Hot Mess

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog about how I didn’t want restaurants to start posting calories on their menu.  The thing darn near started an on-line riot!  Apparently people weren’t crazy about the idea that I survive off a steady diet of coffee, cereal, diet cokes and Cheetos, and BOY… did they let me know it.  After digesting their comments, I decided… maybe I should get my act together and start eating healthier.    

A few days later I was standing in the Kroger dairy aisle inspecting nutritional labels with a magnifying glass, when I ran into a girlfriend from high school.  She had obviously just wrapped up a workout somewhere, so I asked her what she’d been up to.  She said she had just finished a 70 minute “Hot yoga” class just down the street and invited me to come try it out next week. 

Since I was in the market for a new form of torture and friends fly free on Sundays, I decided to give it a shot.  Let’s just say I really should have done a little homework before diving into this little adventure.  I’m one of the most inflexible people on the planet, something that is generally frowned upon in yoga circles.  In addition to that, no one bothered to mention that I was going to lose five pounds of fluid in an hour and a half. 

“Hot Yoga” is not just a fancy term for meditation and stretching.  The room is 120 degrees!  I was fine for the first ten minutes, but I spent the next hour in various states of dementia trying to figure out whether I was awake or dreaming.  At one point I remember promising God if he would let me live to see my family again, I’d turn my life around… whatever that means.  It was like I was on a plane going down.  If I’d had a cell phone in that room I would have started calling people I know and telling them how much I loved them.

During one of my hallucinations it occurred to me that the hot yoga house used to be a photography studio.  I saw a window over in the corner where my daughter’s second Christmas card was shot.  That day was only slightly less miserable than this one.  I remember running out in the yard and barking like a dog to get just one orchestrated smile through the window pain.  I must have killed fifteen minutes reliving that day in an effort to divert my attention from this current mess.      

What’s really tough about hot yoga is that about half way in your skin becomes so slippery it’s close to impossible to hold most of the yoga “poses.”  (Note to self: no more shorts in hot yoga.)  I couldn’t help but think back to a term I read in a book recently.  It was “hot mess”.  I laughed when I read it, but I didn’t have the slightest idea what it really meant.  I’ll save you the trouble of looking it up.  According to the on-line urban dictionary the definition is as follows:

Hot Mess-     Someone or something that is such a mess… the level of it, is off the charts.

It’s past pathetic, past pitiful… to the point you almost have to walk away to keep from busting a gut.

Right there, in the middle of hot yoga I realized… THIS IS ME!  I am, officially, a hot mess!

After the 70 minutes had passed, the instructor told us to lay down flat on our mats and close our eyes to “reflect on all the good things we had just done for our bodies that work so hard for us.”  All I could think about was how I was going to get home without seeing anyone or ruining he seats in my car.  That’s when the most divine thing ever happened.  The instructor dropped a towel that had been in the freezer right on top of my head, and I have to tell you… it was like a little piece of heaven right here on earth.

Much to my surprise, after I got out of that hot mess of a room I started feeling like a new woman.  The more time that passed, the better I felt.  For about two days after the experience I was 100% stress free, breathing deeper than I had in years, and feeling high over the fact that I had burned 600 or more calories in the process. 

I haven’t been able to work it into my schedule yet, but I guarantee you… I will go back.  I’m even recruiting friends, and don’t be shy all you guys out there.  There was a FIREFIGHTER in our class!  Of course, I guess that makes sense.  He sits in 180 buildings for a living.  Anyway, if he can do it, you can do it. 

Most of these places will let you try it out the first time for free, and I would highly encourage it.  You are missing the experience of a lifetime if you don’t just suffer through this once and see what a difference it makes.  If you don’t like it, you can shoot me a nasty e-mail.  Like you needed an excuse!