Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Hot Yoga Sweat-iquette

I had a pretty disgusting yoga experience yesterday.

One of the great things about the hot yoga studio downtown is their 11-class punch card with a one year expiration date. This allows me to show up for class every three to five weeks without worrying about classes expiring... and also allows enough time for me to forget how much I don't really like hot yoga at all.

That's not entirely true. I love the feeling of hot yoga - I love being warm - I love the deep stretch that feels otherwise impossible in our cold foggy climate. I also really dig the teacher. But yesterday I was packed into the small space, 2 inches from the wall, and surrounded on three sides by sweaty men.

I can't find anything on the internet about protocol or etiquette for excessive sweat in hot yoga. But the dude next to me had a constant dripping of sweat from five minutes into the class. His shirtless body was covered in sweat pouring out of every pore. The short towel he brought to class was soaked to the point where it needed a trip to the bathroom to be wrung out. It squished under his feet, and it sloshed like a sponge while he rolled out his spine. His sweat was flinging onto the floor around him and forming huge puddles. And some of his sweat drops landed on my mat.

 Needless to say, I was absolutely horrified and grossed out. The presence of dudes in the hot yoga room always makes for a sweatier, wetter class, and the mirrors always fog up. On the bright side, at least this dude didn't stink. 

What should he have done? What could he have done? What should I have done? What would you do?
Would you complain? Yeah, me neither. Photo Credit.
 When I complain about the class to my fam and to E, they ask, "then why do you go?" Good question, to which I don't really have a good answer. I think I'm going to have to let this current teacher go, and try out some less-sweaty, less-masculine classes and see if they fit.


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