"Your body is not you": A journey into hot yoga

I refused to be the “gym guy” who couldn’t handle an hour of infernal chaturangas.

Near the end of hot yoga last week, the instructor asked everyone in the room to consider kissing their knees. I did not consider it. Not because I’m incapable of or above putting my lips on my own sweaty knees, but because kissing them is goofy.

My only previous encounter with hot yoga had been back in the days when people still called the internet the World Wide Web. But then between Christmas and New Year’s last month, thanks to a promotional trial week offered by a local yoga chain, I found myself unrolling a grease-stained yoga mat (borrowed from my sport-shooting tackle box) in a dark room heated to 107.4° F and filled with very mindful-looking people talking in teeny-tiny voices.

I attended three “hot power yoga” sessions, the first of which required almost every ounce of physical and mental energy I could muster (followed by an afternoon nap). I welcomed the new challenge. Those who know me know I don’t mind looking stupid (briefly) for a worthy cause and, more to the point, I refused to be the “gym guy” who couldn’t handle an hour of infernal chaturangas.

Being open to whatever happens next is not how we’re trained to exist, as adults. Instead we plan, execute, revise and re-execute until our ships are moving aggressively against whatever opposes our interests. But that’s not yoga, at all. Yoga, as the hot-power instructors reminded each class that I attended, was about letting go of expectations and end games, and giving yourself a break.

And that’s when I heard the yogi leading the class say it: Your body is not you.

It’s funny, just writing that phrase makes my throat clutch and my eyes well up.

Your body deserves your compassion

I think I get emotional because, like a lot of you, I put a lot of hard expectations on my body, physically, emotionally. It’s always performed pretty much at or above the high standard I’ve established, starting from an early age. When it hasn’t, I’ve come down hard on it, seeking repair, improvement, adaptation and—always—performance. I would never do that to someone else.

At yet, I have. Because my body is not me. It’s a separate entity from Paul, the guy with seven orthopedic surgeries to his name; the guy who now tells himself to remember to go a little lighter at the gym, for crying out loud; the guy trying to not fall over sideways while attempting to execute tree pose in the hot dark.

My body is not me. Just as I deserve compassion, so too does my body. And it damned well deserves a regular break from me and my expectations.

My conclusion, after holiday yoga, is that I’ve been too hard on this one body of mine. It has performed really well over the years, and now it struggles to keep up with a growing number of my expectations.

I don’t know if I’ll continue hot yoga, though I hope I will. But the invaluable lesson I’ve already learned from those three yoga sessions is that my body is not me, and it deserves my respect and compassion at regular intervals.