After a couple weeks dragging my arse I finally made it back to the studio. It was dark, raining and cold and I totally didn’t want to go back out of the house after getting home. However once booked you are committed. I go through stages with my fitness and I always have a perfect excuse for when I’m not doing anything. I’m too busy, tired, got too much on, its cold outside..etc etc. Yesterday I had run out of good excuses. My bits are getting soft n squishy. My arms are hammy and my muffin top is in danger of turning in to a cake oven (courtesy of sarah millican).

I decided to go back easy. Yoga is my go to class it’s relaxing, not overly taxing unless I make it that way. It’s the one form of exercise I actually enjoy. It’s comforting and reliable. Like coming home to a cosy house after a long commute in the rain. At one point I was doing 3 sometimes 4 classes a week with the advanced classes and acro. However since I’ve not done any yoga in 5 months I opted for the one vinyasa class.

Going up the stairs and in to the room was like visiting a really great friend who you have not seen for ages. My friends were all there and somehow I still had my preferred position in the room. I think that’s more due to the fact no one is crazy enough to want to be at the front rather that it having been saved for me. It’s a strange thing and it shouldn’t matter but you do get a preference for a certain place in the room. I dug my mat out which although not dusty was not willing to unroll. Grudgingly it let me set it but obstinately kept curling up at one end. A bit like me trying to forward bend last night. Hearing the words if you’d like to take it to a full standing bend with hands flat or advanced you can wrap your arms round your legs filled me with dread and hurt more than a little. It hurt a lot! I still gave it a go tho… Followed by a fuuuck.. nope.. obviously in my head.. I think it was anyway?

For anyone who thinks yoga is just breathing and stretching it’s so much more than that. For me when I first started I was in a dark place. I was taking medication for anxiety / stress and feeling very fuzzy and spaced out. I wanted to stop taking the pills but needed to find a means to manage my own demons. I’d had tension headaches for 3 months prior and that’s what had amongst other things led me down the prescription medication path. The pills were amazing, the first day I woke without my eye twitching and without pain was miraculous. The pills ‘fixed’ the immediate problems ie the pain. I hadn’t wanted to believe that my headaches were systemic of deeper psychological issues I was having and will, if I’m totally honest, always have. (I get that now). Only when the pain left me did I agree with the docs that maybe my pain was stress and anxiety induced. I’m stubborn like that I thought it was a brain tumour. I’d googled it…. I went as far as suggesting it to my doc. That went well…

So I made changes to my life but due to the pills I still felt like I was walking through a fog, like the big marshmallow dude on ghostbusters. That’s how it felt walking around, flumping through my days. I was ready to ‘feel’ again but I needed a ‘something’ to centre me and I wanted to get fit on the outside as well as on the inside. This led me down the path to yoga.

So here I am back in yoga 4 years on after a 5 months break. Every part of me is being stretched. My body kind of remembers, it remembers it didn’t fucking hurt this much last time! Even my knees hurt? I don’t even know where to go with that! Then something happened that has never happened to me before. Something I’ve read about, heard about but never experienced. All that twisting, bending and stretching had done something to me. Half way through the class it stopped being a slightly painful but zen like experience and turned in to a marathon hold the fart in operation! Half an hour I clenched! Sounds easy but it’s not when you’re twisting and compressing everything. When you’re bent double, legs spread as far as they’ll go, head on the floor, bum in the air and praying not to let out the loudest shotgun fart ever! The kind that would ricochet around the room leaving the other occupants in no doubt from whence it came. I’ll admit there may have been some controlled leakage but it was ok as it was a ninja fart. No sound no smell. I’ll be honest this was not the relaxing experience I had been expecting! Genuinely this has never happened to me before! At this point I’m very much regretting being at the front of the class! Breath in breath out (do not relax.. under no circumstances relax, no one wants that).

As the class came to a close and I’m laid on my back with my knees over my chest, butt in the air, rocking, compressing even more air in my gut my only thought was please dear god don’t let me fart now…

I didn’t by the way!! My weeks achievement! Not only did I go back to the studio I didn’t fart…well not that anyone would know!

Until now…