I hadn’t been to a yoga class in months and was starting to feel desperate as my entire body seemed to be curling up into a giant stress ball. My best opportunities to attend a class occur on Saturday mornings, which contain a golden period where life’s demands are muted and one’s time is not already obligated. Often my wife and I go for a run during this golden period, but this Saturday I decided to use it to get my stretch on.

I live in a revitalizing, downtown Cincinnati neighborhood called Over-The-Rhine, or OTR for short, and OTR sports no fewer than three distinct yoga outlets despite the puny size of the neighborhood itself. Happily, OTR also has a goodly number of amazing drinking establishments, and it was in one of these my wife and I had spent the evening prior. She and I met after work at a bar called Japp’s. Now the thing about Japp’s is that you don’t have to know the name of a cocktail to get what you want. You can just tell one of the well-trained and creative bartenders what kind of things tastes good to you and then, abra-cadabra, ipso-facto, they make something awesome on the spot. Indeed, it’s a joy just to watch them make the cocktail. Drinking the concoction is generally pure heaven. But while one gets an amazing libation, one may not be prepared for the after effects since one may not know exactly how much alcohol is being shoe horned by that well-trained and creative bartender into the cocktail glass. But this potential pitfall is just peachy by me. We live but a few blocks from Japp’s (and many other bars) and crawling home is always a viable option. We imbibed heartily.

And when I woke up the next morning I was still drunk.

And by the time it was time to go to yoga I was still drunk.

I figured this was fine. After all, I was drunk, not hungover. And I believed that distinction to be of high importance. If I’m drunk the worst thing that could happen is that I might fall out of a pose or laugh at an inopportune moment. No harm done. On the other hand, a hangover can produce any number of negative outcomes in a hardcore yoga environment. But since that was not the case I went ahead and wobbly-walked over to the Yoga Bar, three blocks to the west of the building in which we live.

Everything seemed to start off ok. The wintery morning air had something of a sobering effect and by the time I checked in I believed, in my hubris, my drunkenness to be hovering at an acceptable level or even gone altogether. If I’m half the man I believe myself to be, no other conclusion was possible. Upon entering the yoga room, however, I found myself a tad stunned by the temperature, which would have been fine for a sauna but surely inappropriately elevated for your average, run-of-the-mill class. Had I stumbled into a hot yoga period? My lungs and skin said yes but the published schedule said no. Plus, I did not see any of my classmates with towels, a dead giveaway in a hot yoga class. Despite the heat I fortified myself with manly thoughts of war heroes and the original Rocky movie and remained in place. Besides, from where I stood it didn’t appear any of the other students stank, which was good since a soupy combination of BO and hot air would likely have put me over the edge despite my masculine musings. Giving myself yet another once over I decided to power through, or at least make a reasonable attempt at powering through .

The beginning of class went well and other than the instructor using new-age jargon like “honor” and “celebrate” when referencing how we should react to the differences in our yoga abilities the heat was the most nauseating part of the opening spiel. We started with some light stretching and everything was fine until I realized with some alarm that my earlier assessment regarding my physical status may have been a smidgeon off target. Indeed, I realized I wasn’t actually sober. But nor was I drunk. Rather, it appeared I was actually transitioning from being drunk into a having a hangover. The epiphany hit me the first time we all moved into the “downward facing dog” position. Ass pointing skyward but barely supported in its effort to remain aloft on shaky arms and legs, the truth of the situation struck at the moment my body decided this was an opportune occasion to release the gas that had been building up inside me over what I am sure was at least the last twelve hours or so. The sound, emanating as it did from my ass’ elevated position, was clear and unmistakable, like an emergency siren mounted on top of a court house.

“Um….sorry…” I remarked sullenly and without sufficient conviction given the dire circumstance. Still staring at the back of the head of the guy directly behind me I listened to the ball of giggles bounced around the room.

“Let’s concentrate and exhale.” The instructor instructed, either by purpose or accident creating another ball of giggles at the expense of whatever dignity I had remaining.

After furtively glancing around the room for the stares of shame which most certainly were being directed toward me I managed, somehow, to eke out another ten minutes of yoga torture without incident. Around the ten minute mark, however, I felt another yet another disturbance in the force. Something was happening. Something bad. Something in my lower intestine. It started when the instructor, who otherwise seemed a perfectly nice person, decided my down-dog needed work. Fixing it, apparently, required her to smoosh her head into my back between my shoulder blades whilst simultaneously pulling my upper arms toward her as she squatted in front of me, a maneuver cleverly designed to push my upper body back toward my legs and pull my arms forward. Unfortunately her actions, while having a positive effect on my body position, had a negative effect on my gastric system and with a great, resounding retch, most certainly contrived of and delivered by the evolutionary process as a warning to what was coming next, the contents of my troubled stomach were disgorged on to my yoga mat. A giggle was not to be heard…

The short walk back to my condo was replete with twisted images of my deflowered yoga mat and disgusted yoga students, a couple of who almost followed suit in a bout of sympathetic nausea. To my credit I helped the instructor clean up without adding to the mess (which was a very real possibility.) My yoga mat, unfortunately, could not be saved and was sacrificed for my sins. Once the cleanup job was done the instructor quite appropriately banned me from the facility – for two months. This was probably not enough punishment because by the time I got home I was convinced she really liked me and that this was just a small stumble from which I could easily recover. After all, Rocky certainly had his troubles, although I don’t recall him ever puking in a yoga class.

So no Yoga Bar for two months, but in the meantime I will frequent the other two yoga studios in Over-The-Rhine, and maybe I’ll not get shit-faced the night before a class. Or maybe I’ll just go in the afternoon.