I spy with my third eye...

I'm tough. I'm one of those no-nonsense, (soy)meat and potatoes, "it don't hurt, just rub some dirt in it and keep going", bad-ass mothaf*&$ers. I bought into lots of crunchy things when I was in California: sushi, organic food, spirulina, trail running, and recycling drinking straws. I would not, however, ever consider becoming a yoga person. Sitting still for an hour or more is not my idea of exercise. I hate to stretch, and therefore am pretty inflexible. In my head, being as un-malleable as a piece of sheetrock made me more of a man. And when injuries cropped up and people suggested I do yoga to build flexibility and loosen up, I poo-pooed the idea. I don't want to loosen up, I drink a liter of black high-test coffee a day, I like being high-strung!

But it's hard to come off as anything but hard-headed when you insist you don't like something before you've ever tried it, so one day after work I went to a yoga class. Before the class there were furry people all over the lobby waiting for the aerobics class before it to end. These specimen were the kind of person who you would never expect to set a (bare) foot inside a gym in their entire lives. They were the type that were too earthy for birkenstocks or even organic deodorants. I knew I was going to hate this. In the class I did my usual un-co-ordinated group exercise routine, only slower, and in even more bizarre body positions. I cracked in about 6 places and was as embarrassed as if I'd passed gas in a quiet aerobics studio. I hated these people for embarrassing me. The instructor was speaking in this unreal whisper-y voice like she thought Mother Earth was speaking through her or something and she kept urging us to breathe through out tailbones. I don't know about you freaks, but I breathe through my mouth and nose, I thought. When I looked around to figure out what I was supposed to be doing everyone seemed to have this blissful look on their faces, obviously they'd discovered the secret of breathing through their tailbones. I survived through an hour of this torture. Five minutes after the hour was up, when Mother Earth was still giving my physiologically impossible orders I picked up my mat and walked out, proud that I was right. Yoga is stupid.

I tried yoga one more time in Barcelona. This time I didn't quite feel like they were going to be passing out purple robes and Kool-ade after the class, so it was promising. The problem was that it was dark in there and I couldn't see what the other people were doing. And the instructor was speaking Catalan. I have no idea how to say "breathe through your tailbone" in Catalan. For the last 15 minutes of the class we were told to make our bodies heavy and relax. I fell asleep on my mat. Well, what did they expect in a class that gives you mats and pillows, turns out the light and tells you to relax? In my opinion, a gym is not an appropriate sleeping place. No doubt about it, yoga is stupid.

Since I've come back to Boston I've been on this detox kick, trying to get my health back. I haven't had a drink in a month, cigarettes are no longer a part of my life, I've quit coffee in the morning and drink green tea instead, I read books instead of watching TV, I've managed to cut junk food out of my diet, I'm sleeping again and exercise out in the fresh air. Now, as you may remember, I have recently discovered FitTV on my parents' cable service. I don't like to do the aerobics stuff because we have an old house that rattles as I jump around, but if only there were a kind of exercise that I could do that were a bit more... static. Convinced in part by the boys on Ironman Talk, in part by Phoenix, and in part by a gradual waring down by people who I respect, I decided that alone, in the privacy of my own TV room I would give yoga one more crack. The first day, trying to execute Warrior 3 I knocked over a Leggo sculpture that my cousin's daughter had made one holiday and insisted we keep for her. If I was supposed to be uttering a "motion phrase woven together with breath" what I was doing was more of a grunt woven by a 10-year-old at summer camp.

But I've kept at it, and I'm doing about 3-4 yoga "sessions" (okay, episodes) a week! I'm not getting much better, but at least I'm stretching regularly for the first time since that brief episode in high school when I had a crush on a cheerleader and wanted to try out for the squad. Some of the poses look pretty funny because I'm neither flexible nor balanced. Like for example, when I try to do the bridge pose, which is supposed to look like this,

my butt hangs down so low that, without taking my fists off the floor, I can stick my thumbs up and poke my butt cheeks. And when I try to do the tree pose that looks like this,

mine looks more like "lumberjack pose" because my arms swing around a bit before I fall down with a loud crashing sound. And, even though after a bit of practice I can get into crow pose for a grand total of maybe about 2 seconds, which looks like this,

I spend most of my crow time sticking my butt up in the air more like a drunk ostrich than a crow.

But I can do this,

And I can do this,
And I can hold this for about 1 and a half seconds,
And I absolutely love doing this,

But I still can't get the damn breathing right! It's something that I've practiced every day of my life, you would think that it would be easier to master. I don't know how I manage it, but I somehow seem to do a whole half hour of exhaling. Whether I've learned something and am exhaling all the way down to my tailbone I have no idea, but whenever that sedated voice tells me to inhale, I still can only seem to blow out.

And yeah, some of that stuff is damn tough when it comes down to it! Standing on one leg for 30 seconds while you've got your arms stuck out com ca and your free leg is stretched out impossibly far from your body cosi you can really get a bit of a burn going on! I was moaning for mercy when one show had me doing a whole 8-minute sequence based in chair pose! And as the blood flows back into my muscles after some of these horrible contortions, it actually does feel really good, kind of warm and rubbery. So I'm going to keep going with the yoga thing until my body looks like this,

and I'm able to do this,

and I've got blinding chakaras and I'm able to see into the future with my third eye. Or if that doesn't work, at least until I can touch my hands behind my back...