My thoughts in yoga class can sometimes diverge from the spiritual realm.

"...If I see one more Buddhist statue at the yoga class pre-store (which oddly enough reminds me of the merchandising stores you walk through on the way out of a ride at Disneyland) I'm going to complain to the management. I'm sorry, but you can't sell enlightenment with a chintzy statue made in China....Ok, now I'm in class...what's up with the movie soundtrack music?...There sure are a lot of women in cute yoga outfits in this class. Somebody should really jump on a magazine for yoga fashions, I'm talking strictly clothes...enough on this different schools of yoga thought, let's face it, it's the new 24 Hour Fitness, only instead of weights and stair masters we have buddhist statues and mats...Ok, the teacher's voice is starting to grate on my nerves. Is he trying to sound like Alex Trebek????...This class is easy....OK, I take that back, my arms are tired. No, I am not doing another vinyasa! Enough! What time is it? Oh, damn he's coming over to me. What am I doing wrong? He said dolphin, right? So embarrassing. You can't tell me he's not checking out all the women in this class....He smiled at me...OK, he's nice. Did he say pigeon pose? We're almost done!!!!

I love the pose where we just lie there and do nothing.

I love yoga."

Just for today, I accept my inner monologue.

A hundred people doing yoga in a small hot room, does not a good smell make.

I really can't keep going to yoga in my current work-out wardrobe. It's actually a disgrace, to be quite honest. Nobody told me that yoga class was the new fashion mecca. I had to learn the hard way (as usual), by showing up too many days in the row in the same Ross work-out pants. So humbling.

Just for today, I remain behind the times.

I took my mom to my super hard-core Power Yoga class (which is dedicated to making people spiritually connected AND ripped). And while I tried to focus on the toe nail six inches in front of me during our second Warrior III, I have to say I was constantly worried that my mom was at risk of getting some power yoga injury. But it turns out, she loved it. Very weird.

Just for today, I can do yoga with my mom.

I ended my yoga practice tonight by chastising myself for not keeping my old PPO health insurance (never sign up with an HMO, unless you really want to rely on the random love of chance and cute idealistic doctors...which might be a good reason). I lied in "shavasana" (the point at the end when you sprawl out like a dead person and the point at which I'm the most wound up...why can't we lie comatose in the very beginning when I don't have any endorphines pumping through my body? That's when I really want to do nothing!). Afterwards, I came home and ate one of the Halloween sugar cookies that my "Sex and the City" friend brought over for my dinner party last weekend (I call her my "Sex and the City" friend because she's like Charlotte, Samantha, and Miranda all wrapped up in one package...with a little bit of Carrie). Now, it's my understanding that yoga is supposed to make one more accepting of one self and in touch with the health of her body. Not riled up in a ball of self-hatred and clamoring for sugar. I am very disssappointed. Something's not right. I feel more peaceful after watching two episodes of "Enterouge" and the middle-portion of "French Kiss" at 1:00 am! As every stand-up comic in the 80's used to say, "What's up with that?!"

Just for today, I stand in doubt of the peaceful effect of yoga.

Tonight a loud "CRACK!" echoed throughout my yoga class, like someone had just pulled a branch off of a tree.

"That was my ankle," I informed my friend beside me.

While I try to keep to myself in yoga, by the sheer volume made by my joints in class it seems that some part of me must really need attention. It's not that nobody else creaks and cracks in yoga, but nobody is as loud as I am.

Just for today, I am creaky.

Towards the end of every yoga class I have felt the occasional splash of water on my face or body. For many weeks now, I have told myself that this is the byproduct of someone opening their water bottle and sloshing it into their mouth with such force that it spills every which way in large droplets. Well, let's just say that DeNial isn't just a river in Egypt because tonight myself and a woman sitting two mats down from me figured out that this "water" is really the mixed condensation of everyone's sweat dripping from the ceiling...(gross?!)

After a moment, I realized that I recognized this woman from a creative networking function I once attended at Shakey's Pizza (seriously). Just then, a man walked by who she called out to. I turned and recognized him from an improv class we both took a few years ago. Here were two people who had both impressed me with their creativity at one point in time AND they knew each other.

While driving home, I wondered if consciousness is a point of attraction and if other friends and acquaintances of mine had met through avenues completely alien to my life. The experience feels oddly comforting. It's as if, in the eyes of the universe, I'm in a class of sorts and these are my colleagues. While my adulthood (if you can call it that) has often (if not always) felt like a chaotic and unmethodical (or just plain confusing) path towards middle-aged (40 minus 5 in counting...also known as 35), maybe I have arrived somewhere, albeit a place unmarked by traditional social milestones (according to the NY Times more US women are unmarried than ever before...rock on)...even if it is just a very, very, VERY musty yoga class. If I'm going to commune with other people's sweat, at least it's the sweat of people I like and respect.

Just for today, I can have an intense experience in yoga class.

I got to yoga late this morning and so made a lot rustling noises with my purse and shoes, thus, contributing to what the teacheer deemed the "crazy-ass energy" that had overtaken the room. Then he put me in a spot that was between rows and so I also became part of what he called "the massive un-feng shuing" of the room (not to mention I had a foot in my face for the entire class). It must have been a combination of the sardine-packed bodies and weird energy that made him proceed to torture us for an hour and a half. Since it didn't feel like one of those classes where I could do my own thing and lie in shavasana (he would have stepped on me), I pushed myself to the limit and figured it was a good opportunity to get my butt looking closer to Madonna's (now, let alone when I'm 48). Needless to say, I spent the class at war with myself and the crazy yoga teacher (is there any other kind?) who proceeded to conduct this draconian exercise in the name of spiritual enlightement (and a nice butt)...

I came out of class feeling great.

Just for today, I can push myself to new limits.

Last night I walked into yoga class to witness the tail end of an argument that seemed on the verge of a full-on yoga-fight. I'm so bummed I missed it. I've been to that teacher's class before and I have to say the twenty minutes of chanting did put me in somewhat of a rage, but I thought it was just me. I felt a little sorry for the teacher. It's gotta be humbling to have a violent yoga class. I have compassion for people whose lives are ostensibly built on being teaching peace, love and the repression of the innate complexity of human emotions (ok, so I'm a little judgemental...). Another good reason why white men shouldn't grow dreadlocks...it's just too risky.

Just for today, I can reserve judgement.

My friend talked me into going to yoga this morning. I hadn't been in a while for two reasons: a) I keep re-injuring my back (yoga is dangerous), and b) LA yoga teachers scare me. It seems that in LA it's taken for granted that any and all skills and talents that haven't found outlet in other parts of society can be brought to a yoga class (i.e., singing, comedy, guitar, group therapy). Which would be fine if I was planning on going to day camp instead of somewhere to stretch my body out and think about my week. These days, it seems the teaching of the actual "positions" has been relegated to an elementary status with an "anyone can teach that" attitude.

I've always been a little wary of the chanting, instruments, self-help spirituality talk, and hands on chiropractic adjustments. But the singing is what really drives me nuts. I'm just not prepared to be an audience...

Today, I arrived 15 minutes late and, still, was subjected to ten minutes of sanskrit singing that, according to my friend, whose patience were tried as well, went on for TWENTY MINUTES!

I guess he noticed that some of us were fidgeting or moving out of the "position" (I think we were supposed to be on our stomachs with our hands outreached), and told us that we needed to practice PATIENCE. Like priests or therapists, yoga teachers like to turn it around on the client. But is it really our fault if we're bored to tears? Are you trying to teach us a life skill or indulging your inner-karaoke champion?

I've said it before and I'll said it again, Yoga Teachers in LA are drunk with power. If we're not careful, we're going to find ourselves in a hybrid group massage/ therapy session/12-step meeting/free form dance class/a capella singing group, while a guy with dreadlocks and baggy pants practices ritual self-abuse before he gets taken away by the police and we all wonder why we were planning on giving him our $15.

Just for today, I can practice yoga.

I went to yoga last week. I couldn't get to the class I wanted so I ended up going to White Man's Dreadlocks' time slot despite an aversion to his "It's All Good" style. I don't buy his whole "yoga teacher," thing...I've always suspected it's a ruse for scoping out some hot nubile yogis...but, perhaps, I'm cynical...(giant sigh).
I rolled my eyes through the thirty minutes of chanting and singing, and tried not to yawn as he yammered away about gratitude for this incarnation and blah, blah, blah...

I was considering putting a note in the contribution box that read "keep it real, my friend," when he came over and "adjusted" my position. We were in the middle of some Sun Warrior Something Salutation...can't remember, but whatever I was doing was a great excuse for him to come and put his hands on me...

"Don't lean to far back," he announced to the class. "As I was just telling this beautiful Goddess..."

...what? Beautiful Goddess?

By the end of the class, I had decided that White Man's Dreadlocks was not so bad.

Just for today, I accept that I'm way too easy to win over.

So, I dragged my ass to Rudy's yoga class tonight. I figured if I can't be gainfully employed, then I may as well work on an having a butt that you could bounce a quarter off of (that was Rudy's expression).

Who the hell is this Rudy guy? Only, the most ass-kicking, wise-cracking yoga teacher who will actually make me think that my donation is worth the money. Tonight's theme was "Chairway to Heaven." In fact, he is so funny and ass kicking that I don't mind it when he mounts the young nubile women in an effort to "deepen the pose" (oh, I know, but I'm not going there). Did I mention what pervs yoga teacher are?

I don't know why I stopped going to yoga. I thought it was boring. But you know what's really boring? Back fat. Love handles. Beer gut.

Anyway, if I had any illusion that salsa and leisurely bike rides could keep me in shape, I was sorely disillusioned. After the first fifteen minutes I barely glistened. Shoot, I'm a rock, I thought. Haha...a few hours later my head proceeded to become a water faucet. It was better than a facial.

Just for today, I can get my ass in shape (literally).

Yes, I have issues with yoga teachers. They must've tortured me in a past life. Maybe they were medieval doctors who bled me with leeches. Either way, I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it many more times (because I don't have that many new ideas), but the DMV is more discriminating about who can drive a car than are the majority of self-and-stomach-tire-hating people willing to hand over money and, more disturbing, the well-being of their ligaments and joints to a white man with dreadlocks and/or a controlling temperament so distilled that if he were to bottle it, the Mexican drug lords would have something to think about. (Was that run on sentence worth the payoff? Didn't think so either)

Yes, Debbie Allen made it very clear (if you're old enough to have watched the original "Fame." No? Sorry for you, that must really suck) that fame is pain, or sweat (or something like that). But Debbie Allen didn't know yoga in LA. And when I say "yoga," I mean a power workout of pushups and sit-ups and agonizing positions held for longer than any physical therapist would deem safe. And then maybe a few stretches. This is West LA we're talking about. Do you think Jennifer Aniston looks like that from meditating? Hell no.

While some teachers have a genuine capacity for self-reflection and humor, the guy I had tonight took the power of commanding a class of 100 people with the seriousness of Obama on the national debt, war in Afghanistan and next election (all wrapped up in one).

"Now, as you get up, I want you to roll your matt up slowly, and then put your left shoe on before your right shoe..."

Almost that bad.

Just for today, I survived yoga.

I'm supposed to be "writing" an hour a day (I don't know why I put the word in quotes). So far, I've done some yoga poses, washed a few loads, listened to a podcast, obsessed about my thighs, and posted something wanna-be profound on a blog.

Then I wrote a sentence. Awesome.

Just for today, I'm committed to my work.