NO-ga

I’m quitting yoga. Spare me your admonitions.

It’s been a lonely, solitary journey wracked with frustration, pain, stress, embarrassment, and emotional unease. Sure, I’ve noticed a physical change (when I actually stick to the regimen), but otherwise, there has been nothing positive about it. Those people in that room are in a different social class from me; I feel like an intruder, and imposter, mentally segmented off with the handicapped, old, and infirm who chance into the class. The peace-y, love-y, compassion-y, be-kind-to-yourself stuff is nothing but brahman-shit. I’m there to work out, not feel a cosmic connection, or look inward, or expand outward. That’s just not me. Does that make sense?

Maybe Hatha isn’t my path. Maybe I need to be in Hatha Flow, something less meditative. Or maybe Yoga-Yoga is the wrong place for me. It just might be. But where, then, will I feel welcomed? I imagine every yoga studio has the air of a church, a temple, where there’s an unspoken etiquette, a somber, forced peace, where everyone is there only for themselves and their connection with the divine. I feel constricted in that environment, not welcomed. I know it’s an individual path, and that you’re not supposed to compare yourself to others, but when the class is supposed to move in unison, being not on the same motion really makes you stick out. Nobody at Yoga-Yoga has made me feel welcome. So, where then? Black Swan? Some other place? I just can’t fathom running from work to change and rush to class to sit still in a room with healthy, trim, flexible caucasians who all have it right with their lives. Everybody’s broken, except for these people. Monsters.

I’ll keep my floor mat and workout shorts. Maybe I’ll take up a home practice where I don’t have to divert any attention to how fat or ugly or slouchy or unattractive I may be, where I can just do the asanas in private. Less embarrassing. I just couldn’t see myself going through it again, so I sat out of tonight’s class, looked over my membership contract, and made dinner. I’m done.