(Excerpt)

My cursor hovered in between the responses

EXPERIENCED

MODERATE

NEW

I was joining a new yoga gym and filling out the online profile while eating a muffin and getting crumbs all over my keyboard.

I considered the options.

Well, I'm not new, I thought.

I'm in my 30s and have been practicing yoga off and on since I was 18.

Back then yoga was starting to appear in mainstream gyms with some regularity. I was a member at 24-Hour Fitness. I was young and precious and honestly afraid of all the weight-bearing machines. So I jumped right into the group yoga class. I raised my hand my entire first year of yoga when the instructor asked if anyone was new.

My hand would always fly up before we started downward dogging, therefore justifying my tentativeness. Also, it gave me a solid reason why I had no idea what "flip your dog" meant.

I continued yoga sporadically in my early 20s. Then I got married and got pregnant. I canceled my gym membership, and the only yoga I did was with a maternity DVD I bought at Target.

It was terrible.

Judy looked uncomfortable and due any day, the elastic on her pants, barely holding on.

Ronda didn't look pregnant at all, and Fawn was somewhere in the middle.

I went on to have another child, so I dusted off that old DVD and was nostalgically reunited with Judy and Ronda and Fawn.

I remember working out with them and their vintage haircuts so much that suddenly I didn't need them anymore.

I got this Fawn, I thought to myself, I can't watch you under the studio lights with your wispy bangs anymore. I can pregnant cat/cow all on my own!