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.

surfing didn't go as envisioned. golfs never do. running full speed, not very fast, into a sturdy shed trying to catch a football, hit pretty square. lift weights. never tried snow skiing nor curling.

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.

At a sleep-away camp, I was able to swim across the local lake, about a mile. I tried to swim the length of it, but after about a mile, got a cramp, and the canoe paddlers pulled me out of the water. Hypothermia was setting in too.

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.