Tammy,

As you know, I normally keep my eyes closed in yoga class.  That way I won’t feel any pressure to compare myself to my classmates.  Okay, I admit it: the real reason is that I don’t want to see the scary looks other people have when they’re looking at my poses.

At an outdoor yoga class the other day, the instructor told us to be conscious of our surroundings and that we’re trying to get back to nature.  I believe we were in Warrior II pose and then we went into side angle pose.  My arm was resting on my quad and I looked up to see the palm trees and the sky.  The other arm was trying to reach over my head toward the front of the class.  When my gaze came downward I saw the woman next to me.  One of her arms was over her head, successfully reaching forward, and the other arm was resting on her thigh.  However, at the end of the thigh-resting arm I noticed something different.  The woman had the index finger touching touching her thumb, making a circle.   I think in yoga terms you call this a mudra.  The other three fingers were all pointing in the same direction.   My eyes then gazed a little beyond the woman and I saw her shadow.  The silhouette looked like her body was in perfect alignment and yet relaxed, at peace.  I had never seen a yoga shadow before and this reflection looked like a piece of art.  The woman was in a moment of bliss and I was struggling to keep my body in this position.  Adding insult to injury, the woman was giving herself the okay sign with her hand.

After class I was thinking that I should tell this woman how beautiful her shadow looked.  I thought twice about this as I remembered that we did the same side angle pose on the other side and she must have seen my attempt.

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,

Last night I was watching a movie on tv.  A commercial came on for an allergy medication.  The actress was doing downward dog and a canine approached her.  It was ironic and funny,well, if you’re into yoga.

What other poses could be shown on tv?

For an insurance company commercial:  how about while the actress is in plank pose, a thief removes her diamond tennis bracelet?

For a Spike TV promo:  how about a dog peeing on an actress in tree pose?

A promo for one of those Saturday morning fishing shows on Versus:  how about while the actress does fish pose at beach yoga, a trout washes ashore near the yoga mat?  What is the Sanskrit word for gooey and smelly?  The actress then starts doing pranayamic breathing with her fingers on her nostrils.

For a Law & Order crime:  How about a car-jacking scene in Times Square with the jumbotron in the background showing full wheel pose?

How about during the writing of these emails someone does a headstand near me and asks why nobody else has come up with these ideas?

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,

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,

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

Tammy,

Today was kind of interesting at your yoga class.  As you are aware, there were enough teachers in training that pretty much each one of us students had their own.  After a while I noticed that these young, soon-to-be gurus, could have some fun of their own, at my expense.  During shoulder stand my personal teacher put her foot in my rear end.  I don’t know whether she was trying to adjust me or punish me; all the while she was smiling.  I didn’t know how to diplomatically inquire about this after class.  Should I have asked:  “What is the Sanskrit word for the old foot in the tush pose?”  Or:  “Were you just telling me I’m your bitch?”

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

In class you instructed us to do a variation of uttanasana.  We leaned over and hugged our bended knees.  I felt wobbly and visualized that I was a Norwegian long jump skier preparing for a run at an Olympic gold medal.  Fortunately I had been training my whole life for this moment.  NOT!  I never even tried this sport before.  What do the announcers always say?  Bendze knees, arms back, and start believing in the afterlife?

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

You may recall that in yoga class today we were doing the pose called Warrior I.  You came over to make sure my hips were straight forward.  Before yoga I didn’t even know I had hips.  Women’s measurements always have a hip number.  Nobody’s ever measured my hips and there aren’t any guy jeans called hip huggers.

Anyway, you were standing behind me trying to push my hips straight ahead.  You were able to achieve moving these newly found body parts, despite some unintentional resistance.  Now, I thought this team of teacher and student solidly had the pose.  But, you continued to hold me.  At first this was cool because I was perfectly aligned for the pose.  In yoga you are apparently not supposed to worry about being perfect or right or wrong; something about being in the moment.   As time went on, however, I felt like my leg was going to crumble and that I would fall over at any moment.  As the tremors were running through my leg, I was hoping like heck that somebody near me was a newbie, or anybody was doing something totally out of whack, so that you would have to help them.  Please!   Please!   Please!  Normally I am thrilled to have you, the yoga teacher, help me because that’s how one improves.  Well, as I was about to scream “Uncle” or “Kelly Clarkson” (a la 40 Year Old Virgin) and keel over, simultaneously losing all of my masculine chromosomes, you went to another person.  The second I was out of your sight line, I crumbled to the mat in defeat.  You didn’t see my putrid display and therefore I am, well, I can’t exactly say proud, but I am still allowed to use the men’s locker room.

I might say that if yoga wants to get more male participation, a name change might be in order.

Gary Kahn

Tammy,

In class recently I saw that one of the other students has a mat with diagrams of the poses on it.  Do you think I should get one of these cheat-sheet mats?  I was thinking about looking over at the teenage girl’s mat during class to see the pictures.  Then I realized this may entitle me to jail-house yoga lessons.  Do you teach in the big house?  Something tells me the poses I may need to  perfect for that studio are Warrior I and Warrior II.

Gary Kahn