I'm Doing Yoga Now

Last week I started physical therapy for chronic clinical uptightness. There’s an actual medical term for this disorder, but the jargon basically boils down to my insides being so wound up that a skilled violinist could work out a concerto on my perineum if they tried hard enough.

After my first physical therapy session we discussed what I’m doing to relieve this condition, and it turns out that “single malt” is not the same thing as “medicine,” as I have hitherto contended. At first I was relieved, because the economy still sucks and I might have to slum it with blended malts in some distant and ghastly future. However the physical therapist recommended breathing exercises and attending yoga classes as often as possible.

I’m unfamiliar with yoga. I do know that most of the women I meet in Washington claim to take yoga, particularly if they are single. This is a reoccurrent feature of introductions with young ladies: they want me to know if they are A. Spoken for, or B. Flexible. (Guys are fine with this because it saves a lot of time on Research & Development.)

You might then think that a yoga studio would be an excellent place to pick up chicks, but you’d be wrong. I mentioned taking yoga classes to a friend of mine, who assured me I’d be beating women off with a stick in no time.

Yoga does surround you with ladies, but I’m not exactly in top form in that environment.Yoga involves stretching and contorting your body into weird shapes which only action figures can hold for more than a second or two under normal circumstances. This is problematic for me, as my body has the natural rigidity of a crusty old English colonel, or rigamortis. I imagine it gives me a regal posture when doing things like riding horses or yelling at crowds from balconies, but it makes me a sad, pathetic sight on a yoga mat.

By the end of an hour and a half of yoga my body is quivering and spasming like an inbred chihuaha. I don’t even have time to gawk at the nubile Hill staffers elegantly sweeping their limbs across mats. I’m too busy doing elementary tasks like re-shaping my spine into a curved “S” shape, instead of the ram-rod “broomstick” posture I normally maintain.

When the thing is finally over I am covered with sweat and my entire body quakes for a good hour or two afterwards. I would say that it’s a preview of geriatric tremors, but two seventy-something-year-old women in the Beginner’s Class seemed to do it without getting the shakes.