Every now and then but seemingly more and more, I get sent these cloyingly sickly emails full of psychobabble with sorrowful, haunting music, from new age sites or sometimes worryingly from friends. This is all because long ago, stressed out by life and young children, I succumbed. I took yoga classes. I would arrive exhausted and leave exhausted and tearful. I was not only a clapped-out parent but a loser incapable of standing on my head with my legs wrapped in a pretzel position. Don’t be fooled by the pastel colors and the incense, competition is rife amongst yogis.
About the same time I decided to give up meat for a few years. Instead of eating dead animals I took to eating dead vegetables, that didn’t help with the headstands either.
In desperation and not being able to stand the stress any longer, I gave up the excruciatingly tiresome pretzel classes and attended a meditation class where in theory you just had to sit. And it turns out listen. In this case to a teacher who wouldn’t stop talking which left me wondering whose trip I was paying for, her’s or mine.
I tried another tactic; full immersion. I went on holiday to a yoga camp with my husband and three year old daughter. It was on Paradise Island and it was paradise to look at but boy were they not letting that go to our heads. It was a regimental boot camp for the gullible. We paid a fortune for a hut with two camp beds and a broom.
The tourist boats from the hedonistic Atlantic Resort further along the island would come up close to our yoga deck. “No tea or coffee, no smoking, no drinking, and no sex,” sang the loud speakers of the Booze Cruises incredulously, whilst the camera lenses zoomed in. I didn’t smoke, but surely this place with half naked souls would be great for sex? Then the regime of four hours of daily yoga took their toll on my husband who bent down to tie his shoe lace one morning and stayed there.
Yoga and I eventually parted ways terminating the day the teacher, after having spent years of telling us that we should accept/love our bodies, turned up with a boob job. I don’t miss it.
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