Feeling blue? Do some yoga

Last week was dangerous. Those few days between the end of finals and the start of summer… Last week was dangerous. Those few days between the end of finals and the start of summer jobs can be viciously hollow, and while many students fill this gap by returning home to do laundry and stock up on summer clothes, I chose the more troublesome path and decided to spend my empty days here in Pittsburgh.

The first day, we had a cookout.

The second day, I threw pieces of leftover hamburger and hotdog buns from the cookout onto my roommate’s car, hoping to lure the squirrels to them.

The third day, I didn’t get out of bed.

I was feeling a little spiritually empty by the third day. As in most moments of transition, I could not only not see what the point had been to all of the work I’d done last semester, but I could also not see what any point could be to anything I might do this summer. And with six days of irresponsibility and idleness ahead, I knew something must be done to restore my faith in a deeper purpose. Otherwise, I might be in danger of wasting the entire summer like a zombie, waiting for autumn to return.

Luckily for me, my summery activities in those first three days included not only buying a badminton set, shopping for sundresses and beginning my summer reading list, but also miniature golfing.

It was during this miniature golf match – unfortunately, I did not win – that I was coerced into starting yoga. Coerced is not, perhaps, the best word to use, but it’s close. I had been talking about taking yoga for a few weeks but hadn’t really had enough motivation to go.

But as the eventual winner putt-putted his way to victory, one of my golfing pals announced that he would be taking a trip to South Carolina and that we were invited to join him. At the beach.

If there’s one thing I hate about summer, it’s the implication that I should be glad that I get to go to the beach. I actually don’t like the beach. I sunburn very easily, the snacks always end up full of sand, and once I was bit by a crab. It just doesn’t always seem worth it.

But I do love South of the Border. I will get sunburned if it means stopping at South of the Border.

I was in. Which meant shopping for bathing suits. Which meant yoga.

That Monday, I grabbed a yoga buddy – because I can’t do new things alone – and we headed to a “hot” yoga studio. A hot yoga studio differs from a regular yoga studio in that it is incredibly, incredibly hot. I started sweating as soon as we got into the room: a long rectangle of polished hardwood floors with three windows at one end looking down onto the street below. I paid for the class, rented a mat and set up, somewhat nervously, against one of the purple walls with my buddy on the other side.

Our instructor was a nice-enough guy, who reassured us that it was a personal lesson and that the pace should be our own and not reflective of what anyone around us was doing. Easy for him to say.

We started the class with three “oms” to get in touch with our breathing and quiet our minds. Then we started a sun salutation, in which I guess we were supposed to be saluting the sun for something. Unfortunately for the sun, I was too busy cursing – in a very un-yoga-like way – my feeble muscles and their cries for relief. “No more downward facing dog, you torturous trollop!” they shouted.

I silenced them by focusing my mind on the neon lights of South of the Border and the promise of “Grease”-like summer lovin’ at the beach.

I kept these things in mind as I counted my yoga breaths, imagining the “oms” flowing in and out of me, trying to ignore the streams of sweat running down my arms and legs as I tree-posed and shoulder-stood.

And before I knew it, an hour had passed and our instructor turned down the lights, cranked open the windows and had us go into corpse-pose, a very welcome respite for my strained and unhappy muscles.

After a few minutes of lying with our eyes closed, cocooned in our own sweat and pain, the instructor told us to sit at the front of our mats and seal the lesson with three “oms.”

We faced the three windows, which let in the evening light, and the room rose with sound. I found my own exhausted “om” to be indistinguishable from that of my yoga buddy’s and that of the girl on the mat next to her and that of the instructor.

Even further, I found that the “om” was also indistinguishable from every other sound: the clicking of the heaters as they cooled down, the sound of cars on the street below and the breath of the trees.

It was a moment in which I felt great clarity, not because I had realized something about the unity of things or my place in the world, but rather because I had realized that there was something to realize, and that realization made all the gross sweat and painful muscles worthwhile.

E-mail Cassidy at cassidygruber@gmail.com