Tuesday 3.27: Strreeettch

My first experience with yoga for runners begins with a smiling young woman in an incredibly bright, but seemingly windowless room of painted white brick. She’s wearing a bright pink tank top, knee-length spandex tights, and a tiny ear-mounted microphone with a flesh-toned windscreen, giving her an air of authority in what kind of looks like a band’s rehearsal space, minus the Fountains of Wayne poster and sound-absorbing carpets affixed to the wall. The manner in which she’s casually arranged on the floor (which she will call the earth for the duration of the exercise) suggests immediately that she’s far more pliable than I will ever be. She hasn’t even moved yet, and I’m discouraged.

She tells me to begin by squatting on my knees and sitting back so my ass touches the bottom of my feet. This is the first of many maneuvers I will not be able to perform adequately. The issue seems to be my ankles, which don’t bend to the full 90 degrees necessary to sit as I’m supposed to. The left ankle is particularly uncooperative, the result of a deep tibial bruise and alarming laceration obtained in a moment of inelegant posing during a group photo. I pause to consider the injury, losing track of the woman’s instructions, and lumber clumsily to approximate the jackknife position she has assumed. It hurts.

The woman takes this opportunity to note that the jackknife position is “one of the most difficult for runners, who typically have very tight hamstrings,” which is curious, because according to the YouTube description, this is a beginner’s yoga routine specifically designed for runners. I’m not sure why you want to torture them right off the bat with a maneuver that targets a known inadequacy. Incredulous, I lose my focus for another critical moment (this will become a theme) and must again quickly and (I assume) incorrectly reposition my body to mimic the pose the woman is in, which appears quadrupedal.

This time, the jackknife position is a little more open, and her hands are on the floor (“earth”). She mentions that this is a sort of rest position from which the workout will be based, which is concerning for me because at least on my body, every joint on every appendage is ablaze, and I’m aware of a creeping stress on my lower back that I’m certain should not be there. She moves into a standing position, and it’s with great relief that I follow, fully aware and not caring at all that my movement to an upright position carries none of the fluidity, grace, or strength that the woman exudes with each infinitesimal movement. She says something about greeting the sun, and I loathe her.

It’s also at this solar-hello point that the vocabulary begins to become a problem. More than once, the woman tells me to position my “trunk” in one manner or another, and while at first I think she’s talking about my ass, I begin to think maybe she means my entire torso, which is sort of like the tree-trunk of my body, I guess. Her instructions with regard to alignment with other body parts never fully make sense, though, and her rate of movement through the routine is increasing. I think I hear her say “scapia” and gesture toward her ribs. (When I Google it later, the results return only Italian teenagers smoking cigarettes on Instagram, and a World of Warcraft character.) There also seems to be a series of interstitial movements, tied specifically to a breathing pattern, layered on top of the major movements of legs, arms, head, and (confusingly) torso. The poly-rhythms of the exercise push it further from my comprehension.

Kneeling on one knee with the opposite arm raised and twisting my head in a way that may or may not be correct, I realize that watching this routine on my phone is ineffective, because I’m always looking in a different direction, and never at the phone. The woman tells me to stick my leg out to the side and I knock several pans to the floor, terrifying the cat, who flees.

Fifteen minutes into a thirty-seven minute routine, I’m close to giving up. My shoulders feel tighter than they did when I started, which is not the goal as I understand it. I become aware of the fact that some cat litter has made its way onto the yoga mat, and from there transferred to my forearms, which are dripping with sweat. I brush it off and stand up to catch my breath, watching the woman move through more contortions. Even at rest, I can’t really follow her.

I wonder just how well I actually know my body. Have my hips ever really been directly below my knees? I try to stand comfortably and realize my shoulders hunch hopelessly forward. I try to pull them back, and my neck hurts. The woman lunges her left leg forward and drops her right knee to the ground, then manages to get her right foot into her hand keeping her back straight, narrating clearly and without effort.

I’m hungry, and need to take a shower.