The Most Embarrassing Stuff That's Happened to Your Body During Yoga

I thought it would be smart to chug a huge glass of water before my early morning yoga class. After all, hot yoga forces a kiddie pool's worth of sweat out of my pores; if not properly hydrated, I'd run the risk of passing out mid-sun salutation.

But that glass of water came with a curse. As soon as I sat down, I felt it: I had to pee — badly. But the instructor had already entered the room and closed the door. I was trapped. This was a ritzy Manhattan yoga class — a rare treat for me. I wasn't about to flush precious minutes of class down the toilet. 

So I peed my pants, right there on the mat. It made a small puddle. I prayed the instructor mistook it for sweat. I don't know if she noticed — but I do know I was the only student who didn't receive hands-on adjustments during class. 

Plenty of us have had embarrassing things happen during yoga class, what with all that sweating, twisting, bending and folding. To celebrate International Day of Yoga, I asked fellow yogis to confess their worst moments.

"I once forgot to pack underwear"

"I once forgot to pack underwear, but didn't think it'd matter," Eli, who asked that his last name be omitted, told me. "That is, until we did warrior pose, and I looked in the mirror to see where that breeze was coming from. I now pack long shorts in my yoga bag and try to remember underwear every time, to remain less free to roam."

"Hoo-ha farts"

"I'll be fine! I need no underwear!"

Anna Reichert wrote, "I used to wear these little booty shorts to 'Hot Power Fusion' at CorePower, and one day I decided, 'These are so tight! I'll be fine! I need no underwear!' And I got up from frog crunches to find a full [labia] lip out of my shorts. Thankfully I handled it, and everyone else had been doing crunches too — except the instructor, who was walking around."

"Extremely visible vagina sweat"

"I thought it would be a really fantastic idea to wear my cutest outfit to my first heated vinyasa class," Kyra Duhaime told me. "I took a spot in the middle of a sea of girls in [Lululemon] with $55 water bottles."

"Thirty minutes into [the] packed 90-minute class, [I] looked down to see that I had completely sweat through the pelvic area of my light grey yoga pants," she said. "[I] could not escape without a huge disruption — so I had to finish the class with extremely visible vagina sweat and two large circles over my boobs."

When class was over, "I have never pulled out of a parking lot faster," Duhaime said.

"I have loudly farted"

"On at least one occasion, I have loudly farted during yoga," said Mic staffer Alexis Kleinman. "I just tried to keep a straight face and hoped nobody noticed, but I'm sure they did."

"I usually fart"

Mic staffer Unn Swanström has farted during yoga, too. "I don't know why, but when I've exercised and my body loosens up, I usually fart," she told me.

"Free-flowing farts"

Mic staffer Nancy Noto added, "All I can say is: Yoga = free-flowing farts."

"I probably looked like I was going to die"

Shortly after getting together, Sophie Vershbow and her boyfriend tried Bikram yoga — a style of yoga performed in 100-plus-degree heat. It wasn't long before she was dripping with sweat and "electric-red in the face."

"I went in concerned about how I looked in my itty-bitty outfit, but within 10 minutes all I cared about was not dying," she told me. "I thought I was going to pass out, and just kept thinking how embarrassing it would be to pass out in front of him."

"My sweat wouldn't stop dripping"

"One time in hot yoga, my sweat wouldn't stop dripping in my eyes and legitimately blinded me for the a majority of the class, so I had no idea what I was doing," said Mic staffer Jess Eggert. "Every time I wiped the sweat from my eyeballs, it just dripped right back in."

"Everyone thought it was farting"

One fellow yogi, who asked to remain anonymous, had an upset stomach in a recent hot yoga class. "It was dead silent in there during meditation, when my stomach made the loudest noise — like gurgling," she said. 

The gurgles were "long, loud noises," she said. "I'm sure everyone thought it was farting."

"The instructor asked me to leave"

"I once fell over in an intermediate-level yoga class and knocked the person next to me," Olivia Nightingale wrote. "The instructor asked me to leave. I have not done yoga since."

"I ended up pulling a muscle in my back"

"I went to beginner-level yoga class because I was into a girl in college," said Danny Peterson. "I tried to impress her with my ability, Forgetting Sarah Marshall-style (this was my first yoga class ever). Somehow I ended up pulling a muscle in my back, which led to several trips to the chiropractor and nagging back pain. Oh, and I only got one more date with the girl before I was kicked to the curb."

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