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,

This is the one year anniversary of my blog.  I wonder what posts people have liked the best.

I guess yesterday was a good example of my yoga experience over the past year.  It was raining while I was driving to an outdoor yoga class and I was wondering why I was going.  I felt I would probably get sick and not be able to do yoga for a while.   I feared that my mat would become slippery and I would slip and fall and get injured.  When the class started the teacher immediately ran us through some sun salutations and warrior poses.  I felt drops of water on my mat and soon realized they were sweat, not rain drops.  The rain and everything else had evaporated from my mind except the pose we were doing.  Soon enough there was no rain from the sky.  The sun even came out.

As far as my progress in yoga, I show up every week.  I don’t do any homework.  Outside of  class, I don’t think much about yoga.   Is it possible I don’t really care much about yoga?  What’s the irony here?  I’m getting better at yoga.  I can now do the crow and full wheel poses.

Maybe I shouldn’t try or think about other things and they’ll get better.  Maybe I’ll start with relationships.  What do you think?

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,

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,

Today I sat and meditated.  For fifteen minutes I thought about normal things; like the garlic festival I will be going to and how garlic is supposed to be great for your health.  I then pondered how many weeks it will take to get the smell out of my pores.  Next I remembered something in the liquor store; they actually sell tequila in bottles shaped like rifles and hand guns.  I know these might be cool at parties but what kind of message are they sending?  After all, how accurately can you shoot when drinking?  I started to think about the dinner I had with someone’s elderly mother.  The woman is in an assisted living facility but they don’t shave her face.  She has whiskers almost a half inch long but I don’t think she has a clue what the cat pose is.  Do the workers leave this grotesqueness there to spite her since she is mean to everyone?

What are you supposed to think about during meditation?  Is there a right and wrong? Am I twisted?  I pay attention to my breath but my mind wanders elsewhere pretty quickly.

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,

It was really hot tonight in your class.  We were 15 minutes into the class and I had to take off my shirt.  It’s taken me awhile but I think I may have gotten over the body image and body hair neuroses; even if I didn’t, we were now talking about avoiding heat exhaustion.   I am sure the other students were overheating too and didn’t have the chance to worry about my skeletal deformities.  As a guy I was pretty lucky that I had the luxury of going topless.  Sorry ladies, you get revenge when I exit the studio and regular people see me in yoga clothing.  I was thinking that if it was this hot, I should be getting a tan.  Perhaps the the studio should invest in some tanning lamps.

Without a shirt it was still pretty unbearable.  I  felt delusional and then all of a sudden I was doing Warrior III.  I had been trying that pose with you for months and now my dehydrated brain didn’t have the chance to think about any balance or fear issues.  I just followed your instructions and nothing else claimed any cerebral space.  All I had to do was look over at you and imitate what you were doing.  It was monkey see, monkey do.

If your yoga studio does change over to heated classes, I think they should serve cold beers after such an experience.

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