A Strong Body

I used to be completely resigned about my non-existent inner athlete. It just never appealed to me, the whole run till you throw up blood thing then do 674 push-ups. What was the point? It all just seemed like a whole lot of suffering to me.

First of all, I'm not all that competitive. I don't know if I was at some point, and then just gave up on it, but for as long as I could remember, I was much more of a peace-maker than a warrior when it came to sports.

Second of all, I just wasn't naturally good at anything athletic. Put a basketball in my hand and I was most likely to put it underneath my butt and sit on it. The only sport that I was kind of good at was swimming, and that's only because I had literally done it my whole life, and it's the perfect sport to make a hobby of if you're not good at sports because it really just requires the same movement over and over again in a straight line. Even then, I was mostly just a "graceful swimmer" rather than a fast one- translation: my limbs are long, moving them around underwater tends to look esthetically appealing, but does not guarantee that I'll move any faster than a starfish.

Lastly, I just don't like sports. I don't like the aggressive energy, I don't like the sweat and dirt of it all, I don't like the pressure, and I don't like doing things I'm not good at.

Put all these things together and you can start to understand why no one ever wanted me to be on their team in gym class. I was always close to last when teams were picked, and I certainly was never given the privilege of being team captain or anything like that. I didn't even like dodgeball.

I just kind of shrugged it off eventually. I wasn't good at sports. Whatever. I was good at grammar.

What happened, though, was that I labeled my body as weak. I figured one of the main reasons I wasn't good at anything was because I was not strong. How could I play soccer if I couldn't even run around the field ONCE? It just wasn't possible. I was given this body, and it was better equipped to sit on the bleachers.

All was well with me and my weak body, since I didn't need it to be strong for anything I liked doing. But then I went to Sarah Lawrence, and they had this stupid requirement that we take a class that gave us a gym credit in our first year. I know what you're thinking, Of all the schools in the world, Sarah Lawrence had a gym credit requirement? We asked the same question, trust me. The top two reasons we came up with as to why Sarah Lawrence had this ridiculous requirement were a) they built this fancy athletic center and wanted us to use it- and they knew a bunch of tree-huggers weren't going to willingly go to the gym, or b) we had a tendency to get fat there and they didn't want to get a reputation for being a school for fat liberals.

Miserably, I looked over the list of options for classes that would give me that gym credit, hoping to find something like "making margaritas". No such luck. Instead, the list held the predictable: tennis, basketball, rowing, kickboxing... but then, last on the list, the funniest thing: Yoga. (OF COURSE, at Sarah Lawrence, Yoga was considered a sport...) Well, at that point in my life, I had no idea what yoga really was, but from what I had heard it sounded easy. It was like taking a meditation class! Ok. The decision was made. I signed up to take yoga for a semester.

I certainly didn't expect what I was about to experience during those yoga classes. I arrived to the first class in warm sweats, imagining it might get cold if I had to be still and breathe for a while. I had no idea- NO IDEA- that yoga was hard work. The class started with the teacher (a very nice older man who spoke so softly I wondered if he thought he was teaching pre-schoolers) telling us to sit cross-legged and breathe equal breaths. Ok- so far so good. Next he had us kind of chant an "OM". Ok, a little weird, but whatever. Then we had to stand up. Err.... okay... Then we had to put our hands in prayer position- ok, so we're gonna meditate standing up, that's not too bad. Then we had to raise our hands up to the "Sun". But we're staring at the ceiling... Then he told us to dive forward and touch our toes. WELL. 18-year-old Larissa did not touch her toes. Knees maybe. And still, that was pretty hardcore for me then. Then, assuming we all had our hands flat on the floor by our feet, he told us to jump or hop backwards into "plank" pose! Ha! I looked around me to, first of all, see what the hell that means, and second, to see if anyone else was planning to quit like I was. But everyone did the movement and didn't complain, so I kind of waddled my feet backwards and ended up in that so-called-plank position, which was starting to look way too much like a push-up position, and I was already starting to tremble. On we went to "upward dog", which felt like something that should only be expected of olympic professionals, and then to "downward dog," which felt naughty and made me want to fart.

The class went on and on, crazy shape after crazy shape, and I was sweating and working so hard to bend and mold my body into those shapes and keep on breathing "equal breaths" (impossible! I thought, as I panted) that I might as well have been giving birth to a mini-lion.

But then came the end of class, and he had us lay in "corpse" pose, which I would've found to be an incredibly morbid way to reach inner peace had I not been so exhausted. And there I lay, still and silent. And slowly, as my breath and heartbeat slowed down again, and my body- hot and sweaty- cooled and melted, I started to feel drastically different. I started thinking, Wow. Look what my body just did. My arms feel so strong. My abs feel so connected. I feel so "in my body". I feel so relaxed. My organs even feel relaxed. This is fantastic. I think I'm addicted. I wonder where I can buy my own yoga mat.

And, just like that, I found my athletic self. I wouldn't call myself a devoted yogi- yet- but I kept on doing yoga sporadically in the years to come, and recently have been making it a point to take it more seriously, doing it on a regular basis, and paying attention to my growth in the practice.

As it turns out, my body was never weak. There was always a strong body inside my lazy outer frame, I just didn't know it. And even though I'm not going to be the one to pick up the ball and suggest a volleyball game at the beach, I know there is a place where my body does like to work hard, push boundaries, and grow stronger. It just so happens that my "field" is a soft yoga mat, and my sport had to be one free of competition and aggression, where the payoff is what's felt in my being rather than displayed as points on a screen. I have learned to let my body tell me its limits, instead of imposing them upon myself before trying them out. I have learned my body is ever-changing, if I let it be.

Oh, and not only can I touch my toes now, I can do a back-bridge...