The New Yogis Resolution

I have been teaching yoga for a long time now. I have been teaching yoga in Washington DC for an awful long time. I started before yoga hit it big here in our nation’s capital, before men and women carried yoga mats to work with them along with their briefcases and palm pilots. Being from San Francisco it always boggles my mind that there are humans that have never done yoga. Yet every January, I am reminded that here in Washington DC, that is, in fact, the case.

Taking up yoga sounds like a really tremendous resolution to have as the old year melts into the new. New yogis may have thought of it a while back, announcing the splendid idea to friends and family. Perhaps a spouse dutifully wrapped up a brand new yoga mat and put it under the tree next to other fine gifts. And as 2007 approaches, the eager yogic beavers are doing the research. “What kind of class should I take? Where should I look?”

We’ve all seen the yoga classes at the gym. As we finish up our mindless spurts of cardio, one can see the people through the steamy glass on their sweaty mats. They are glistening and breathing hard, but also doing some lying around, which is appealing. It doesn’t look that hard. Hell, Madonna does it and she’s almost 50.

And so, the first or second week of January, they wander as if accidentally into my yoga class. They are nervous but confident. They know themselves to be athletic people, they work out. They are eager and scared. And so it begins.

I get some kooky looks from folks as the class progresses. Most everyone knows that yoga has some spiritual or religious aspects, and the newbies are generally uncomfortable as I speak of such nonsense as “prana” and these “chakras” that I insist everyone has. The eyes of the new kids tell me in no uncertain terms that they are here for the work out and not a sermon. Fine, I’m used to that by now. But they try and sweat and try and do their absolute best to twist and stretch. In fact, they try way, WAY too hard. As fresh students, they are unconscious of the fact that yoga is not a challenge in contorting one’s body to look like the teacher’s. It is a tool to give up the need to compete and compare and judge oneself. It is in fact an excursion for each person to discover what one’s body desires, what each body can do that was never imaginable, what happens when we gently suggest, when we lovingly move through fear. Yoga is a means to acceptance, without striving and pushing and harming. When everywhere else we are taught to accomplish and press on and grind and adjust and “suck it up”, in yoga we are willing to learn the training that manifests when we simply, allow.