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,

In class yesterday, you asked us to get into the downward dog position with the soles of our feet up against the wall.  I’m trying to figure out why.  I know one reason is for the students to work with this sensation and feel what it is supposed to be like if there is something pushing against our soles.

Perhaps our feet against the wall is a metaphor for the pressure of life pushing against our souls.  In other words, how do we react to life?  Do we crumble over, splat, and become lame, lying face down on a mat like a drunk?  Do we just wait for someone to help us become rich in Farmville or the latest Facebook game?  Or, do we stand up and roar in lion’s pose, excited that we’re alive?  (Is there a lion’s pose?)

Does this in any way coincide with what you’re teaching or do I hallucinate from my own sweat?

Gary Kahn

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,

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,

Today one celebrates Valentine’s Day and exchanges romantic gifts with his/her special person.

What does everybody do for his or her self?  No, I’m not referring to anything pornographic.  In class you generate an atmosphere of silliness, acceptance, and wacky places where we’re supposed to put our various body parts which you call poses.   You ask us to focus our mind.  You ask us to look into our souls and love the person in the mirror exactly the way we are, right?  Does it matter exactly how we do the pose?  I think you adjust us to make the body feel better, rather than worrying about whether the body looks perfect, right?  So by following your directions to breathe in the moment and be present, are you showing us how to give ourselves presents?  Does that make you Saint Valentine and us students your little cherubs?  Thank you.

If you don’t mind, I will not be wearing red for class today.  I may be in the present but I don’t think others would take me seriously as Cupid in warrior I or warrior junior, or as you say warrior II.

Gary Kahn

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,

At work, there is a woman who goes to a yoga class from 12-1. She leaves the office and changes in the yoga studio bathroom. After class, she changes in the studio bathroom, bypasses the shower which is adjoined to same bathroom, and returns to our office in her professional clothes. She tells me that she doesn’t sweat at the yoga class and therefore she is clean. I tell her that by putting on the yoga clothes and moving around she is getting sweaty and dirty. Would you agree with me or her that she is officially less than clean and should be sent home from work by reason of being less than sanitary?

If a guy were to take his lunch hour to work out and return to work in the same clothes, without showering, he would never hear the end of it.  The Women’s Viral Guide to Hot Men would forever list him as undateable, despite how good looking he is, how much money he has, how nice he is, or even if he writes a crazy, mildly entertaining blog about, say, yoga.

Gary Kahn