Yoga for Winners

Through a steady diet of yoga, meditation, and the calm.com app, I’m learning how to let go and live in the present. Headspace® teaches me when to let go of annoyances like the temperature in a room and accept “the now.” Spoiler: we are always supposed to let go. This is hard.

I recently had the chance to practice “nowness” in a yoga class at the YMCA where I’d planned to sweat though my usual vinyasas, pigeon poses, and a crow or two. But none of this was to be: the room was too cold and the light too bright; the instructor was a young ho-hum sub, who read instructions from sheets of paper that she kept rustling. When she asked the chilly gym, “Who’s new to yoga?” and two would-be yogis flailed their flaccid arms, I tensed up. I hated on the sub because, as I suspected, she’d cater to those newbies. I came for challenge, not chumps.

When she announced that the class was devoted–reading from her script—to “heart opening,” my own heart sank: I wanted my hips to open, not my God-damned heart. “How about some ab work instead?” I muttered under my visible beath. The warmup left me cold, with seated arm raises for sissies and side bends that bypassed the obliques entirely. Worse yet, music blasted from the class next door as that teacher belched out Marine-style prompts. They didn’t call the students “pussies” per se, but drilled them: “Why are you here?” Answer: “To work hard, sir!” Initially, I considered lacing up my shoes and exiting Yoga room B to Aerobic room A for a proper work-out. But I was trying out acceptance that tragic night even as I raged against the light, the cold, the noise next door, and the too-slow poses. Neck rolls! Fuck no.

I finally decided to add my own zip to this slow-ga.

After the twentieth lazy-ass cat/cow posture, I moved into some bird dogs on my own, which was where young Tiffany was heading next, according to her ever-crinkling piece of paper. Life isn’t a movie; so, no moment of surrender flashed when I embraced the fucking present, accepted things as they were (sucky), awash in a glow of the Y’s fluorescence. No sudden switch from inner kicking and screaming to outer child’s pose awakened my humility. Yet something like warm humanity settled upon me at the point when the clueless teacher–she was only about twenty years old–spoke of me. She could have written me off as an odd bird or a hot shot, though I beefed up the moves mainly to stay warm. “Next we’ll do some bird dogs, and here is someone demonstrating that now,” she treacled, pointing at me kindly. As I let out an embarrassed chuckle, I also let go of my aversion to the present.

It may not have been a Zen thing. Maybe Chagrin did that. Whatever the case, I began to relax, despite the temperature, the distracting brightness and cheat-sheet shuffle, and her tentatively voiced instructions. I breathed in appreciation for Tiffany covering for the regular (if better qualified) instructor. I breathed out my high expectations. I could feel my shoulders sinking back into their sockets after having lodged up near my earlobes for most of the hour. My breathing slowed.

Though I was still grouchy about the overlong warm-up and jealous of the calorie sizzling next door, the session did quicken a little, and I added my enhancements with a lighter touch. I admittedly blanched when, with a good twenty minutes left in the hour, Tiffany moved us toward savasana or “final relaxation.” Now, in no yoga-verse that I know does savasana exceed half that. Just as I was despairing anew—God bless her!–Tiff sneaked in a boat pose and some bridges. Whew!

I’d like to report that the new, letting-go me stayed to the end to thank her, but, no: I stole away before the saccharine savasana guidance wound down. I couldn’t bear to hear about open hearts when mine was far below its target pulse rate. So, I popped over to the room next door and started jumping. When the drill sergeant yelled, “Why are we here?” I shouted back, “To open our hearts?”

I’m killing it in acceptance, if still toggling the thermostat up or down a degree or two. Is it cold in here or is it just me?

 

Professor of English at the University of Houston, Ann Christensen (PhD University of Illinois) memoir-in-progress, “One-Woman Show,” traces her widowhood, from learning of the plane crash that killed her husband to moving her wedding band from finger to finger; from teaching a son to drive to becoming a grandmother; from applying only waterproof mascara (because crying) to applying for writers’ retreats. In Houston, she is also a GUST (Grown-Up Story Time) reader, writer, host, and fan, and president of the Catastrophic Theatre Company board. She writes satire and occasionally does improv. Her academic scholarship has focused on anti-racist pedagogy and economic and domestic life in Shakespeare and other drama and literature.