Are you one of those people who discover they enjoy something and have to do it to death? If you aren't one, you know one: The guy who hears a new song, buys all the band's CDs and plays them continuously for months; the new mom who takes up jogging to burn the baby weight and ends up running marathons; the smitten new couple that can't break contact for more than 30 seconds and murmurs baby talk to each other until bystanders yell, "Get a room, Bunnykins and Cootypie!"

I have rarely been guilty of that kind of overdosing; I find that if a round of mini-golf, say, is amusing, two or three rounds is not two or three times as much fun. Unless you are having two or three rounds of mai tais between them.

So I admit it was out of character to sign myself up for a three-day stay at a yoga institute in New England. I take one or two classes a week, and I do some yoga nearly every day, but I'm not a yogeek about it. I can't imagine what possessed me to choose the fitness-themed program, but I felt so strong and healthy as I typed my credit card number into the online reservation form.

For three nights and days, I lived in a dormitory with eight roommates, shared a bathroom, ate vegetarian and drank water and herbal tea. I was up before dawn and chanting "om" at 6 a.m. By 8:30 each morning I was crashing through the woods on a vigorous hike. By 9:30 every night I crawled into my bunk bed and passed out.

It was glorious, in a masochistic way. It made me feel like the fit, wholesome athlete that I have never been and hope never to be again for more than three days at a time.

(I have no desire to be on "Survivor," unless there's a "Survivor: Club Med.")

I learned that days seem much longer when they start in the middle of the night, which is what I consider 5:40 a.m. to be. Most of us showered before bedtime so that in the "morning" we could slip into our yoga clothes and sleepwalk directly to class. This regimen puts you in touch with your inner beauty by ensuring that every day is a bad hair day.

Breakfast is silent, which is very sensible. There is nothing worthwhile to say before 8 a.m. After a bowl of millet porridge with silken tofu cream and a steaming mug of echinacea chai, it was out of the soft-n-stretchies and into the flannel and boots for a four-mile hike through the gorgeous, muddy forest. I sucked in plenty of fresh air, which woke me up properly but would somehow act as a powerful natural tranquilizer dart 12 hours later.

There was just time to change back into workout clothes for an aerobic exercise-ball class. If you've never worked with an exercise ball, it looks like a big, happy beach ball. Trust the fitness police to turn something so friendly and appealing into an instrument of torture.

After fueling up with a bowl of organic free-range yard clippings, there was time to relax by falling face-first into another steaming mug of herbal tea sweetened with rice syrup before the afternoon yoga class.

Dinners were always extremely tasty, partly because by that time I was ready to eat an organic omega-3 tofu horse with alfalfa sprouts and ground flax. There was a movie in the evening, but it was typically a documentary about a Third World labor activist's heroic struggle to save endangered free-range kinkajous from pollution, corruption, exploitation and/or trans fats. I preferred to sit in the whirlpool and fantasize about fast food.

I was in bed before 10, unconscious before 10:01. I was also paralytically sore in every major muscle group by Day 3. But I'll tell you this: Days like that don't fly by and leave you wondering where the time went.

Another thing I learned is that it is fashionable in some yoga circles to do a lot of elaborate, loud sighing when you stretch. Imagine this: It's 6:05 a.m., I'm lying on my mat in the near-darkness trying to breathe deeply without drifting off, and all around me there's a sudden eruption of "Aaaaaaaaaah" and "Mmmmmmmmmm" and deafening yawning noises. I almost sat bolt upright and barked, "People, I came here for PEACE AND QUIET!"

I've never seen such ostentatious relaxation. It seems in poor taste, when there are stressed-out Type As sitting in New York traffic yelling on cell phones. Also, it's inconsiderate of others. If you want to revel vocally in your serenity, sheesh, get a room.