I Tried Yoga

It Cured My Burnout by Burning Me Alive

In a previous article, I wrote about the … ahem… frustration of telling people about being burned out at work and getting asked,

Well, plot twist. I did it. I tried yoga.

And it worked.

… sort of.

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I have a coworker… er… ex-coworker… not like that… we both got laid off together… friend? Okay, sure. Friend who shared the horrors of work with me. There we go. FWSTHOWWM.

Anyway, back when we were chained to the same company, one day after I published my scathing review of yoga-suggesters, she mentioned at the lunch table that she loved yoga. I probably choked a little. I know I felt a bit bad. She’s really nice, and so I listened to her talk about how much she loved her studio, her instructors, how many times she does it a week, etc., etc.

I remembered back in the days before I was a snail desiccated by the hot sidewalk of corporate culture. I was early in my career and had energy to do such things. In a way to combat some joint pain, I went to hot yoga once a week in a nondescript strip mall off the highway and really liked it. Then I got converted to a matrix manager and lost my will to live move.

So after we’d been laid off, and several weeks of pondering how to stay active after repeatedly eating myself into a coma, I decided I’d try it again. I’ll go with FWSTHOWWM to yoga. Now that we’re technically not coworkers, I feel less gross about her seeing me bend over.

So I show up in a black T-shirt that says,“E. coli happens” (don’t ask) and a baggy pair of sweat pants to hide my rolls. She shows up in skin-tight yoga gear and weighs 95 lbs. All right, let’s do this.

I roll out my mat in the studio and realize it still has the garage sale price tag stuck on it. Everyone else has these large, thin towels. I brought a dish towel with a bleach stain on it. I’m slummin’ it. But this is Burien, WA. No one has even heard of Burien, WA. And it’s between Seattle and Evergreen State College, so I’m certainly not the weirdest gastropod to step foot in this room.

Screw it. I’m not here to win a beauty contest; I’m a snail. Just get to bending.

Someone who definitely is not afraid of foot fungus comes into the room and cranks the heat. It is our instructor. She has hexagonally framed glasses and is svelte as a gazelle. How do they get that way? How do they not eat five bowls of cereal a day?

I spend the first few minutes thinking about what it would be like to date a yoga instructor. Are they kind? Do they align their chakras? Do they have a ridiculously large Himalayan salt crystal in their room? If I were left in there alone, would I lick it?

Fifteen minutes in and I feel the arches in my feet completely collapse and realize that by wearing dress shoes for the past ten years, I have lost the ability to hold myself up with a naked foot. Nice. A newborn baby has better grip strength than my toes do on this mat. I somehow stay upright. I watch the people in front of me, mimicking what they do.

About thirty minutes in, I begin to pour sweat. It cascades down my back and into the gaping maw that is my butt crack. It itches, but I dare not scratch it. My hands are keeping me from beefing it straight into the mat. I am acutely aware of how my wrists are telling me that if I do not move in the next five seconds, they are going to strike for better wages. I relent.

I stand back up and try to attach my foot to my inner thigh. I adjust my shirt a few times and curse myself for dressing like an insecure preteen. My ankles are sweating. I look at myself in the mirror ahead and realize that the lighting in here makes it impossible for anyone to look truly as bad as they actually do. I know that as soon as I walk out into the light of day, people will instinctively recoil. I am okay with that.

Downward facing dog into child’s pose. I can feel a large gas bubble turn the corner of my large intestine and position itself within firing range. I will it to retreat. For the benefit of everyone in the room, it has the grace to do so.

45 minutes in. Or…? I don’t know. I’ve lost track of time. In fact, I never had any concept of time. What is time? Is it truly a construct of the human mind, or is it intimately woven into the fabric of the universe? I take the child pose while everyone else moves. My water bottle is nearly empty.

I recover. I nail the warrior pose and then some other weird-ass position where my elbow is glued to my knee. We are instructed to lean forward all the way and let our heads hang down. I realize that my former coworker is going to see me spread-eagle and that my butt, albeit temporarily, will hover about a foot from her face. Upside-down, I look through my legs to see the back of her head. She either saw nothing or has already forgiven me for existing. I sigh in relief.

I am surprised by the end of the hour. I did not realize that there was an end, could be an end. There was only one existence. The hot yoga existence. And now it is over, and the door is opened, bringing with it a whoosh of ice-cold air.

I now know what heaven feels like.

I realize I never need to orgasm again in my life if I can just experience that door.

I will move mountains for that door. I will push anyone out of the way to chase that high. My pupils dilate. I see my place in the universe.

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“So, you think you’ll come back?” my friend asks.

Fantasizing about the door, “Absolutely.”

“You’re going to feel great in an hour.”

“I feel great now!” I exclaim. The endorphins are surging. I get in the car, go home, take a refreshing shower, and feel like a real winner. I sit on the couch and

I am desiccated.

The endorphins have faded. I am a four-year-old denying a nap. All I can do for the next three hours is stare into space. I crawl into bed and lose consciousness.

Ten hours later, I wake up. Everything crackles like Pop-Rocks on a wet tongue. I groan.

I am old. And doughy. And everything hurts.

I pull out my phone and text her.

“When you going back?”

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This is why they ask if you’ve tried yoga.

It isn’t about the poses. The breathing. The muscle tone. The tattoos.

It’s about the DOOR.

The door opening at the end of the session not only felt like the purest euphoria. It was also permission to STOP DYING.

And, as my friend posited…

It’s about being so entirely focused on not dying for one hour that you stop thinking about your life.

Will it fix your burnout? Absolutely the hell not.

Your burnout, your exhaustion, your stress, all of that is not going to be “fixed” by yoga.

To truly eradicate a disease, you must treat the cause. Yoga, like other self-care or masochistic practices, is a fresh Band-Aid on a wound. But it won’t heal what keeps causing the wound.

But if it keeps you from drinking, have at it.

See you at yoga. Maybe I’ll be wearing shorts this time.