The gray brigade vs. the ponytail brigade

I started going to yoga many years ago as a way to help alleviate lower back pain and to build up my sadly underdeveloped muscles. The first class I attended at the YMCA was a power yoga class, and it seriously freaked me out. Some of the people in that class were able to execute a perfect Parsva Bakasana without breaking a sweat. Being the weakling that I am, I knew I wasn't about to go back and subject myself to that kind of humiliation.

But I kept going back.

I was never very flexible as kid. I wasn't one of those girls who could collapse into the splits at the drop of a hat. I could do a backbend, and I was pretty good at cartwheels, but I knew I didn't have a future as a cheerleader. Still, yoga enticed me because of the "payoff" at the end -- 10 minutes of delicious relaxation after 40 minutes of forcing the body into unnatural positions.

We eventually lost our drill sergeant of a power yoga instructor and inherited a kinder, gentler teacher. We've got a core group of devotees, mostly a graying, over-40 crowd of men and women with the weary air of having battled personal demons all day long. Every January, we get a new batch of members, eager to try out the class. I've come to despise these newcomers: young women dressed in the latest yoga fashions, hair pulled perkily back onto the tops of their heads in a loathsome ponytail. It's obvious when we start the warm-up that they're former cheerleaders. They aren't interested in getting the pose correct -- they prefer to show off their youthful flexibility by stretching their bodies into adorable cheerleader stances. As winter melts into spring, they eventually drop away, and the gray brigade settles back into relaxed familiarity, comfortable in old sweats and stained t-shirts, no longer harassed by those perky ponytails.

Last night, our teacher tried to get us to try a partner move. I watched as a gray-bearded man and a woman who'd recently had surgery put on their game faces and attempted the pose. Having just seen an SNL sketch in which Tom Hanks and Rachel Dratch did a similar move with disastrous results, I decided not to try it out. I love a good challenge, but I have to trust that my partner isn't going to smack me in the face with his "package."

I settled into Child's Pose and waited it out.