Pompano Today

We know, we began with a bit of, ah, poetic license.  Pompano Today the magazine did not, in fact, participate in yoga this morning. This writer, however, did.

Let’s start at the beginning.  A couple of weeks ago, we saw a photo posted by “I Love Hot Yoga” on their Facebook page.

While we had peripherally heard somewhere that there was, indeed, a yoga session occurring on Sunday mornings at nine on the Great Lawn, something about the photo whispered in our ear, “This.is.something.you.need.to.do.”

Now, we are not by any stretch of the imagination yoga experts.  In the past five years, our practice of yoga has been pretty much limited to a few Sun Salutations in a hotel room somewhere in order to center us for a particularly important business meeting (which, by the way, works wonders).

Given this, the thought of attending this class this morning was, to say the least, intimidating.  Try as we might, though, our usually excellent avoidance behaviors failed, and we found ourselves ready to walk to the beach at 8:50 am. Since we couldn’t reasonably conjure up a valid reason not to finally get ourselves out there, we left the house, ready to participate.

Upon our arrival, we were relieved to see a rainbow coalition of fellow practitioners.  From the young to the old, the fit to the less so, the perfectly attired  to the “you’re lucky I even HAD pants to wear” (that would be us), participants appeared from all walks of life.  This was PERFECT.  There were people who clearly knew each other and attend every week and others, like us, who arrived solo and for the first time.

As you know, one of the hardest things about trying something new is fearing that you don’t know the rules.  Do we pay? There are donations collected at the end; more about that later.  How should we dress? However you want.  What if we can’t do everything perfectly?  Not to worry! We felt completely at ease as everyone settled down to begin the class. Remember, yoga is a “practice”; there is no perfection and we pretty much guarantee that (a) no one is looking at you anyway (trust us) and (b) people of all skill levels are attending this.

Then, it was time to begin. We started out with some stretching.  Ahhhhh. If there’s anything better than stretching and breathing on the Great Lawn, while the sun warms your body and soothes your soul and the ocean is within view, well, we don’t know what that might be.

Type A that we are, we were smugly keeping up and (there’s that Type A thing again) we couldn’t help but sneak a peek at our watch.  Score! We were about halfway through, just as we suspected.  This is a piece of cake!

And then – then – things got serious.  Compromising positions aside, we’re confident that the swanlike grace we’re sure we were projecting in the first part of the class had devolved into something that we’d likely not want anyone photographing. Ha! But – take heart! – see (a) and (b) above.

As the class became more challenging, we began to have less benevolent thoughts about the instructor.  Of course, this is typical in any sort of physical workout – if you don’t have a moment where you’re thinking, “I wish the earth would open up and SWALLOW YOU WHOLE,” you’re probably not getting much of a workout.  Also, remember:  breathe! It really DOES make you feel more benign. In addition, the instructor was incredibly gentle and motivating. No boot camp drill sergeant here!

By the time we got to the “cool down” portion of the session, we felt incredibly, incredibly good.  All  that stuff you read about why it’s so important to take care of your body?  You knew that really is true, right? right? And to have the gift of something like this right here! On the great lawn! At the humane hour of 9:00 am! Ah-mazing.

When we ended, feeling as if we could go out and, maybe, either end world hunger TODAY, or maybe bring peace to the world (singlehandedly!), a donation vessel was passed around.  Warning:  bring a reasonable amount of cash with you (this of course is your personal choice but really, what’s world peace and a completely healthy start to the day worth?), but don’t bring all the money you have in the world.  You might be tempted to hand it all over.

And – oh! – you’d think we’d know better, but bring sunscreen and water.  Next time.  And there will absolutely, positively be a next time.

Namaste.