Pooting!

New students often confide that they are scared of farting in class. "Does everyone look at you?" "What if it's loud?" "Have you ever really let one go?"

The answer of most experienced yogis is, yes. Aside from the fact that you are supposed to fart in class, (What do you think all that pushing, pulling and stretching is doing? Removing toxins by sweat, breath and yes, farting.) the yoga room is not a magical land where bodily functions cease. If you spend enough time in any one place, you will eventually fart in that place. Duh. 

This does not mean that the room becomes thick from gasses, causing methane gas to asphyxiate the yogis inside. I certainly don't fart in the room often; unless you count once per month often. I can, with some confidence, say that is the precise frequency with which I spend my class tooting. I have no idea if other females* have this issue, but during my monthly visit I develop copious amounts of gas. It's not always smelly, or noisy, thank goodness, but the quantities are rather astounding. 

Last week contained an unusually bloated day and class became an adventure in farts. In most poses wind was removed, whether the pose seemed to call for it or not. I felt a little bad about it in separate-leg-stretching, when my neighbor's head was uncomfortably close to my rear.

My shorts were so wet from sweat I got horrible visions of the material billowing like a sail with each fart. 

Hi! Nice to meet you. Yes, I ate curry today. Why do you ask?

Miraculously though, not a single one was loud or particularly smelly that class. I have, of course, been next to (and the cause of) those. New students are particularly prone, males especially.** I realize the goal is to become so focused you don't notice these things, but when a guy is accidentally telling you what he ate this week (That smelled like beer. That was Cheetos. Woah, that was spicey ramen) it is hard to give your focus adequate focus. 

All that said though, I notice the gas with the same amount of eye-rolling, snickering or superiority that I would address a person's thumb. We all do it. Get over it. Unless it's me. My farts are epic. Go ahead and laugh at my billowing sail-shorts.

* Aside from the ones with my same genetic code; I did feel the need to confide this issue with my mother at one point. Evidently she gets gassy at that time of the month too! What a relief it was to find out I wasn't alone!

**I know this is a horrible generalization, but I do feel it safe to say that, on the whole, men eat more red meat and drink more beer than women. Both substances are notorious fart-causers.

You May Say I'm a Dreamer

Many of us yogis live in our own little world. Things are nice here. There are many nice people and the few bad people, in theory, slowly morph into good people. Hard work is rewarded with a long, healthy life. In this lifetime too; not some yet-to-be-seen afterlife crap. This may seem like a flighty worldview. I don't care. It's nice in my world and I am not coming out to join you in your broken one. Let me give you a few examples of why realism can take a hike. When you are ready, feel free to join me in my happy yoga bubble.

Today I will share reason #1: Less Mature Attitudes Toward Attire

In the real world finding yourself at a gathering in the same outfit as another woman is considered embarrassing. Unless you have brought a spare outfit in the car, this can make for an entire evening of uncomfortable encounters. These can range from, "Haha. You (or, 'she') certainly have (or 'has') good taste." (repeated about 50 times) to the behind your back exchange, "That b*tch is wearing my dress!" "It's okay, Kitty, she looks like a 10-cent whore. You wear it with such panache!" 

As a child it was my duty to repeatedly make the argument that school uniforms would stunt creativity and individualism, a foundation of our shared American heritage.* Now I long for the freedom of every man, woman and child, be he laborer or executive, donning the same unflattering but comfy slacks and polo. I would proudly proclaim, "Why, yes, I DID wear this yesterday!" I will admit though, it's not to avoid the above scenario, I simply think it would give me an extra 15 minutes in bed every morning. 

R.W. (Real World)

In my yoga world, the repeating of an outfit is welcomed. It is celebrated with the same enthusiasm that just about everything is in the yoga world. I revert to my twittering 12 year old self, screaming, "OHMYGOD! We're TWINS!" despite dissimilar backgrounds, hair or eye color or being born on opposite sides of the globe.

Y.W. (Yoga World)

More, possibly more pertinent, examples of why my yoga world rocks harder than the real world will follow in subsequent posts.

*Not that non-Americans don't value independence. This was the argument of a grade-school student who knew darned well that anytime you say something is an "American value" it becomes harder for the teacher to disagree. This same tactic is used by some adults. It is because of these adults that the phrase "American values" now makes my skin crawl.

Yelp!

Yelp is aptly named. It sounds like onomatopoeia for when one of those yappy dust-mop dogs is frightened by a falling leaf. 

I have a strategy for Yelp so I don't leave the site feeling like I had doo-doo flung at me by strangers; I only read the good and average reviews. More often than not, the negative reviews are some yahoo that may or may not have stepped into the reviewed establishment one time where they suffered some grievance that can rage from stubbing their toe to being served "unripe peaches." 

The latter grievance is in a review for one of my favorite brunch establishments, Marmalade. Marmalade does not serve peaches, it garnishes its plates with mangos. Yes, this bright crayon was not only rating his meal a one star because he could not correctly identify a mango but the mango is a free garnish, not part of his meal. The mango should be a, "Wow, what is this delicious bit of color on my plate that I did not pay for? A peach? Hmm. Tastes odd. Oh well, I did not ask for a peach so I will not complain about its lack of peachy-ness." Instead, it was a several paragraph diatribe about how offensive this "unripe peach" was to this man's fine palate. Fine my left cheek; he couldn't identify a mango.

Knowing such odd grievances abound, after I reviewed my yoga studio (after a year of attendance and visiting multiple other studios both in and out of my area for comparison) I had no intentions of visiting its Yelp page again. That changed when one of my yogi friends sent me a review she figured out was about me. The gripe: "The first time I went, someone was menstruating and leaking all over their white towel." Everyone with me, "EWwww! Gross!"

Exhibit A: The Review

Now, let's examine this comment. 

1. The goal of the class is to remain focused on self. I have to assume this was a real gusher in order to distract this poor yogi. So, what is the likelihood that a woman was having a full-out waterfall and not doing anything about it? 
2. It is not the studio's fault if one of the students is menstruating. 
3. It wasn't menstruation. I can, fairly confidently, confide that my yogi friend was most likely correct that I was the offending yogi and therefore assure you all it was not blood of any form.

You all may have noticed from my illustrations that I have a red strip of hair where bangs usually go. The first day or two after I have dyed my hair it can bleed. When I attend class after my dye job I notify the teacher that, "I am not bleeding from my head, my hair may drip today and promise to keep it on the towel."  In all my years, I had never even considered that this drip of color might be interpreted as a shunning of feminine products (although, possibly, the thought should have crossed my mind).

This review forced me to reconsider the evidence. Through most of the standing series, there is no contact with my head to the floor, or even a good clear shot from the hair to the ground so no spots appear. The first pose to mar my pristine white towel is comically perfect for the supposed 'period incident.' Standing-separate-leg-stretching pose (wow, is that a mouthful). For those not familiar, one separates their legs, stretches down and grabs their feet. The object of the pose is to get your head on the floor directly between your feet. Most days I can do that. My head hits the floor, directly in the center between my feet and stamps a red blotch there. We all come up together and, voilà!, The person behind me sees a period mark directly below my crotch.

Evidently, in this pose I look like Megan Fox. If you need me, I'll be in separate leg stretching.

The red spot will get progressively larger for the remainder of class; rabbit being the biggest spot-expander as I try to position my head on the floor, close to my knees, directly below my airborne buttocks. The precise nature of the series movements dictate that my butt will be on that red spot anytime we turn and lay in savasana, enforcing the impression that the spot may be coming from those quarters. 

My favorite part is the closing of this review. The review closes with, "Namaste." I was under the impression that namaste meant, "The lightness in me bows to the lightness in you." A beautiful phrase honoring and acknowledging that there is good in everyone. Evidently, I was wrong. Namaste is a proper closing for openly criticizing others in a semi-annonomous way when you say nothing nice at all. Well, joanne y., namaste.*

*Pretty sure I get -10 karma points for that one. Oh well. I'll get a kitten out of a tree later or something.

Drunken Yoga

I have taken class in less than desirable conditions, as we all have. Maybe we haven't drank enough water. Maybe we were out too late the night before enjoying libations. Maybe we were out just a few hours ago and the libations are still in our system making us just a little more than tipsy. Yeah. I've done that.

In my defense I did not know I was getting drunk. No, really, I had no idea. Okay, a little idea, but I was pretty sure I was in control of the situation. As in most instances where I think I am in control, I found out I was not.

The day was sunny and warm. The sort of day that people call in sick to take a walk and contemplate never going to work again. Fortunately, I am a freelance designer which means I can take a walk whenever I feel like it, as long as the work gets done. On this particular day, I had most of the day free and decided to knock off early and enjoy the sunshine. Walking through my neighborhood gave me that complete feeling that inspires one to eat nice things and maybe drink a beer. "Have a summer," I've heard it called.

That's exactly what I did. I stopped in at the corner book store, grabbed a novel comprised of essays I could easily drift in and out of without missing too much and proceeded to one of my favorite bars. I sat in the large front window watching the main-street scene in front of me. I grabbed a nearly black beer (of which I am more than a little fond) and munched on a salad with corn/thyme dressing (balance, right?). I polished both off and, not wanting the glorious day to end, turned and asked the nice man behind the bar for a non-alcoholic beer suggestion. The last yoga class of the day was in two hours and I was already feeling euphoric.*

I explained to the man behind the bar that I had a passion for dark beers but would settle for anything made from a hop with low or no alcohol. The nice man pulled out a small sample for me of some very black ooze. I realized that with over 100 beers to choose from, 25 on tap, I had come to the right place. A velvety beer with no alcohol! Jackpot! I loved it, yes, I would have a glass of that one!

I went back to reading my book with a tall non-alcoholic black hole of a beer to sip on. Euphoria sustained.

Half a glass later, I was enjoying my book even more. In fact, for a book detailing the fall of Russia, this was a hoot! Three-fourths of the pint through, my waitress ran up to me in a panic. "I don't know why you needed a non-alchoholic beer, but this isn't it! I am so sorry, you weren't talking to the bartender, that was a bus-boy." She went on to explain that I was drinking something called Nosferatu, the name itself hinting with a sledgehammer that this is not a beer to be trifled with. This beer's alcohol content is 8.0%, considerably higher than standard beers. Because of the high content, the bar usually pours this beer into a snifter, not a giant pint glass, like I had been pulling off of. My book's sudden hilarity made far more sense.

Being on a consecutive 60 day challenge, I wasn't about to let a little Nosferatu get in the way of my yoga. In fact, I figured, this may just be the day I cut out half-way through pranayama breathing to take a 90-minute hot nap. I waltzed into class, lightly sloshy.

My first backbend pretty well told the story of that whole class. I stood straight, pulled my arms tight over my head, leaned my head back as far as it would go and pushed my hips to the front mirror. I was pushing and stretching so good I anticipated staring at my own buttocks. Blearily, I could tell it was not my own butt I was staring at, but, rather, the pebbly surface of our ceiling. The facts laid out by my vision were telling me I had succeeded in tilting my head back an inch or two.

To make a 90-minute story short, I made it through the class sloppily but intact; no nap needed. I headed to the locker room after final savasana and my friend, who had the unfortunate mat position by my side, glowered at me, "Beer and corn? What the hell did you eat? The whole class smelled like beer and corn?!" It took me a while to catch on that the corn was the dressing on the salad, but the beer I knew right away.

This friend and I laugh about our exploits a lot, realizing this is not how a regular yoga practice "should" go. My thought on that is that none of us are perfect. Realistically, I am not going to stop drinking (although not before class if I can help it), give all my worldly possessions to charity, or live on a mountain. That's not where my karma is. My karma is being the best Kate I can be, (maybe that means I can encourage folks with lifestyles like mine that you can do yoga; it's not all willowy women in flowing white tunics foraging for mushrooms). Sometimes being my best "me" means admitting where I am at any given moment and doing the best I can to meet my personal goals with where I am. Sometimes that will mean a lesson learned for next time, sometimes it will not. Either way, continuing with a light heart will get me much further than chastising myself, or that darned bus-boy.

* Since picking up daily yoga I have become an incredibly cheap date. I thought I would mind, I used to enjoy drinking large muscly men with tattooed faces under the table only to turn around and have a pleasant conversation with my friends over another beer. I have, however, discovered that the cost savings far outweigh the swell of pride from an over-achieving liver.

How I gained the ability to wear shorts.

Modesty can be a wonderful thing — it creates people like Audrey Hepburn. It also creates a wardrobe inappropriate for Chicago summers. I have always had an odd relationship to modesty. In bars made exclusively of dark corners I feel perfectly comfortable in little corset-style tops and fishnets. However, you get me on a sunny street and I become some pre-suffragette trying to make amends with the fact that it is okay for the modern girl to show a little ankle. Or, at least, that was the case until one remarkable event. 

Getting me into short shorts for Bikram was a slow process. My first class was spent in knit pants and two layers of shirts. The first shirt was a tight tank top, so that if I had to flip upside down, my belly would not hang out (I was familiar with downward dog and prepared should it rear its ugly head). The second was a loosely fitting T-shirt so that, heaven forbid, no one could see the curvature of my body. I should mention that this behavior was not driven by some teenage angsty body image issue. More than anything, I just didn't want to assault the person next to me with unwanted fleshy bits. 

Within a month the outfit morphed into a tank top and loose running shorts (with built in undie-guards so the person behind me didn't have to see anything in balancing stick). Over the course of the next 6 months, my belly even made an appearance. Granted, the belly-bearing top had thick padded cups I would shove into it to prevent anyone from being able to see that I, like most other people, have nipples. 

This steady pace might have gotten me to the blasé attitude I have now within four or five years but a miracle happened. My first year as a yogi, I competed in my first Asana Championship. While always an enriching experience, this one was special. Rather than performing the 3 minute routine on a stage in a park, where your audience passes by at a distance of 20-30 feet, or in an auditorium, where your audience is only people interested in the sport, this competition was in a Whole Foods. Yes, right in the grocery store. 

Tucked safely between the check-out lanes and the entrance we lifted our legs, shoved our chests up to the sky (which incidentally, was not a sky, but the second floor and escalator. One competitor, when folded in half in guillotine, saw, just past her own rear, two young boys staring at her from said escalator). To ensure that no competitor would leave this day with lingering body-shame, the warm-up area was placed on a second level, past the floral department. Yes, to get on stage we had to walk past hoards of urbanite mothers and their gaping children in what amounted to our undergarments. Many a young child was educated that day on the glories of anatomy as competitor after competitor wove through the floral department, past the check-out lanes, passing the natural soaps, to the stage — clad in spandex leotards and banana hammocks.*

Aura's Guillotine

Now that my hoo-hoo has been pointed at unsuspecting shoppers of organic produce I find bearing a little ankle, even knee, quite unremarkable. And thus, you can now find me purchasing flimsy bra-tops and clingy short shorts for my practice. Problem solved. I would recommend this as a sure fire cure to any person willing to try.**

* I would like to make special note that I think this was actually a genius move. Being in such an open venue ensured a lot of visitors who would not have been watching otherwise. It also put us in close proximity to food, which was a huge bonus the second we were off stage. 

** The author of this blog will not be held responsible for any person being forcibly evicted from Whole Foods for indecent exposure.

My Incredibly Efficient Sweat Glands

For the first time in my life I plan on purchasing a scale. I have, as a rule, never owned one as I can see myself obsessing over every pound. This thought is not without reason. At one point, living in my parent's house, I stepped on a scale twice a day, if not more. I worked out the averages for morning and evening, before a potty break or after a meal. I knew this behavior was obsessive and that, lacking the willpower to stop myself, the easiest solution was to never have a scale stare at me from the foot of my home commode ever again. This plan has worked out great and I can currently only guess my weight within 15 pounds. I am willing to revisit my willpower over my former obsession, or possibly just purchase a scale as a disposable item, to answer one burning question, "Exactly how many pounds of sweat do I shed in one class?" I, up until this point, have squelched my curiosity, feeling it was just too odd to disclose, until yesterday. Yesterday, The Boy expressed the exact same desire. 

You see, The Boy just had his first tactile experience with what I have explained to him many times is a phenomenon beyond explanation — the amount of sweat my body can produce in a one-and-a-half-hour period. It happened because The Boy and I got home later than intended from Occupy Chicago. In order to get seven hours of sleep before a planned 6am (zombie) yoga class The Boy and I divvied up the chores I had left that evening. The only chore I could delegate to him (could he brush my teeth?) was laundry, which included the yoga gear I had been lugging around downtown with me for the past four hours. I was hesitant, but he was insistent. After he promised me he would still sleep with me after handling my grody towels I acquiesced — I really wanted to get to bed. 

As I was picking out clothes for the next day I heard a shout from the laundry hallway (it can't really qualify as a room), "This is all sweat?!?" While I was expecting some variation on this exclamation, I was not expecting the tone. There was no disgust in the voice. He was expressing sheer curiosity of the scientific variety. "Yeah!" I shouted proudly back.  

The Boy is stymied by my glands' efficiency.

I am not saying I sweat a lot for a girl; putting to shame those who "glisten." While I have never been a "glistener," my current capacity for water release puts most men to shame. I am captivated by the new efficiency of my glands.  If I can weigh my towels before and after class Im pretty sure it would be a figure of epic proportions. I may be able to get into Guinness for this!

At my studio, we frequently discuss the 'top sweaters' and my name is always in the top three. Of these three, the other two are men. I like to play a game with those other two, you know, like "Monkey in the Middle" only way grosser. One of these two fine gentlemen will set up on one side of a good friend yogi and I will set up on the other. We form a wonderful sprinkler system in eagle; sweat flying off our swinging fingertips in giant arcs. Our friend in the middle gets an unwelcome shower if they don't move to the back of their mat.

One of our teachers is such a good sport, when teaching from behind me she once exclaimed, "Whoo! You got me!" I apologized and she quickly retorted, "I like it!" I have also gotten the comment (from a much taller member of the top three tier), "I didn't know such a small person could produce that quantity. I mean, there just isn't that much surface area!" 

This might seem incredibly gross but it is just how comfortable I have become with myself. At some point you just shrug it off. There is even a "two towel club" I am proudly a member of. Yup. I sweat right through one bath towel and my teachers have kindly requested I lug not one, but two towels around with me so as not to form a marsh around my mat.

So, when The Boy had his first confrontation with what I had been trying to explain to him was a miracle of the human body and reacted in the same sheer wonder I experience every day, I was all too happy to puff up my chest and proclaim, "Yes, that is my poundage of sweat you are hefting!" And that, is why a scale may just make it back into my house. 

Two, Two, Two Posts in One!

Am I the only one that will get that outdated Certs reference? Yeah? Oh well. Im not changing it because this is my blog and I can rave like a lunatic and make inside jokes if I want to. 

I will get to the regularly scheduled post next, but first, I would like to share with you the coolest thing I have ever seen on public transit. I can not tell enough people about it. Maybe it's all over the interwebs by now, but I haven't seen it. In fact, my fellow passengers were so plugged into their gadgets that I am the only one who seemed to notice! I weep for them.

I was on my way home from a client's office via the brown line. For those not familiar with Chicago public transit; all of our lines are elevated. This line is above ground for it's whole route, putting you at eye-level with rooftops. In this particular section of Chicago, Lakeview, you pass many four-story brownstone buildings with flat roofs. A few of these buildings have short brick walls (about three feet high) around the roof. I imagine the idea is so that one can safely work on the roof ...or paint graffiti in private.

On this particular roof, the one where I saw the coolest thing one could ever see on public transit ever, three individuals decided to dress up and enact a scene exclusively for us tired, huddled masses on the brown line at rush hour. 

Two people stood roughly 4 feet apart, dressed in brown outfits, held cylindrical, possibly by a hoop-skirt type form. The third stood in between the other two with a giant mallet. The gentleman in the center faced one brown cylinder, then the other, swinging his mallet at each when he faced them. As he swung, the brown critter getting clobbered would sink down below the short brick wall surrounding the roof. Get it!?! GET IT!!?? They were Whac-a-Moles! One of only two games I could play at Chuck-E-Cheese!*

Coolest commute EVAR. Or, at least I thought so. One yogi's only response was, "Yeah, I think you have to be a little nuts to live that close to the tracks." Point taken, John.  

Okay, now on to the yoga!

The other day my mat was placed next to a gentleman that must have been eating curry for lunch, dinner and breakfast for the last twelve years. The smell was pungent and pervasive. It kept assaulting me in waves, rushing over my nose and filling me with images of wholly unappetizing dollops of red, yellow and green sauce. And you know what? As long as my own lunch stayed down, who cares? Really. 

Knowing what I have put into the air after weekends of binge drinking, the classes during the first months of winter, when my diet consists of brownies and wine, and the worst, after one of my rare rendezvous with red meat, I have little room to complain. 

In fact, yesterday and today I have become a Glade layered scented candle from the Garbage Pail Kids' dimension. Breathing through eagle is onion. This melts away to a pungent ammonia smell that I, like all cat owners, can only relate to in terms of cleaning the litter box. Finally, from standing bow until I have flushed the last of the odiferous toxins out, the bottom scent I will refer to only as, "musky male." Let your imagination go on that one. I'll give you a second. Yup, what you just cringed at? The smell is about like that. 

I understand these layered scents are my own fault, my punishment for seven cinnamon rolls yesterday, a plate of brownies the day before, a New York strip steak the previous dinner and various other offenses to my system that were just so good smelling on the way in. I can live with that. I know that usually I do not smell. Regular practice ensures that. 

I also know that the hot room itself smells no more offensive to my olfactory system than walking into a boy's locker room. I can handle a bit of curry for an hour and a half, knowing that he will walk out smelling a little less like curry for his companions in the elevator, cubicle mate and that blind date he may have tonight.

So you, my smelly yogi sister, wafting waves of stale cheese in my direction, rock on. My yogi brethren who continue to live on Cheetos and beer long past college, hold your head high. You there, in the back row reliving your poor decision making skills at the bar yesterday (scotch? I don't even like scotch) continue to push those toxins out of your system and I will do the same.

*The other is ski-ball. Maybe "could play" is a bit strong. I was relatively proficient at that one, as long as Scott Evans would crawl up the lane and put a ball in the 100pt hole for me every now and then.