EVENT > FREE lululemon yoga

Michelle from Dare to Be Fit is hosting this Sunday’s free lululemon yoga class at the 900 N. Michigan location.

Yoga usually bores me so badly I would rather do my taxes. Five minutes into every freakin’ class at the East Bank Club, I’m already watching the clock, squinting out of one supposedly closed eye to see it, even when in the twistiest of poses. It’s like being in high school again, except even more boring, if that’s possible.

I just don’t get it.

Maybe it’s because we Westerners have highjacked the holistic practice of yoga and stripped it down to its bare bones, just the physical movements and breathing for the sake of our ‘fitness’ (phf…)

Like healthcare, I would suggest not trying to pluck the best bits from several systems that work, slam them together at high speed and think it’s going to create something super, mega, awesome amazing. It’s a matter of the whole being less than its parts because its parts have been taken from a whole that worked for hundreds of years for a reason!

Yoga stripped of everything but the repetitive series of movements sucks, is basically what I’m saying.

Maybe in an ashram in Uttar Pradesh with some dread-locked yogi leader in a cloth diaper teaching me and my fellow students (no doubt also dread-locked… but white… Antipodean and vewy, vewy high) true Yoga, I would get into it.

As a way to break a sweat and wear cute, form-fitting clothes, I think not. I’ll leave that to the anorexic cougars and the metro men who think it’s a good way to burn calories (not so much) without bulking up (morons).

Anywho, this brings me back to Michelle at Dare to be Fit.

She teaches yoga. Sometimes. Other times she teaches pilates and various other boot camp-style classes.

She is not boring.

At least, I don’t find her other classes boring so I’m assuming my love of her early morning beach workouts during the summer (I highly recommend these) will fortify my will to go on if I loose it a bit during a protracted downward dog.

If you want to do a FREE (can’t really say no to that nowadays, can we?) yoga class taught by a teacher who isn’t going to make you want to scratch out your eyeballs with the blunt corner on a stability block, then might I suggest trying out Michelle.

THE DETAILS

SWEAT > FREE Dailey Method Class

What? Skinny Jeans Workout (Free Dailey Method class) at lululemon Bucktown  

When? Thursday, December 2nd, 7pm to 9pm (class is 60 minutes followed by jeans fitting)

Why? Butt-kicking, muscle-quivering workout that mixes ballet, pilates and yoga for a gorgeous, lean, mean body

SWEAT > GO Cycle Spinning Open

EAST BANK Club spinning instructor Emmy Rigali has struck out on her own and opened the GO Cycle spinning studio in Old Town.

The current class schedule features three classes > GO, GO2 and GO YO, a combo of spinning, abs, stretching and yoga that run between 50 and 60 minutes on Keiser M3 cycles (for the spinning geeks).

Try it out for a month and get unlimited classes for $115. If you’re a new student your first class is free too, so you don’t have to pull the trigger on anything until you’ve checked it out yourself. And parking’s free, natch.

Because The Cycle Studio closed on September 1st, this is now Chicago’s only dedicated spin studio. If only we could get New York spinning favorite Soul Cycle to open a Chicago branch we could all be as hard-bodied as Chelsea Clinton was for her wedding…

View a video of the studio here.

GO Cycle, 501 W. North Avenue Chicago, IL 60610 (312-878-4999).