Email to My Yoga Teacher

Tammy,

I was the youngest member in tonight’s class and guess who was seeing a cardiologist for a possible sedated, invasive test, potential angioplasty, or impending heart attack?  Yep, that would be me.  Already things were a little off the yoga tree of balance.

First you had us put our butt up against the crown molding in the floorboard and our legs up the wall.  “Hold that for 2 minutes, please,” you said.  Isn’t it sweet to know that all of the blood from my legs will be draining into my ailing heart.

Next you asked us to put our butt up against the floorboard and fold our body over, with the goal being that our head touches our feet on the floor in front of us.  I don’t know how you were able to squeeze behind me so you could forcefully push my back over and my head closer to my feet.  I get it; the resulting back pain was supposed to take my mind off my allegedly faulty ticker.

How about the pose where you had us lie with our backs on the floor and our legs spread in a wide v on the wall.  I felt like a feeble boy trying to break the gender of high school cheerleaders but unable to achieve this rah rah routine.  Were you intentionally trying to destroy the male psyche and start an aortic aneurysm?

A number of times you had to step over a bunch of people and get in strange body positions to help adjust me.  All I could think the whole time was that you were going out of your way to break my heart.  I thought you liked me.

Gary Kahn

PS  The doctor said I’m fine and told me to enjoy living life.  Maybe you were sending me good karma after all.