Going out on a limb

You can hear the most innovative and hilarious excuses in a yoga class

“Sir, I can’t bend and touch my toes because my arms are short!” “Her legs are shorter than mine, that’s why Dhanurasana (bow pose) is easier for her!” “What is the core? I don’t think I have a core!”

This was a regular day at my yoga class when I was a new mom. As you can see, you hear some of the funniest excuses from a bunch of women in a yoga class.

The motivation to join yoga lay in the company of my classmates, all homemakers, some of them with little kids or older kids, and a grandmother too! The entire hour was spent exercising, interspersed with lots of laughter, much to the chagrin of our yoga teacher. He was younger than all of us and, hence, was bullied into letting us have our way in terms of cracking jokes or sometimes complaining and grumbling throughout the entire session.

The excuses would start right from the warm-up exercises. If we were late, we would skip the warm-up saying, “Sir, we are up at 6 in the morning and have got kids ready for school, packed lunches, and have now run down the stairs to join class. We don’t need any other warm-up exercise!”

After this, we would ask what the exercise of the day focused on. No matter what he said, there would be protests and grumbles. If some of us had a party to attend that evening, we would ask him to work our abs so that we could eat without too much guilt.

If he said ‘legs’ on two consecutive days, protests would go up in a loud chorus: “Our legs are still hurting from yesterday’s squat session, and we cannot do that again.”

A different set of complaints filled the air on the days we had to work our arms: “Sir, I can’t roll my belan to make paranthas,” or “I need to pick my baby up a million times a day.”

And like this, when his patience was tested to the limit, he would just decide that we would do 108 Surya Namaskars. It was the only way to get us to stop talking.

Once, while doing the elbow plank and holding the pose for a long time, I was looking down at the mat and suddenly said, “Sir, I am beginning to see an optical illusion due to the pattern on the mat, I cannot hold this pose anymore”. Everyone just dropped down laughing, and even the teacher found it hilarious and said that only I could bring up ‘optical illusions’ in a yoga class. And so got away with planks for that day!

While I do yoga alone now, mentally I’m still there, working out with the instructions I can still hear, chuckling at what someone said while doing a particular asana or at how we would make plans to have a well-earned treat of bread pakodas or brownies with masala chai!