“Get UPPP, Shika. If you drop you have to give me 5 more”
I glare at the screen, my face red, sweating from every pore on my skin.
“WHAT?’
Luckily I’m on mute.
Uhm I can’t do one push-up without my arms shaking so hard, that they start to resemble tuning forks.
But she wants me to do five more push-ups.
She here is my 23-year-old online yoga teacher.
I don’t want to namedrop, so let’s call her KJ.
KJ is genetically closer to a rubber band than a human being, with an almost un-godly love for exercise.
She has the muscle tone of someone who thinks 25 pull-ups is a warm-up, and genuinely believes that everyone can hold a plank for 2 minutes if they just ‘set the intention’. Calm, but rarely smiling, everyone in class scrambles for a "good work" from her.
She holds class 3 days a week. Thank god for that, because she doesn’t approve of absences.
And the off days are crucial to my well-being, I need the time to recover my muscles and my ego.
By the end of my class, I'm usually descending the stairs with my legs shaking like an overloaded washing machine. Which, naturally, my family finds wildly, hysterical.
They refuse to believe this is less “if it calls to you, come into child’s pose and rest there for a moment” and more like baby Marines training camp.
No incense. No mercy
But..
Call me crazy, hell, call me masochistic but I kind of like it??!
During each cursed push-up, or when my sweat drips off my hair and onto my mat in down dog—some sick little voice in my head whispers this means you’re doing something right.
I like to complain like a hostage like it wasn’t me who saw the 6.30 AM advanced yoga class and thought, “Yes, this is an emotionally healthy decision which I will definitely not regret every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 6.29 AM.”
And I’m not even that advanced. My legs still stubbornly refuse to go behind my head, while I’m surrounded in there with women who jump into handstands like they're auditioning for Cirque du Soleil.
It’s humbling, it’s painful. And oddly enough–I keep showing up for it.
But while intensity feels rewarding on the yoga mat, it rarely serves you in the inbox.
Obsessing over metrics, complicated funnels, and contorted strategies feels like successful email marketing– but you don’t need bruises, just the right numbers.