Email to My Yoga Teacher

Tammy,

So I arrive in your class one day.  There is a guy there and I hear him happy that another guy (me) will be in the class.  I don’t think about it much.  Then the guy rattles off a whole bunch of maladies and how he is affected by them.  I quickly decide that I will place my mat as far from him as possible.  After a class wherein you had us try a bunch of different poses, in what seemed like slow motion, I heard the guy complaining about his maladies even more now that the class was over.

I definitely avoided the guy on the way out.  I found myself thinking this guy was tremendously annoying.  Fortunately these thoughts did not come up during class.  He made it clear he was into women, so why was he happy when the room became more filled with testosterone?   Wouldn’t his odds with women be greater if there was less competition?  I don’t know what this guy was all about.  Why did he brag about his aches and pains?  Would the women be impressed by that?  Maybe I am out of touch with picking up women as I’m in a relationship, but I still think they like masculine guys that appear to have their act together.  I don’t know.  Are women attracted to insecurity these days?  Are they into skinny guys who can’t fix anything or maybe they fancy guys who cower late at night when there’s a strange noise outside your house?

Maybe my real question is:  should I care about this dude and/or let him bother me?  After all, in class I don’t think about him.  I am judging the malingerer, right?  In yoga the aim appears to be void yourself of judgment.  Does yoga promote helping a fellow man or letting him/her be?  I’m probably not properly qualified to help the guy but I could tell him that women are more than likely rarely ever turned on by his verbal self-mutilation.  As a teacher, do you try to loosen him up and tell him to take it easy or let him be and hope he figures things out?

Did you say this yoga thing is supposed to be relaxing and freeing of the mind?

Gary Kahn