Downward Dog?

So after my catastrophe with my class schedule this semester (I may post something about that later), I started my second session of classes. This session I started a yoga class. I go three times a week at 7:30 in the frickin' morning. Last session I took an aerobics class with a woman that I often wanted to punch in the face due to her over excitement about fitness and annoying habit of calling me "fatty". 

I dreaded getting out of bed in the mornings for six weeks because I knew I would have to deal with Aerobics-Instructor-Betty (whose actual name is Shannon) and I knew the next day I could honestly convince myself that someone used me as a punching bag. So I was pleasantly surprised when I walked into a dimly let room with soft music playing and a man named Sam (who I think also goes by Wind Spirit) telling me in the calmest voice possible to grab a mat and have a seat. 

I think I was one of maybe three people in the class that has never taken yoga before. Being the first day of the class, I thought he would maybe explain a few positions before we got into it. Things were looking good when all I had to do was sit on the ground and breathe... until he said that we needed to have our knees below our hips. Now I consider myself a pretty athletic person but when it comes to flexibility..uh-uh. I ended up having to sit on a rolled up blanket just to keep my ass above my knee caps. I knew I was in trouble. 

We then started doing some breathing exercises. I thought, "Ok, I've been doing this for 21 years, I think I got the breathing thing down." Just as I felt a little less remedial at this yoga thing, we moved on to the next part: the actual yoga part. We began doing some, apparently traditional, yoga poses. As I said, I have never done yoga before save for the time I was doing drunken yoga on the Wii, which I don't think counts. So when he is telling us to try to transition to these new poses, I'm still 10 minutes back on breathing. When I found myself a little behind, I would overcompensate by forcing myself into the pose as quick as possible, which just ended up making me hurt about every joint imaginable and sent my body flying across the room as I lost my balance each and every time. 

But Wind Spirit just kept on dictating. From child pose to downward dog, to warrior, to farting tree..he just kept on going. The whole time I'm in the back of the studio practically dancing back and forth across the room, watching the other girls to make sure I wasn't making an ass of myself (too late). Finally, it came time to lie down on the mat, arms and legs spread apart and sleep. Ok we weren't really supposed to sleep. We were supposed to lie on the floor and "become aware of our energy". I, instead, lay there reflecting on how many weeks I think it will take before I can do a farting tree with less than 67 one-legged hops. This could be a long semester..