For me, life has always been a long struggle to avoid exercise. I hate running and anything vaguely similar, which pretty much rules out all forms of working out (on land). I even bought a bike a few months ago—not because it’s healthy, but to facilitate my laziness as it means less work to get to class. But reluctantly, I’ve realized more and more that eating gluttonously while slowly sinking into fattiness is perhaps not the best lifestyle to lead.

So I decided to try yoga.

I’d heard about Yoga to the People before, mostly from super fit girls with high pony-tails and asses off of which you could bounce quarters. I knew about it as the place with signs featuring pictures of flexible, sexily sweaty girls that I saw on my way to gorge myself at Pomme Frites. But they spoke about this St. Marks yoga place with donation-based (free) classes and cheap mat rentals, and how awesome they felt afterwards. The donation-based aspect certainly sounded appealing, but everything else made me nervous, considering how much I suck at all forms of athletic activity except for ping-pong.

But I got over myself and committed to going to a 4:30 class, though admittedly not before scouring their website for pictures of fat old ladies having a good time doing yoga to make myself feel better.

I hesitantly made the trek over to the East Village in my yoga pants, climbed the flight of stairs to the studio, took off my shoes, paid $2 for a mat, and sat down. Sure enough, there was a whole slew of hot chicks bending around, doing headstands as I wallowed in my flabbiness. I was never so happy to see anyone as when a brave man weighing about 375 lbs walked in the room in a Speedo. Looking at him, I knew that I would be okay.

And as it turned out, I was. More or less. Our instructor lead us through the poses, which started fairly simple, but got increasingly more difficult as class went on—I was sweating almost instantly. Many times, I had to look at those around me to see what the hell I was supposed to do, but overall it was a pretty self-focused exercise. Their website’s says that they intend “to create an environment and space that is non-competitive,” which, luckily for me, seems pretty accurate.

Yoga is traditionally a spiritual practice, and there was definitely a sense of that. As a person who is usually highly wary of such things, I found that the “inward awareness” and meditative aspect was actually—dare I say—a little relaxing, in a hippie New-Agey kind of way. Loud moaning around the room was abundant, which, if nothing else, is entertaining. There was a big gong sound at the end, which had a sound that somehow floated almost psychedelically across the room.

Yet indeed, I felt good afterwards, which almost never happens when I am as sweaty and tired as I was. Yoga to the People lives up to its name—it’s challenging enough for those hyper-flexible yogis to get something out of it, but simple enough for sad beginners like me to leave without crying. And you certainly can’t beat the price. I’m going back.

Photo by Yoga to the People