And now for cold yoga (not to be confused with hot yoga)

Shwami Shimon's father died this past week and he is sitting shiva for seven days, which is how I found myself at a cold yoga class last night. It's not that I couldn't live without yoga for a week -- because I could surely live without exercise forever -- but in true teenage fashion, everyone else was going so I went too. Actually, I wanted to find out if one could actually do yoga in a room that wasn't 105 degrees.

The short answer is yes, you can do yoga without feeling like you are stranded in the Sinai desert in the noon sun in summer. The longer answer is that it just doesn't feel like you have worked hard enough if the sweat isn't streaming off your body by the bucket load. Cold yoga is very civilized and everyone leaves the class looking pretty much as they did when they entered. After hot yoga you look like you just spent an hour and a half in the oven at 350 degrees.

As an aside, one of my friends asked me after the class why I did yoga at all. "You look like you were really struggling," she said. I wanted to punch her in the face but I did the mature thing and simply agreed that I wasn't the most flexible person on earth. I also added that Swami Shimon said that if I kept it up, I would eventually become more flexible.

If I gave up on everything I tried but didn't do well, then I might as well just sit on the edge of my bed and stare off into space all day. I am very good at that. Actually, I think you could fairly call me an expert in this category.

Back to yoga. Based on the remarks above you can reasonably assume that hot or cold, I didn't execute the moves with any finesse. Apparently temperature has nothing to do with my lack of balance or general yoga ability. I actually thought I was holding my own quite nicely in cold yoga until the editorial input from my "friend" after the class. The teacher didn't have to run to my rescue on a minute-by-minute basis the way Swami Shimon does, so I took that as a sign of improvement on my part.

When I asked the other hot yoga chicks if they preferred cold yoga over hot yoga I received a very enthusiastic and consistent "no way". That doesn't mean that they didn't have fun because who wouldn't have a good time doing pretty much anything with 13 friends? Plus, if you aren't comfortable bending over to grab your ankles and in the process sticking your rear-end in someone's face, then they really weren't your friends to begin with were they?

Also, one thing that cold yoga had that hot yoga never has was an apres-work-out meal of real Nepalese food. Compliments of the cold-yoga initiator, we had the most delicious vegetarian meal I can remember. I would tell you what I ate if I could, but I can't. All I could easily identify were the peas and the basmati rice. There was something mushy in a brown sauce and something else more mushy in a red sauce. Both tasted amazing. And all the dishes were spicy which gave me the added advantage of going home almost as hot as if I had gone to a hot yoga class.

Sauna yoga for the uninitiated

You know the saying: curiosity killed the cat? Well, it didn't materialize out of nowhere. Somewhere out there, there are a lot of dead cats. And after my yoga experience last week, I could easily be the next one.

As I have stated here many times during the past year, I am no friend of exercise. Not even a passing aquaintence. It is kind of a shame considering my husband just can't get enough of the stuff.

When friends of ours from Florida suggested we join them for yoga one night last week, I thought it was a good compromise. I like yoga -- at least the four lessons I had previously attended didn't seem too bad, even for non-flexi me. Also, I figured my husband and I could go together so it would be a family exercise event and that might satisfy his need to do something active with me for a few weeks. As I saw it, it was a win-win situation. And .... I was curious about this SPECIAL yoga that had all my Floridian friends in a tizzy.

You may notice that I specifically said that the people who kept encouraging me to try this out were all previously residents of the State of Florida. In other words, they are people who were born in colder climates and sought out the warmth of the American South. They are people who thrive in the heat and do not flinch when the humidity reaches 97 per cent. While I don't miss the snow for even one second, suffice it to say that after all is said and done: I AM CANADIAN.

So off we go to this yoga class. My first clue should have been that it was being held in a location that one could not find without the assistance of someone who had been there previously. It was a very Matrix-like moment just getting there.

After our mini journey to the middle of nowhere, we arrived in this very nice little yoga studio and we were met by a very hippie-ish looking guy in shorts. Nothing else. Just shorts. At first glance he didn't look like he was in such great shape himself, although I did survive long enough to eat those words.

We had been forewarned to show up in the least amount of clothing necessary. I was wearing my very obvious green and pink bike shorts (a present from my husband when he was still deluded enough to think I had athletic potential)and a mismatched t-shirt. Please note that all the real yogettes are dressed in yoga outfits.

We all got our bottles of water out and then we headed into a room that looked, from the outside, like a normal work-out room, but when we entered, it was a sauna dressed up to look like a work-out room. I had been tricked but it was tooooo late.

I went to my mat and the class started. I am not going to go through all the details because reliving them is just too painful. So let me summarize: I have no balance. Everyone else had great balance. I have the flexibility of a metal rod. Everyone had the flexibility of a willow branch. I looked like an idiot. Everyone else looked very yoga like -- including my husband who has never done yoga before. I disrupted the class in regular 2 minute intervals. Everyone else participated nicely and quietly. I crashed into my husband more times than I care to count. Everyone else was crash-free. I received special motivational comments from Swami Shimon. Everyone else just received positive nods from him.

NEED I SAY MORE?

An hour into sauna yoga, which in fact is called Bikram Yoga, I thought I was going to sweat out (similar to bleeding out, but with sweat). I just did a quick Wikipedia search and look what it says: "Bikram Yoga is ideally practiced in a room heated to 105°F (40.5°C) with a humidity of 40%." Who the hell does anything physical in 105 degrees. If that isn't a good temperature for reading a book, I don't know what is.

Fast forward to the end: I am still alive. I am even thinking of going back again because having survived I feel empowered. The strangest part of it all is that when I mentioned it to the women sitting near me in synagogue last night, everyone started to rave about Bikram yoga. And the ravers were from Cleveland and Toronto respectively so I can't even accuse them of being heat seekers. I think that everyone of you should try it as well. Those of you in Ra'anana can come with me.

Apparently I am missing the point -- therefore, I've decided to take another kick at the cat.