Y

I joined our local Y last week. So far, I love going there. I missed the gym.

Renovations of this YMCA completed three months ago. All the equipment is spanking new. It's a bustling place. So that's what makes me want to go to the gym - a bustling place with new, working equipment and classes during the day in the middle of the week. Bonus: on the weekend, I ran into friends at the Y. Now this feels like a club.

But about those group classes... I went to a pilates class. The instructor was a petite, sensuous, toned woman who spoke little English. When she said, Sit like this, she showed us how her perfectly round firm buttocks perched on the mat. The rest of us settled in half-empty sacks that passed for our bums. When she said, Do this, she thrusted her perky bosom out and her T-shirt draped down the slope of her breasts in one graceful, concave swoop. The swoops on the rest of the us had lumps, bumps and spare tires in the way. On one man, it was definitely jagged and convex. When she said, Do that, she stretched her curvaceous leg out, which ended in the taut arch of her foot. Most of the class didn't have a straight leg and even lying on our backs, some of us lost our balance.

She was beautiful to look at. But she was a terrible instructor. I need more than, Do this, Do that, Go like this, Go like that, to know what to do with my muscles. I couldn't help but feel she was there more to show us her beautiful body than to teach us how to get one. I won't be going back to that class.

Then I attended a Kundalini yoga class. The idea for this kind of yoga is, you do stretches, poses, and breathing exercises to activate the chakras in your body, raise your internal temperature, and to unleash the serpent within. I don't know what all these things mean. It's a physical and spiritual thing. The instructor was a bearded man with skinny legs that you could see even through his pants. He's one of those people who wear all white with a turban. That's the costume of Kundalini practitioners.

He sat at the front of the class and gave specific directions, demonstrated the exercise for a second, then sat back down. But he was a mumbler. It took a long time for me to get used to the way he talked and to understand what he said. So most of the time, I mimicked what I could of him and others.

But something about these stretches and poses sat very well with me. I felt limber and strong at the end of the class. I will go back to this one as often as I can.