"HAUTE, HOT OR NOT? PART ONE"

THE YOGA CHRONICLES: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT YOGI

“Haute, Hot or Not? Part One”

All things considered, I’d rather have been comparative-shopping proctologists than yoga studios, but like a limping, slightly chubby Diogenes hoisting a lamp filled with bacon grease, my bum knee and I sallied forth to discover whether this new endeavor held for me the unaffected joy of dribbling a basketball, the mystical allure of running, or the censorious discipline imposed by golf.

How utterly Freudian is that? Id, ego and super-ego.

While my instincts told me that instruction was a primary consideration in choosing a studio, the physical plant had to be a place in which I felt at home. I am a man whose tastes run to dive bars with convivial wait staffs, greasy spoons where real chicken–fried steak can be found, and funky old gyms where there are two or three dead spots on the hardwood and the game clock still rotates rather than digitizes.

In retrospect, I suppose I was expecting them all to involve variations on a general theme gleamed from my brief flirtation with the late Seventies/early Eighties Austin counter-culture: an Early Hippie aesthetic with eastern and Asian influences and perhaps a Navajo blanket thrown in for good measure, shaggy beatniks left over from Woodstock with dirty feet speaking in muted, measured tones while sitar music provided the soundtrack. It wouldn’t have been a stretch to find an in-house dealer on premises and I would all but guaranteed the lovely scent of curry would permeate the entire joint. I was expecting at least one Buddha statue to placidly preside over the whole operation.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself in a tony cave inside a mid-rise seconds away from Highland Park, where a security guard greeted you at the door to establish whether you were someone of importance or interest. I suppressed my initial inclination to ask how long the wait for a table was. Back in the day, my brother Ben would have hit him in the palm with a C-note and told him he wanted his whole group to jump the line past the velvet rope.

It was at this point I first noted the obvious and undeniable significance of incense and candle aroma to the practice of yoga. Don’t get me wrong-.I am all in favor of a fragrant yoga studio (we’ll discuss the quaint aromas of “hot yoga” in another installment)-but I was not prepared for the ground floor cosmetics counter at Neiman Marcus. Yet here were those same sleek women- whose designer fragrances were locked in a battle royal with pungent candles and burning sticks of incense- striding purposefully through a lobby where I too could buy–for a mere $1195.00- an imitation Navajo blanket of my very own. The whole place had a distinct high-end boutique feel, down to the black American Express cards and Prada handbags.

I had narrowly avoided the “Wellness Center” which greeted me as I emerged from the elevator, which is a good thing, being that I have no earthly idea what “wellness” is or why I would want it, much less pay to get it. After at nimble feint to my right, I found myself in a moody room lit by thirteen hundred candles issuing soothing aromatics into some fairly rarefied air where lacquered bamboo shelves were overburdened with books, CDs, the above-mentioned Navajo blankets, mats, mat holders, bolsters, blocks, straps, and, of course, candles and incense. There were Indian rugs on the floor, dark paneling on the walls and alas, two futons bookending the room, presumably for those who desired a nap after class.

Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought.

The first air ball came when I asked the waif at the front desk if she minded if I took a nap before class. The response came from the Voice of the New Age. There was no mistaking it.

“Ya know, like really, they don’t like people laying down on them,” she mewed, having looked up from Twitter just long enough to miss the joke. The fact that she did not take any personal responsibility whatsoever for the prohibition made me realize- for perhaps the millionth time in the last two decades -that we really ought to keep score during children’s soccer games.

If I seem overly cynical, it is because the yoga practice I have found is genuine, honest and true, a practice to which I am totally committed and which challenges me daily. It is also the result of a journey that began much earlier than I really knew. In fact, I now see its genesis in the dank gyms of my youth where I learned life’s harsh realities:

If you aren’t good enough, no one chooses you to play on their team.

If you don’t score, the other side gets the ball and keeps it until you keep them from scoring.

If you don’t win, you sit down again and watch others play.

There are monumental truths in a pickup basketball game. In fact, the minute I embraced those undeniable truths is when I became a much better basketball player. I was forced to accept and analyze my own shortcomings in order to overcome them. I learned to pass inside to the big men, play defense which would complement my teammates, and in general make myself part of a unified whole better than the sum of its parts. It was then I began getting picked over taller, faster and more athletic players.

I was also very often the only white player in the gym in a time and place where social change was occurring but racial scar tissue remained. Acceptance of one’s circumstances and surroundings was essential to not getting your ass kicked. But that experience was much more primal than simple self-preservation or even the grudging respect I ultimately earned.

I had deliberately insinuated myself into a place where I had to no choice but to adapt, accept and surrender, a place where my self–respect derived only from vigilance, discipline and finely patterned behavior. It was also a place where no one could protect me.

In short, it was my first lesson in humility.

That same humility is the foundation of any yoga practice and remains the biggest obstacle in my yoga practice and in my life.

So my new “gym” had to have some blood, sweat and tears to it, a place where I could build my own practice without pretense or distraction. I needed the exact opposite of institutionalization and commercialization. I needed a blank canvas if I were to shed my own pretenses, distractions and affectations.

This was not it.

Even worse, I never got my nap.

NEXT TIME: “Seal this.”

© (2013)