The Yoga Problem

I’m a lot of things and wear a lot of hats throughout the day (even my Red Sox hat, even though thanks to them, I know how my mother must feel, to have something start out with so much potential, statistically perfect; then have it turn out to be nothing more than a gross pile of disappointment who marries a punk rocker and gets knocked up while wasted on her 22nd birthday AM I GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU YET MOM?) – but one thing I can openly admit I am not is graceful in socially political situations. I tend to approach these with the same tact and grace as a drunk rodeo clown – uncouth, reprehensible, tactless and oftentimes without pants.

So you can imagine how well I respond when put in the middle of sticky office politics.

I work for an organization that encourages health and well-being; as such, I have a free wellness center membership and they encourage us to take advantage of it whenever we can – this includes lunch breaks, “mental wellness” breaks, etc. I have to willingly try to be a lazy fat piece of shit working here, and I’m too busy being willingly insubordinate in other aspects of my job, so I work out quite a bit.

I used to enjoy yoga on my lunch breaks, until I got too swamped with work to have a lunch break. Also, it was winter and cold. Also, I’m lazy and would rather go get Taco Bell and hoard it to my office like contraband. I don’t hate yoga. It helped a lot with my slipped disks following a serious car accident last year, and the last five minutes of class are dedicated to laying prone and re-energizing our chi. So basically, naptime for me.

At any rate, our HR director and my boss are now friends, and have started going to the yoga class I abandoned. Which is fine. Til I heard five words that completely strike fear into the heart of any middle-level white collar desk jockey:

“You should come with us!”

Anyone who has fought in the trenches of office politics – or is just painfully neurotic – knows that this is so much more than a friendly invitation. This is an invitation from upper management to come see the executive squash room and try the caviar, so to speak. This is a level of comfort with your superiors that is pretty much just reserved for sleeping with your teacher. It lets me be on the same chi level as the people who ultimately decide whether or not I get to keep showing up for work every day.

Which is exactly why it’s terrifying.

Number one, I’m not ready for that level of comfort with my superiors that only comes when you’re in yoga pants and lying on the floor twisted in ways you haven’t done since you and your college boyfriend tried when you stole that Karma Sutra book from the school bookstore (why was that even there?). Number two, my organization is pretty straight-laced, and my bosses even moreso. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I sort of lack an internal censor for the things that come out of my mouth.

This includes, if it's not completely exclusive for, my yoga time. I’m not relaxing. I’m still going balls-out Type A trying to do every pose like I’m fucking Ghandi or Yogi Bear, whoever the fucking god of yoga is, while calling the poor instructor everything but decent under my breath. I’m just not ready to expose that layer of myself to my bosses – who saw more than enough of my under layers at the last open bar office Christmas party. (Never again, Chardonnay, never again.)

Not to mention, this requires changing in the same locker room as my bosses. Did you ever change in the same locker room as your teachers in high school? No? That’s because those levels of authority are blurred. We’re like, in our underwear together. You can see my poor tattoo decisions from college and you can see that for reasons I don’t even understand, I spend an inordinate amount of money on underwear that is best reserved for a neon-lit stage. (To be fair, my Editor pants show panty lines and I’m not going to parade THAT through the office.) We don’t cross that line. We don’t blur it. No.

So the question is: to yoga, or not to yoga? I bought myself some more time since, following my pinning surgery on my left pinky finger (maybe a story for another day), I can’t put weight on my hands. And I feel like they’d frown upon me using the entire yoga session as naptime chi revitalization. So I smiled and thanked Boss for the invitation, and excitedly said, “I can’t wait! Once I get the pins out and I can put weight on my finger, we’re so on!”

Which basically buys me another six weeks to either find a new excuse, break another finger, or hope that, like my raise and promotion, they get sick of thinking about it and forget about it.