Email to My Yoga Teacher

Tammy,

I think I may be  turning into a yogaholic.  Can you tell me if I am in need of a twelve-step flow, I mean program?  Will I need an anti-yoga intervention?  Will you be my sponsor?

I practice yoga with you once a week. I go to Barnes & Noble a couple of times a week under the pretense that I drink coffee and read the paper. Actually I read all the yoga magazines and books. I’m lucky because my B&N has the yoga section in a back corner.  When nobody’s looking and the surveillance cameras have panned by, I dream about sneaking in a vinyasa and sometimes a full sun salutation. That would be awesome.  It would be like my yoga coming out party.

It feels like I’ve worn out all the yoga dvds from the library; I believe I’m now banned from checking out any and all yoga materials. Those cretins! I think I even saw a picture of me with a diagonal red line through it at the checkout desk; they claim I recently tried to sneak out the newest yoga picture book.

I get in such a zone during yoga that my focus blocks out any portion of reality.  I don’t know what I do in this state of mind.  How can I be responsible for my actions during such enlightened flashes?  I’ve heard about the guy who was forced to wear an ankle bracelet because he called the local sports radio station 250 times requesting a yoga class be broadcast over the air.  At his restraining order hearing, I heard his lawyer argued that it was only 238 calls.  I’ve only called around 50 times, but I block my number before dialing.

When my ham strings and quads need the boost, I scan Groupon, Living Social, and even craigslist for a cheap unlimited month of yoga. Those deals are only for new customers but I convince the yoga studio owner that I am so desperate I will disavow Buddha if he/she won’t let me have the deal.  I don’t even believe in Buddha but I know I’m striking a nerve and that’s the way to get what I must have.

This Thanksgiving I will participating in a three hour yoga workshop, thereby missing my family. Somehow I think they won’t regret my annual twenty minute evaporation from the holiday dinner table. I tell them my stomach is sick, but I believe they know what I’m up to. You see, during recent desserts I heard them muttering my meditation mantra.

What do you think?  Are these normal signs of a person doing yoga or am I slipping off the yoga mat of sanity?

Gary Kahn