Yoga Class the Third

If the first class was "Wow, this is fun, productive, and peaceful," the second class was "This is hard, but I seem to be getting the hang of it!" then the third class was "I think I hate yoga now." Yesterday, I could barely keep up with the rest of the class (two other people this time,) and I was getting things wrong the whole time. It wasn't that the teacher had to constantly correct me or anything; I could just feel the misalignment of my body.

I can't even describe the horrors of the poses I tried to twist myself into yesterday. Just the instructions overloaded my brain. My body had no idea how to interpret the instructions and couldn't figure out what the first step was. 

I'd describe one of the poses, but because words fail me, I'll just draw.

How do you stick your left elbow on the other side of your right knee? I don't think my spine moves like that. Everyone else was like, "Okay!" and just went into the pose. I kinda flapped my arms a little bit and, with panic-stricken eyes, implored my teacher to please save me.

...and this was only a step toward a more advanced pose.

Yesterday, I mentioned at the beginning of the class that yoga seemed to me like a foreign language: something you can't really learn on your own, that it's best to be taught by someone who's there to show you the proper way of doing things so you don't learn the wrong way. At the gym, I'm surrounded by mirrors and can try to correct any weirdness in my posture when I'm doing an asana. At home, I can't see what I'm doing, and if I do it wrong, I won't have a clue. So I haven't really practiced at home (except for one twenty-minute session where I spent 15 minutes setting up a space and wandering around the house, then 5 minutes practicing.) Hopefully, the excellently illustrated book the teacher let me borrow for the week will inspire me to try again.