Wait. Yoga’s Not a Competitive Sport, Is It?

Here we are, half-way through January, and the newly reformed have yet to give up.

And the yoga studio is packed.

It’s all part of the practice, I think to myself. He/she doesn’t know an outward expression of calm is part of it, that his/her heavy sighs and grunts are distracting others, doesn’t know to be cognizant of where his/her feet/arms are in relation to his/her mat…

It’s enough to drive me/you/one mad.

It’s a New Year’s resolution of theirs, no doubt; and I’m sure all across the world something or other is full to bursting in January, what with people turning over leaves in varying stages of new-ness, only to return to normal operations by mid-February.

I can’t wait.

Not that I don’t wish our newly arrived brothers and sisters success! Of course, I do! Anything else would be stingy and mean-hearted, and I am neither of those things.

True, I once told a panhandler to “touch me and I’ll scream”.

And I have wished ill to droopy-drawered men, their pants belted just inches above their knees.

And then on one occasion I screamed across the street at a man known for consistently failing to pick up after his German Shepherd in the park to “…never come back here! I know who you are!”

Hmm. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen that guy or his dog in almost four years…

OK. So I’m not stingy, anyway.

Still, attendance at the yoga studio will be like last year, and the year before. They come in, riding the high of heartfelt resolutions and tingly with the excitement of the first week of yoga being free and in short measure discover that a hot class makes you sweat by the bucket, that holding a position until you tremble is hard work, and that the firm young bodies surrounding you are a blow to the ego.

In time, however, should they stay, come the discoveries that one adapts to the heat, that the mind gives up long before the body, that the nubile youngsters lack the determination of their elders and give up easily.

And that there’s nothing that feels as good as successfully doing the splits next to someone half your age.