In my quest to Act Like A Fit Person, I’m now attending a weekly yoga class and a weekly hula dancing class, both at work where I have multiple colleagues reminding me to go and making me feel virtuous about hauling around my purple yoga mat and workout bag with an occasionally smug smile. (I’m trying to work on that one — doesn’t everyone hate smug yoga people?)
Just for the record, I want to state that I am proud of myself for going to these classes, because not only do they involve going to the scary gym across campus, but I am inflexible and fat, not to mention out of shape. Yoga can be a special kind of hell for fat people, or at least for me anyway. Inflexibility aside, there are poses and moves where my chubs just get in the way! The lovely yoga teacher is very lovely and loving, a big proponent of doing What Feels Good To You Today, but I still have trouble with a few things. Let’s not forget about my ankle injury, which makes my left ankle extremely inflexible and my left leg in general kind of weak. So yoga involves a couple of scary things:
- Bending my ankle,
- while balancing,
- and while sweating in front of people (a fear that deserves its own entry!)
- and being the fattest girl in the room
- all in front of a giant wall of mirrors!
(Can you tell I love lists?) So yoga is a big test of self love, for me. I have to shut down my anxieties about looking around the room, comparing myself to others, and simply focus on being inside my own body and my own mind, trying my hardest to exist in the pose. I admit, I still have some residual shame when I see myself in the mirror, though. All my nice internal peace whooshes out of my mind to be replaced by other thoughts. Is that really how I look to other people? Are they looking at me now?
Also: Do they think I don’t belong here? I really have to push that one away. That’s one I work on almost every day. For a long time I thought that being sad and anxious all the time was the price I was forced to pay for not having a “normal” body. I thought that most people were disgusted by me, and that they were correct, and my only option was to apologize for my own existence. I know now that this is not true; that every person is entitled to a good life, no matter what their external self looks like. If I believe in putting love and peace and optimism (with occasional sarcasm) out into the world, then I also have to believe that I am part of the world, and therefore deserving some of that universal love, too.
In any case, being in yoga is a good test. I am a total novice, clumsy with my lack of balance and therefore painfully fulfilling the Clumsy Fat Person stereotype. While I’m sweating and feeling very visible and awkward, it feels like the mental work to keep myself centered is just as difficult. I love that this is the aim of yoga — to be mindful while pushing your body in new ways. I love it even when I am sweating and tipping over from my Mountain Pose.
The hula dancing class is another matter, though. Yesterday, during the first session, we learned six very basic steps, and then learned to string them together to the soothing sounds of some ukulele music. And what do you know, that random belly dancing class I took eight million years ago paid off, because damnit, I know how to move my hips! I picked up the moves fairly quickly, though I am no dancer, and I was really proud to be in the front row and moving along with people who had taken this class last year. I was also really proud of only sneaking a few glances at my fellow hula dancers, because if I have a right to learn yoga with my crappy equilibrium and my inflexibility, then that skinny lady in the back row also has a right to learn hula even though her hips don’t really move. Health at every weight, Hula at every ability, friends!
I wouldn’t say I am disheartened by yoga and then lifted up again by hula class, though the two occur in that order — I work really hard at hard things one day, and work only a little bit at things that come easily the next day. But the contrast between the two classes is certainly nice. I may be the fattest, least flexible girl in the yoga room, but I am the girl with the shimmying hips in the hula room, and that feels really, really good.
PS – One day I want to try a yoga dvd with the very awesome Megan Garcia who is a fellow Smith College alumna! As I recently learned in the Smith Alumnae Quarterly, she promotes yoga for large bodies and has special techniques of “moving the flesh” that help with some of the different needs of our bodies. How awesome!
