Okay, so first off, I am not at all unbiased when it comes to Beyoncé – I know that.  However, what does the woman have to do to win album/record of the year at the Grammys? I’m not in any way demeaning Adele’s talent.  She is talented, and I bought hard copies of both 25 and Lemonade, but Lemonade was the better album from start to finish.  The committee did her dirty, and Adele agreed, according to last night’s speech.

Ok, we’re done with that.  But it kind of ties in to what I did this weekend.

I mentioned this a few posts ago.  But a really sweet girl who works at the Y bought me a gift card to a yoga studio I’d mentioned wanting to try out, and so once a week or so, I will actually trek down to Durham, and take a class there.  It’s good for me.  The drive is nice, Austin gets to do some dad duty, and I get a really good practice in.  We all win.  (Plus it takes 20+ minutes to get there, so I get to listen to podcasts on my way.  It literally is so good for my mind to get down there once a week.)

So anyhoo, a few weeks ago when I was taking Angela’s class, she mentioned a Beyoncé- themed yoga class.  The class was still like three weeks off, but I went ahead and signed up so that I wouldn’t have an excuse to not go (like I’ve done with getting my nails done every single week since the day before he was born). I signed up, and really didn’t know what to expect.

Sunday afternoon, I got to class about 15 minutes before, set my mat up in the corner, but close enough to the mirror so I could see myself, and watched as the room filled with women, some young, some older, super excited to take the class.

The instructor, a tall, thin, and beautiful dancer-type with mermaid hair was piddling around the room, setting up her mic, and helping folks get set-up while one of Queen Bey’s live tours was playing.  I was pretty impressed – usually the live stuff is reserved for only the biggest fans.  I chatted with the instructor for a second before the last of the nearly 45 women poured in about the Formation world tour, the one during which we’d been evacuated due to bad weather before the Queen re-entered and finished out the show.

So the class started with a talk.  Where I started crying immediately.  Gah.  But Brady, the instructor with the mermaid hair, began to talk about the class, what it meant that we were all women, the fact that the class would have some dancing, and some singing, and would be unlike any class we’d ever taken before.

Ok. I leaned over to the woman sitting next to me, and whispered, “this is gonna be insane I feel like.”

And off we went.  We started with ‘Drunk in Love,’ and began in tabletop.  From there we did dancing lion, a moved I recognized from the pole fitness studio I sometime teach at, and back into downward facing dog, which morphed into a more twerky version of itself at some point, more bouncy and ass-ish.  At the top of the mat, in mountain pose, things started to get different in a great way.  We strutted up and down the mat, waved our hands, sang at the top of our lungs, and between of all this, managed to throw in squats, work on our calves, pushups, and some core work.  I was drenched in sweat 20 minutes into this, and the class was 90 minutes.  I took a few moments during the class to take a mental snapshot…

…and it was so neat. It was kind of cool to take yourself out of the place where you criticize any and everything about yourself and someone else for dancing around like a fool, and just go with it.  There were some women who were really cute, perfect-looking lulu yogis.  There was me, in running shorts and a tee, still trying to lose those last few pounds of baby weight.  There was the mom next to me who’d been married for over 17 years as I found out.  There was Brady the mermaid.  There was the cute girl, barely out of college, singing her lungs out in the front.  And we were all just enjoying sweating with one another!

Anyways, so now, I’m feeling really energized.  A little sore.  Inspired.  And totally ready to do some more creative programming and host my own themed classes.

How have you gotten sweaty this week?