Discovering Yoga

The Little Yoga Book
by Erika Dillman

The Yoga Dictator

I had done some yoga breathing once when a yoga teacher came to my office to conduct a relaxation workshop. The breathing exercises had helped my lungs and my head feel better, although I felt a little funny lying on the floor making breathing noises in front of my co-workers. Something that the teacher said had stuck with me, even though I didn't fully believe it. She said that yoga helped balance and unite mind and body.

Curious to find out more and propelled by desperation, I signed up for my first yoga class, despite a lingering skepticism. Breathing exercises in my office were one thing, but I was sort of a jock. I had never appreciated the value of an exercise that didn't involve sweat, pain, and competition. And weren't yoga people kind of weird? I wasn't too sure about meeting them on their own turf.

I associated yoga with a murky, mystical, other-worldly aura. I imagined dark rooms filled with patchouli incense and rows of thin, ascetic men and women sitting in the lotus position, chanting in trance-like unison. I couldn't shake from my mind the pictures I'd seen in yoga books of gaunt, solemn men, wearing what looked like giant diapers, with one leg wrapped around their necks, and cold, expressionless women in Jack LaLanne? style polyester unitards nonchalantly twisting, bending, and lifting themselves into torturous positions.

These images intimidated me because I knew that MY body could never do that, but also because I didn't feel any energy or joy from the pictures. They were too serious and nobody seemed to be having any fun. I thought that they must all belong to a secret club where everyone was miserable. That was the price you had to pay for enlightenment.

Unfortunately, my worst suspicions were confirmed when I attended my first yoga class. I was pretty nervous about being there because I didn't like putting myself into unfamiliar physical situations when I was so out of shape. I didn't know the rituals, the lingo, the protocol. And I had long before lost all confidence in my frail body.

The teacher, a brisk, short, hard-eyed woman in a tight aqua-blue unitard, came in, took my money (scolded me for paying with a check), and sent me to the other side of the room. As other people filed in and took their spaces on the floor, I started to feel dreadful. Once the class began I had no idea what the teacher was doing or how to breathe.

I struggled with every pose, feeling weak, tired, and foolish. At one point, the teacher marched over to me, grabbed my head and pulled it down into her face, rubbing my forehead with her thick, strong thumbs, commanding, “You cannot do yoga with a grimace! Open your third eye.” I was dying. I'd tried so hard to blend in and not make a spectacle of myself, and there I was with everyone looking at me and my third eye refusing to cooperate. I was determined to make it through the class, though, and I stuck with it, trying not to grimace as I twisted and contorted my scrawny, inflexible body.

Occasionally, the yoga dictator came over and yanked the hair on top of my head to remind me to stand up straight. Then, just when I was starting to feel like she'd forgotten about me, she called me to the front of the room to help her demonstrate a pose for the class. She stood bolt upright and started tightening and flexing her buttock muscles and rotating her ankles in some bizarre pose. Then she grabbed my hands, placed them on her butt and told me to hold on to her, then slide my hands down her legs to her ankles, so I could feel what her muscles were doing.

Okay. I'm from the Midwest; we don't touch other peoples' butts. Not for any reason. And we certainly don't do it in front of a room full of mirrors and people dressed in black leotards. I was mortified. As soon as class was over, I fled, traumatized (but with better posture). I never went back, and it took an entire year for me to try yoga again.

I realized later that I had let my misconceptions about yoga get to me, and my pride keep me from looking for another class. The fact that the yoga dictator has classes to teach means that some people enjoy and thrive under a strict, disciplined format, but that style didn't work for me.

Before my illness I had always jumped into new situations, able to start in the middle, but that wasn't who I was when I was sick. I needed a different approach. I had to start at the beginning, and I needed basic instructions, patience (from myself and from my teacher), and a minimum of jargon about third eyes.

I Start Bending

About the Author

Erika Dillman is a freelance health, fitness, and sports writer and editor based in Seattle, WA. Her articles have been published in a variety of regional and national publications, including Runner's World, Self, Northwest Health, Hemispheres , Ms., Northwest Runner, The Melpomene Journal, and Women's Sports & Fitness.