Tammy,

Last week I met this woman at a public speaking class.  She was telling me she met a small business management consultant.  She rattled on, “This businesswoman really took the time to get to know me.  She cares about me and I’m in my 50’s.  With all the age and sexual discrimination that goes on I’m thrilled to have her believe in me.”  I didn’t understand why she was spilling her guts to me.  I’m not her best friend, a shrink, nor even such a consoling stranger (she forgot to brush her hair and revealed to me that she had just been tried and convicted for driving under the influence).  She pushed the consultant’s card into my hand.  The teacher marched in and started speaking so I put the card in my pocket.

When I went to bed that night I emptied my pockets and was throwing out the business card when I noticed something.  I put the card up to the light and saw the white outline of two humans pointed toward each other.  They had sort of folded themselves over, slumped in half.  I couldn’t figure it out.  What were they doing?  This is not some athletic trainer’s card, not that of a prayer group, nor even an s & m club card.  I came back an hour later and realized one leg was behind each person, the elbows were on the ground and the head was almost floor level too.  Hey!  That’s the yoga “pigeon pose.”

Since the average business person would not figure this card out, I wondered if this was a signal.  Maybe this symbol was a covert code for an undercover CIA operation.  This is how they recruit, right?  Not!  Obviously I’ve been watching too much Homeland lately.  More than likely this was a female pimp of some sort secretly inviting me into a strange men’s club.  They must figure if you recognize a sophisticated pose from a traditional women’s activity, you are probably into some funky stuff.  That’s not for me, not that there’s anything wrong with that.  Needless to say, I don’t think I’m going back to that public speaking class again.  What do I do that makes me look like such a mark?

Gary

Tammy,

Today I was running late for a yoga class at a gym.  I got there just as the previous class was letting out.  I went into the room and practically the entire floor was already covered with mats.  As I walked throughout the room looking for a space, I didn’t see any friendly faces looking at me.  I found some empty floorboard space near a woman who was packing up to leave from the prior class.  I could see she wasn’t thrilled about me and my mat.

The teacher arrived and asked people to create a couple of spots for the expected latecomers as they were coming from a significant distance.  I didn’t see any happy faces at this request.

About ten minutes into class we heard a car horn beep and then beep again.  I think the driver was trying to say, “Save me a spot.” Knowing the crowd I was with, I wouldn’t put it past the motorist.

At the end of class I wanted to ask the teacher something.  I waited in line for my turn and noticed a woman approach the same area and wait too.  When I was done I looked back and noticed she was third in line.

I’m relatively new to yoga and I thought yoga practice was supposed to be a friendly place, as they say, a community. Maybe I’m wrong.  Perhaps the code name for power yoga is killer yoga, kripalu yoga is really known as cripple you yoga, and smokers enjoy ashtongue yoga.

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

I attended a “hands on” yoga class.

First the teachers said they were going to massage some Chinese gel into our shoulders.  Since we are in South Florida where they’ve had problems with asbestos in Chinese drywall, I immediately became fearful that this class may be carcinogenic.  Shortly thereafter while I was in downward dog, a teacher put a harness around my waist and started pulling me backwards.  What are they trying to make me into?  A rickshaw driver.  Then, while in child’s pose, one of the teachers had me reach my hands forward and grab her ankles.  The thought crossed my mind that I was going to be attached to something by the other teacher and become become part of a human trafficking scheme.

Fortunately my brain eventually shut off, the neurosis went away, and I started to feel a slow bit of exhilaration run through my whole being.

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

While waiting for yoga class the other day, I did a little yogic thinking.  I guess these emails suggest I might do that once in a while.  When yoga teachers say that it is my class, I figure that means I focus on me and do the best I can; stopping only if I have trouble with a pose.  On this day, I did something uncharacteristic and intentionally watched the others.  No, I’m not a perv, just curious.   I never knew how much other students disregard the professional yoga teacher’s instructions and do whatever they want.   What’s up with that?  I noticed a woman doing savasana the whole class.  Why get out of bed for an early morning yoga class to just lay on the ground when you could have been snoozing away in a comfy bed?  Then I saw the little duckling pose.  That’s where the mother brings two daughters below ten years old and they try to imitate their mom; in other words, a yoga class of three.  It was cute, especially when the girls couldn’t keep up with the flow and didn’t get totally frustrated.  With more yoga practice, one day all the ducks will be in a row and will be joining the rest of us.  How about the muscle dude in the front row?  When we flowed, instead of upward dog, he did a headstand.  I was shocked when I first saw it and thought maybe that was how advanced yogis do the pose.  Then I realized he was just trying to impress the hot woman next to him.

I know it’s their yoga, but how do you teach your yoga when so many people are freestyling?

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

Little do you know but for the past month I’ve actually been doing the homework you assigned me some fourteen months ago.  That’s right, I’m doing child’s pose every day.  Woo hoo!  I’m completing your assignment, albeit a little late.  I know you’ve given up on expecting much from me.  But come on, what do yogis say?  When an unwanted thought pops up, go back to focusing on the breath and all is good.  So, now that we’re all good, you and me, do you think you can go back and alter the grade on my report card from last year?

In class today you were walking around the room and from a distance you could see if all of the students were properly aligned and breathing the pranayamic way.  Towards the end of class, I laid on my back, with my palms face up, the back of my head on the mat.  The music was barely audible.  All of a sudden my head nodded off to the left; I came to pretty quickly.  A minute later the same thing occurred.  Shortly thereafter the class was over.  While leaving the class you asked me what was going on and I couldn’t come up with anything.  Touche was all I had.  You were just toying with me.  You knew I had actually achieved the goal of shivasana which is sleep; though mine were only two brief narcoleptic-type episodes.

Today, right before you said namaste, you gave a homework assignment.  The only time I remember you giving howework was 14 months ago.  What can I say except that I reach a colossal milestone in class and you up the ante.  Can’t I just have a post-class celebration for one moment?  I was thinking about an end zone dance in the front of the room or a shot of Cabo Wabo.  Don’t yogis get excited over their long-awaited triumphs, no matter how small?  Come on, live in the moment.  Or does the seemingly accepting yoga always have to keep bending forward without even a second of partaying?  Didn’t the creators of yoga realize that all work and no play makes a yogi convert to pilates?

Gary Kahn

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

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

Tammy,

The other day you caught me grimacing during a pose and told me to breathe and smile.  Why is breathing given such a big focus in yoga?

When you’re concentrating on your breath, you fail to take life for granted.  You fail to worry that you’re doing triangle pose wrong and you fail to care that your shorts are riding down and someone might see a small part of your butt.

Right now I’m in your level one class so I’m just concentrating on achieving some semblance of the basic poses and simultaneously breathing smoothly.

In the advanced yoga classes do they teach multi-tasking like breathing and thinking?  How can I grow into a mature yogi if we continue to do the happy baby pose?  Let’s start practicing the snotty teenager pose; my sense of humor might fit in better.

Is it possible we concentrate our thoughts on each breath so we live life in the moment, here and now?

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

The other night in class you came over to my mat and looked at me and asked, “How did you get into that mess from what I demonstrated and described?”  You laughed at me.  I laughed at me.  Yeah, I try as hard as I can, but come on, yoga’s funny stuff.

Let’s take melting heart pose (anahatasana)?  It looks like you’re a centipede moving slowly along, with your butt in the air all the time.  Maybe it’s the new way to search for hidden coins on the beach.  Or maybe you’re trying to find a contact lense.

How about prasarita padottanasana a/k/a wide-legged forward bend.  Maybe if you’re being inducted into a college fraternity you should practice this pose.  “Thank you sir, may I have another.”  I think this pose is actually a tribute to Douglas C. Niedermeyer from Animal House.

What about mermaid, I mean fish tale pose?  If a woman ever wants her guy to feel feminine like she is, ask him to get into this dainty pose.  After the pose, trust me, the guy will be running to the doctor to check for low testosterone levels.  If he doesn’t feel that way, tell him next Halloween he’s dressing up as I Dream of Jeannie.

I laugh at this stuff and some emails may seem like I complain about various things yoga, but it’s all good fun that keeps me going back.

Cheers and I look forward to our next adventure.

Gary

Tammy,

So I’ve had some sort of virus for a while now.  It has forced the cancellation of a trip to New York, interfered with work, and halted yoga classes.  I’ve resorted to looking online at yoga things; one might call me a yoga lurker.  No, not dirty stuff, just compelling like a crack addict needs a fix.  I know reading about the experience of others and how they do things is not good for me.  It’s supposed to be about me.  For once, it is all about me.  Alas, I have figured it out; yoga is an activity for narcissists.   After all, I’m not supposed to worry about the way others practice.

Do you think this sickness has messed with my brain or am I more enlightened?

Gary Kahn