By Ed Staskus

   When I was taking yoga classes I learned much about the practice, from the thinking side of it to the action side of it. It learned yoga wasn’t any one thing but many things. It was a melting pot of ways and means. The core of it was simple enough, but the branches bore investigation, from meditation to headstand, no matter how exasperating the branches might be.

    I wasn’t able to do headstand for a long time, except against a wall, until one day I was doing it, no problem. After that I flipped wrong side up at the drop of a hat. I went from hating it to loving it. When a woman toppled out of the pose and crashed into me in a class, I thought, man, what an amateur! I changed my tune when I almost killed myself trying to get a grip on handstand. I never did get the hang of it.

   When it came to the doing of yoga the instructors were all different, all sincere, all good coaches with good intentions. They demonstrated the nuts and bolts of poses. They explained the idea behind them. They helped with adjustments. They encouraged us, which was a good thing, if encouragement was what you needed. Hope and encouragement are two of the best things you can give another person. For my part, lack of encouragement has never been a problem. I am irascible enough to not care too much about sticks and carrots. I mind my own business and keep in mind what Ezra Pound said, which was, “I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn’t irascible.”

   One element of studio classes always bothered me, however, which was the catch phrases the instructors used. Some lingo like drishti, bandhi, and chaturanga was helpful to know. Everything seemed to revolve around down dog and tadasana, making it easy to jump to attention when hearing those words. Lift your leg, open your chest, and bring your feet together were sensible and understandable. Most of the new age cliches, however, got under my skin.

   “Love yourself” was one of the new age cliches. I understand living in your own skin but always thought loving yourself was either narcissism or some kind of mental disorder reserved for celebrities. I sometimes thought being a celebrity might be fun because, if I was boring somebody they would naturally think it was their own fault, they being nobody’s.

   “Inhale the future, exhale the past” was another one. Breathing is breathing. It’s not a trick or a metaphor. It’s a fact of life. Breathing consciously or unconsciously, awake or asleep, running a 10K or while doing Chair Yoga, is staying alive. Not breathing for a couple of minutes is losing life’s good luck charm. As for me, whenever I feel blue I go for a walk in the Cleveland Metroparks where the breathing is free and easy.

   What did exhaling the past mean? Exhaling the past would mean puffing away everything you have learned and know. The past informs the present. The past is gone, sure, but it isn’t going anywhere. As for inhaling the future, who can wait that long? When I was on the yoga mat scuffling to keep up, I had to gulp air right now, not in the future. Besides, instructors were always saying, “Be in the present.” Today was yesterday and is going to be tomorrow soon. Every asana, which is what the poses are called, was always right now. Breathing right now is what matters, never mind the past or the future.

   “Letting go is the hardest asana” was hard to take. Nobody who has ever taken a Bikram Yoga or Ashtanga Yoga class can possibly believe this. Bikram in a sweatbox is a torture chamber and Ashtanga is simply torture. After finishing those classes letting go isn’t hard. It is the easiest most wonderful thing in the world to breathe a sigh of relief. I have seen men and women letting go at Bikram Yoga studios and never coming back. What is so hard about letting go and kicking back on the sofa with a cold one after sweating out a gallon of life’s salt water?

   “Release the toxins” was a shopworn chesnut. Hearing it always reminded me of “Release the hounds.” What if I released my toxins and they started attacking others, for God’s sake? The instructors never explained the mechanics of it, except for saying nonsense like toxins come out in perspiration. There is no such thing as toxins that come out in sweat. Anyway, if I knew how to release them, assuming I was keeping toxins prisoner in my own body, I would do so without anybody having to cajole me. 

   The maxim that dazzled and perplexed the most was “It’s all yoga.” It was like saying, “It is what it is.” When I asked what it meant all I got was well-meaning mush that implied yoga was woven into the fabric of life. The life of the Mafia or the Taliban? The life of Nazis and Commies? The zany cesspool of the NRA and MAGA? There are many monsters running rampant who think they are gods and yoga is unquestionably not in their DNA. The nut cases who spill blood at schools and shopping centers with their AR-15’s don’t have a drop of yoga blood in them. They could use it but eschew it in favor of their dark fantasies.

   Even yoga isn’t exactly yoga nowadays. It might have been in the Old World, but much of it in the New World is a hodgepodge of calisthenics, jazzercize, and core work. Some studio owners don’t even bother paying lip service to the ethical and spiritual side of the practice anymore. They have bought in to the capitalist side of yoga by endlessly promoting teacher training, which costs thousands of dollars. Bikram Yoga teacher training, lasting nine weeks, cost ten thousand dollars before Bikram Choudhury fled the country, leaving behind charges of mischief behind closed doors. 

   There are practices like Naked Yoga and We’re Stoned Yoga that have as much to do with yoga as the Three Stooges have to do with Schrodinger’s cat. “Now you see it, now you don’t,” is what the cat says. Better to sleep it off than try to figure it out, although figuring it out isn’t difficult. “A child of five would understand this,” Groucho Marx once said. “Send someone to fetch a child of five.”

   Many yoga masters, like Greg Gumucio and John Friend, oozing sincerity have been the most insincere yogis ever, opting for sex and dollars. They are always banging on Heaven’s door with news of their next Ponzi scheme, except they don’t call them schemes. They call them something like conscious surrender. It is a showboat they sail on the open river, a fishing line leading back to what they are really all about. Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters, especially when the leaders tell you their sole aim in life is to help you. 

   When I looked around the west side of the North Shore it was the haves who were enjoying “It’s all yoga” the most. Those in Rocky River had the time and energy levels. Next door to Rocky River in Lakewood, where I lived, they enjoyed some of “It’s all yoga.” The problem was their income levels didn’t match up, so they didn’t have the same time or energy. The city of Cleveland, where yoga isn’t a halo except for scattered gentrified islands, it wasn’t all yoga, at all. The streets are meaner there and there isn’t the time or money to kid yourself that classes are necessary.

   It was when the head honcho at the yoga studio I went to in Rocky River started trying to convince me I should deepen my practice by taking teacher training that I stopped taking classes there. I was in my late 50s with a bad hip and skeptical about more than a few of the claims of yoga. I wasn’t teacher material, far from it. I was more anarchist than love your neighbor. They didn’t seem to be enlightened enough to see that. I wasn’t grist for the mill, either. I didn’t have the readies teacher training would require just lying around waiting for something to happen.

   I don’t take classes anymore. I practice at home by myself almost every day. There’s nothing complicated about yoga once a few basics have been mastered. It’s easier than grafting plants or installing a garbage disposal. It has lots of benefits to it, like staying in shape and finding some peace of mind. When I get on the mat at home, I get to be me, not what somebody else is telling me I should be, using buzz words that mix up being grounded with pie on the sky.

   That’s the best thing about the practice, the freedom of it, at least once I broke free of the conceits and capitalism of yoga studios.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street  http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Cross Walk” by Ed Staskus

Late summer, New York City, 1956. Big city streets full of menace. A high profile contract killing in the works. A private eye working out of Hell’s Kitchen scares up the shadows.

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRPSFPKP

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication