Competitive Yoga (and other white people concerns)
For a practice that includes some silly paraphernalia (here's looking at you stretch pants, foam blocks and carry-around mats), yoga is a serious business in Fog City. Citizens devote as much energy and time to yoga as they do to their dietary needs and Halloween. Turn your head and you'll spot a space to stretch. Boston may celebrate a high Dunkin' Donuts density but a casual glance on google maps provides 796(!) places to get a yoga fix within the 7 mile by 7 mile county of San Francisco. So if there's so much supply and so much demand, why do I constantly feel like the only kid who forgot to do his homework? Did everyone move here as a previous yogi?
I'll admit it - I'm a dabbler by nature. With ten plus years of casual yoga behind me, however, I feel confident enough to hold about a dozen poses on my living room yoga mat (and to know them well by name). Never had I considered yoga competitive until I moved to San Francisco. More worrisome, I feel swept up in the seriousness of it all. Case in point: I had been attending my Sunday morning Hatha yoga class in the Castro's 24 Hour Fitness. Hatha is a gym-appropriate strand of yoga that focuses more on strength-building postures. For weeks I had groaned to self at how easily and competitively my yoga-mates levitated into "crow" every week leaving me behind in shameful "child's pose." But the bigger slap in the face was that the gym management actually cancelled the class and replaced it with a kick-boxing session. Was the city becoming more aggressive?
Dazed and dismayed I ended up stumbling into a Kundalini co-op studio a block from my house to fill the void of my Sunday morning. Kundalini is the real deal; it's like where the technology of M.I.T. meets the free-love of U.C. Berkeley. The Big K (at least that's what I call it) has the visage of a sex-positive cult; it's the "yoga of awareness" brought to you by Yogi Bhajan, some dude from India who exported the practice to California in 1969. Kundalini believes that there is a serpent at the base of your spine that travels through all the chakras as you move through the breathing exercises, poses and mantras. Newcomers have to be especially cautious because you might get bitten by this serpent if your mental health is not vigorous. Too much awareness can have its own venom.
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I feel somewhat comforted that we are in the Chinese Year of the Snake so maybe Kundalini is a good fit. Like most things, slowness is of the essence even when the hedonistic rush of go-go California argues otherwise. My biggest fear is that this city as a whole is turning me into Chris Traeger on NBC's Parks and Recreation. God, grant me some self-deprecating humor so I don't turn into a super human. Therein lies the real competition - between the selves we'd like to maintain and the selves we're actually becoming.
I'll admit it - I'm a dabbler by nature. With ten plus years of casual yoga behind me, however, I feel confident enough to hold about a dozen poses on my living room yoga mat (and to know them well by name). Never had I considered yoga competitive until I moved to San Francisco. More worrisome, I feel swept up in the seriousness of it all. Case in point: I had been attending my Sunday morning Hatha yoga class in the Castro's 24 Hour Fitness. Hatha is a gym-appropriate strand of yoga that focuses more on strength-building postures. For weeks I had groaned to self at how easily and competitively my yoga-mates levitated into "crow" every week leaving me behind in shameful "child's pose." But the bigger slap in the face was that the gym management actually cancelled the class and replaced it with a kick-boxing session. Was the city becoming more aggressive?
Dazed and dismayed I ended up stumbling into a Kundalini co-op studio a block from my house to fill the void of my Sunday morning. Kundalini is the real deal; it's like where the technology of M.I.T. meets the free-love of U.C. Berkeley. The Big K (at least that's what I call it) has the visage of a sex-positive cult; it's the "yoga of awareness" brought to you by Yogi Bhajan, some dude from India who exported the practice to California in 1969. Kundalini believes that there is a serpent at the base of your spine that travels through all the chakras as you move through the breathing exercises, poses and mantras. Newcomers have to be especially cautious because you might get bitten by this serpent if your mental health is not vigorous. Too much awareness can have its own venom.
.jpg)
I feel somewhat comforted that we are in the Chinese Year of the Snake so maybe Kundalini is a good fit. Like most things, slowness is of the essence even when the hedonistic rush of go-go California argues otherwise. My biggest fear is that this city as a whole is turning me into Chris Traeger on NBC's Parks and Recreation. God, grant me some self-deprecating humor so I don't turn into a super human. Therein lies the real competition - between the selves we'd like to maintain and the selves we're actually becoming.
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