I have absolutely no complaints about my recent trip to Paris. Really, how could I? It’s Paris! (Okay, I don’t understand why it’s impossible to find a restaurant that’s open for dinner before 7 p.m., but that’s just a quibble.)
But in some ways, as others have remarked, there’s no place like home. One of the things I did regret, just a bit, about my trip to Paris was that it forced me to miss two of my weekly yoga classes. As hardships go, I’ll admit that this is not in the major leagues. And I did actually see a yoga studio or two in Paris where I suppose I could have dropped in (yes, they do yoga now in Paris, and they even jog, although they still smoke). But it wouldn’t have been MY yoga class.
Some years ago, a neighbor of mine opened a yoga studio literally around the corner from my house. I was overjoyed. I’d been taking yoga for years, but my class wasn’t in the neighborhood and … well, let’s just say it left something to be desired. I quickly signed up for a Friday morning class at the new studio, imagining a roomful of students–mostly women on their day off from work, since Friday is a frequent day off for part-timers. It would be cozy and chatty, and there would no doubt be familiar faces from the neighborhood, perhaps even a few actual friends.
So I was surprised when I showed up for the first class and there was just me and one other student–a man. The teacher was a man, too. Okay, I told myself, nothing necessarily wrong with that. Just give it a chance. But the teacher had a weird affect, and his idea of background music was nonstop Hare Krishna chants. And the other student, who claimed he’d never taken yoga before, was somehow able to hold downward dog for what seemed like ten minutes straight. Adopting an extremely un-yoga-like attitude, I felt I had to keep up with the guy—after all, I’d been taking yoga for years. My arms ached for days afterwards.
I didn’t go back to the yoga studio for quite a while after that first class. But when I did finally decide to give it another try, four years ago now, I found at last the Friday morning class of my imagination—-and a teacher who would have been the yoga teacher of my dreams, if I’d had one.
I’m not by nature a spiritual person, and I’m basically looking for stretching and exercise, but Anne is somehow able to make the more Zen aspects of yoga appealing to me. Her yoga class is a much-needed oasis of calm in my week, a place to pause and reflect as well as to stretch and bend.
This morning Anne talked about having gone to a talk by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen spiritual master who spoke earlier this week in a large downtown theater. It was a very un-Washington event, Anne remarked: very simple, very quiet. And yet, there in downtown Washington, it was sold out. There must be a sizeable number of Washingtonians who are craving an un-Washingtonian experience.
And our yoga class—which is packed wall-to-wall with students every week—might be considered un-Washington as well. Oh, it has its Washington aspects. Getting into the class is in some ways like applying to kindergarten at one of those private schools where there’s room only for siblings and alumni kids: it’s so popular that only those students who are already enrolled can sign up for succeeding sessions, since they get priority. By the time enrollment is open to the general public, the class is full. But at least no one is required to ace a standardized test.
And I confess that I’m not entirely able to shed my Washington (or perhaps it’s just Western) self during yoga class. It’s a constant struggle to remain present, to not let my mind go wandering off to my to-do list or whatever else is weighing on me (this morning I was starting to write this blog post in my head). And try as I might, I can’t quite ignore the gradations of ability in the class, secretly feeling inferior to the student who effortlessly propels herself up to a headstand, and superior to the one who can’t quite touch her toes.
But as I know Anne would tell me, that’s okay. One of her recurring messages is that you need to just accept yourself and move on. If your mind wanders from the moment, just observe where it’s gone and bring it back to the breath. Don’t beat yourself up about your imperfections. I sometimes repeat to myself the mantra she once gave us: “Ah, this too.”
One of the nice un-Washington things about the class is that—unless you know one of the other students independently—no one knows what anyone else does. For a living, I mean. That “and-what-do-you-do” question is one that generally gets asked within seconds of an introduction in this town, and I confess I’ve asked it myself—it just seems natural. But in yoga class, all we do is yoga.
We also chat and laugh, of course. It’s hard not to, when our balancing poses sometimes threaten to knock us down like a row of dominoes, or we find our faces just inches from our neighbors’ posteriors. I barely know the names of most of the others in the class, but somehow our shared experience there—-our mutual struggles and support, and our appreciation of Anne—-have made us a community.
The name of the studio is Circle Yoga, which I always took to be a reference to Chevy Chase Circle, a block away. But it occurs to me that our class—-like the studio itself—-is a kind of circle, too. And it’s one of the things that makes me feel lucky to live in this neighborhood.