Hot yoga. Hot damn.

Recently, my good friend Laura mentioned that she was going to start doing hot yoga, and I - as a person who often gets excited about things before thinking them through fully - was like, "Awesome! I want to do that, too!"

So tonight we went to our first session at the hot yoga studio. I was excited, but also terrified, because I'd heard that you need to chug water ALL DAY in order to not pass out, so today I was pounding glasses of water like it was my job. I was doing two jobs today. It was stressful. Beyond dehydration and passing out, the other thing that made me nervous was the yoga people. They intimidate me. The are freakishly flexible. I'm just not like that. It hurts to sit cross-legged for more than two minutes. When I was younger, I always got super stressed out during the presidential fitness competitions in middle school, because the only thing I couldn't do was the sit-and-reach. Sit-ups, push-ups, running - no problem. Sit on the ground with straight legs and reach two inches past your feet? Yeah right.

So, I'm not sure what drew me to hot yoga. Partly the fact that I knew Laura was going, so I knew I'd have an encouraging workout buddy there, partly because I've been wanting to expand my workouts, and partly was because it's January in Chicago. I'll sign up for anything with the word "hot" in it.

Here's all you need to know about my experience tonight:

105: temperature in the room

90: minutes of hot yoga

26: number of exercises

24: number of exercises I couldn't do properly due to my lack of experience and/or flexibility (maybe a bit of an exaggeration... but not much)

2: amount of times I thought I was going to pass out

1: amount of times I thought I was going to throw up

1: amount of water breaks allowed by the insane instructor (no, we were not allowed to drink at our own discretion. too bad I broke that rule! sorry, dude)

1: successfully completed session!

So intense.

I'd thought that it couldn't possibly be that hard. I work out and am in OK shape right now, but that class was like, "Ummm NO, woman. You are NOT in shape. Keep on working."

Laura's coworker, who is an experienced hot-yoga-er, told her that the goal of the first class is just to make it through. Which we successfully did! Hurray!

I actually feel amazing right now, which is shocking. I think it's all the endorphins I released. So much sweat, so many endorphins. As hard as it was, I am excited to keep working at it. I'm hoping to improve my flexibility and strength, but even if that doesn't happen, I'm at least sweating out half my body weight in every workout, so it feels great.

The next session is later this week, so we'll see how this whole hot yoga situation progresses.

In other news, I know there are a lot of intense things going on in the world, and I feel like I should write about one of them, one of these days. But tonight is not that night. Tonight is just about hot yoga and pretty nail polish colors. Let's all just look at this lovely new nail polish inspired by the upcoming royal wedding. It's so pretty. It's... fit for a queen.

With that, I'm out.