Postcards from a Yoga Tourist

Note: This is a purely hypothetical writing exercise. The style of yoga described below is fictitious. And even if it weren't I couldn't be sued for slander because if the yoga personage described were real, he/she would be a public figure. )Any lawyers out there might want to give me more authorative advice.)

This week, our regular Monday night yoga class was cancelled. Since I gained 6 pounds over my long-weekend visit to my inlaws in Florida, I decided I should look for another class to take in the hopes of using up more calories than I would in my home practice.

Imagine my surpise when I found there is a new yoga studio in Montclair - home of 6 Japanese restaurants, 4 mediterranean restaurants… and now five yoga studios. Not counting church basements.

B***** has come to Montclair. And although it costs $20 for a drop-in class, they've got a deal going where you pay $25 and can take as many classes as you want during a seven-day period.

I'm up for a bargain, and a look into another yoga universe.

My short impressions first: B***** is "hot" yoga, where they keep the room above 100 degrees F, and the practice consists of the same series of 26 poses in a 90-minute class.

I found the heat to be oppressive, not something I'd want to subject myself to on any regular basis, although I must say my muscles felt good the next day - as if I'd had a very good svitz (a very very good svitz - after all, who could stay in a steambath for 90 minutes?).

I also am sure that, for me, doing the same poses in the same order every practice would become boring very soon. There are whole classes of poses that are not done (inversions are a notable example). It also seems like the poses at the start get more time than the poses at the end, because the teacher has to fit in all the poses. So certain poses always will get short shrift.

The sequence itself wasn't terrifically challenging - except for doing them in the heat.

And of course, there are the differences in the way the poses are supposed to be done. Pascimottanasa is done with a rounded back; the elbows are kept down and close to the leg in Janu Sirsana rather than extended to the sides and lifted. A different lineage, different interpretations of the pose. Different names, too.

It was interesting.

Now, I have a tendency to be analytical and frequently critical. I think being critical of other types of yoga systems is probably not very yogic. So I'm going to pretend I have an angel on each shoulder. First I'm going to let the Good Angel speak about the postive aspects of B***** yoga.

If you don't want your energy to be brought down by my negative thoughts, you can stop reading after the Good Angel stops talking.

The Good Angel asks, "what might be the benefits of B***** yoga?" Certainly the "hot" aspect is an idiosyncracy, and it makes the practice very uncomfortable. But maybe there's a good reason.

I would guess someone would say - let's call that someone "the hypothetical Mr. B*****" - that the heat encourages the tensions in the body, and the tightness in the muscles and joints, to more effectively release.

Maybe, in addition to that, the very practice of being so uncomfortable is part of the yoga - where you come to release the judgment "I am hot and uncomfortable" and merely sense in the present the heat.

The fact that there are only 26 poses makes the practice accessible to many people. After going to one class, you can go to another class in any B***** studio, anywhere, and be familiar with what's going to happen.

Maybe the hypothetical Mr. B***** has learned from his guru, and has direct experience, that these 26 poses are the most complete and concise distillation of everything you need to do in yoga to get the maximum benefit.

And maybe, in contrast to inducing boredom, doing the same poses over and over lets the practitioner go very deeply into each pose.

But wait - the Asur (one word for "demon" in Hindi) on my left shoulder is clamoring to be heard. He's such a little devil. I have to give him his turn, so stop reading if you want to avoid bad karma.

The Little Devil is imagining what might have been going on in our hypothetical Mr. B*****'s mind when he developed B***** Yoga as a system and exported it to the U.S.:

"Yoga is becoming big business in the West. How can I best use this sacred ancient system to fit the commodity-minded American consumer?

Let's see… I'll make the room HOT so that the students get all sweaty-wetty, because American fitness nuts think that if they get all sweaty-wetty, they have had a good workout. That's a plan!

And none of this hundreds-of-poses like that stodgy old Mr. Iyengar. How many poses can I fit in 90 minutes… 26, that's a good number.

A small enough number so that after a few classes, the students can think they've mastered the basics. They're too culturally illiterate to realize that they might need to know a lot more before you become a master. Americans think they they can purchase anything, and are used to quick fixes.