Not hot as in sexy.
There's this giant window in my local neighbourhood which showcases enormously attractive people in their underwear doing some kind of yoga. I know this because every time I go past in my car I almost have an accident trying to cop a long and enduring look at all the athletic half-naked specimens on display.
Gabi: But why do they have to be in the window?
Me: Maybe they want people to look at them.
Gabi: Who wants to be looked at while they're doing yoga? You're all bent over and stretchy and sweaty and weird.
Me: They're probably just perverted.
Gabi: I guess that would make sense.
It was only a couple of weeks after this conversation that a pair of dear companions started making noise about 'seeing god' during a new exercise class.
Ukulele: You have to come. I felt like I was high after the first session.
Sugar: I kind of felt like I was going to throw up.
Me: Ew.
Sugar: But in a good way.
Me: How can anyone throw up in a good way?
Sugar: (unconvincingly) You know. A healthy vomit.
I really don't know. I really don't know how they convinced me to go. Me! I fucking hate exercising. The only time I become short of breath is when I'm naked in bed with someone or dancing to the Yardbirds in my living room. WHY WOULD I WANT TO STAND IN A WINDOW IN MY UNDERWEAR DOING YOGA.
Anyhow. Because I'm saying yes to just about everything at the moment*:
Some things I learned about 'hot yoga' in advance:
That I would probably feel nauseous and dizzy.
That I may vomit.
That I may faint.
That it would be 'emotionally intense'.
That people outside the window would most likely see me in my underwear.
That during one particular pose there was a good chance I would cry.
That if I didn't drink enough water during the class I'd collapse.
That I would sweat so much I may start hallucinating.
Gabi: EVERYONE IS GOING TO LOOK AT YOU THROUGH THE WINDOW.
Some things learned about 'hot yoga' during class:
That for some reason yoga is always taught by bald men in lyrca hotpants suffering a severe case of testicle separation.
That 42 degrees is REALLY FUCKING HOT, no matter how brrrr and wintry it is outside.
That it took far too long for me to stop marvelling over the fact that the man in front of me was dressed in tight underpants and nothing else.
That after being spiritually pummeled by the heat I didn't give two parts of a flying fuck who may or may not have been looking in the window.
That I didn't vomit.
That I didn't faint.
That at one stage I very much felt like both vomiting and fainting simultaneously.
Some things learned about 'hot yoga' after class:
That the first thing I whispered when the lights went up was: 'I will never forgive you'.
That marinated kangaroo fillets with bernaise sauce at the Napier is probably not what the instructor might recommend as a 'light after-class meal'.
That I can give a whole new meaning to the term 'apple cheeks'.
That I will probably never speak to my friends again.
465 days til the next election.
Comments
You looked pretty on TV last night, I even stayed up late to watch it after coming home from the film festival (I had taped it as I was seeing Royston Tan's short films then.)
You did look pretty. And demure. I adored it when Peter Cundall said the best thing to do with American Psycho was to use it as compost.
I just don't get Bikram yoga. All sorts of other yoga, yes. The premise of hot = stretchy muscles is flawed, it makes you feel ill and you don't even feel good at the end.
I'd have skipped straight to the Moulin Roo.
Yes, you looked lovely. I also stayed up to watch it and I thought you looked like you had more to say but were a bit conscious of being the youngest person on the panel by about twenty years and not wanting to appear a smartarse. Is this an accurate perception or was it just the editing?
You look better than pretty MS Fits you looked gorgeous, loved the flower touch.
As for the yoga thingy, all I can say is been there done that and now know that there are LOTS of people who shouldn't wearing tight anything in those class's.
so when you say underwear you really mean underwear, ie not just underwear-like sports clothes?
and what is it with people "staying up late" to watch last night? i thought your readers were all funky late-night cats who go out 8 nights a week?
i thought i was the only dork who likes an early night.
Those people doing hot yoga might look sexy whilst performing in the window and sweating it up, but I've also walked past when they're leaving and they look like people leaving a bathroom in Bali after having shat flaming daggers
Hang on, you were on TV? On what programme?
I don't care how bloody good looking people are they shouldn't wear their jocks to yoga, particularly if it's one of the early morning classes. And particularly particularly if they're wearing those clingy-cottony-not-quite-boxer-shorts-with-a-fly type arrangements
Where's the mystery?
I dragged you along because I adore how you look when your face is glowing red.
It amuses me so.
as well as on tv, now i have to look out for you in the steamy window? it's like tv...
i'm slow off the mark, but would've loved to see you on the telly... ar well. i never turn it on, so what's the chance of that... but i know you'd be beautiful...
Damn I missed it. Beloved will be annoyed, yours is the only blog I've emailed to her that she likes, and she was furious when that certain show was taken off air.
Birkam is bizarre. I tried it, it felt kinda good. But exercise at that heat is bad for you. And you have to be suspicious, certainly as a lefty, about something founded in california by a now multi millionaire who runs around in speedos and a rolex. It is sort of the anti-yoga, the yoga you got to to be 100% sure that all the spiritual stuff has been chopped out.
If you want a simple, unpretentious style that's very good exercise, with a bit of the old stuff still in it, try the ashtanga place on the side street off brunswick street where the turkish take away is.
I keep vowing to go back, one of these days.
i bet you do it again. i only go because amidst the almost vomiting and fainting it makes my toes curl like ... well, you know what like.
Hmm, for mine, next time anyone writes a part for a ghost has to contact Jacki Weaver. Saved me from taking a dull axe to the telly after 10 minutes of Yasmine. I want Peter Cundall to star as Jack Nicholson in a remake of Easy Rider. You can just see it can't you - look, you just get on, like that, slip the key in, and kick start the bloomin' thing - its DEAD EASY. I'm surprised he didn't try to prune that growth sprouting from behind your ear. Not that you didn't look damn hot. Now my head hurts -
http://ninospirelli.blogspot.com/
Can we stop commenting on Fitsy's TV antics? She is obviously a shy and retiring flower who would rather not discuss it as she gave NO ONE ANY ADVANCE WARNING!!!!
Well, not many anyway.
But with the Yoga thing, It sounds kind of like the exercise I would like, if I was to do any exercise besides laps of the MCG and its surrounds. Hot, sweaty, and ultimately pointless.
No competition, no score, just beating the shit out of your body for the sake of it.
But anything that has to be paid for in cash money is almost certainly NOT a spiritual experience, in my humble opinion. Somehow, enlightenment doesn't seem to be something that should have a monetary value.
If there is even such a thing as enlightenment, and it's not all just a higher level of self delusion.
Part of the success of Bikram is because most of the Yogic mumbo gumbo has been taken out.
Whether it is ultimately a pointless exercise and therapy regime remains to be seen. I personally don’t see how 90 minutes of cardiovascular activity that stimulates your entire body, that promotes concentration and personal endurance, encourages self discipline as well as an overall sense of well being and accomplishment could possibly be a bad thing.
If I am in a state of extreme self delusion because I practice it, please leave me in my fantasy land because I feel a heck of a lot better then I did before I started.
Greatest apologies readers. I realised that last comment sounded rather fanatical when I didn’t intent it too.
Whatever freak flag you want to fly I suppose.
terrific that she looked purdy on the telly but for a bunch of smarty pantses I am surprised no one wants to comment on what Ms Fits had to SAY!??
Peter Cundall for God
That thing is right across from my house and it does prove to be something of a perv fest, especially amusing when i'm walking back from the service station with a pie and slurpee (which I happen to think is a genius name for a beverage but that's something else).
My friend did it and the guy who led them all was called something ridiculous like Jaguar, Tigerstyles or Pumatime. When he finished he said something along the lines of 'I've been Jaguar and remember Yoga is of benefit to all people, everywhere all the time'. That statement had me so close to going but I had shaved my testicles that day and didn't fancy the associated sweaty itchiness.
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I did bikram for some time over last summer. Committed myself enough to even buy a yoga mat. I hated the woman who owned it because she always talked about Bikram himself. You could just tell they'd boned at one of the 'conferences'.
But overall, I loved how it made me feel. It is kind of addictive. Except when you go five days in a row...then you just kind of never want to do it ever ever again.
It is amusing though how bikram practisers tend to get very competitive. You can see them subtly looking around to check their pose is stronger and more 'correct'. Hilarious!
Can you please tell us what show you were on? Was it a one off or a series?
Meanwhile, come check out Mackenzie Green for a healthy dose of satirical teenage angst!
I saw that book club show last night... were you the chick between jennifer and peter?
"Part of the success of Bikram is because most of the Yogic mumbo gumbo has been taken out"
True, it is the ultimate yoga for the aerobics set.
I did it and it felt good, so as you say each to their own, but ashtanga, I found, gave a better workout. Little mumbo jumbo apart from about 30 seconds of rather funny chanting at the start!
Not jumping in its corner, I don't do any yoga at the moment, just saying its worth a go if you haven't tried it already. The people who run it are really nice.
i hear the room smells like farts encouragingly induced from the instructor while practicing something called the Wind Pose.
if the carson daly show is the worst thing in the world, this is, by a mile, the second worst thing in the world.
i'd have contemplated eating a piece of cat shit over going to a Bikram yoga class. honestly.
and i prefer dog shit, so seriously it'd be a tough choice but bikram would lose.
Hither...
http://www.ashtangamelbourne.com.au/Intro%20classes%202006.html
Having just come back from the 47 degrees Californian Central Valley, it is my contention that this hot yoga stuff just got started because the poor bastard didn't have air-conditioning in his yoga studio.
Anyway, what I really wanted to ask is "Where is the effin asterisk?"
As in "Anyhow. Because I'm saying yes to just about everything at the moment*:"
What are these everythings that you are just about always saying "yes" to? Active, enquiring minds want to know, as do slow, fat, old, perverted* ones like mine, with hair trigger fingers indelicately poised over send buttons of lewdly suggestive emails.
*Would it sound too perverted if I said I watched you on tv while I listened to you on the radio last night? It happened just by coincidence and I turned the teletext on. I promise.
"were you the chick between jennifer and peter?"
sadly i missed the show due to other commitments, but i'm just going to assume the answer to the above question is 'yes'.
although i didn't think it was going to be that kind of club.
*hangs head in bad inuendo-making shame*
*sets vcr for next week*
Farting is common to all yogas.
Nothing is funnier than a class of serious looking sweaty types straining as far over as they can, and someone with a tightly tuned rimhole lets out a noise like tearing cardboard.
If you're juvenile, like me.
Ah - this. They haven't uploaded a video of it, though.
Ah yes, the old yoga class. I'm just surprised there was no farting!! It's frighteningly common in yoga. At least you don't have to endue watching NUDE YOGA ON THE BEACH as you go for your morning stroll! It's all too common a sight in my neck of the woods and it gives whole new meaning to the pose 'down-face dog'.
Yeah, where was the salacious soundng footnote we were expecting? And, forgive this humble worms ignorance, but what show where you on?
Ms Fits,
"Well I can see that you and yoga will never do.....
Yoga is as yoga does ,there's no in between.Your either with it,on the ball, or you've blown the scene"
Elvis just left the room.
I agree with all the previous commentors about the pretty tv bit. And not to forget witty. I felt very proud for some reason.
Fuck Yoga, you have to try this.
There is NO other way to do 42 degrees, baby.
I did it today and my lurgy has pretty much packed its bags and headed for some other feeble chick.
Me: How can anyone throw up in a good way?
Sugar: (unconvincingly) You know. A healthy vomit.
clearly, sugar is bulimic
I've been going along for about a year to Bikram and I love it - the windows however are another thing all together aren't they - especially the 6am class with drunks from Tankerville mooning you. I must admit to practising at the window - only because it's much cooler up that end of the room - honest.
My dear Ukelele, I meant no offence, and I certainly wasn't deriding the helath benefits of extended physical exercise. I was just musing aloud on a topic I am prone to babble extensively about. As my uncle used to say "Whatever blows your hair back, baby" (Really he actually did used to say this)
Keep it hot and sweaty.
Love TLS
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