Bendy Pretzel

I decided to try a yoga class today at my new fitness center.  I've been doing Zumba, which is always fun, but I wanted to switch it up.  I took yoga in college and loved it, so I figured maybe it was something I could get back into.

I was the first one in class - I was even there before the teacher.  Soon after I put my mat down, the teacher sauntered in.  I'm not sure of her name, so we'll just call her Ms. Bendy Pretzel (or Ms. BP for short).  Ms. BP was fairly small, about my age, and she had one half of her hair in dreadlocks and the other half was shaved off.  Erm...interesting.  I figured maybe she had reached a level of higher enlightenment than me, or perhaps the shaved half of her hair had been messing up her chi or something.  Who knows.  Clearly I'm not an advanced enough yogi to understand.

Anyway, I was really looking forward to a relaxing hour of aligning my chakras and stretching my muscles.  Once the class started, though, I knew I was in trouble.  This girl moved FAST, and she did really advanced stuff.  She would say something like, "Okay I want you to hop to plank and pull up into a cobra, then push into downward dog and bring that up to warrior two."  She'd say that all in one sentence, and while I was still trying to translate that in my head she would already be halfway through the sequence.  It was nuts.   After a few minutes I looked around nervously, thinking that everyone must be judging me for being so far behind.  In reality, I was actually ahead of most of the people.  When Ms. BP called out the next command, I paid attention to what people did.  The grandma lady next to me just stood there looking helpless and scared, and the guy in front of me was just staring at BP's butt.  Cool.

The thing is, this wasn't an advanced class or anything.  It was just your run-of-the-mill yoga class.  So why was BP being so nuts?!  I knew I was done trying to keep up when we were all standing and she told us to put our leg straight up in the air and put our knee in our ear.  Ummm...no one can do that (except, obviously, Ms. Bendy Pretzel).  The only way my knee is ending up in my ear is if I am in some horrible crash/explosion and that's just the way my body parts land.  I wanted to yell, "I'm sorry!  I'm just a recreational yoga user!  I don't know all of this hard core stuff you're doing!"

Literally no one could keep up with Bendy Pretzel.  Not even close.  Half the class just stood there with their eyes bugged out while BP did stuff that no human should be able to do.  At one point she contorted her body into this weird knot and then held herself off the ground on only one hand.  WHAT?!?!  I was amazed and disgusted all at once. 

That's not really a good way to teach a class.  I'm not going to stand in front of my fifth graders and say, "Time for math.  I'm going to go ahead and do some Calculus, so just try to keep up the best you can."  I left feeling pretty sad and inadequate, which is dumb because I actually knew something about yoga going in.  I'm no Bendy Pretzel, but I was hoping that I would have at least been able to relax a little and do some toning stretches.  :-/  Instead I think I might have pulled something trying to get into a "wrapped scorpion" position.  Who would ever want to wrap a scorpion in anything, is what I'd like to know.  *sigh*  I guess it's back to Zumba tomorrow.