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,

I think something is wrong and I’m a little embarrassed to admit this to you.

In your class, I like to hear the sanskrit words you say as we go into each pose.  I don’t know what is going on but something about the language turns me on; no, not like a fetish or anything.  This language is probably thousands of years old and you probably can’t have a conversation in it.  I guess I’m an information junkie and love to store stuff, but why this outdated language?  Does yoga do this to other people?  Once in a while I think about saying padangustasana in my real, non-yoga life.  What freakish looks I would get if I actually said this to say, my mechanic.  I don’t even know what it technically means beyond being a yoga pose.  I like to try to guess the names of the poses as we go into them. What is going on?  Why does my brain want to say trikonasana?  I have no desire to be a yoga teacher; at the rate I’m learning at, that wouldn’t happen for a few light years anyway.  Is there a doctor you can recommend that would know what is going on?  I can’t be in a business meeting and all of a sudden out of my mouth rolls the word utkatasana.  What if a client does yoga and hears this oddly placed word?  I don’t think they’d find it funny for me to command that they get off their leather seats and do the chair pose for the rest of the meeting.   How about halasana (plow pose)?  They might even think I am suggesting that they do this pose so I can tie them up in some sick way, take pictures to extort them later, or to rob them.  Someone who doesn’t know yoga may think I am tripping, having a stroke, or I am terrorizing them.  Speaking of which, what if I was at the airport in front of a TSA officer?

Is this what happens to people who take yoga or have I meditated my way into a yoga form of tourette’s syndrome?  Help!  Do I need meds?  Some camomile?  A cleansing by Deepak Chopra?

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

At one of your yoga classes I noticed a teacher in training was shirtless. I was wondering if I should be topless too.

What will people think of my body? I’m slender but not ripped like an MMA fighter. I don’t have any cool yoga tattoos so my cred will be pretty suspect. My continuous river of sweat will be pretty visible and I’m sure that’s not an attractive feature; not to mention the slipping and sliding that will occur when we do tree, sphinx, seal or any other poses on or off the mat. I do have some body hair; is that something  I need to take care of? Do you recommend shaving, waxing, or the apparent latest craze, laser removal? Obviously I’m not up on the latest self-maintenance trends. On the positive side I have neither any body deformities nor any weird colored body splotches. I have an innie belly button. How does that fit in the scale of corporal assessment?

Does yoga actually chisel the body? If I became a yoga fanatic would I feel comfortable going shirtless? Maybe I should become a yoga teacher and then I’d get a smoking body, right? I mean you have the ideal body; can I achieve that? Well, for a guy of course.

Perhaps the real question is why I am wondering what other people will think about my body. I know yoga teaches us to be non-judgmental but you still don’t want to be the smelly guy every one avoids placing their mat near, the repulsive guy that distracts others from class, or the hairy baboon that should be quarantined in a zoo rather than taking a yoga class.

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

Recently I went to Daytona Beach for a yoga class with someone who is renowned for being a great teacher, does world-class inversions, is really sweet, and likes to have fun and laugh.  She’s a lot like you.

I took I-95 to get there and found the yoga studio which was pretty close to, but not quite on, the beach.  The studio was right next to an Irish bar.

The class started with the routine warm-up poses.   The pose changes then came quicker and quicker.  I’m asthmatically challenged so intervals and fast aerobic activities are not my strong suit.  It soon came to me that “my colleagues” on the mat were teachers and veteran yoga practitioners.  Not a problem, I would do things at my own pace.  I soon drifted a few poses behind everybody else.  My heart was pounding out of my body and my shirt and mat were full of sweat.  Whoever says yoga makes you look great has obviously never tried yoga.   Anyway, the teacher then started going into some of the poses with our legs off the ground.  I tried a couple and then it got too complicated.  My brain recognizes the left from the right but converting that to my body and occasionally there’s an issue; add some inverted positions and my mind-body coordination inverts and then flatlines.  So I backed off and started watching  what the teacher was displaying and asking the students to try.  They did zoological animal poses that I didn’t know were even part of yoga:  scorpion, grasshopper, and side crow.  It looked so cool I should have been the class photographer.   All the while I was laughing.   What was so funny about all of this?  Was it that 50 other human beings could do things with their body that I was incapable of?   Was it the realization that the other participants would not appreciate me calling them “colleagues”?   Was it that yoga allowed me to constantly laugh at failure?  Whatever it was that day or in your classes, yoga is a big laugh (to me).  Who cares why I laugh?  I’m going back to your class for more!

Gary Kahn

P.S.  After class I went to the Irish bar hoping to hang with all of the other yogis and talk about the class; like people do with friends after you play softball or football.  Nobody else from the class showed up.  Perhaps there’s something else to I need to learn about the yoga world besides the poses.

Tammy a/k/a today’s Hero Poser,

May your happy baby pose cry out with silly laughter.  May your child strike a great pose for you.  May the pranayama breath you take to blow out the cake candles inspire all your wishes to come true.  May your mountain pose be the highest in the world.   May your head and shoulder stands be above all others.

Have a ROCKIN’ and TRIANGLE KICKIN’ birthday!

Namasbirthday!

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

Tammy,

For the second time I went to visit my father and step mother in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  They moved there about 3 years ago.

They picked me up from the airport.  It was night when my dad’s car was about a mile from his house.   I was pretty tired from a long day of travel and having a mild allergy problem.  In my oozy state I looked out the window and saw something I didn’t see the first time I visited.  A street sign indicated that the next turn signal would be the split between Western Trail and Namaste Road.  I didn’t see this sign on the first trip.

They say when the student is ready the teacher will appear.  Am I ready?  Was I born again the second I saw this momentous sign?  I’ve been doing yoga for many months with you and my quads are still weak.  My body isn’t lined up along a single plane in Warrior II pose.  I find the Sanskrit and English names of the poses pretty wacky and laugh at them in class.  Was this the sign that you and yoga are telling me that I should do a life-long meditation along the Western Trail?  Along Namaste Road there is a STOP sign right below the street sign; did I pass this anti-yoga sign so that I would get the hint and stop going to your classes?

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

Recently I went on a bicycle ride right next to the beach.  This is something I do often.   It was the middle of the day and extremely hot.

A couple of miles up the road, my bicycle computer indicated that I was cruising.  In fact, I was going a full 3 miles faster than my average speed.  It was a little weird.  I wasn’t pushing any harder than normal on the pedals.  There was almost no wind.  I was riding alone and wasn’t in anybody’s “slipstream.”  I wondered what I had been doing differently that was making me ride quicker.  I was sweating profusely and started having either a daydream, or perhaps a hallucination.  I thought I saw a big parade float in the sky pulling me forward.  As I drew nearer I realized that the float was not a cartoon character but a person doing a yoga pose with the head and back bent over in an aerodynamic position.  The phantom character was smiling down at me.  Then I realized I was actually picturing, you, my yoga teacher, in Warrior III, a pose I’ve never been able to master.

At first I was a little confused as to why I would be daydreaming about yoga during my ride.   Then it struck me.  I realized my head was tucked down and my back was parallel to the ground.  I was as close as I’d ever come to Warrior III and I was pretty satisfied.  My subconscious had put me in a pose that helped my cycling without me even realizing it.  Three cheers for yoga!

I also realized I was relaxed enough to follow the vision in my head.  What’s that old cliché?  When the student is ready, the teacher will appear in a strange place.  In my case, the old cliché might actually be that if you see parade floats in your head, the little men with the white suits will soon be tying you up.

I guess the next question is how can I relax like this in class so I can do all of the poses and skip to the advanced level classes?

This week is Thanksgiving so thank you Tammy for being my teacher and for the apparition on the bicycle.

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

I went to your class today and I have never laughed so much in a yoga class; not at you, but at yoga and with you.

There is no Super Bowl for yoga; it is a non-competitive activity (except perhaps in India).   If yoga isn’t going to help American adults get somewhere, why do we practice yoga?  You don’t serve beer and the incense you burn is not magic mushrooms.  In the “studio” you create a freedom for us to laugh at ourselves when we can do a pose well, and for us to laugh even more when we don’t even come close to the attempted pose.  So yoga teacher of 14 years and inciter of laughter, what is the feeling I had today in your class?

On the way out of your class, I got in my car and it seemed like I traveled a couple of miles on autopilot.   Inexplicably I had a hankering for some potato chips.  Then I heard a siren.  I looked in front of me, nothing.  To the left, nothing.  To the right, nothing.  Yep, you guessed it.  Right behind me I saw the cherry tops flashing.  I pulled over and the cop said to me, “do you know why I stopped you?”  The words that passed my lips:  “Actually officer, I have no idea.”  He then put his whole head inside my car, looked me straight in the eyes and said:  “Are you high?”  Quickly I realized the cost of my first yoga high:  $15 for the studio and $85 for running a red light with a cop right behind me.

Gary Kahn