Tammy,

I’m sick again.  It may be that I was just doing too many activities and burning the yoga candle at both ends.  Actually, it was probably the close-talking woman at the networking party who told me she had been sick on and off for 4 months but that she wasn’t contagious.  Maybe I should bottle up some of my sickness and send it to her so her malaise lasts a little longer.  I know this isn’t a yogi’s way of looking at life but recently I seem to get sick for four to six weeks now, rather than the normal week.

You’d be proud of me.  I looked at my intention of getting better and enjoying the world.  I can’t do any cycling nor yoga. So what can I do?  Hey, how about meditation?  Well, I sat in the official position for 15 minutes and the pressure of sitting up straight made the chest congestion feel worse.  Then I thought about your classes.  When we do shivasana in your classes, we lay down on our mats and put our hands to our side.  Hey, I can do that.  So, I decided to put my mat down in the house and just as you say “float into space.”  For some reason it wasn’t that comfy so I climbed onto my bed.  I concentrated on listening to the ins and outs of my breathing.  My back was on the bed and my arms were out to the side, face up.  After a while, I was sleeping.  The dream was better than usual.  I seem to recall you saying that relaxation is the ultimate goal of yoga.  Mission accomplished.

If the goal of yoga is relaxation, why do we do all the poses?  Shouldn’t we just learn to sleep better?  I think I might be missing something here, but this revelation might just take down the whole yoga industry.  Maybe we can reformat yoga as a sleep tool, build a start-up, grow it, have an IPO and sell our shares for millions.  Then, we will have the time to actually practice what we created.  Sickness yoga may have solved life’s problems.

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

Today I wanted to take a mid-morning yoga class at a local gym.

I was a guest of a friend and we got to the parking lot ten minutes before the class was supposed to start.  Cars galore.  What’s with that?  Well, there was a fitness class prior to the yoga class and there are a lot of retirees in South Florida.  We had to really scurry for a parking spot.  Saying my friend was nervous as I backed up past 15 cars through the only lane of travel would be an understatement; I thought there were going to be ½ inch finger divots in the passenger door handle.  Then, as we got into the place, the previous class was letting out; within a minute the entire floor was completely covered with mats.  Are you kidding?  What’s the Sanskrit phrase for turnaround and leave?  Yep, adios before we even started a single pose.

Somehow I don’t get the idea of massive yoga classes.  They’ve had yoga classes in Times Square, the National Mall in DC, and Millennium Park in Chicago.  I’m not trying to be negative but I like to have space for my poses.  I know you’re supposed to accept your neighbor, but touch your sweaty neighbor more than once and I get a little skeeved.  I know if they touch me, I’ll be quarantined for sliminess.  Am I missing something?  In a setting where the space is filled mat to mat, can you, or any teacher, make it around to each and every person for adjustments?  Did I miss a tweet saying only yoga teachers or perfect yoga students are invited to yoga love fests?  Is there supposed to be some sort of cosmic group connection or yoga wave in the colossal sessions?  Perhaps the best person for these classes would be the shivasana robbers as they stand to make some extra loot.

Can you let me know what the appeal is to enormous yoga classes and public displays of yoga affection?

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

So I arrive in your class one day.  There is a guy there and he says he’s happy that another guy (me) will be in the class.  I don’t think much about it.  The guy then 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 his mat 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 even more physical issues. 

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?  Are women impressed by that?  Maybe I’m out of touch with picking up women but I still think they like masculine guys that appear to have their act together.  I don’t know.  Are women attracted to men who have negative game and claim insecurity as a strength?  Wow!  What cardboard box am I living in?  I guess I better get to a yoga class and start crying.  Wait a second.  What’s this blog all about? 

Hold on.  Maybe the real question is:  should I care about this dude and/or let him bother me?  After all, in class I didn’t think about him.  Am I judging the malingerer?  In yoga the aim appears to be voiding 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 rarely ever turned on by 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,

I was on my way to the beach recently.  Being that we are in South Florida and it was the holiday season, a lot of tourists from cold weather states had the same idea.  The traffic was heavy but not quite reaching LA Freeway levels.  Rather than inch my way forward at every stop, several times I allowed cars from side streets to move in front of me in line.

This is not like me.   Normally I ignore them.  After all, I am from the Northeast.    In the past, I would occasionally make up a story about how drivers on side streets are late for an important meeting or how they are going to the doctor for an urgent medical problem.  Not letting them cut in would bring a smile to my face.  After all, I plan ahead and so should they.  Do I go as far as road rage?  Nope.  I learn from my elders. You see, I have an octogenarian neighbor who got three months in jail for brandishing a gun at another vehicle.

Why did these out-of-body experiences occur?  Are you rubbing Zoloft into my system when you message my head during shivasana?  Is the shoulder stand calming my nervous system (pun intended).  Have I been sweating so much in your yoga class that my aggressive impulses are transforming into good kharma?

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

I signed up for a class which was going to be held right next to the Intracoastal Waterway.  I was psyched as it had promise to be euphoric.

Upon arrival, I parked in the lot near where I thought the class would be.  Nobody was going to the grassy area where the internet showed the location of the class.  So I waited outside my car.  A woman who had apparently gone for a run suddenly arrived at a neighboring car.  I stared at her for quite a while and finally asked if I was in the right place for the yoga class.  Hesitatingly she said yes and that she was the teacher.  She pulled out her mat and other stuff from the trunk of her car.  We walked over to the serene spot where the sun was shining.  The water was close by and the gigantic houses were easily visible across the water.

Nobody else showed up so I was excited for my first private class.  How cool!

It wasn’t quite a flow class.  We started doing poses but they didn’t connect to each other.  I was right in front of her but quickly realized that she wasn’t really talking to me during the poses.  She was speaking as if it was a large class and just letting me know what the next pose was and how to get into it.  She only looked at me twice during the entire hour.  She didn’t adjust any of my poses; not even Warrior I or II.

What happened?  Was the teacher upset that I arrived?  If I didn’t show up, she could have gone home.  Is it possible I freaked her out and she thought I was a stalker?  Maybe I was in the zone and did the perfect yoga class.  Does this mean I will soon have my own yoga dvd for sale?  After all, I was wearing my rock star sunglasses.

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

Recently I tried something new in your yoga class.  I wanted to really get into whatever it is that real yoga people, yogis, experience while practicing.

It was right after you gave the first instruction that I tried my new yoga accessory, eyes closed during class.  I didn’t know what to expect but I was hoping for peace, friendliness, enlightenment, and exhilaration.  You started the classes and physically I could achieve most of the poses without looking; however, a weightless, stress-free, soothing state of being failed to arrive.  I was far from fantasy land.  Rather my thoughts were totally occupied by sweat washing all over my body.  My nose was now in full bloom as the remaining senses compensate for any missing.   To make matters worse, I was trying to concentrate on exclusively breathing through my nose, ujjayi style.  The lovely fragrance I perceived was that of a men’s locker room.  The studio is clean and I know it wasn’t me, so how could the pungent odor have appeared so soon after the class started?  Wait a second, could it have been me?  You’ve never said anything, though, you are diplomatically polite and try to run away from me after class.  With all this swimming in my mind, I opened my eyes to try tree pose.  I guess the land of hopes and dreams doesn’t include balance as my body resembled a weeping willow during a hurricane.  Marking a conclusion to the experiment, the body of one of my mat neighbors was a little late in celebrating New Year’s Eve and my nose received an inauspicious welcome to 2012.

If this is what people rave about yoga, maybe I should take up internet stair climbing.

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

Last night I was watching a movie on tv.  A commercial came on for an allergy medication.  The actress was doing downward dog and a canine approached her.  It was ironic and funny,well, if you’re into yoga.

What other poses could be shown on tv?

For an insurance company commercial:  how about while the actress is in plank pose, a thief removes her diamond tennis bracelet?

For a Spike TV promo:  how about a dog peeing on an actress in tree pose?

A promo for one of those Saturday morning fishing shows on Versus:  how about while the actress does fish pose at beach yoga, a trout washes ashore near the yoga mat?  What is the Sanskrit word for gooey and smelly?  The actress then starts doing pranayamic breathing with her fingers on her nostrils.

For a Law & Order crime:  How about a car-jacking scene in Times Square with the jumbotron in the background showing full wheel pose?

How about during the writing of these emails someone does a headstand near me and asks why nobody else has come up with these ideas?

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

At the end of today’s class you said, “yoga is love.” It’s hard to think a couple could meet in a yoga class. The mate selection process is a little different, if not impossible, that’s for sure.

The women are all decked out in their designer yoga capri pants and matching tops with coordinated sport bras; whereas the guys are in raggy, baggy basketball shorts, tailored cut off shirts (not), and the highly erotic sweat bands. Most guys sweat like crazy so I don’t think any woman would be dreaming about an aromatically rank shower during a mating activity. In fact, one day as I was leaving class I heard one woman say that some guy was cute, but then she laughed and called him stinky dinky doo.   Somehow I don’t think that was an endearing pet name.

If a guy could get by this obstacle, what would be a great pickup line in yoga class? “You’re so hot we should do our own bikram yoga practice, just you and me.” Or, “when I meditate I only focus on you; are you thinking about me?” What about: “I love the way you pose; was that just for me?” Somehow I don’t think any woman would date such a guy. So tell me, what’s love got to do with yoga?

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

In Today’s class we were doing triangle pose.  When I looked up I saw something I had never before seen in class.  Through the window I saw a red light out in the main road, at a distance.  Was it a sign that I should stop doing yoga?  Was it the Amsterdam red light district?  Tis the season so was it the ghost of Rudolph?

I bet all of your other students think the same thing upon viewing this yogic distraction, right?  On second thought, I bet all of your other students see a green light, don’t they?  They see positive things, and I, well….  Next year, if I do 10,000  downward dogs, say om in every sentence I speak, and wear only yoga clothing, will I become enlightened?

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

While out of town last week I took a couple of yoga classes.  I was the big dog as I was the youngest and most flexible.

So today I felt quite confident and went to your class.  As usual, you were serene and glowing.

It was a small class so you announced that we would go a little faster today.  First you giggled at my triangle pose and hinted that it looked more like a trapezoid; you had never seen anybody do that before.  Don’t worry, the Guinness book of records didn’t come calling.  When we were going into happy baby pose, I could see you were going to help me; however, the look on your face told me you had never seen a new born this sweaty.  You held your nose and sprinted to help somebody else.  Well, I’d been doing downward dog for many, many months so I thought l could ace at least one pose.  Nope, my but wasn’t high enough; after all we are in Boca Raton.

Gotta hand it to yoga:  go in feeling cocky and come out with your thong in a wad.   Sometimes in class you tell us we should be happy and feel lucky; we have the luxury to be doing yoga.

Gary Kahn