(with apologies to Frank Herbert)
There were lean, taut, mostly-naked bodies everywhere I looked. I stared at their faces in the wall of mirrors, half-expecting a sea of blue-within-blue Fremen eyes to stare back at me.
I alone was *not* lean, taut, and mostly-naked. I was wearing a pair of my husband's sweat pants cut off at knee-length and an old University of Dallas Rugby Team ("It's Never Pretty") tee shirt over a swimsuit. I was wondering what in the hell I was doing in a 105˚ room that smelled like hot valerian root extract, standing on a towel, facing a wall of mirrors.
I don't remember much about my first ninety-minute class other than the fact that I was surprised to discover, when it was all over, that I was still alive. That was on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, I went out and bought myself more appropriate clothing... or rather, more appropriate *lack*-of-clothing.
On Thursday, there I was again, standing on a towel in my special yoga skivvies, surrounded by mostly-naked Fremen. (Okay, make that mostly-naked Fremen with hair extensions and interesting tattoos and piercings. This *is* Berkeley, after all.) I don't remember much about this class, either, except I didn't get quite as dizzy, and, when it was all over, was grudgingly ready to admit that maybe this wouldn't kill me after all.
On Friday night, when most people my age in this glittering metropolis were out at nightclubs, trendy restaurants, and movie theaters, I was back again, reciting the Bikram Gesserit Litany against Passing Out from Heat Exhaustion ("I will not faint. Fainting is the pride-killer. Fainting is the little-death that brings total humilitation. I will face my inability to breathe only through my nose while exercising in this sweltering heat. I will permit this hot, sticky air to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the dizziess and the tunnel-vision has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain... what little there is left of me.")
Bikram yoga, for those of you not familiar with the term, is a series of twenty-six hatha yoga asanas done at 105˚ over a ninety-minute period with one thirty-second water break. During this time, you are not supposed to leave the room or open your mouth to breathe. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have been caught dead there... not only because of my very real fear of *actually* being caught very dead there, but also because it's something of a Vegan Meat Market (tm). But my sister, proud of the fact that, after three months of soothing my grief with carbohydrates and letting depression keep me from exercising, I had recently rediscovered leafy greens and was jogging two and a half miles every morning, had given me a gift certificate for One Month of Unlimited Suffering at the Funky Door Yoga Studio on Shattuck, and I figured, what the hell.
So there I was last night, not going to a movie or having a beer at one of the three brewpubs only blocks from my already conviently-parked car, but breathing through my nose and pushing myself into still more painful contortions. And the scary part was, I was starting to like it.
Now I was getting the hang of this, and I was actually able to focus on proper form and regulating my breath instead of, say, concentrating on not actually going into cardiac arrest. I watched the sweat running down my arms and legs, dripping off my nose, soaking into the carpet under my towel.
("It is by breath alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the breath through the nose in-two-three-four-five-six, out-two-three-four-five-six that the asanas acquire strength, the limbs acquire sweat, the sweat becomes a warning. It is by breath alone I set my mind in motion.")
In my heat-addled brain I began to hallucinate. I realized that these people couldn't possibly be Fremen at all, the way they were squandering their bodies' water. I imagined a horde of actual Fremen zealots bursting into the studio, crysknives at the ready, forcing us all into stillsuits to reclaim our sweat, and then tearing up the foul carpeting soaked with our blood, sweat and tears and wringing every last drop of moisture out of it into catch basins. Smile. Breathe.
9:30 p.m. Class is over. I roll up my mat and my towel and go home.
(note: If you didn't get any of this, read Dune)
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