Tammy,

Last night  I saw a hilarious movie and a few live comics; a late night full of laughs.

I arrived at the outdoor yoga class early in the morning today.  Apparently the teacher said hi to me right before the class started, but I didn’t even notice.  I must’ve been in the “yoga zone” before class even started.  How cool! I was totally focused.  No sports psychologist, astrologist, or craniologist necessary here.

During class I suddenly felt something touching me.  First I thought it was a little gecko as they run rampant here in South Florida.  Yikes!  One of those little guys crawling all over my body during downward dog would have been totally skeevy.  Then my mind went to an army of ants; nope, they race pretty fast and I would have succumbed to their full body invasion immediately.  My iliotibial (it) bands (yep, both left and right) were apparently crumbling from a life’s worth of non use when I finally realized it was the teacher.  I think she said something in yoga speak to the effect of loosen up dude, take it easy.  Be in the moment.  Enjoy!

After like sixteen months of yoga I thought I was totally relaxed and present.  Second thought, maybe you need a lot of sleep to do yoga; otherwise, stay home in shivasana.

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,

I was the youngest member in tonight’s class and guess who was seeing a cardiologist for a possible sedated, invasive test, potential angioplasty, or impending heart attack?  Yep, that would be me.  Already things were a little off the yoga tree of balance.

First you had us put our butt up against the crown molding in the floorboard and our legs up the wall.  “Hold that for 2 minutes, please,” you said.  Isn’t it sweet to know that all of the blood from my legs will be draining into my ailing heart.

Next you asked us to put our butt up against the floorboard and fold our body over, with the goal being that our head touches our feet on the floor in front of us.  I don’t know how you were able to squeeze behind me so you could forcefully push my back over and my head closer to my feet.  I get it; the resulting back pain was supposed to take my mind off my allegedly faulty ticker.

How about the pose where you had us lie with our backs on the floor and our legs spread in a wide v on the wall.  I felt like a feeble boy trying to break the gender of high school cheerleaders but unable to achieve this rah rah routine.  Were you intentionally trying to destroy the male psyche and start an aortic aneurysm?

A number of times you had to step over a bunch of people and get in strange body positions to help adjust me.  All I could think the whole time was that you were going out of your way to break my heart.  I thought you liked me.

Gary Kahn

PS  The doctor said I’m fine and told me to enjoy living life.  Maybe you were sending me good karma after all.

Tammy,

Yesterday I ventured out for park yoga. There was a raised cement platform in a public park where the class would take place.  It was a sunny, early morning, about 75 degrees with a slight breeze; glorious yoga weather.  I arrived five minutes before the class was scheduled to start. I scanned the area to figure out where to put my mat.  In the middle were a bunch of women with purple tops on. My eyes couldn’t move away from that area for a couple of seconds.  What’s going on?  Did I miss the dress code memo?

The session started and the pace was a little slower than the intermediate, rush-into-as-many-asanas-as-you-can-do-in-an-hour.  I was able to keep up without a problem.  In the middle we got into pigeon pose.  For some reason I was able to follow the instructions and successfully achieve the pose without teacher adjustment.  My hips hurt in exactly the right place and this pain made me happy.  Previously I thought happiness was supposed to make me feel good; what is yoga doing to my sense of life’s pleasures?  After class I saw that a bird painted part of my blue car white.  I guess he/she liked my impression of his/her species.  With my new yogic fondness for discomfort, am I supposed to like the artwork or should I have done a celebratory sun salutation?  Yogic karma evidently was present later on in the day when one of my teeth provided the worst pain I’ve ever felt.  Maybe if I do the bridge pose when the dentist does my root canal I’ll enjoy this new sensation.

I may have to practice yoga a long time before I buy into its pain philosophy.

Gary

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

Good morning Tammy,

Since I haven’t been to any of your classes this week, I decided to take my second of ten Bikram yoga classes this morning.  Despite the near death experience at my first class, I’m going again because Groupon ehounds me to see whether I’m using the Groupons I purchased.  Groupon also wants me to rate the experience at the Bikram studio; I’m in a good mood and will skip this part.  As the saying goes, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything; otherwise your next Bikram class may terminally be your last.

There is a little trepidation about going to another Bikram yoga class.  I go to your class to feel good about myself and laugh which I think is the purpose of yoga.  I think Bikram is life’s way of seeing if you have a death wish or if you really want to be alive.  There are a couple of signs indicating my first class wasn’t a comedy festival or an ecstasy party.  Nobody said hi to the teacher as she walked into class.  During the entire 90 minute class, every student had their teeth clenched; they should’ve been wearing mouth guards as they were surely grinding their teeth.  The sole positive I can relate from the class is that I was able to stay up until 2 in the morning after the class; good bye 5 Hour Energy drink.

My mind wanders who may be a good candidate for Bikram yoga.  Somebody who is waiting for a big inheritance should consider suggesting Bikram to their “loved one”; the richie may not make it out alive.  Ladies, is the love lost from your marriage and you’re thinking about divorce?  Is your hubby’s life insurance paid up?  If so, don’t even wait for his birthday, your anniversary, or the holidays, gift him some Bikram yoga classes as soon as possible.

When I go this morning, I’m going to pay special attention to the teacher’s speech at the beginning of class.  The teacher must give out a safe word like they do in BDSM sessions.  I must be able to stop the madness or get a reading of the last rites.

Bikram for breakfast is definitely the way to wake up!  NOT!

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

Tonight was my first Bikram yoga class.  I don’t know if I can go back but I’ve already paid for 9 more lessons.

When I walked in the studio door it was already a little steamy.  Okay I thought, this is really going to be exhilarating.   When the teacher arrived she asked for my name and whether I had ever done Bikram yoga before.  No and Gary I announced.   She then cranked up the heater near my mat.   Initially we did some breathing poses where you move your arms and neck.  So far so good.  Then oblique twists for mountain pose.  Cool, good bye muffin top.  Soon there were new poses I didn’t know and I was covered in sweat.  I reached for a towel to wipe my face, neck, arms, and chest.   The cute, young, girl-next-door-teacher, approached and told me to give up the towel because I would need it the whole class.  I was able to do a few more poses and then I had to stop and sit in timeout on the ground behind my mat.  I feared heat exhaustion.  Aerobically, I was burnt toast.  I could feel my heart pounding out of my chest.  I watched everybody else do what I was incapable of.  She then called out triangle pose.  She came over to me and sweetly whispered, or so I thought,  “come on, even Charlie Brown can do this one.”  During another pose she told us to put our hands by our heart and we can pray if we want.  I don’t think she was kidding.  I couldn’t see the clock so I piously requested the end of class.  Throughout class the teacher would call my name to encourage me; however, I felt quite embarrassed.  After all, there were a couple of overweight guys who had 15 years on me and they could do all of the poses.  I heard her say shivasana and I got up from my exile as I can definitely do relaxation pose.  She said to keep our eyes open.  I think something is wrong.  Three seconds later we were instructed to fold our torsos over our legs; this sent me back to once again being a bench warmer.  The teacher was so hot her halter top and capri pants were covered with sweat stains.  No need for any weird ideas; I was so delusional my brain didn’t have the capacity for any Clintonesque thoughts.  After several more fakes, the real shivasana arrived.  I got back on my mat and nearly passed out.  When I came to, I saw there was only one other person in the class and she was leaving.

Was this really yoga?  Maybe an inbred cousin.  Hardly any of the poses resembled vinyasa yoga.  It was so hot I think the walls will soon be covered in mold.  Maybe I should call Groupon and tell them I dropped into the wrong class and get my money back.

Gary Kahn