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’m a little perplexed and a little embarrassed as I didn’t know how to handle a situation in class today.

As you have told us, yoga is non-competitive, even with one’s self. Recently you’ve noticed that I’ve been pretty close to the poses you have described and told us to get into. I’m even keeping up with the class as we go a little faster, or as the yoga world says flowing. I’m holding Warrior I and II poses longer than I used to.

Today, you found me in the plow pose, but everybody else was in the next pose, shoulder stand. I think I deserve a mulligan, a pass, or even a special compensation. How do I say this? You see, while doing the plow pose, somebody behind me must have been visualizing a mushroom farm because all of a sudden I heard a noise. Some people might say there was a little crop dusting going on. A short time later there was confirmation of what I heard the first time. Just when I was trying to refocus on what you were saying, a third, shall I say, explosion occurred. You caught me in the plow pose with my back on the ground, legs stretched over my head, and most importantly my knees in my face for, diplomatically, sensory, and olfactory protection. How could I explain this when you came by and asked why I was lagging behind the others?

At the beginning of class, you said that we are not supposed to expect anything. You have always told us not to be judgmental. I was dumbfounded. The auditory shock and fear of an oddly flavored draft arriving in my direction left me confused. What is one supposed to do?

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,

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