Hubris, humility, and yoga

The hardest things to write about are the somatic phenomena that are so completely nonverbal as to defy description, yet that's probably what make them worth writing about. It would be so much simpler if, as the positivists claim, thought could only take place in the realm of language and therefore anything outside language can't involve thought. Nice, neat compartments. Well, you're wrong again, you poor misguided, disembodied positivists. But that's not what this is about. It's about Monday night Vinyasa class at the yoga factory (shameless plug).

J. was teaching last night, as usual, and only four students showed up, which is unusual. The others were all women, all younger than me, and each in a different stage of yogic development, whatever that is, in this case some combination of familiarity, skill, and confidence. We started slowly to warm up with some easy postures, and as J. picked up the pace and the postures became more difficult, my ego started to get involved, and that's always dangerous territory.

There are some asanas that I am "better" at than others, and there are some areas of my body that are more "open" than others. My forward-folding postures, for example, are technically more correct than my hip and leg rotations; not surprisingly, my spine has more range of motion than my hips. Consequently, I was feeling good during downward-facing dog, upward-facing dog, and bridge, which play to my strength, and I was feeling not so great during those side-twisting things I can't name and don't like because I don't practice them because they're not as satisfying. It's a common, self-defeating pattern.

So my totally un-yogic self-image is going up and down as I realize that I'm doing okay for an old guy, but to really make use of this practice will require more commitment than I have given it, which has been intermittent at best. It's a credit to J. that we all finished strong. A good class is like a story: it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Everybody seemed pretty happy as well as very sweaty as we eased out of inversions into savasana, spacing out flat on our backs, before bowing briefly, saying "Namaste," rolling up our mats, and heading out the door.

What's interesting about being in a yoga class with mostly women is the levelness of the playing field. The typical group includes a normal range of physical "types" - from quite young to older than me, from lean to stout, and from magazine-cover cute to just plain plain. There are usually one or two other men - same deal - bigger guys, smaller guys, some buff and some not. As far as I can tell, nobody is there for the eye-candy. Of course I look around the room and make observations based on my own twisted American up-bringing and mass-culture standards of beauty, but most of the time I'm watching the instructor in order to know what to do and keep up. We're all doing our best to do the work that makes us mindful of the body. That means legs and backs and shoulders and bottoms and chests are highly visible and in motion, yet no one wants to ogle or be ogled.

It doesn't take long to realize that some of these people are stronger than I am, more adept and experienced, more disciplined and more knowledgeable in their practice. It's clear to the naked eye who knows what they're doing, and it helps to be in a class with those people, because they show the rest of us how it's done.