The first yoga class I ever took was probably an accident.  I honestly do not know what compelled me to go, since I always sort of thought about yoga as stretching, which I believed was Sanskrit for “lazy”.  It wasn’t even something I was looking to do on a rest day, because I didn’t do those.  In any case, I wandered into a giant class on a Sunday afternoon at the Crunch Fitness on 2^nd avenue and 59^th street in Manhattan that I belonged to and sat uncomfortably on a borrowed mat that had been worn away slightly in several spaces at either end.  What would I be doing, I wondered, that would contribute to the wearing away?  How would I know what to do once the class started?  Why was that guy standing on his head?

Suddenly, a woman with a pixie haircut tip-toed to the front of the room in a midriff top and flowy, flowered pants.  “Welcome”, she said, in a low, half whisper, and hit play on a stereo to initiate a twinkly soundtrack that would last the duration of the class.  She said words I had never heard before and suggested movement I had never tried.  But it worked, somehow and I followed along easier than I thought I would.  What began with me comparing my every move to the students around me who had very obviously done this before, melted into a private class for me, unaware of anyone else.  I was never sweating, my usual barometer for working out, but I felt amazing.  Tension had eased, I felt stronger and by the time the 60 minutes were up, I stood and floated home.  I walked into the apartment and gushed to my husband about the gold mine of relaxation that I had found.  “You have to go with me next week”, I demanded.

Seven days came and went with impossible slowness and my husband was racing to keep up with my speed walk to the class the following Sunday.  “Just to be clear, are we racing to get relaxed?” he asked.  “I can’t believe how much you love yoga.”  He knew me.  We walked downstairs and to the back of the building, where the giant, darkish yoga room housed the smartest people in Manhattan.  Feeling a little smug about how much I learned the last time, I choose two less worn mats from the back of the pile and claimed an open spot big enough for the two of us.  I sat, stiffly in a lopsided, cross-legged position, bouncing my right leg up and down in excitement.  I lacked the flexibility of nearly everyone around me to get my legs closer to the ground.  But I was undeterred.  This magic class was going to transform me.

Seconds later, the door jumped open and an older, balding, but incredibly fit man walked in and up toward the front of the room.  “Good evening”, he offered, formally.  He hit play and there was no twinkle to his music.  Pay attention, it sang.  Be serious.  The next 60 minutes were like slipping into a bubble bath and finding crushed ice and cold gravy where the warm water should have been.  My first instructor was like a kindergarten teacher on show and tell day, this guy was a TSA employee during a random airport security pat down.  Instead of levitating, I was stiffly trying not to draw attention to myself.  My husband shot me a “you’ve got to be kidding me” stare every time he was facing my direction.  We left angry and frustrated and fighting.

What happened?  Why didn’t that guy do the yoga thing?  I pushed the door of our apartment open and went straight to my computer to pull up the Crunch Fitness class calendar.  Every Sunday afternoon looked the same.  Beginner yoga, four o’clock.  Over and over down the left-hand side of the page.  What I hadn’t previously noticed was now critically important.  Each class had a different teacher’s name underneath.  I couldn’t find the name of my teacher from last week anywhere and later found out that was her last class before moving on.  Probably to foster baby goats on a rainbow farm. I couldn’t go back and risk getting this second, sergeant yoga teacher again.  So, I tried a different studio all together and subsequently never went back to Crunch for yoga again.  I didn’t just sprint toward zen.  I sprinted away from discomfort.  I can gather that up in two sentences now, writing this years later.  But the me back then had no idea what was happening.  It was all about them and it being their fault.  I’d show them how badly they messed up by never saying a word and running away.  Only two years before that yoga class, I had gone to my first, much needed therapy session and after 45 minutes walked out and said to myself, “I know everything.  I don’t need to go back.”  I even sprinted through self-awareness. 

My third yoga class was an even bigger disaster than the second.  It started slowly and perfectly and just as I was setting my defenses down, the teacher encouraged everyone to try head stand.  But I didn’t want to try head stand.  I was barely aware of where to put my hands and feet to make the mat wear away in the right places.  Besides, as much as I wished it were different, I was the least gymnastic-y kid you ever saw.  So “head stand” was a phrase that evoked “Olympic athlete” to my twenty-something mind.  I raised my hand and shared my reluctance.  She refused to take no for an answer and twisted it into a reflection of how I might need to set down the walls that I had built up.  Fine, she totally pegged me, but that was definitely beside the point.  It was borderline dangerous.  She just kept telling me to put down my ego and stop worrying about doing it well.  Listen, lady.  That’s all well and good for like, a bite of tuna tartare if you’ve never had it.  But I couldn’t put down my ego with a fork and grab a napkin in case of emergency if I tried head stand wrong. It could leave me in traction.  I refused, proud of myself, and walked out early.

Turns out, yoga teachers are just people.  In my mind, because of my first experience, I expected every teacher to be exactly what I needed exactly when I needed it.  Clearly, I did have to put down my ego.  But like coffee shops and ice cream flavors and the pens you want to buy in bulk, not all yoga teachers are created equally and every last one of us has a different preference toward them.  Imagine trying to be mint chocolate chip in a room full of butter pecan fanatics.  Talk about a rocky road. I didn’t have this mental clarity after head stand lady, so I did what any type A overachiever with little self-awareness who didn’t know how to relax on her own would do.  I pushed myself physically in other activities and forgot about yoga for six years before trying again.

I got back in as unceremoniously as I began.  But this time I knew that I needed it.  They say a yoga pose starts to work the minute you want to get out of it.  Boy, does it.  Over those yoga-free six years, I grew my advertising career, went through infertility treatments until a successful round of invitro-fertilization (IVF) resulted in my twin daughters, left work to be a full time stay at home mom and eventually co-founded an organic kids snack food company.  I had scaffolded myself up for years with motivational quotes and books about success.  But then an 8-week meditation class and two years of therapy unequivocally cracked me open and hinted like a bulldozer that I needed more to slow down my thoughts.  I Googled “yoga class near me” and went to the first listing that popped up.  Being relatively new to my suburban New Jersey town, I didn’t recognize the address as “good” or “bad” for a yoga studio.  I was previously so focused on what I thought about my first few yoga teachers that I hadn’t considered the studios all that much.  My first experience had been in a basement, but the space was professionally curated with sleek, modern design.  The second class was on the street level, so natural light elevated the already clean, whitewashed space.  When I walked down the sidewalk in my town, with a freshly purchased mat under my arm, I paused and looked up at what I thought was the correct address.  Head tilting, I surveyed the surrounding doors, walked up the block a little and then doubled back.  Was I at the wrong place?  Nope, this was definitely it.  But the entry was tinted glass, with the names of therapists and social workers stickered in white across the middle third of the door.  Inside I could make out a small area for umbrellas and three hooks for coats and nothing else but a set of stairs up to the second floor.   I was expecting a fancy studio entrance and got my grandmother’s indoor/outdoor carpet.  Sigh.  I wanted out of the pose.  But I was already there, so I slung open the door and walked upstairs.  On the second floor, there was a common room, where stiff doctor’s office waiting room chairs were nestled in among small side tables, stacked with plants and air diffusers and sound machines, all whirring at different speeds.  All five of the office doors were closed in the semi-circle that they created, suggesting sessions inside that required privacy.  There wasn’t a person in sight and I thought about leaving before anyone saw me.  Just as I took a step backward, a man came out of a room down a small hallway I hadn’t yet noticed.

“Hello!  You are here for yoga.”  It was a statement more than a question and I mumbled hello and offered my name, unsure if we were going to shake hands or bow formally.  “My name is Alex,” he offered.  “Follow me,” and he walked back down the tiny hallway that he emerged from.  He was steady and confident but quiet, wearing an unfussy tshirt and calf-length pants.  His waist-long dreadlocks swung around his dark brown skin and when he entered a room at the end of the hall, I followed behind him and wondered if he turned into a closet by mistake.  The room was teeny tiny.  Carpeted and with an 8’ ceiling and no windows.  The cream-colored paint was glowing unevenly from the one, standing lamp in the corner.  I turned in a slow circle, mentally calculating how many walls my six-foot frame might bump up against as another woman entered the room and comfortably rolled out her mat.  She smiled, saying hello and began stretching in a way that suggested she could teach an expert level yoga class.  I felt instantly uncomfortable to know that anyone could see her and I together.  Just as I reached peak self-consciousness, a second woman entered and set up her mat on the other side of me and began stretching like the two of them were on some sort of synchronized flexibility squad.  Cool.  Flanked by the stretchy sisters in a 16 x 25 space.  I wanted out, I wanted out, I wanted out!

Before we started the class, Alex asked me a little bit about myself and I shared a self-deprecating story that glossed over playing basketball in college and focused on the horrible knee tendinitis that came out of that.  Also my general inflexibility.  I left out the part about hating yoga.  “We will reverse your knee issues,” he said, confidently. “Oh,” I laughed.  “No, you don’t understand.  I was popping 4 ibuprofin before every game that last year.  It’s pretty…” He cut me off with a simple, “we will reverse it.”

There is a reason they call it “practicing” yoga.  We should definitely use this word more often.  “Practicing being an adult” is a lot more accurate than, I had to talk to my boss about a raise today that I’ve totally deserved for 2 years but never got.  “Practicing being a parent” is truer than, I had to sit and comfort my daughter’s crushed feelings instead of driving across town and crushing that awful kid who hurt her.  Practice.  I showed up every week.  And I practiced a kind of yoga called ashtanga that prides itself on being exactly the same every class.  You build and grow and gain flexibility a little more every time.  I did this for a year.  First in that tiny, windowless room with two experts on either side of me.  Then at the end of the year in a new, slightly larger but infinitely brighter room with 8 windows, spread across two of the four walls.  The yoga was uncomfortable and hard and I fell out of the pose, as they say, more times than I’m willing to admit.  Even though they will tell you it is okay to fall out of the pose, it doesn’t feel okay to fall out of the pose and then onto the ground in a giant, embarrassing thud.  I had no choice but to be the tortoise when I’ve always been the hare.  Then one day I realized that we reversed my knee pain totally.  I also realized that I had begun to relax (a little bit) about life.

When Alex announced his upcoming and imminent move to Florida, I was worried about what would come next but quickly grateful for the replacement he found us who practiced vinyasa yoga that required new physicality and opportunities to push myself.  The repetition of ashtanga had healed me, but my life, like everyone else’s runs a well worn path.  Mine yearns for active variety.  Allison was the perfect blend of strength and calm.  She showed incredible physical strength while sharing stories and quotes and then lit candles and poured tea.  I invited friends to her class and encouraged her when she hinted about opening her own studio instead of renting out a room in a shared space.  I never considered that she would take that encouragement and open a studio 45 minutes away. 

Turns out the perfect little studio had opened in my own town months earlier and I had missed it.  Two incredible yogi women had created a sky blue, sun splashed room on the third floor of a building in the middle of town.  After one class I would have climb three more mountains to take classes there.  I became a regular.  I started gravitating toward the higher and higher intensity classes.  I was on the road of mindfulness and meaning but the physical victory of slipping into crow pose and headstand started riding shotgun.  I went to class every other day the month before my dad died and every day the month after.  Just laying still for 2 minutes at the end of class would turn on my eyes like a faucet.  But the only thing holding me back from trying handstand was the 8’ ceiling.  When the 85-degree warmth didn’t hit hard enough, I’d go one town over to the 100+ degree class. 

It took years (years) and a major back spasm injury before I realized that I was trying to win.  Yoga.  Have you ever tried to win something that is meant to relax you?  It is absurd when it’s happening and even more absurd when you realize you’re doing it.  Like the hokey pokey. 

I pared back from the extreme heat first.  Then the headstands.  Then the super physically demanding, balancing, bendy classes.  I slowed down and went back to the basics.  The teachers who knew me the longest laughed the hardest when I told them my “brand new discovery” about trying to win.  Like when you sit in class in 7^th grade and think your teacher can’t see anything you and your friends are doing.  And they can see everything you and your friends are doing.  Slow yoga teachers see me coming a mile away.  “We will reverse it,” they offer.

And that’s what it’s all about.