I love yoga. My attempts at yoga have always been filled with unique experiences.
A few months back, I call up a yoga centre close to home to find out its exact location so I could join the classes.
A few weeks later I call up to find out about the timings of the classes.
Days later I call and ask the friendly lady “Where is the centre again?”
Yet again, I dial her number to see whether they provide yoga mats or “should I bring my own?” And she patiently answers.
Weeks later I still hadn’t joined the class. I say enough is enough and make my way to the said location. I can’t find the building. So I call her up to say I’m there, could she please tell me where I’m supposed to turn?
But what do you know, she refuses to pick up my calls. I guess she’s saying enough is enough! I call her again to say I’m dead serious about joining her classes this time but she doesn’t budge.
So return home cursing myself for being so lax.
Maybe I’m just not meant to do yoga. I remember the last time I went yoga classes was back in college.
A gang of us enrolled thinking that’s a good way to start your day. We were expecting to be uplifted spiritually and pass the rest of the day in peace. We couldn’t have been more wrong.
The first day a prominent (?) lawyer, the guruji’s disciple – came to teach us the basics and said what a great Guruji has agreed to teach us. When she spoke of him she had a surreal smile on her. He the compassionate one, he the one who knows everything there is to know about yoga, he the one who’ll change us all. We were already feeling holy and waiting to meet him.
So the next day, we all arrive rather early in the morning, still groggy and wait for the guruji and his lawyer disciple. Our first impression of the guruji was non-newsworthy. He looked like any other yoga teacher. Long unkempt hair, with the trademark beard and a semblance of a benevolent smile. Can’t remember whether he was bare-chested or clothed.
The classes began as I had expected. I’d taken some classes in school (there’s another story) so I knew the basics. Our teacher was no Baba Ramdev, but he had his own style. At the end of the class, guruji whispers into his disciple’s ear and she smiles shyly and turns to us and says, “bring some music the next day”. Guruji chips in “music is good for the soul…”
We were instructed that the music had to be fast, to be able to dance to it. So the next day we bring our collection of the latest pop music. Towards the end of the class he gestures towards the CD player, our cue to get up and dance.
So the girls, around 20 of us, slowly move to the beat, still unsure of what exactly we were supposed to do. We’d never heard of yoga classes with pop music. It seemed like an oxymoron. Anyway, apparently we weren’t getting right so guruji shows us how. He starts with jumping jacks. He spins round and round, his long hair all over the place.
And we girls froze, in slow motion we look at each other, keeping one eye on our beloved guruji. Were we supposed to jump too? Saying it felt like something out of a movie would be a cliché, but that’s how it was. Really.
So that’s another experience with yoga. But my affair with it started in school like I mentioned. It was part of our PE class. Every other day for an hour or so we practiced yoga. It calmed us boisterous girls down. I don’t remember much about what our American PE teacher taught us (he himself was learning it from books and teaching us). But I do remember how the classes always ended-with me sleeping soundly.
Of all the yoga moves, Savasana is what I loved. Sleeping was the best part of yoga. Mr Patterson’s soft voice would lull us to sleep, “Toes facing out…palms open…back rested flat on the ground…close your eyes…” And I’d invariably be the one with the soundest sleep. So much so that at the end of every single class, he’d be on his knees tapping my toes gently nudging me out of my slumber. Embarrassing.
But I’m not giving up. I’m going to find another yoga centre and see what that one has to offer me in experience. So if you know of a place that’ll take in an erratic student who loves to sleep in every class and doesn’t mind a little music thrown in; you know who to shout out to.
Source:http://in.yfittopostblog.com
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