I Suck At Yoga

I have started to supplement getting my ass kicked with yoga. It has been something I have wanted to do for a while, but I kept coming up with excuses not to do yoga. I think a lot of this is it is never all that great to go into something and know you are going to be really bad at it. I have never been known for my flexibility, so I was quite positive that I would be very bad at yoga, and that fear stopped me from taking the first step towards progress. I way overthought everything, like do I need to have a mat, and are gym shorts and t-shirt acceptable yoga clothing? Those are stupid excuses to not try something, so I had to get over myself.

I finally tried yoga, and guess what? I did suck at it. This is not some magical story where I conquered a mild fear and it turned out I was great. If it required much flexibility, I was very awkward while doing it, and I often needed adjustments, because I cannot follow simple yoga directions. Even though I am fairly strong for my size, I often felt my muscles blowing up while holding poses. It was embarrassing, as I watched 60-year-old women handle things with ease while my shoulders were screaming in agony. But even though it has only been a couple weeks, I can feel myself improving. I definitely feel a little looser when it is over, and physically, I know that I am improving. And as bad as I am at it physically, I am even worse at it mentally.

My problem is that I enter with a very calm and relaxed attitude that is ideal for yoga, but once I start going, I get more and more aggressive and start wanting to attack every pose. I look around to see how others are doing, and I want to do better, despite me not being flexible or even all that good at core strength, because I get blown up trying to hold poses. Still, I want to strive beyond my limits, which is the total opposite of what you want to do in yoga. I can't even relax properly, because I'm side eyeing the people next to me to see if I am relaxing better than they are.

Still, I am getting better, and the cool thing about being really awful at something is that you get to see vast improvement quickly. So now I'm ready to stretch so hard that I tear muscles off my bones and breathe so deep and peacefully that Kim Jong-Il destroys all of the nuclear weapons in North Korea.

I'm never going to be good at this.