Yoga is so zen and all that crap.

While I was away, a new yoga studio opened in the perfect location - halfway between my home and my office - and so my friend and I thought it would be the perfect reason to start doing yoga again. So last night we went to check it out.

The class was supposed to be hot yoga, and so, remembering my hot yoga etiquette, I arrive a half-hour before the class, ready to secure my space, lie down, not talk, and become all zen-like and focused. Only the class before hasn't gotten out yet, so the guy sitting at the reception desk tell me I can wait in the lobby.
"So it's hot yoga?" I ask him.
"Oh yes," he says. "Have you done hot yoga before?"
I tell him I had.
"Where?"
I tell him where.
"I go to that location too. I've never seen you." He says accusatorially.
Huh. That could be because I haven't been in more than a year, I think. But AS IF I'm going to admit that to him. Besides, what kind of receptionist admits he goes to another studio?
I think about telling him I usually wear glasses (it works for Spiderman!) but instead, decide just to shrug. I look at the clock. "So when can I go up?"
"Oh! I should turn the heat up in the room so it's hot."
That seems like a good idea.
A few minutes later, after my friend arrives, the guys comes back downstairs, and so does the one person from the previous class, and the instructor. She looks very yoga-like, with her Sanskrit arm tattoo and hairy armpits.
"So it's hot yoga, right?" my friend asks.
"Oh yes. It's hot yoga, right?" the guy asks the instructor.
"No. I don't teach hot yoga," she says.
"So who's teaching the class then?" he asks. There seems to be a lot of confusion.
"Me," the instructor says. Interesting.
What about the now-hot room? I want to ask, but just then an Asian girl bustles through the door, screaming into her cellphone. She stops yelling long enough to yell at us, "Where are the changerooms?" to which we all point downstairs. Then she heads downstairs, and resumes screaming into her phone. How zen-like.
"So what's the class, then?" a girl who actually looked like she did yoga, based on her cute outfit and fit body, asks.
"It's vinyasa." She said. "We're gonna move."
Fine.
"You can come up now."
So we do. Me, my friend, the screaming Asian, the yoga girl and a young girl with cute bangs, who is wearing a turtleneck and track pants.
"It's a good thing we're not doing hot yoga, dressed like that," the instructor says to Cute Bangs.
Yes, let's blame Cute Bangs for the change in class schedule.
We all unroll our mats and sat down.
"Are your cell phones turned off?"
We all nod.
"Mine's at home," I say smugly to my friend. This is, of course, because it isn't charged (as usual).
"I don't even own a cellphone," she says adding her own smugness.
"You're so OM."
"I know."
We nod at eachother and then prepare to focus.

The class begins and we start to breathe. A lot. Easy peasy.

Then, we hear large, ape-like sounds on the steps. The door to the class opens and this Richard Gere-in-Pretty Woman type guy steps in, while TALKING on his cellphone, closing some sort of deal to take over the world. What in the name of OM is that all about? The instructor stands up and tells him to shut it down. She should shut him out. Hello? I am TRYING to focus. I mean, I only do yoga once a year, I want to make the most of it! But whatever.

"Can you turn it off, too?" the instructor asks Richard Gere, who obliges and then grabs a mat and sits down beside me. We start breathing from scratch again (which worries me - we are now more than five minutes behind. Am I going to make it home in time for The Hills?). But I try not to think about that and instead regain my uber-OM-like focus, until the point where the instructor tells us to turn our hands into knives, pinkies facing down, as though we're slicing through a big cake.

Come on. You can't mention CAKE and expect us to focus. I hadn't eaten in like five hours.

So of course I start thinking about what I am going to have for dinner. I weigh the pros and cons of stopping for Hot and Sour soup (getting home even later) or fixing myself a bowl of cereal (did I have enough milk in the fridge?). I am just making the final decision when she interrupts my thoughts to tell us to bend over our pot bellies. POT BELLIES? Is that any way to help us embrace our squishy figures and feel good about ourselves? Apparently we're allowed to slice the cake, just not eat it.

So I stop thinking about cake and dinner and eating in general and start focusing on minimizing my pot belly until...

A cellphone goes off. We all look up from our bellies.

"Oh SORRY!" the Screaming Asian says and runs to her bag. Right. Because you didn't HEAR the instructor when she asked if everyone's cellphones were off? We all watch as she pulls out her Blackberry, puts it on VIBRATE and sets it beside her mat.

"Are EVERYONE ELSE'S cellphone's off?" the instructor says.

More nods and mmms.

We go back to bending over our pot bellies for a few more minutes until...

Another cellphone goes off. Only it's not the Screaming Asian's phone (because it's on VIBRATE). It's Cute Bang's phone.

"Sorry!" She singsongs and giggles, and runs to her bag to get her phone.

So I start thinking about cake again. I think we can all agree I am justified.