Yoga Gone Wild

Yoga Gone Wild

 

On occasion, yoga goes wild. Any yoga teacher who has been teaching long enough has got a story or two like these. It is nearly impossible to get through teaching a few thousand yoga classes without at least one thing going drastically wrong. I’m not talking minor upset: when people leave a studio because they find out you’re the sub, when boobs fall out of low cut tops, or getting kicked in the face trying to help someone into a handstand. Those are hazards that come with the job; things they warned us about in teacher training. When yoga goes wild it challenges just how centered one really has become.

                As a yoga teacher, I try to keep composure and calm in the face of any upset during class.  There can be many. People cry. This is common, especially during savasana. This usually doesn’t take more than a tissue, a kind word, and a willingness to listen. During yoga, people open up. Maybe that’s why people pass gas. Sometimes loudly; sometimes silent but deadly. When I first started teaching I would say, “Better out than in,” to lighten any embarrassment. But now, it has happened so often, I just ignore it. People arrive for class late and leave just before savasana. Students are regular people just trying to make it through a group yoga class the best they can. As a teacher, I do my best to roll through these ripples as a model of confidence balanced with concern.

                I’ve put the wild things in three categories: there are things that go wrong with the administration and infrastructure that surrounds us all during our journey through this great practice named yoga; there are disturbances in the force created by the those who come to the class, my community; and, finally, there are things that I do, as a teacher, which are my own private screw-ups.

First are administrative things that go wrong: the power goes out, you get locked out of the studio with the wrong keys, people steal mats (or other stuff), students forget to sign in, studios go out of business and neglect to pay their instructors, you show up to substitute a class and there’s already a teacher there, UPS delivers a package. This is all part of the job. What I’m talking about are things that leave our head spinning at the end of the day.

                Most of the wild administrative things disturb the holy experience of savasana, the infamous relaxation experience that might not be so. I already mentioned crying. I think that’s a good sign unless someone is crying from physical pain caused by an adjustment and not an emotional release. On the low end of the scale you’ve got your type A personalities who spend the whole time tapping their fingers and staring at the ceiling. I know they are going over their “to do” list. There’s only so much external calm that one can create in a class before it’s up to the practitioner to let themselves go. But sometimes, that calm is impossible and savasana has to be abandoned.

Once a construction crew decided to start jack hammering just outside the window of the studio as soon as I invited the class to let go of the thoughts of the day. Another time, I started teaching at a studio located above a karate studio. As soon as my mellow savasana music kicked in, from underneath the floor, we heard a chorus of, “Hughn! Hughnn!” It sounded like a gay male orgy without lube. Not nearly as calming as the bells bowls and chimes I normally opt for.

                Yep. Things go wrong because the illusion that we are in some ashram far off the grid is rice paper thin. The modern world and all its psychosis is barely held at bay even in a yoga studio. I’ve had random people wander in off the street in the middle of class and start asking me questions about yoga (this has happened at least three times in recent memory); in my mind I want to ask them, “Do I look like the internet?” Instead I always refer them to the studios phone number and website.

The community we’re in is constantly trying to make waves in the artificial calm exterior. In one class I had a demure Asian girl who’d been in my class before suddenly start yelling at me in Japanese, of which I only know a few phrases. I had to show her out of the class and pass her off to the studio owner while my class held downward dog. I’ve had one person pass out in class (It was Yom Kippur and she hadn’t eaten), but another suddenly ran out and I didn’t know what happened until the girl at the front desk poked her head in, with panic in her eyes, and asked me to come out for a minute. There was the student, pale and coming back to consciousness slumped across a bench. She claimed to have neglected eating as well.

Cell phones go off. It happens to everybody at least once. Some people get up, apologize, and turn it off. I don’t even comment on this since I think they feel bad enough. What I do comment on is when nobody gets up and the person who’s phone it is (I can usually tell whose it is by the look on their red face) tries to pass off that they don’t even know it’s there’s. Yeah right. Worse than that is when people get up and answer it and proceed to talk. (I make exception for doctors and firefighters who are on call). One teacher I know had someone hide in a corner during a lesson on inversions and talk at length. “I’m in a yoga class,” she whispered loudly, “What, no, I’ll talk to you later. I’m in a yoga class, that’s why I’m whispering,” The teacher whose calm had vanished,  finally came over and asked her, “What the hell are you doing. Get off your phone.”

                Things don’t go wrong just because of the students or the studio. I admit, it has been my own fault too. One learns quickly not to put on CD’s that skip, to know the sound system, the heating system, and the light switches. As a teacher one has to own the space. Sometimes literally. I had to pay for the space when doing a careless demonstration of a modified handstand when I stuck my foot clear through the dry wall touching the inside of the wall of the room next door. My class watched in shock as a struggled to get my foot out taking a few chunks of dry wall out with it.

                I used to wear hemp pants, but hemps not very elastic. There are only so many lunges one can do until the fabric gives. This I found out in the middle of teaching as my pants ripped right up the middle of my back side, leaving my butt hanging in the breeze. I told all the students that they got to see my delightful well sculpted “yoga-butt” at no extra cost.

People who think being a yoga instructor is all Oms and pajamas are sore mistaken. I’ve been sexually propositioned and inappropriately adjusted. I’ve dealt with sudden ant and roach invasions on students’ mats. I’ve been harassed, more than once, during a yoga auditions, for my philosophical views.

There are legends I’ve heard. Like the one about a very renowned teacher hitting someone in the jaw because they lowered their chin too much in warrior two.

                One of my favorite legends happened during a short partner yoga session when people were helping each other into handstands. In one pair, the person helping the handstand-er held them only by their pants. When the guy fell, he somehow fell straight down, leaving the helper holding his pants and undergarments, while he was on the ground pants-less. I think any class with elements of pants-lessness is not so good. However, there is yoga out there that is specifically pants-less for those who’re into that kind of thing. (Personally, aside from the one ripping incident, I keep my yoga pants in their full upright position).

                So Beware. If you’re thinking about becoming a yoga teacher, know that it’s not all fluffy feel good and flute music. If you’re a student, the next time you go to a yoga class, think about bringing an extra pair of pants, and, for buddha’s sake, turn off your cell phone.