Hot Yoga

I have the very good fortune of working with my very good friend Annie, with whom I went to law school. Our offices are right next to each other and she is the person I go to 100 million times every day with a look on my face that communicates "someone just asked me to do something and I think they were speaking Hebrew!" Then Annie sits me down, talks it out with me, and helps me understand what the heck I'm doing. Also during that conversation she makes a quiche and solves the conflict in the Middle East. Because she is the most efficient human being who has ever lived.

Annie has been trying to get me to go try Bikram Yoga (aka "hot" Yoga) for a few weeks. She goes every Saturday and has assured me that it's a wonderful experience. I kept telling her I wasn't that interested because I've been to Yoga classes before and it's just not really my thing. Finally on Friday Annie explained, "it's weird. You'll like it. Because it's weird."

I'm not really sure what this says about me, but that was a compelling enough argument and the next morning I walked right into a Bikram Yoga studio.


It was a 90 minute class and, because it was my first time, the lady who checked me in gave me a little pep talk before we started. She told me it would be 104 degrees in the room with 40% humidity (and 20% chance of rain), that I would have a fight or flight urge, and that I just needed to do my best to stay there and survive. And I was like, "honey, where were you when I was moving to Palau?"

I stripped all of my clothes off, with the exception of some short running shorts, and wandered in. I wandered into THE JAWS OF HELL.

You guys. There is a difference between 104 degrees outside and 104 degrees inside. That difference is a lack of air flow and happiness.

Immediately I dropped to the floor next to where Annie was silently meditating as though she was enjoying a pleasant day at the beach. Annie is a superhuman and I should have taken this into account when she informed me that it wasn't that hard and that I would be totally fine. She had a baby in 2013 and somehow still had a six pack the entire time and within 30 seconds of giving birth she was already competing in all of the Olympic Games.

What? There weren't any Olympic Games in 2013? WELL THAT'S HOW SUPERHUMAN ANNIE IS.

By the time class actually started, I was soaking in a pool of my own sweat, flat on my back, in what felt like a muggy cocoon.

There were 50 people in the class and the instructor made sure to give me special attention several times because I was the new guy.

And look. I love attention. If I could afford it, I would hire a swarm of people to follow me around all day and pay attention to me. One of those people would be Paul Simon. He would sing to me all of his songs but would change words to "Eli" as appropriate. And I would be all, "oh my gosh! You wrote this song about me!?" every time I heard my name. And Paul Simon would be all, "who else would I write my music about?" And then I would swallow some of his hair.

But in Bikram Yoga, where I already felt self-conscious and out of place and DISGUSTING, I was really not looking for any attention. So I didn't appreciate the instructor calling out, "NOT LIKE THAT, ELI" and "PLEASE PAY ATTENTION, ELI" and "YOU'R NOT SUPPOSED TO BE NAKED FOR THIS PART, ELI. OR ANY PART, FOR THAT MATTER."

Do you guys have any idea how long 90 minutes is when you are standing in the shape of a pretzel and it's 104 degrees?

The only way I can get the point across is by telling you that it is exactly the length of one and a half episodes of Glee. OF GLEE!!!

Eventually the individual pools of sweat started overtaking one another and the room began to fill up with water like that part on the Titanic when Jack is all "chop off my handcuffs with that hatchet!" and Rose is all "paint me naked!" and Jack is all "never let go!" Then she lets him sink into the icy water and forgets all about him and Celine Dion sings about it. I haven't seen Titanic in a while, but you know what I'm talking about.

When the class ended and the instructor swam through the room to open the door, all of the water came pouring out into the front room with each of us in it. You guys. I cannot possibly overstate how much I was sweating. It was raining off of my body. RAINING.

I kept almost fainting from dehydration. But my motivation for maintaining consciousness came from the horror of the thought that I might fall over onto another person. And I didn't want that to happen because GROSS.

I went into the locker room to shower and I was really confused about which parts of the locker room were acceptable for full nudity and which were more like quasi-lobbies where you were just supposed to leave your stuff and NOT be naked. So naturally I just treated them all like a brothel and I wandered the place without clothes. But then when were leaving and putting our shoes on out in the actual lobby I noticed that I could see into the quasi-lobby part of the locker room from the front desk. And I was like, "well. I guess I wasn't really planning on coming back anyway."

~It Just Gets Stranger