Someone Else's Sweat... On Me

In an effort to branch out my fitness abilities, I will occasionally try something different from my usual running (as seen in the previous post).  On several occasions, I've tried yoga or pilates and have determined that I am entirely too wound up to do these activities.  I like the middle portion of the class, but the beginning and the end with all the breathing and relaxing mumbo jumbo - I tend to find myself thinking about my grocery list, what I'm going to watch on the DVR and what I'm getting for dinner.  Maybe that's a sign that I need to keep going back to these classes to relax, but I typically ignore that sign.

It's been a while since my last attempt at yoga but Groupon made me attempt it again.  Groupon was offering a great deal on this newfangled thing called Hot Yoga.  It's similar to yoga, with the small exception of the temperature of the room.  The thermostat is cranked up to a mere 105 degrees while you're doing the yoga. It was a good price and good location, so I bought my Groupon and headed down to the studio. 

Before class, the room was a typical yoga studio with everyone laying down on their mat and meditating - while I stared at my toes and wondered if I liked my current polish color.  Then it started.  These little machines in the corners of the room starting pumping hot air into the room and I started sweating.... and the class had not even started.  Uh-Oh.

Obviously not me.  But you get the point.

The class consisted of a full 90 minutes of profuse sweating, with a bit of yoga mixed in.  I'm not really sure how much yoga, because I was in awe of the amount of sweat dripping off not only me - but all the strangers packed into the room, so I couldn't really concentrate on what I was supposed to concentrating on.  I'm talking about sweating to the degree of dripping in your eyes, running down your legs and puddling in pools on your mat.  It sure is hard to hold a downward dog when your palms and feet keep slipping out from under you.  I think I spent more time wiping the sweat off my body in the attempt to hold a pose than actually holding the pose.  30 minutes into the class, I was insanely exhausted - not to mention nauseous.

One shining light in the process was the instructor.  She mingled throughout the room and gave tips on how to hold poses or adjust your body to get the most out of the class.  But a small problem. 

She was sweating too.  And leaning over people.  Which meant she was dripping her sweat on someone else.  Including me.

YUCK.

You never EVER want a stranger dripping sweat on you.  It's pretty gross.

After a very long 90 minutes, the class finally ended and we all filed into the locker room to rehydrate and try our best not to pass out.  I was struggling to stay alive by this point and was one of the last people to trudge in the locker room.  I was so tired and barely hanging in there, in fact I starting trudging through this long trail of water on the floor.....weird.  Someone must have dropped their water bottle.

Wait.  That wasn't water - it was a pool of sweat, running from the yoga room to the locker room.  A collection of the entire class' sweat.  UGGG.

The saddest part of this whole story is that I didn't realize the co-mingling of sweat until after I got home and started to thinking about the class.  The class made me so tired, that at the time I didn't care about other people's sweat.  I was swimming in other people's germs and I didn't even know it.

They say you eventually get used to the Hot Yoga and tend to like the hot room..... but do I really want to spend a day a week mingling with stranger sweat?  Not so sure about that.