Ultimate Yoga

You come home from your quick shopping trip from the mall getting a nice new set of workout clothes from the sporting goods store; some breathable fabric shorts and a simple white tanktop. You set down your bags and walk right into the living room, excited to finally start your journey into losing some of that winter weight and getting in the habit of doing some simple exercises that won’t strain you too much or go overboard; you’re just getting started on step one of getting back into shape, after all.

You get changed, and begin lightly jumping in place up and down to get yourself amped up and ready to go for your workout. You walk over to the counter where you laid your shopping bag, and pull out the DVD case, inspecting it one more time before you put it in.

“Ultimate Yoga Workout From The World’s Top Yoga Expert - Getting Into Shape and THEN Some!”

It looks just like any other workout tape you’ve ever seen, bright and flashy, smiling attractive people on the cover. This one happened to be on the top shelf at the store and jumped out at you simply couldn’t pass up something straight from the “top yoga expert”, could you?

You pop in the disc and the film begins playing.

You hear the sound of the tackiest, most non-offensive light jazz elevator music play in the background as the video fades from black into a shot of what appears to be a home-gym, with colorful yoga mats strewn about the floor, and a few small weight racks and medicine balls in the back of the room. As the shot comes into focus, there’s a waist-up shot of a woman, smiling at the camera.

“Hi There!” A bubbly female voice projects from the screen. “I’m Nicole Arbig, Professionally Certified Yoga Instructor, and current title-holder of ‘Top Yoga Expert’. Today I’m going to showcase some of my favorite yoga poses and exercises, and I hope you at home can follow along the best you can. Not everyone is going to be quite at my level, but remember to do your best!”

The athletic personal trainer was a brunette girl, her long hair tied in a high ponytail, sporting a tight form-fitting sports bra, matching running sneakers, and pink booty shorts, beautifully accenting the shape of her firm, toned body. Even despite the quality of your TV, you can still make out her defined muscles and lean, yet feminine, core.

“If you’re new to the world of yoga, let me be the first to say welcome! I’m glad to be your first!” She winked. “I’ve been practicing yoga techniques for years and years now, and I can confidently say it’s changed my life for the better… If you still aren’t sold on whether or not it’s right for you, let me list off some of the reasons I love it. It’s so calming and relaxing to just follow along to a routine like this, taking deep breaths, aligning your energies and finding your happy place. Plus, there are all kinds of health benefits! First and foremost, my personal favorite is definitely the weight loss… I hate to brag, but I LOVE my body!” She said, turning her hips side-to-side to give a nice profile shot of her well-toned athletic tummy.

“We’re gonna start off with something nice and easy…” She began, as she lifted both hands straight up and took a deep breath in. “Get your body nice and straight, and then bend down slowly to touch your toes, or just as far as you can go.” Arms still straight, Nicole lowered her arms and torso, flat as boards, down towards her toes. “Remember, go as far as you can before it gets uncomfortable!” Nicole said.

You do the same, attempting to re-create her movements. You lower your hands down, straight out in front of you as far as you can, until you manage to touch your toes for a few seconds, and resume your normal position.

“Remember to breathe in and relax, make sure your muscles are nice and loose so they don’t get cramps.” Nicole’s voice coached from the background.

You look up, expecting Nicole to be done and ready to begin the next stretching exercise, but it was clear that it might take a while.

“Everyone at home, remember, don’t push yourself any more than this! Only someone like me can go further than that!”

After touching her toes, her hands slid up her calves, and began cupping the back of her calf muscles, rather than the front. Nicole practiced what she preached, using her hands as leverage, began pulling her body further and further forward past the hairpin-end shape it was already in, folding her stomach almost at a 180-degree angle against her crotch. Her hands crawled up the back of her legs and back as she pulled her head between her thighs and upwards towards her beautifully toned butt, just enough to make contact with her C-cups. She took a deep breath and released her body tension, slowly returning back to her regular stance.

“Okay everyone, time for our next warm-up!” The perky instructor cheered. “This time, we’re just gonna stretch out our backs a little bit, and get all the kinks out. All we have to do is stand up straight, and then just slowly turn your torso to one side until you can hear a little pop, or it starts to get uncomfortable. Remember, nice and slow!”

You follow along, going nice and slow like Nicole said. You quickly reach the edge of where the turning will take you, hearing a light pop of your spine cracking (in the good way), and then do the same for the other side. Waiting for the inevitable “and now, the other side!” that every fitness trainer says in an exercise tape, you find yourself waiting longer than you expect. You look over at the TV again after you finish cracking the second section of your back. As you feared, but sort of expected, Nicole was still working on her first side. As you struggled to get past a 45-degree angle on either side, you see Nicole pushing 90-degrees and going further. You can audibly hear the popping noise of what had to be every spinal disc in her body, as she pushed and pushed her torso further around, going beyond what you thought was humanly possible, until she reached an angle that had to be at least 130-degrees around. At this point, her upper body and lower body were now facing opposite directions because of how much her torso could twist, the exposed outline of her ribcage tightening against her twisting skin.

“You gettin’ this, camera guy?” She joked.

As she kept on turning, her smooth skin became more and more taut against her bones, making a visible outline of her shoulder bones. At one point the bone simply wouldn’t budge anymore, so she took her other hand and pushed her finger into the joint connecting her shoulder and humerus bone, applying more and more pressure until her arm dislocated itself! With her “loose” arm having a larger range of motion, she wrapped it around her torso once, and then twice over, looking like a coiled snake. She did the same to her other arm, purposefully dislocating it safely, and mirrored the other hand as both of her arms wrapped around her toned core like thick fleshy cables. Her hands gripped onto some of her very little remaining tummy fat, probably the smallest amount a human body can manage to have without breaking even more biological rules, and squeezed in, moving the remainder of her taut, yet squishy, stomach every which-way, pulling apart, pushing together, and bending back and forth, making her body, her metaphorical bitch.

“Hey Steve, can you help me with this one?” Nicole asked the off-screen camera guy.

“U-uh, I should watch the feed” He stammered, trying to signal this was a bad idea.

“Oh come on, don’t be camera-shy. The tripod will take care of it.” Nicole insisted.

“Well, okay…” Steve shuffled over to Nicole, head still out of frame. “What do you need me to do?”

“Just put your… hands… right… there.” She guided his meaty hands onto her tender soft chest. “Now just hold me while I do this. Not too tight.”

She took a deep breath and began lowering her torso to the ground, facing the camera, now almost flush against the front of her legs, her head now dangling upside-down below her shorts. You decide to sit back and wait patiently for whatever was coming next instead of fast-forwarding.

“Not bad, huh? That’s why I’m the best, after all!” The smiling temporarily-Australian teacher bragged. “They have competitions for this kind of thing, but they would never allow anything like it; luckily I get to show you everything my body can do for you today! Okay Steve, I think I got it from here, thanks.” Steve ran back behind the camera, thankful to no longer be in front of it, from a combination of anxiety and simply just wanting to watch Nicole work.

It felt like an eternity for her to bring it back and do the same exercise for the other direction, but you can’t look away, watching the laws of physics break in front of your eyes. Once she re-created the pose on the other side, she kept pushing herself even further, throwing her body weight around in such a way that she landed face-and-torso up, laid down on the ground folded in perfectly half like a piece of paper, twisted nearly 180-degrees further than a normal spine is supposed to go, smiling confidently. She shifted her body weight again, flipping herself over like a giant pancake until she was face-down against the carpeted floor.

She set her hands down in front of her, as if re-creating the famous Egyptian Sphinx pose. Her heels, currently parallel with her hands on the floor, began sliding up from their position, brushing the toes against her forearms as they bent upwards, turning Nicole into a human triangle, bent at 2 places on her back and torso respectively. She held the pose for a second, clearly feeling awash with all sorts of feelings about how bending like that felt, seeming to forget she was recording a tape. A few seconds later, she snapped back to reality, and then followed suit with her own body to do it literally, hopping up and un-bending back to normal human form and back on her feet in one impressively fluid motion.

“Heh, sorry, got a little carried away there. I don’t like to brag too much, but god, that feels great. If you keep up this workout, maybe someday you can bend as far as me!” Nicole addressed the audience. “Right, uh, let’s move onto our next move, the good old-fashioned split. Spread your legs apart, planted on the ground, and spread them out as far as you can before you start to feel uncomfortable!” She instructed.

You follow suit, planting your feet firming on the ground like a sumo wrestler, and begin spreading. Inch by inch, you can feel yourself going lower to the ground as you slowly spread your legs as far out as they can go, but after a few seconds, you’ve reached your limit, and decide to pull back. Meanwhile, Nicole yet again decides to show off the “results” of following the workout to their full extent, quickly spreading from 45-degrees to a full-blown 90, plopping her butt on the floor. She kept on going further until you couldn’t do anything but sit back and watch in amazement as she began looking less like a human and more like a Barbie doll. She had almost complete control of her legs, able to bend them up and out at inhuman levels, as she coyly smiled at the camera, satisfied with how good she knew she was.

“Okay everyone, this is the end of the beginner’s segment. These next moves are for the more advanced yoga enthusiasts watching at home. If this is your first time, DO NOT try this at home!”

With morbid curiosity, you continue watching.

Nicole laid down flat on the ground, face-down, as if laying on a massage parlor table. She tilted her head up to rest her chin on the ground, leaving herself some room to breathe and see straight in front of her, instead of pressing her nose to the ground. Slowly, she began to lift her legs, toes pointed as straight as they could get, up into the air. 30 degrees. 45 degrees. They bent back like a protractor semi-circle arc, quickly approaching the 90 degree mark. Her legs were bent at a 90 degree angle *backwards*, ass beginning to press against her lower back as her toes pointed towards the sky.

“You think that’s good, watch THIS!”

Despite her legs refusing to bend any further back, the rest of her body seemed to compensate as her spine and back accommodated her desire to push further. Her lower back craned up in the same arcing motion towards her head, and then her upper back followed suit, turning the space between Nicole’s collar bones and torso into the shape of a big hook. Further and further she stretched, until she did the impossible, resting all of her body weight on her upper chest and made contact between her ass and the top of her head, pretending to wear it like a hat.

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“Okay, I think that’s enough for me.” You say, walking over to the DVD player and ejecting the disc before the end of the tape, assuming it would only get crazier from there on out. You put the disc back in its case and walk over to where you put your shopping bag, and find the receipt for the purchase. You pause for a moment.

“Well… Maybe someday I’ll get there. Who knows.” You think to yourself, throwing out the receipt and placing the DVD case on the shelf.