Yoga Oaf

Forty-eight hours after hiking fourteen miles with 5,009-feet of elevation gain, I joined an advanced yoga class for the first time. Legs were extremely stiff and sore. Hello, lactic acid.

"I have great balance," I bragged to the teacher, thinking of hiking. Not in yoga. Try standing on one foot with the other leg straight out at a 45-degree angle. "Hold and breathe deeply." I could manage two seconds before collapsing.

The teacher used Sanskrit names for yoga poses. "Get ready for Ardha Baddha Parivritta Malasana." Huh? Whatever happened to Downward Dog?

I was spectacularly inept. Announcing I was crooked, the Yoga teacher repeatedly marched over to straighten my body. It was embarrassing. Felt like a warped oaf.

At the end of class, we all laid on the floor for three minutes. "Finally, something I'm competent at," I quipped. Everyone laughed. We were supposed to be meditating.

All I could think of was how cold and hard the floor was. Shivering, I longed to grab a blanket but didn't want to disturb anyone’s sacred meditation. The longest three minutes of my life.

I don’t know if learning how to waterski qualifies…..but at 9 years old I was learning how to waterski and bellywhopped losing my balance and lost my bathing suit…LOL.

I'm not sure how much this counts as athletic or really even entirely a failure. But it was absurd.

In my 20s my Park Service uncle and I were in his canoe a mile or so out in Flamingo Bay near the Everglades when a wind storm came up. The waves rose enough to swamp the canoe and I lost my grip on it.

I was a good swimmer but I couldn't see the shoreline and I started thrashing, sure I was going to drown.

Then my uncle just stood up. "You moron. You're in the Everglades. The water's never deeper than this."
When I reached, sure enough, the bottom was there.

We bounced over, grabbed the boat and when the wind died down bailed it out. The only consequence was that we lost a cool chest. Ah memories.

Sounds to me like he was trying to impress you with his prowess with this particular difficult activity.

Where I live men often try to get girls snorkeling on a first date. Probably to check out what we look like in a swimsuit and no makeup or hair style, not the most flattering look on the average woman.

While I love snorkeling in calm water, where I feel in control of my safety, some of these snorkel dates would be in waters I was not sure of, so anxiety would over take my breathing and that is not safe.

So, there have been some near drowning experiences where I was pressured into going into deeper waters or keeping up when I needed to re-adjust my mask. Lessons learned. I will stick to snorkeling with people I know and trust, and who are not trying to impress me by swimming off into the deep without a concern for my safety.

He doesn't sound very helpful and quite the showoff. No one has ever accused me of being athletic, most of my life is an athletic failure. I just got wise enough to be really careful of what I try, so I mostly don't try.