3.18 pm

I have gone to five yoga classes in the past eleven days. Two in the past two days. I don't yet have that "hurting in muscles I didn't even knew existed" feeling that I did when I first started yoga a few years ago, but it's close. The kind of weird thing is that I actually enjoy that sort of pain. I used to feel like this after really good dance classes or really hard lacrosse workouts. I'm also starting to feel less painfully stiff and sore in the morning, which is a definite bonus. Part of that is the fact that I'm sleeping on a pull-out sofa in which, until I put a foam eggshell thing down a few days ago, I could feel every mattress spring when I lay down. Most of it is that I'm totally losing the flexibility I had when I was younger.

The other night I was at a bar with one of the girls from work, and we got onto the topic of dance and acro and all that, and she mentioned that there's adult gymnastics at the Chelsea pier. It sounds like you pay your $20 and they let you at all the equipment for a few hours on a Friday night. I'm wicked excited to go do it, but I'm also wondering if a) my body will still remember what to do and b) if my body will actually move and bend that way again. I know what it feels like to do a back handspring. You have to bend your knees and jump, straight up, while bending your head back and trusting that your arms will catch you. That's the hard part. After your arms hit the ground your feet will follow, at which point you have to stay on them and not wobble around as you stand up. What I wonder, though, is if my arms will support me, if my back will arch the way it needs to, if I can still jump straight up into the air as though I were never planning on coming back down.

All of which is to say that I find myself upping the personal ante for my yoga classes. I signed up because I knew I'd be eating ridiculous lunches all summer and I wanted something to keep off the "summer fifteen". And because after watching the contortionists at Cirque, I really wanted to be able to bend down and touch my toes again. Now, my goal is to be able to get flexible enough to do a back handspring this summer.