The Downward Dog is Not My Friend...Yet!

I have a gym membership and like thousands of other people out there, I rarely get my fat ass to the gym. Sure, around Christmas time it seems like a great idea, a good investment for health and well being and all that other crap I keep reading about on the scores of health web sites I can't stay away from. I was actually pretty good the first few months, went every single day for at least an hour. Even tried a Zumba class. For those of you not familiar with Zumba, it 's apparently the hot new Latin Dance exercise craze. It will always be taught by a size two hottie, young enough to be the daughter of most of the women taking the class. She will move like a gazelle while the rest of us simply try to keep up with the pulsating beat, lumbering at best like hippos with four left feet.
Somewhere around mid-summer I took a sabbatical from the gym. It started innocently enough, first with the excuse that it was more important for me to catch up on my sleep with afternoon naps, and then moved into the "but there's so many other things I need to do around the house first" excuses. I stopped going and never looked back. I knew hard-earned money was being wasted, automatically withdrawn from my bank and into the gym's account, but I didn't care, I was sick of working out. It went on for so long that the staff at the gym even started calling me to see if I was okay. Talk about guilt.
And here's a shocker: after four months of being a sloth and cramming any and all refined carbs down my throat, I gained ten pounds. I was surprised to see it was only ten. Time to get back on the wagon, I decided.
Today, My daughter and I tried Yoga, deciding to ease ourselves back onto the exercise bandwagon. We grabbed our mats and picked spots in the back, away from those who looked like they probably knew what they were doing. We inhaled and exhaled, and we fell over quite a bit. But little by little we managed to keep most of our balance and tried to suppress a chuckle when the instructor went into new age, spiritual overdrive.
I can't say I loved it, not yet. But as the class ended and we went to place our mats back on the shelf, I did notice that the little pains and cricks in my lower back felt much more relaxed, my knees less stiff, my neck nice and limber.
Sign me up for the next class. Who knows, maybe power yoga not too far down the road!