Sucky
I didn't want to go to yoga last night. It was a late class, and I was tired. I've been having problems with pain in my hand due to pinched nerves. I've discovered that trying to haul my substantial heft around on the mat with such weak muscles causes all kinds of nerve twinges from the compression of my weight on my bones. This happened three years ago when I weighed this much, but it got better as I got stronger.
With this in mind, I dragged ass to the car, knowing it is never going to get any easier if I don't keep moving forward. All I have to do is show up, right? Well. I would do anything now to erase the experience of that class from my memory.
First, the regular teacher of the Good Vibrations class, Yo, was out of town. A bummer, but no big deal. Yo is great with knowing my personal body problems and adapting the routine to help me deal with them. She told me Monday to avoid down dog for a while until my hand pain got better. She said she would give me alternate poses. But she wasn't there.
It wasn't the sub's fault that she designed a routine to hit on all my injuries and the weakest parts of my body. She doesn't know me. She just created a routine that focused on shoulder expansion and abs. She threw in some pilates as a bonus. How could she know that me and pilates have never gotten along? How could she know that she had designed a routine that would completely shatter the tenuous grasp I had on my body's recovery?
From the beginning I was struggling. I couldn't do about half of what she was calling out. I was trying, but that effort was just leading to straining and frustration, which is not the goal of yoga. If Yo had been there, she would have just walked by and given me some optional instructions. So much of what the instructor was doing was unfamiliar to me; there were these exercises in holding the breath while pulling the abs up and in for a count of ten. When we weren't doing that, we were in down dog for extended periods. Well, after about 45 minutes of this in different scenarios, pain was shooting through my hand, and I started having these stabbing pains right between my eyes. I've experienced this head pain before: it happens when I'm straining to hold a position and forget to breathe.
I suddenly got dizzy and nauseated. I got up to get some water, but when I came back it was just more of the same. I just had to quit, and started doing some leg stretches. The teacher, of course, was concerned and thought I was going to fall out, which was a legitimate fear. She kept asking me if I was OK, bringing the entire class's attention to me over and over. I just said I was OK, knowing that it was only five minutes until the end of class.
But it wasn't. She went 30 minutes over! Honestly, I thought more than once about just leaving, but I was concerned about my ability to drive. Also, I didn't want to disrupt the class by packing up my stuff before it was over. I knew the teacher would try to stop class and help me if I did that. I just wanted to lie there and try to recover. I swear, people, that was the longest 30 minutes of my life. After every pose, I kept thinking, "this has to be it." But it wasn't. It just went on and on. If had known at 9:30 that I would have to lie there and suffer for another 30 minutes, I would definitely have left!
When I got home, I walked in the door. My husband took one look at me and said, "What's wrong?!" I just burst into tears, walked straight into the kitchen and found a bar of chocolate in the pantry. "Endorphins," I thought. "I need endorphins." You'll be glad to know that I only ate one square. Really, I wasn't hungry, just the opposite. I just wanted to experience something that felt good for a moment.
This "fake it 'til you make it" plan isn't working for me. I don't know when I'll feel like I want to go to another yoga class again. I'm just so sick of every attempt I make at exercise leading to pain and frustration and tears.