So you teach yoga, huh?

I have been surpised in the past few months by how many people find out I’m a yoga teacher. It comes up in conversation much more than I had expected.

I have told co-workers, grocery story cashiers, my dental hygienist, the woman who put me under for my wisdom teeth extraction, one of the VPs of the company I work for, etc, etc, all without necessarily meaning to. I have experienced a wide variety of responses to the conversation.

Here are some I’ve heard more than once:

• Oh, yoga, my wife does that.
• I used to do yoga but I stopped.
• Yoga, huh? Would that stop my back from hurting?
• I’m not flexible enough to do yoga.
• So can you put your foot behind your head?
• I’m too arthritic to do yoga.
• I don’t like hippies.
• Would that help me with my balance?
• Does that make you more coordinated?
• In high school I could stand on my head.
• I’m too old for that.
• I hate the yoga parts of P90X.
• So is that like pilates?
• If I come to your class, you’re not going to take photos of me, are you?
• So I guess you’re a vegetarian then.
• Have you gone to India?

And here are a few unique responses that I especially loved:

• My wife does yoga in the living room with a DVD, and I poke her and try to make her fall over. She gets mad at me.
• I went to a yoga class once and I had to leave the room to throw up.
• I’m not putting on spandex and bending in those positions in front of people.

And today I got this one, which was a first:

No wonder you’re so calm and centered.

I guess my life’s work is complete : )

Namaste, and happy weekend. What do people say when they find out you’re a yogi/ni?
Jamie

Confessions of a yogini with multiple personalities

Lately, I have been feeling a bit like an imposter. I don’t feel like just Jamie all day long, I feel like a different person during different parts of my day.

In the morning, I grudgingly wake up to my alarm and put on my cardigans and my dress pants, and I go to work. I work in a cubicle and sit at a computer most of the day. Since a lot of people in Bloomington-Normal do the same thing, the haughty and derisive around here have taken to calling us “corporate drones”.

I do not have an overwhelmingly important job, nothing vital hinges on my decisions, I do not own a Blackberry. At least on the good days, I do not feel like a drone. I can’t decide if these two sentences are contradictions are not.

My husband teaches three out of the four work nights of the week, so I have large chunks of evenings to myself. Now that the weather’s nice, sometimes I rollerblade down to the park and get some exercise. I walk my dogs. I spend a little bit of time each night fulfilling obligations: dishes, laundry, other chores. Sometimes I meet a friend for dinner or drinks. I spend lots of time reading blogs and keeping up with various internet things. Other than that, the majority of my free time is spent reclining on the couch, reading a novel. It is my favorite way to relax.

Once a week I take a yoga class and twice a week I teach. During these times, I feel most like myself — I feel like the happiest, most positive and clear-headed version of myself I can be.

When I am at work, you have to look hard for signs that I practice and teach yoga. I leave a few hints, but not many. The most obvious is that I can’t sit normally in a desk chair. I sit sideways, with my legs under the arm rest, or have one knee bent with my chin resting on it. I sit cross-legged a lot. I often do odd-looking stretches when my shoulders and back start to feel tense. I do not know how other people go all day without doing them! I almost always take off my shoes and leave them on the floor where my feet should be. I also wear very little makeup and jewelry, which is not yoga, per se, but relates more to Yoga Jamie than Corporate Jamie.

The dissonance of this situation hit me when last week when I was at class, as a student. I shared with some other students where I work and what I do, and it just felt strange coming out of my mouth while being Yoga Jamie. It didn’t seem like me, although I know I do it for nearly 40 hours every week. In the same way, when I am at work, I don’t feel like a yogini. No one I work with practices yoga regularly, and most of my co-workers know just the bare minimum about yoga, my teaching style, what I’m working on, what it means to me. Some of them read this blog, but that is likely the closest they will get to know Yoga Jamie.

I sometimes feel guilty pursuing other leisure activities besides yoga. I love yoga and as I said, I love Yoga Jamie. But I rarely practice at home, because – at least at this particular moment in time – I would rather do other things while I’m there. I want my blocks of time to read a novel, play with my dogs, visit friends. I don’t practice every day. I frequently chose to be Reading Jamie over Yoga Jamie.

There are lots of moments in my life where I think “I don’t live like a yoga teacher”. I don’t drink caffeine, but I almost always have a cocktail on the weekends. I love to sleep in whenever possible, sometimes even till (*gasp*) 9:30, a fact I hide with shame around my friends with children. I love to eat junk food and French fries and chicken. I don’t fit a yoga sterotype, or any stereotype.

I am sharing this because I want to know if it’s typical. Do other yoginis feel this way? What about those whose full-time job is to teach yoga? Is there still a gap to bridge between yoga and personal life? Do people with different hobbies feel this way, too – does someone passionate about painting, or cars, or writing, feel like a different person throughout other moments of the week?

More importantly, is yoga a unique passion because it informs the other moments of our lives? Because I can say “no” to my mat, am I exercising the balance I learned while I was on it? Since I can focus on being present as Reading Jamie and maintaining my breath as Corporate Jamie, am I always Yoga Jamie, whether I realize it or not?

Namaste,
Jamie

photo credit: http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/womens-health/fitness/yoga/article/-/6218203/em-yoga-em-for-workaholics/

Yoga in the movies

If I knew nothing of yoga before this weekend, I would believe yoga to be nothing more than an oversexed version of Pilates. Why? Because I went to the movies, twice, to see “Valentine’s Day” and “Couples Retreat”. Both movies included yoga, and both made me cringe.

In the latter, yoga is something that scantily-clad, flirtatious women do outside to impress a macho football star. They weren’t so much doing asanas as just shoving their naked hips in his direction and stretching to show off their bare midriffs.

In the former, a yoga teacher is a total pervy-Fabio-type who can’t – or just doesn’t bother to – discern between a yoga adjustment and a sensual touch, and “spanks” his participants as a form of encouragement (and later drinks with them).

In fact, the most accurate “yoga” moment in either of the movies was in “Valentine’s Day” when the 5th grader’s nanny told him to calm his anxiety by “doing that breathing thing I taught you”, at which point the little boy starts Chandra Bheda, or cooling single nostril breathing (through his left nostril, opening the passive side of the body).

What do you think about the way Hollywood illustrates yoga? Is it enough to make you shudder, or am I taking it too seriously? Surely people realize that’s not what yoga is like, just like the movie is not what life is like, right? Right?

Namaste,
Jamie

Re-defining yoga

18 hours, 45 minutes!

There is a lot of talk out there about what yoga is and is not.

Yoga is not a religion for me, but in a lot of ways the contemporary yoga discourse is very similar to contemporary religious discourse: there’s a lot of “my way is the only way” going on. The good thing about the internet, of course, is that you can choose what you read! : ) And for every blogger or teacher who is adamant that they have defined yoga the “right” way, there are five others who are open-minded, willing to try new things, and are consciously refraining from judgment.

As my dear loyal readers know, in January I challenged myself to practice yoga daily for at least 30 minutes. I think I did a pretty good job.

This experience opened my mind because it not only challenged me to get on my mat, it also challenged me to define yoga differently. My definition now is much broader and forgiving. Before, my practice consisted primarily of vigorous Vinyasa classes – but, believe it or not, there are many times one is just not in the mood for 8 sun salutations! For instance, when it’s Friday evening at 11:30 pm.

So here are my “notes” (so to speak) from the month of January.

Yoga does not necessarily have to

• include sun salutations
• include any warrior poses
• make you sweat

Yoga can be

• one pose or a hundred poses
• energizing or calming
• empowering or humbling
• spiritual or silly
• meditating
• supta baddha konasana for 15 minutes, then child’s pose for 15 minutes

While practicing yoga, you can

• play music, but only if you want to
• use nothing, or use lots of props (blankets, straps, blocks, bolsters, dining room chairs)
• follow the rules or make up your own
• belly laugh at your laptop when your yogaglo instructor suggests you jump into crow pose from plank
• sing at the top of your lungs to a Brandi Carlile album – if that is just the kind of day you had
• let your dog in the room to give you kisses while in savasana

What about you guys? What practices have you had that break the rules and defy conventions?

Namaste,
Jamie

Have you seen this calendar? It cracks me up! My sister got it for me for Christmas.

I also read these books in January! Busy month!

“I wanna quit the gym!”

I wanna quit the gym. I joined there last October with the intention of finding a nice balance between cardio and yoga. I liked it because it was only $37.50 a month for all of the classes, the pool, the cardio equipment, the locker room, and child care (which I don’t need, but it’s nice that it’s there, right?).

Well, in the past year I’ve probably hit the treadmill and elliptical about 12 times combined, which I’m ashamed to admit. But there it is. I do a really good job at a lot of things in my life, but I’m pretty terrible at exercising enough. I could do yoga much more often, too, but that’s another post.

So when I joined the gym, there was a 1 hr 15 min class on Monday and Wednesday…which has slowly dwindled to a 1 hr class on Monday only. So I pay $37.50 a month for four classes and the (completely unrealized) potential of a cardio workout, which is still not a bad price, except that I’m busy (and I make excuses) and I don’t remember the last time there was a month that I made it to all four Monday classes. So really I pay $37.50 a month for 2-3 classes. And I’d still be okay with that because I like my teacher a lot, except that she and I are trained in the same format, so her classes are a lot like mine and if I’m paying $12.50-$18.75 for a class I’d like it to really blow my mind.

(Those of you who know me in real life can tell I feel guilty about all of this because I’m rambling and “talking” so quickly and justifying every other sentence I say.)

So it brings to mind the Friends episode where they all find out that Chandler belongs to the gym even though they’ve never seen him go. It goes a little like this:

Chandler: Oh, yeah, I’m a gym member. I try to go four times a week, but I’ve missed the last… twelve hundred times.
Ross:  So why don’t you quit?
Chandler: You don’t think I’ve tried? You think I like having 50 dollars taken out of my bank account every month? No, they make you go all the way down there! Then they use all these phrases and peppiness to try to confuse you. And then they bring out Maria.
Ross: Who is Maria?
Chandler: Ah, Maria. You can’t say no to her. She’s like this lycra/spandex covered gym… treat.

So, Ross thinks that’s absurd and goes with him to provide moral support while Chandler quits. Chandler has to explain to the associate why it’s a good idea that he’s quitting (“I hate it here! Everything you have is very heavy!”) and Ross ends up joining the gym because they bring out Maria again.

from http://www.ooooopanda.com/iwannaquitthegym/

Well, I just called my gym and asked about the terms of my membership. I found out all I have to do is quit three days before I’m billed for my next month and that’s that. No one cares if I quit or not. There’s definitely no svelt awesome man waiting to talk me out of quitting.

If I do quit the gym, I plan on joining yogaglo because over on Eco Yogini’s blog, she says it works really well for her.

There’s only one hiccup with this plan: I currently have three dogs living in my house. So can I really take an online yoga class and keep them distracted enough with treats and toys so they’re not tickling me with their tongues while I’m in a headstand? Or can I have the willpower and inner meanness to make them stay in their cages an extra hour while I practice (and try to tune out the guilt-inducing whining I may hear)? I don’t know.

So my question to you guys is this: Can I quit the gym? Am I an insane, unheard of type of yogini who hates cardio and doesn’t care if I ever see another elliptical in my life? So many people I know who are serious about yoga are also serious about running, tennis, swimming, something. Not me. Am I an imposter?

I feel like if I quit the gym, I’ll have to really step it up with my yoga practice to compensate for the cardio exercise I’m missing (which I don’t do anyway). So that is almost putting too much pressure on myself.

Do any of you out there have pets? How do you practice while Fido and Mr. Kitty are around?

I obviously need help. Please do a better job for me than Ross did for Chandler.

Namaste,
Jamie