Let me read for you. Skip intro 2:41
I confess, I am a yoga girl at this moment in my life, purely because I can’t afford the London prices of a Pilates reformer class. I used to pride myself on being a Pilates girl; I’d post photos of the studio on my Instagram #PelvicFloor. And I broadcast it on my Hinge profile.
I like black coffee! Autumn! Pilates!
(I may also write about you in my dating blog).
I started Pilates in a small studio in Oxford; lured in by the linen curtains, spa music and how deeply LA it was to use a £ 3,000 machine to do leg circles.
I wasn’t a natural. In my first class, I took up far too much of the instructor’s attention trying to make my legs into a clam.
One instructor used similes, which was extremely useful.
“Lift your arms up like you’re a koala hugging a tree.”
“Kick your leg out like you’re kicking a chihuahua.”
“Imagine you’re balancing a bowl of soup on your pelvis…”
I soon got the knack of it. I would smugly get into position before it was even demonstrated. I wouldn’t say I was having fun (I hate exercise), but there was something about whooshing back and forth on the machine which made me feel like a superhero in training.
Once, I agreed to have my photo taken in one class for marketing purposes. I thought I could use one of those photos for my Hinge profile. I imagined I’d be in a balancing plank, looking focussed and fit.
My Typical Saturday …I would caption it.
My first error was wearing a vibrant orange tank top; it was supposed to bring out my tan, but when everyone else in the class was in black, I kind of looked like I had been given an orange top for a reason. This person needs special attention.
The instructor/business owner messaged me after the ‘photo shoot’
‘I know we said we were not going to show faces, but you looked so happy, so can I use this one?’
The photo appeared.
I looked like a sea lion doing a trick at SeaWorld; holding a wooden stick over my head, beaming, from ear to ear. I had no neck. Not Hinge material at all.
“No, you can’t use that photo,” I wanted to say. But I couldn’t let my vanity get in the way of a small business. Catholics go to hell for those kinds of things.
The flyer was printed and spread across the city. My happy head on every message board in every coffee shop. It was also on Instagram. The caption read:
‘It’s important to remember that the benefits are so much more than physical…’
Grand.
It was the last time I:
1. Wore orange.
2. Let anyone get photographic proof of me doing exercise.
When I moved to London, I signed up for a two-week unlimited class package at the nearest Pilates studio – or at least I thought it was a Pilates studio. What it turned out to be was a mix of F45 (a circuit-training cult) and Pilates. This is NOT a combination that should exist, just like you can’t mix football with tap dancing or boxing with ballet. plié and punch. plié and punch. plié and punch. Ridiculous.
For an hour, I tried to keep up with an animated human on the TV screen, who would, for one minute, be lunging, the next, be squatting with weights. WEIGHTS?
‘The instructor’, meanwhile, played the role of a military officer, egging us on via a headset.
‘COME ON! YOU GOT THIS, GUYS! LAST PUSH! GET LOWER!
Where the hell was I? Where were the steady breathing reminders? The spa music?
I left the class, almost angry. I had pulled muscles that I didn’t know existed. I wasn’t going to pay £30 a class to follow a computer game. Needless to say, I never went back.
The months went by, the leaves fell, and so did my butt cheeks.
I knew I had to do something more than climb the stairs at the underground station. (It’s friken hard, okay?)
One day, while walking up the stairs in the underground, I saw a poster for Hot Pod Yoga. Yoga wasn’t too different from Reformer Pilates; you just did less ‘whooshing’ and more bowing. Most importantly, it was cheaper, so I thought I’d give it a go.
I had dabbled in hot yoga before, but not in a pod, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
It was a purple tent inside a room with a crude-looking entrance. It was hot –as promised. I discovered the climate was made by a few humble portable heaters – enough to make Greta Thunberg kind of mad. It did the job though. (Except that time the yoga instructor forgot to put the heaters on, so it was just – pod yoga for that class).
In my first class, I settled in the back corner and got into corpse pose. I wasn’t interested in talking to my neighbour. There is a common misconception that you make YOGA BUDDIES in classes, but I’m in too many compromising positions during that hour, so I’d prefer to stay anonymous. So, no YOGA BUDDIES, just me, myself, and my, erm, inner eye.
‘Think of your intentions for your time in the pod,’ the yoga teacher purred. It was cool that she was trying to keep the yogi terminology, even if we were all in £80 leggings, in a tent in North London, with Argos heaters. I wondered if the father of yoga would approve of how his teachings had been interpreted, or whether he would think we were missing the point somewhat.
I was surprised by how many men were in the pod. One or two guys would come to Pilates. One time, we were doing leg circles when a man farted so loudly that it disturbed my inner peace for days. Yoga is about being all-accepting, and I tried to be, but there was this one man who placed his mat in the middle of the pod – centre stage. He was only in shorts, leaving his sticky chest on display for us all. I struggled to ignore the sweat sprinkling off his body.
“I have an orange tank top to spare, champ? ” I wanted to shout, but we have to be, all-accepting, all-accepting, all accepting…
It wasn’t just the men who made me lose focus; I often found myself drifting off whilst in a pose. Why did Tyra Banks start selling hot ice cream? How do you make it hot? Can you legally call it ice cream if it’s hot? I’d focus back on the class and find I am the only one still bent over. For the rest of the hour, I agonised about how long I had been alone in that position.
I knew the class was coming to an end, when the yoga instructor wacked out her most ambitious pose.
‘We’re going to try this today,’ she said, and bent herself into a one-handed pretzel.
I’m not one for the fancy positions. The Crow – where you balance on your hands and lift your body in the air – I can’t do. I’d get into position with my elbows digging into my thighs, only to hop and fall as gracefully as a Shetland pony trying to do a back-kick. Thankfully, there is no photo evidence of me doing this.
By the end of the class, after doing 100 down dogs, my Sweaty Betty leggings were sweaty, and my body was sore – in a good way. As I lay in my final corpse pose, I decided that I’ll be a yoga girl until the cost of reformer classes goes down.
‘Take your intentions with you for the rest of your day,’ the teacher whispered, ending the class with a bow. ‘Namaste.’
I mumbled back, ‘Namaste,’ and did an awkward bob of my head.
I left the Pod with one intention – to do a bit more research on Tyra’s hot ice cream.
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THE QUACK 