Going to the mat -1

This is not a weight loss blog.

Over the summer, the city hosted a sunrise yoga program at the park by the river. It sounded nice, like a peaceful way to begin the day, and I had never done yoga before --at least, not a full class.

Long, long ago, back when I lived in another place and was a slightly different person, I swam most mornings at the local community center. It was a good way to clear my head before work and release a lot of pent up tension. At the time, I was a copywriter for a local radio station, poor as a church mouse and my love life was in the toilet.

Swimming was good for me.

Anyway, Lori, a friend from work also went to the community center and told me I needed to come to the kickboxing/aerobics class she taught.

Her exact words: "Bill, if nobody shows up, they won't pay me."

She also suggested that it might be a good place to meet women --young, athletic, flexible women who might be impressed by a the kind of guy who made exercise a priority.

It seemed like a long shot, but I went along with it and was, naturally, the youngest student in the room. Everyone else was retirement age or older, but I had a pretty good time anyway, and it wasn't like I had anything better to do, except sulk in front of the television in my apartment.

With a little encouragement, I became a regular and eventually, Lori and her kickboxing co-teacher began adding yoga to the end of the session, as a kind of cool down.

I didn't know what to make of it and to be honest, yoga didn't seem all that manly. Back then, a dude saying that he wanted to go to a yoga class was like saying you wanted to make sweet, sweaty love to a truck driver --but coal country isn't necessarily known for being progressive.

It was pretty progressive that I was even doing the kickboxing.

Yoga didn't go over so well and the class began to thin out. Eventually, I lost interest, too. I stuck with the swimming until my economic circumstance grew dire enough that I decided to devote my early mornings to delivering newspapers.

That was a pretty miserable six month, but it passed. My life changed and I completely forgot about yoga until I started reading about Buddhism and meditation and did a couple of stories about yoga instructors. Yoga was becoming a thing.

I got interested very slowly. Friends taught it. My boss taught it. Everyone invited me to come to their class, but I never went.

So, using a borrowed mat, I went to the class by the river. While the cars on the overpass droned on, taking their drivers to their early morning offices, and the sky threatened rain, I followed along. I was as graceful as a drunken water buffalo, but I can't deny that I didn't feel both relaxed and energized afterwards.

I wanted to to do it again.

So, I bought a yoga mat online and thought long and hard about doing yoga. I'd find a class. I really would. This would be great for me.

A couple of months passed.

So, maybe it was my schedule. I was too busy (not really) --or too shy. On the mat, I'd felt clumsy next to the mostly lithe bodies around me whose bones were made from pipe cleaners.

I tried checking out a yoga video from the library; kept it for two weeks, returned it unwatched. I repeated the process with the same results.

The yoga mat I bought remained tightly rolled up and propped up against the television stand in my living room.

Finally, I looked for yoga instructional videos on Amazon's streaming service, added a stack of them to my watch list and then pointedly ignored them through the holidays. 
 
 That changed this morning.