When is yoga not relaxing?

I'll tell you when.

There I am. Clear mind. Slightly sweaty. Enjoying the music. We are doing sequences of downward facing dog, coming up to standing, extending our backs, stretching our hamstrings. Then we come back down to plank and push forward onto our mats on our hands, chest leading the way. As we begin to come down to the floor to begin the sequence over again I see it. On the corner of my mat. It is black and looks like a shadow at first. A shadow? I am confused. The music is still playing. I squint. SPIDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I FLY off my mat, changing the energy in the room from calm and zen to panicked and alarmed. Holly is next to me being a good little student and flowing the flow. I almost knock her over in attempts to get closer to the wall thus further from my mat. People are staring. I keep whispering "oh my God, oh my God" and I can't stop. Goodness gracious, I'm not arachnophobic but I sure am close. The teacher has to come over, I explain with hand gestures and point to my mat. I am trying to be quiet but let's be honest, that ship had sailed.

She ends up having to fold my mat up (trapping the horrible creature) and brings it into the hallway, releasing it. She hands me my mat back but all I can picture is "it" crawling all over it, leaving a trail of disgusting germs and totally throwing me off my game.

The whole rest of class I kept feeling things crawling on me. I was just a little bit distracted. A few minutes would go by and I would forget about it. Then I would realize how good I was doing and therefore re-live it. Out of all the mats in class, all 20 or so odd mats, why, Mr. Spider, did you have to crawl onto mine? UGH.

The silver lining? Actually, GOLD lining because it was just that groundbreaking and should in NO WAY be overshadowed my by traumatic episode..... I DID MY FIRST HEADSTAND TODAY. Holly helped me. It was so cool. After months of yoga I thought I had enough built up core strength to try and it was a success :) I was so proud of myself!

So, I'm going to remember this day as the day I did my very first headstand :) and not the day I encountered a creepy crawler. I thought I would share! Now I am showered and exhausted. Goodnight to all!