Untamed

My friend Ashley took her first hot yoga class recently. She walked into the room, unrolled her mat, sat down, and waited for something to happen.

“It was exceptionally hot in there,” she told me.

When the instructor—young and confident—finally walked into the room, Ashley was already dripping with sweat. The instructor announced, “We’ll start soon. You are going to get very hot, but you can’t leave this room. No matter how you begin to feel, stay strong. Don’t leave. This is the work.”

The class got started, and a few minutes in, the walls began to close in on Ashley. She felt light-headed and sick. Each breath became harder and harder to come by. Twice her vision became spotty, then briefly went black. She looked at the door and felt desperate to run toward it. She spent ninety minutes terrified, close to hyperventilating, holding back tears. But she did not leave that room.

The moment the instructor ended the class and opened the door, Ashley jumped off her mat and ran into the hallway. She kept her hand over her mouth until she found the bathroom. She threw the door open and vomited all over the sink, the wall, the floor.

While she was on her hands and knees wiping up her own puke with paper towels, she thought: What is wrong with me? Why did I stay and suffer? The door wasn’t even locked.