Adventures in Pilates: Two Thumbs Up!

Greetings, readers-who-don't-exist-because-I-refuse-to-make-this-blog-public-for-fear-of-familial-friendly-corporate-embarrassment-and-retribution!

This whole Cait-IE Experiment is supposed to be about my quest to better myself through choices, experiences and trust, right? (Actually, how would you know that; I still haven't had time to write the "About" page). Anyway, I thought I should probably write something about a big leap (in a number of ways) that I made today.

I signed up for, and tried, my very first structured Pilates class.

"Ok," I know you're saying, "big deal. Pilates class. WHOOPIE!" You don't know me, though, and the fact that I have spent years (yes, literally YEARS) working on severe social anxiety issues. I don't know where they came from, or why they appeared, but sometime in college I completely lost any backbone I had and became this giant... puddle. It's how I gained weight in the first place, actually, after taking off 50 lbs between my sophomore and senior years of high school. I avoided the Freshman 15 and gained the Junior 80. Sad, but true, and I'm sure that one day I'll get more into that aspect of my life. But back to the problem at hand: Pilates.

I've dabbled in Pilates before. For awhile, I was a devotee of the 10 Minute Solutions: Pilates Perfect Body DVD. Abs, Arms, Lower Body, Total Body and Cooldown, all in 50 minutes? Sweet, sign me up! Except, of course, if signing up required actually doing these things in public, where people could see me awkwardly trying to contort my body into unnatural positions and sweating like a pig while trying not to die. I'm not without any grace, some have even called me elegant with movement, but I wouldn't wish the sight of me doing anything involving pelvic bridges on anyone. Except maybe that kid who scratched my car last weekend, that little b**tard. But I digress. After working with the DVD for a few years in my bedroom, I progressed to Jillian Michaels' Yoga Meltdown and The Biggest Loser: Yoga after completing the 30 Day Shred. I was content with striking poses like Boat and Swan in the comfort of my own or, in a few cases, my friend LC's, home.

And then I joined Gym X, started running again, got coerced into trying Spinning, checked out the classes offered and wanted to get my money's worth for the astronomical fee they are draining from my bank account each month. While browsing the class schedule on a particularly irritable day, I saw "Beginner Pilates" on the schedule for today and, with my boss' blessing, clicked "Sign Up". So, after sending multiple panicky emails to my poor coworker, ("OMG, do I have to wear sneakers? No, it's barefoot, right? Ew. Is that even sanitary? Do I have to bring my own mat? Will I be the least flexible and fattest person there?") I sat Caitlin down and let Caitie have a little chat with her, which went something like this:

Caitie: "TAKE A CHILL PILL, YOU FREAK!"

Deep breaths. Then I went to the gym, managed to get dressed with only one switch of the shirt (there's another question: do you go loose and flowey, or is fitted and immobile better? I don't want to flash the entire gym my lady bits, after all! I went with a crewneck and stretchy shorts), put on socks, and proceeded to hover awkwardly around the water cooler in the locker room, stealthily checking out the feet of every woman who walked by, sneakers sitting on top of my gym bag in that, "Oh, silly me, I forgot to put on shoes!" in the event that no one else was barefoot type way. Finally, I decided to just go with it, and padded my way from the locker room to the group exercise studio in my socks. Thankfully, everyone else was similarly clad in cotton, and those who weren't had rolled up their socks and stowed them next to their mats. Thank God.

Observing in a, "Oh, I've done this in a million times!", side-of-the-eye darting around the room fashion, I understood I should be grabbing a mat from a disgusting stack in the corner. So I did, and unrolled it, realizing I had two - cool, because I've done this at home, and one HURTS. What's the point of a mat if it isn't going to even cushion your spine while you contort it in ways that nature never intended it to move? Then I saw a few of the women grabbing blocks and hand weights -- um, I did not sign up for accessories when I signed up for Beginner Pilates. So, I just sat tight until the instructor, who had an accent I had initially pegged for Russian but, it turns out, was actually French, asked us if anyone was new to Pilates. Momentary crisis: do I deny, deny, deny, and just fake it until I make it, the way that I did with Spinning? Or do I fess up, because in the event I look like a total jackass while belly flopping and rolling around in a ball, I want to have something to blame it on? I went with the latter, and added a really confident arm swing when I shot my hand up like a bullet. HELLO, WORLD! I'm an EAGER newbie!

From there it was actually easier than I expected. There were a few other newbs in the group, and they both said this was their second class (For the record, I lied and said it was my second class, too. Hours of DVD instruction has to even out to a one hour class, right?). Then we did The Hundred (knew it!), leg circles (check!) and a bunch of other stuff. The whole time, the instructor was wandering around and commenting on us, particularly those of us who were new. She kept correcting the woman to my left, which was awesome because I felt like a rockstar when she made her way over to my extended leg circle with pointed toe and said, "good!" That's pretty much how the class went - almost everything we did, I had already done it with the DVDs, so she just fine-tuned my form on a couple things. And then there were the rolls. GOOD GOD. Anything that requires you to grab your feet, roll yourself backward, click your heels three times over your head and then roll back to a sitting position should be outlawed. I was fine with the rolling back part, but apparently my abdominal region is full of jello, rather than muscle, and I could not FOR THE LIFE OF ME use my abs to roll back up. I (thankfully) was out of view of the mirror, but I assume I looked like a fish flopping around on the deck of a schooner. It was bad enough that the instructor, whom I had liked up until that point, made the ENTIRE CLASS do the extra-super-idiot-style modified version of the move 5 times just so I didn't feel like a failure. Thanks, lady. Then it got easier again, with leg extensions and stuff, and once again the friend to my left was all kinds of jacked up and I looked great by comparison. Then, an hour had rolled by and the class ended. I barely broke a sweat (good? bad? who knows). And the best part...

... as I was leaving, the teacher caught my eye and broke off her conversation with someone else to say, "You did very good today! Very, very good!" I've analyzed it for the remainder of my afternoon, and honestly, I don't even think there was a hint of patronization in her voice. I think she was trying to tell me "Good work!" I'm not about to run out and try the intermediate class anytime soon, but that didn't stop me from grinning like an idiot, rushing back (have you ever tried running while strutting? It ain't easy!) and telling my coworker and boss what a natural I am at the ancient art form, Pilates. What a trip.

And that's all she wrote... for now.

The Great Cait-IE Experiment Begins!

Well hellllloooo there! (said totally in that creepy Paul from The Next Food Network Star voice. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go YouTube it. I'll wait.)

Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm hoping to get out of this whole blog thing, but I figured it was about time to put my bizarre journey to figure out who, exactly, this Caitie person I've been seeing around is, and how the heck she managed to sneak into my body and slowly start taking it over, corporeal and mental aspects alike.

Because that, folks, is what the Cait-IE Experiment is about; I feel as though Caitie is an arm of myself that I am slowly developing - not in a mutant, walked-too-close-to-the-nuclear-power-plant kind of way, but more of a Beyonce/Sasha Fierce type way. She's the person who tries spinach smoothies despite their resemblance to jarred baby peas mixed with day-old yogurt; who throws financial caution to the wind and ditches her oh-so-cheap membership to the gym two towns over and shells out 4x the amount per month to finally join the gym across the street from work; who actually GOES to classes at the gym, despite not knowing anyone else, and tries something new (and discovers she loves spinning!); who runs around Whole Foods harassing innocent stock boys about their next shipment of chia seeds; who actually EATS said seeds, as well as a whole slew of other bizarre things with names she isn't 100% sure how to pronounce (cacao? Ca-cow? Ca-cay-o? Caca-o? Whatever); who eats whatever she wants at the time, without grabbing her cell-phone at lightning speed to calorie-check her options and then spending the evening nervously fidgeting and mentally berating herself because she chose to eat a chicken wing and have a beer with friends instead of nibbling on some lettuce and having her 32nd glass of water for the day. Caitie doesn't have time for obsessing about stuff like that, because she's too busy loving herself, the life she leads and the people she surrounds herself with to care.

Caitlin is who I am. Caitie is who I want to be. And slowly, bit by bit, she is becoming a part of me that I am more than excited to get to know -- and I want to share her with others, too!