On a warm, summer Sunday morning I found myself sitting cross legged on the floor of a hot yoga studio for the first time. The studio is tucked into the corner of a fairly new building in an up-and-coming neighborhood where the streets are dotted with the usual landmarks of gentrification – luxury high-rise apartments, coffee shops serving overpriced drinks in mason jars, a glimmering green Whole Foods, etc.
The rest of the students proceed to gradually fill the room until almost every inch of studio space is covered beneath a sea of brightly colored yoga mats. As we wait for the instructor to start the class, everyone around me instinctively folds into some sort of stretch variation, including my boyfriend next to me. With silent trepidation I self consciously stretch forward to touch my toes and avert my eyes towards the Lululemon spandex-clad tush in front of me.
I don’t know what it is about group fitness classes that make me feel major imposter syndrome, like I don’t really belong there and everyone can tell. Maybe it’s because I never stick around for these things long enough to become a regular (flashback to last winter when I told everyone I was becoming a pilates girlie and quit after two months) but I’ve become so accustomed to doing my workouts at the gym in silence, that after a few weeks, these classes start to feel like a nuisance, like some weekly scheduled cult meeting I’ve lost the zeal to participate in.
The instructor walks in, pulling me out of my thoughts. I am admittedly in a terrible mood, rubbing my temples to ease the throb of a headache, and looking forward to a relaxing hour of stretching and deep breathing. She shuts the door behind her and the temperature instantly rises about a thousand degrees. She then takes a seat at the front of the room, says a few indiscernible words, and the entire group chants a collective “Ommmmmm” so thunderous it reverberates through to my teeth and jolts me upright. I feel like I’ve been transported to a scene in Midsommar – I discreetly side-eye my boyfriend, expecting this to be something he would make fun of, but I am amused to see he is Omm-ing right along with them.
We begin some basic stretch movements and I am wondering if it is normal to be sweating already – embarrassed, I wipe away at the beads of perspiration forming above my lip and silently curse myself for not bringing a towel. The next hour is a marathon of movement – all around me, the bodies glide into each new position in a silent and sweaty dance that I awkwardly stumble to keep up with on the sidelines. The air is palpable with heat – as we transition from downward facing dog to a plank to a push up I am gasping to take in even the slightest bit of breath.
Our instructor continues to approach me and help adjust my movements (by now she has learned my name and is not afraid to use it.) I am in a standing lunge position and she is trying to get me to step further and further out, but my yoga mat is so soaked I am terrified to move for fear of slipping and falling in my own pool of sweat. I envision going down face-first, the world turning black, paramedics rushing in and carrying me out on a stretcher as I tell my boyfriend, theatrically, to go on without me.
As the temperature rises, a few soldiers begin to jump ship. A girl packs her things and I watch with envy as she pads towards the door and exits the room; a sliver of cold air teases us briefly before it dissipates. The six foot five athletic man in front of me rolls up his yoga mat and a waterfall of sweat pours out from the mat onto the floor, and at this point I’m convinced we’ve entered the ninth circle of hell.
Just as I am on the verge of collapsing, we finally reach the end of the class and find ourselves back where we began – sitting upright, eyes closed, the sheen of sweat worn like badges of glory on our skin. The instructor offers up some encouraging words and I can’t help but feel overcome with a sense of accomplishment – the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory. She has us put our hands together in prayer and bow down towards ourselves, our own true source of light. It is Sunday morning and it feels like this is church and she is our preacher – I sweat and I am absolved of all of the stress and pain that I carried in here with me. We close out the session with another collective “Ommmmmm” and this time, somewhere in the chorus of voices is my own little mousy contribution.
I write these words standing at the precipice of a several-months long plague of writer’s block. Lately, it feels as though I’m sitting on my life’s backburner, waiting for inspiration to strike, for some random major life event to shake me to my core so forcefully that the words just pour out onto the page.
The process of waiting for a major breakthrough became lengthier than I originally anticipated – hours turned into days turned into weeks turned into months, without so much as a paragraph to serve as evidence that I’ve lived or learned anything at all. This is 30 – I am currently more spectator than participant – at least it feels that way at times. But in the process of waiting for a breakthrough I’ve been neglecting to realize life has been happening all around me.
Breakthroughs aren’t always life-altering milestones. Sometimes a breakthrough looks like getting out of bed. Or kneeling on a sweaty yoga mat at the edge of exhaustion and managing to get back up. So lately, I’m trying to make it a point to acknowledge the breakthroughs both big and small, to romanticize the everyday (to be a good writer is to be a bit of a romantic) – and it’s funny, as soon as I did this – opened my eyes to what was already in front of me – the words so easily poured out onto the page.
