After the last try at exercising, (see Hero 英雄 ) which took me 4 days to recover, I decided to take it easy and do yoga instead.

That was my first mistake.

My second mistake was not lubing up. I should have just drank a gallon of olive oil.

My body twisted, stretched, bent and flexed in so many positions that I don’t remember how I straighten out after that. I felt like an overnight pretzel, and a cardboard contortionists forced to perform.

It started out easy. I was patting myself on the back and feeling rather smug about my limberness. It was the bend, plank, transitioning into the cobra, to downward dog, to the runner’s pose, followed by lunges and the warrior I, II, III poses. So far so good.

Then we went into balance: tree pose, chair pose, the triangle pose and the half moon pose. Hey, I’ve got superb balance on my right side, but my left ankle wanted nothing to do with supporting 115 lbs of me. At the risk of sounding like Cartman from South Park, “I’m not fat! Just big boned!” So I wobbled and shook, but still held on or, in my case, cheated. Wii is nothing compared to this.

Next, I was on my back. Anything with me lying on my back will be a breeze. Or so I thought.

Plow pose

Right off the bat, we went into the plow pose. This is one where the entire lower half of your body is lifted off the floor and ends up on the other side of your head (as I find out later). I got my behind up, and with my legs dangling precariously over my face, I tried to understand what the instructor was saying while making sure I didn’t break my neck. I couldn’t see a thing on the TV, as my legs were in the way. Spreading eagle, I tried to peek through my legs to see what they were doing. Nothing. I have fat thighs. Since I had one minute to kill on the pose, and I had no clue what they were doing, I started improvising. I did the peek-a-boo, bicycle and the scissors while hanging out in that position. I’m just thankful that my neck is still intact.

That was followed by an easier, table pose, bridge pose and wheel pose.

Then came the animals: frog, sphinx, one-legged king pigeon and the upward dog. When they started showing the crane pose, I thought they were crazy. The crane that I know requires standing on at least one leg and flapping the hands like make-believe wings. This crane, requires you to support your entire body on just two hands, while the knees rested on the armpits. I don’t know what crane they were mimicking. Most likely an unhatched crane.  Needless to say, I never made that pose, otherwise I would have been a wingless crane.

Crane Pose

Off to core work, with the half and full boat poses, repeated until my entire body screamed in pain. Even my ass was hurting. Of course, my abs was crying the loudest.

One hour 20 minutes later, we were doing the final stretches: cat, happy baby pose, child pose, and the lotus pose. When he called for the corpse pose I couldn’t help but smile at the irony of the name.

But then again, I couldn’t smile.

My pants were torn.