Photo by Katherine Rountree
This isn’t one of my usual Netflix reviews. After months of avoiding a yoga class because of weather conditions or time conflicts, I was finally cornered and had no choice. This is not the first time I’ve been put in a position that could potentially lead to bodily harm, but, considering that this is finals week, I felt that this would be an appropriate closure to the quarter. Passing your classes is important, sure, but being healthy both physically and mentally should be paramount. Besides, I hear spending too much time in front of the TV rots your brain.
I’m not a patient person, so the idea of contorting my body into uncomfortable positions for indeterminate amounts of time does not appeal to me (I should also mention that I am neither flexible or balanced). So when I was told that Kathleen Pyrch, one of the instructors at SCAD Studio, would be holding a yoga class just before midnight breakfast at The Hive, I was more than hesitant to join in. But I borrowed my editor-in-chief’s (Katherine Rountree) yoga pants, and grumbled my way over. Kathleen greeted us with towels and me and the few girls present picked out our spots in the sand.
I quickly learned that I was very wrong in thinking that yoga was boring. You do not have the luxury of being bored. Every moment was spent focusing on inhaling and exhaling while mainting whatever balance you could muster. It’s easy at first — you syncopate the breaths with every pose: inhale upward facing dog, exhale downward facing dog, etc. But then your hamstrings and other muscles start talking, and focusing on the rhythm just gets harder. All of my extremities felt like weights, and my palms where begging for some tiger balm.
It’s hard to keep your pose when you want to waste every breath by screaming for mercy, but Kathleen — lovely, calm and encouraging — had the perfect aphorisms to boost my confidence.
“If you fall down you’re a human. If you get back [up and] find your pose again, you’re a yogi.” (Paraphrased.)
Even though I knew it was a farce, I felt like a yogi. In those moments when I was holding myself up in plank without shaking, or when my breathing cycle was consistent for 10 seconds in a row, there was an overwhelming feeling of pride.
In the last few exercises of the session, we laid on our backs and closed our eyes. Kathleen covered us in blankets, and gave us lavender oil to rub on our temples and hands. I had become a puddle of human goo. My muscles had been pulled in every way and stretched harder than they’d been since high school gym class, but — surprisingly — nothing hurt. I had gone through a workout, but I didn’t feel like dying. I was more alert than I had been all week, but incredibly calm.
Leaving the class, I was disoriented — almost like I was walking on bubbles through a fog. I could feel each part of my body as separate entities, but altogether whole. Everything vibrated and it was kind of scary. But damn if it wasn’t exactly what I needed to get through the next week.
Yoga makes you work for it, but the results are pretty much guaranteed. For the most part, it’s a terrible, horrible feeling, but as Kathleen said, “The good thing about yoga is that it doesn’t last forever.” I only wish the sensation aftwerwards did.
You can sign up for classes next quarter at the SCAD Studio website. I know I will. In the meantime, you can watch “Samsara” on Netflix. It’s no downward-facing dog, but it gets you pretty close to the final mindset.
