Yoga Is Not a Crime

(This began last spring, as a private rant when I was feeling harassed from several directions about my yoga habit.)

       Two evenings a week I walk down Main Street in my town, past the two rough beer joints, sometime biker hang-outs, or maybe just poser wanna-be biker hang-outs. The sidewalk on this block is filthy from chewing gum, cigarette butts, spit and other body fluids, and it is worse on rainy days. Men loitering in the doorways look me over, beckoning with their heads to draw me inside. Teenage boys on skateboards barrel toward me on the sidewalk, staring insolently.

       This street is the only access route to the bridge that leads to the shopping center on the other side of the river. I carry a yoga mat in a shoulder bag and wear neon-colored gym shoes, yoga pants and a t-shirt under a loose-fitting rain jacket that covers my backside. But I know the loitering men and skateboard boys think the yoga gear is a ruse, a cover for my true purpose: any lone woman walking the street wearing yoga pants is a street-walker.

       I first tried yoga off and on in college, then came back to it in my 40’s. After working some strenuous manufacturing jobs, or low-wage, no-benefit jobs in retail, I began to have trouble with my back, hip, knees and feet. By “trouble” I mean nearly constant pain from sciatica and injuries to my Achilles tendon and knee ligaments. My left foot would go numb from mid-shin down when I walked a few hundred feet. The hip pain flared up for five or ten days a month with my PMS symptoms, and I began to limp badly, walking hunched over, with my shoulders twisted. I held my breath unconsciously when I was hurting, which dulled my thinking more than the pain, and sometimes I caught myself tensing my stomach muscles, pulling my spine down into a C-shaped curve. Losing my job was often the best pain relief, but then I’d lose my medical insurance, if I had any. Anyway, usually the only remedy doctors could suggest was aspirin and RICE – rest, ice, compression, elevation.

       At last I realized that it was up to me to take care of myself, that no one else would or could. I found a yoga studio where I could attend regularly and practice consistently. For more than a year I took weekly classes in an incense-scented studio with Buddha heads, lotus flowers and mandalas painted on the walls. The first thing the classes taught me was simply to stand up straight and breathe – tadasana, or mountain pose. It took months of practice for me to remember to do that outside class, but it was the beginning of a steady, progressive recovery. Then the studio closed when the instructor, whose degree was in kinesiology, entered a Physical Therapy Assistant program.

       Now I take classes in a strip-mall gym, which has quite a different atmosphere – hot yoga, power yoga, yoga-Pilates, core-work, with a bit of tai chi and jazzercise thrown in, though the teachers still stress flow, balance and breathing.

       In both locations, the studio and the gym, there is (or was) a mix of students. Most are middle-aged women like me, plus a few men, trying to recover from injuries or pregnancies, to preserve strength and flexibility. Often there are younger women and girls who look like dancers or gymnasts. They are more competitive, nonchalantly sliding into backbends or full 180-degree splits while the teacher is still talking the rest of us through a series of gradual moves. Sometimes they snicker a little at those of us who are thicker around the middle, less limber, and don’t always come to class with perfectly hairless legs.

       In fact, I can imagine that many poses evolved when bored young yoga devotees on a mountain top somewhere started egging each other on, saying, “yeah, but can you do this . . . OK, OK, now go like this . . . now stand on one foot . . . stretch your arms out and stick your leg out like this . . . bend your knees . . . now hold it . . . hold it . . . hold . . . HOLD . . . ” But I digress.

       Outside of class I notice that some people I know from work, who used to talk to me about their involvement in church groups and bible study, turn cool toward me when they learn I have been practicing yoga regularly. There is a jolly older man in town who used to stop me on the street to chat and tell corny jokes, then tell me he was praying for me. He would tell me about his ministry and his bible study group, and invite me to Easter services. Then once, when he saw me walk in to the grocery store food court carrying my yoga mat after class, he turned away and stopped talking to me.

       Even at the yoga studio, a student once asked if there is yoga without Buddha. At the gym, I notice teachers begin to avoid using Sanskrit names for poses. One student confides to me that as a Christian, she is uncomfortable in the class. At the end of class when we have a few minutes of meditation in “corpse pose” (shivasana), some students walk out first, before the teacher has a chance to say “namaste”. Why would anyone go to a yoga class and expect a prayer meeting? And do they expect me to give up a practice that has brought me so much relief from pain and improvement to my health because of their beliefs?

       Sometimes I do worry that I am showing disrespect by using yoga as my personal physical therapy plan, but still, the more spacey, new-age spiritualism aspects of yoga seem silly to me, and I am suspicious of some beliefs. The owner of a studio I tried in college used to send out a newsletter which included a brief essay about some principle of yoga. One month it was the principle of “non-attachment” (I forget the Sanskrit word for it). She described it as letting go of ambition, control, possessions, and even attachments to places and people. Wait, I thought, that sounds like the definition of a cult, requiring members to turn over their paychecks and property and cut off ties to family and friends outside the group. Naturally I didn’t stay long with that studio. Another place expected students to be vegetarian, which I’m not ready to commit to – I still eat poultry and fish, and still crave hamburgers now and then, though it’s been more than a year since I’ve indulged.

       During one class session my foot slipped on my mat twice, making a little fart noise each time. I could practically hear the eye-rolling behind my back, the suppressed giggles and snorts of disgust. For weeks after that evening, some students avoided placing their mats any place where I might bend over in front of them. Which just goes to show, enlightenment doesn’t necessarily bring maturity.

       “Remember, it’s yoga practice, not yoga perfect,” the teachers will say, reminding us to let go of comparison, criticism and judgement.

       This isn’t really a spiritual lesson, but it has done a world of good for my confidence and self-esteem. In my high school PE classes I was often tripped up by self-consciousness, so busy worrying about whether my butt looked big or my breasts jiggled, that I couldn’t watch the ball or remember which way I was supposed to run. Finally in middle-age, I can believe that there is no sense in comparing myself to others. We are who we are and where we are, because of choices we’ve made, because of things that happened to us, and because of the way we react to experience. Everyone is different, all our lives have taken different courses, but we come to practice yoga to make things better, to make the best of what we are.