I started yoga today. Now I have trembling thighs from all the stretching. It makes me feel 1) good that I exercised and 2) weird that my shaky legs are making stumble like I’m drunk. Seriously, I tripped twice over my own feet the first few minutes after class, that’s how wobbly my thigh muscles were.
Why yoga, I pretend you ask?
Because yoga can be an intense form of physical movement (who knew?) but doesn’t bounce you around too much. It has taken almost 18 months for my IT band to heal up, so I am watching it carefully. Yoga stretches out the IT band (which is now a wee bit sore again), and I think I’ll be in good enough shape to start kickboxing and whatnot after Christmas in addition to the yoga. I am determined to get my back into my physical fitness routine, so I can sneer at people who are judging me because of my fat.
Frankly, I am always looking for an excuse to sneer at people who embrace cultural constructions without researching facts. It’s my dark side.
I used to do yoga for years, until Lilo arrived and my life became all high-needs baby, all the time. So it’s been about 7 years since I’ve done it regularly. I had forgotten that I have all the flexibility of a plank of wood. My “down dog” looks like “frozen stegosaurus”. It ain’t pretty, y’all.
I had also forgotten how much I can hurt the back of my pelvis when I am lying on a hard floor. Yoga mats have all the cushioning power of three squares of toilet tissue, so I need to put a folded blanket under my ass as well. Moreover, I need to use the yoga straps to do the thingy where instructors tell you to “push your heel up toward the ceiling and really feel the release of tension behind the knees” but should really be phrased as “aim your gnarly heel that desperately needs someone to take a pumice stone to it at the ceiling, but only get it as high as the middle of the wall, and then grab your yoga pants to hold it there because you cannot reach your knees to help the hold the pose due to the fact you have arms that the same length as a Tyrannosaurus rex’s forelimbs”.
A video of me doing yoga, in all my beefy and rigid glory, could probably go viral on You-tube. If I catch anyone in that room with a cell phone out I’ll smack them and steal their memory card, just in case.
I have class again on Thursday morning. I am hoping that my thighs will quit quivering like a soft boiled egg yolk by then. If not, I’m going to need some stronger straps.
I took a yoga class once with a brand new instructor. Whenever she wasn’t sure what to do, she had us do downward dog. I didn’t walk out of that class, I wobbled. It felt like my pelvis was sliding all around. It’s hard to walk when your legs aren’t attached to anything solid.
Also, anyone who is judging you for your fat is working hard to see past your GINORMOUS personality. That sounds like way too much work to me.
wow, so vivid a description, I felt like I was there with you
Although…………had I been there, there would have been a large amount of giggling going on and unfortunately the only muscles being stretched would be our jaw muscles. Still, that’s a yoga class I would like to be a part of!
Also, I’m going to have to request you stop calling yourself FAT!
Please don’t call yourself fat. I’m overweight and getting ready to shock some people as I’ve been asked to teach a yoga class at my local Y.
My instructor at my YMCA is a stocky older woman and she can bend like a rubber pretzel. She is hoping to help me touch some part of my leg below my knees before the end of the class :0)
Actually, I call myself fat as a form of resistance to that word being used pejoratively. I am not chubby, plump, or “full-figured”. I am fat. Hear me roar! Watch me shop for larger yoga pants that won’t creep down my backside!
Finally got to read, hope my fb response doesn’t seem condescending now that I know you are a veteran yogi.
I had a friend in Toronto who loved going to yoga class with me because she loved giving the evil eye to the skinny chicks in their designer clothes who stared at me in disgust when I walked in in all my fat glory, in non-branded leggings and t-shirt. She would get quite indignant about Lululemon etc only making yoga clothes in tiny sizes: stick figure and deceased stick figure, as I call them.
The women in my sangha here at my Centro Holistico also go out of their way to explain to people who look at me with disbelief when they hear I’m the yoga teacher, that despite my size, I have more flexibility than all of them put together. They are quite proud of me.
So, yay to us for taking back yoga from those who clearly have no idea.
I’ve done yoga for years, but I am by no means a veteran … I still cannot do a warrior’s pose for diddly :0)
YAY good for you on yoga and on owning fat! Whenever I refer to myself as fat or speak specifically about my fat to my doctors they always get uncomfortable. We’re in Santa Monica, one of the hubs of pretty people in the sea of pretty people that is Los Angeles. Fat is a dirty, dirty word here but I use it regardless. Clearly I’m not being spanked enough… ahem. Back to the topic. Fat is just a word, used in the vernacular to refer to both adipose tissue as well as to a person whose body composition includes a certain minimum proportion of adipose tissue. There’s no shame accuracy nor in truth.
Also, what happened to your IT band? What did I miss? Who do I kill?
I had trouble with yoga because my boobs always seemed to be in the way. Did you know that there is water yoga? Woga. Seriously.
Ah, boobs are a challenge for me, too! I have to constantly explain to my students that I am modifiying my pose because my boobs are in the way, and show them diagrams from a book of the original posture. Hadn’t heard of water yoga, but I usually do some when I’m floating in the ocean- even better than regular yoga!
Good for you! I’m always so inspired by how much exercise Julie is doing, and Barb too. I’m trying… trying… I never give up hope… lol But I’m starting to try a little bit of yoga at home, since I think i will mesh well with my newish focus of practicing meditation.