idle chatter

there are yoga instructors who play loud, contemporary music during their classes. matt reyes, steve ross, tom morley, and david romanelli fall into this category. some students find the music too distracting. some say that it detracts from the "sacredness" of yoga itself. so they go elsewhere. i find the music quite motivating (although i have to admit there are times when i can't hear the teacher's instructions over the music), so i continue to attend those classes.

and then there are yoga instructors who barely play any music at all during their classes. and to fill the relative silence, they continue to talk about life, staying centered, listening to your body, ad infinitum. perfect examples are bryan kest, saul david raye, and seane corn. some students can't take the non-stop blah-blah-blah, so they stay away from those teachers. as for me, i honestly don't remember what they're saying because i'm busy tuning them out and doing exactly what they tell me to do; that is, staying centered and listening to my body instead of them. so i continue to attend those classes too.

i've never really had a problem with the choice of music nor the supposed-spiritual ramblings of a teacher. until today.

i somehow ended up having to take a late morning yoga class after my run this morning. the only class that fit was daniel head's noon class at power yoga west. since all the teachers i'd taken classes with at that studio had led me through tough yet enriching sessions, i figured that daniel's class would be similar.

but it wasn't.

he started us out in child pose... for what seemed like an inordinately long time. i think i actually fell asleep while waiting for him to call out the next pose.

then he had us doing sun salutations. ok, so we were getting warmed up and needed to move slowly. but we would get into a pose, then he would talk. and talk. and talk. and all this time we were patiently holding that same pose. it got to the point where i wondered if he was so caught up in what he was saying that he had forgotten all about us. so somehow, instead of loosening up as i was supposed to, i started tensing up because i just wanted him to stop talking!

this went on during the entire sun salutation A and B series. the thought of rolling up my mat and walking out of the room crossed my mind many times. but i decided to stay, partly because i didn't want to make a commotion (especially since i was somewhere up front) and partly because i figured the class HAD to get better. after all, the room was full, so he must have had a captive audience for a reason.

and better it did eventually get. once he had decided that all the ab work we did early on had us sufficiently warmed up, things started getting more vigorous and fast-paced. we flowed from one pose to another. we held poses until our muscles screamed for mercy. we opened our hips, we arched our backs. at that point, it really didn't matter what he said because i had learned how to tune him out.

the class ended in savasana, with "one of these things first" by nick drake (found on the garden state soundtrack) playing in the background. it was different, but at least it was music i liked. and he finally stopped talking.

om shanti. peace...