If I Have to Be a Neurotic Mess, I Might as Well Do Yoga
I’m just trying to survive each day without experiencing a minor panic attack in the office bathroom
“The planet is spinning on time: not a small event. All the galaxies are managing fine; the whole cosmos is doing great. But you have one nasty little thought crawling through your head, and it is a bad day! The problem is you are living in a psychological space that bears no connection with reality. And you are insecure, because it can collapse at any moment.”
— Sadhguru, Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy
“Find your intention,” says the yoga instructor gently, as she’s met with a whirlwind of orchestral exhales. My intention? I’m just trying to survive each day without experiencing a minor panic attack in the office bathroom. Okay, um, hmm, what’s my intention? The task hops onto the treadmill of my to-do list, tinged with resentment and anxiety and avoidance. “Find your intention,” she repeats, an allegedly peaceful meditative exercise that superimposes itself on my already-overwhelming and over-plastered mental vision board, littered with dreary routine and administrative bullshit. Well, I still need to register to vote, and send my mom a card for her birthday (which was last week), and figure out a new career path, and remember to stop stubbing my toe on the corner of my bedpost.
Jesus, my life is a slog through a bottomless inbox. Is this really all there is to my existence?
“No,” says the restless human spirit. There is also back pain.
I am told that yoga is a dance of dealing with what is, and the mat is a safe opportunity to see what’s on the other side — which, for me, is mostly muscle tension and a slowly developing ulcer that expands with each cup of iced coffee. Inner turmoil lurks beneath my generation’s “rise and grind” ethos. Even wellness hobbies like yoga have made self-care feel less like relaxation and more like a pit stop along the burnout cycle.
But my corporate overlords were magnanimous enough to bequeath me with a monthly wellness stipend, which subsidizes my never-ending search for anxiety management. A fatter paycheck would work wonders in helping pay for rent and avocado toast, but I suppose this is an adequate consolation prize.
Before this, every day around noon, I practiced self-care by taking a break from whatever I was doing, going outside, and screaming at the sky. For a while it made sense to me because having anxiety is like being lit on fire, but when you’re faced with choosing between extinguishing yourself or running around in circles shrieking in agony, you end up crippled with existential thoughts like, “Why didn’t Rachel end up with Joey?”
There are many methods for dealing with stress, so naturally, I sought relief by surrounding myself with gaggles of conventionally attractive, athletic women, all outfitted in expensive-looking Lululemon pants molded to their sculpted bodies as if they were secretly functioning as push-up bras for their booties. My goodness, I’m a prisoner of my own perversion.
“Relax. Forget about the world, your problems,” the yoga instructor says, her voice soothing like aloe vera. “Focus on the moment, lose yourself.”
I don’t comprehend.
AM I FOCUSING OR FORGETTING?
HOW DOES ONE TRY TO RELAX?
DO I SUCK AT MEDITATING?
WHY DOES MY INTERNAL MONOLOGUE SOUND LIKE A CARTOON CHIPMUNK THAT WAS FORCE-FED A SPEEDBALL ENEMA?
It’s weird that we’re being told to let loose by someone who appears to have spent her entire morning curating a meticulous aesthetic (teal- and white-patterned yoga pants, a Nike sweatband, a neon tank top) while projecting this carefree persona that says “i text in all lowercase letters.”
Okay, let’s forget about the moment, even though this is America in 2019: Our president’s sex trafficking confidant is pushed out of the news by the president’s serial racism, which is pushed out by our president’s blackout drunk (“allegedly”) penis-jousting judge, which is pushed out by our president wanting to shoot migrants in the legs or drown them in a moat full of alligators, which is pushed out by our president’s abuse of power and foreign-policy-by-extortion, which is pushed out by our president using Twitter to incite violence, which is —
“Chaturanga to down dog!” echoes from the front of the room, like the command of a half-sedated drill sergeant.
My pelvic area thrusts toward the sky and my hands push against my mat, which is sinking into the ground. Immediately, the damage of 15 years of contact sports rears its ugly head. My chest, my lats, my neck, my joints — they all crackle and burn.
I think you feel decrepit in your mid- to late-twenties because your biological clock’s stubborn hands refuse to tick on, a not-so-subtle declaration that two to three decades is roughly the natural and appropriate life expectancy for our species. “Time to wrap this up,” your body implores. It never fully adapted to medicine and nutrition, which would explain the growing demand for adult nap times. So we keep doddering along like modernity’s little abominations.
“Hold for five breaths, focus…”
I close my eyes and all I see flashing across the inside of my eyelids are various images of “rise and grind” trappings. “Hustle Harder” neon signs. “Just Do It” billboards. Throw pillows with “Do what you love” embroidered in loopy script. Office coolers with “Don’t stop when you’re tired, stop when you are done” carved into the flesh of the cucumbers floating inside. The #TGIM posts littered across my Instagram feed.
“Yogi squat!” The class segues into an abrupt transition, hips sinking downward in unison. “Don’t worry, this is an easy pose,” the instructor assures us.
Yoga is supposed to make us feel like our bodies are perfect as they are: powerful, useful, and also entirely temporary. Well, we are no more than five seconds into our spirited squat and I am already panting and perspiring uncontrollably. The magnitude of my leg and abdominal pain registers all at once. I’m taut as a banjo string. My groin literally feels like two ends of a Chinese finger trap sprinting away from one another — the stress and the tension, pulling, on the verge of snapping in half. But as my inner thighs feel like they’re the victims of a prison shanking, that searing pain recedes and takes a back seat to a different, unidentifiable flavor of anxiety.
With a rumble, something stretches the threads of my abdomen thin and fine, crevices leveled smooth and leering down from a great depth, a hidden life beneath the surface roils. I part my lips for a heavier exhale but a shriek of rage and sharp, hot pain emerges from my very core, somewhere deep and troubled. I’m fairly certain that I’m hitting a breaking point, perhaps the early stages of an epileptic seizure, mounting, then… nothing.
I transition to child’s pose and…
PPPPPFFFFFFFTTTTTTT!
An uncontrollable release. This is disgusting. I’m disgusting. Sensing my palpable embarrassment, the instructor reassures me that, “it’s perfectly natural to flatulate during yoga. This is a judgment-free space.”
Why did you phrase it like that?
And I’m calling bullshit — there’s no such thing as a “judgment-free space.” We live in a society of shame.
Krystyl, I see you over to my left, flashing that “WTF?” face at me, as if I just spartan-kicked your Pomeranian off a bridge. I see you leering at me with your downward-turned, disappointed eyes, the apples of your cheeks reaching skyward while your brows corrugate into small, bowl-shaped caterpillars. Do you think you’re better than me? I can’t wait to scroll through Instagram and see a new pic of you out with your girls so I can passive-aggressively undermine your self-esteem with a comment like, “So cute. And your arms don’t even look that fat!”
The instructor shifts her weight forward and pauses for effect as if to deliver some grandiloquent, emperor-has-no-clothes soliloquy: “Time for crow’s pose.”
As I push the weight of my body up, holding, I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth in an attempt to fend off an embarrassing, mid-class dry heave, which normally hits me whenever an attractive woman catches me eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in public. I am wheezing like a donkey with the black lung, which makes it especially difficult to hear the instructor’s uplifting one-liners and pivotal directions. I don’t know which way to contort my legs. Everyone else is somehow gliding upward, transcending like they’re Jerry Garcia, which makes me suspect I missed a pre-session psilocybin sesh in the lobby. Then my hand slips and my body collapses on top of itself in an epic face plant, and I reach a new level of despondence.
Not sure if this beats crying at SoulCycle every week.
As my flattened cheek rubs against the mat, a faint light seeps into my periphery and I’m greeted with a flurry of update banners popping into my iPhone screen. Three emails from my boss. What’s the update on the monthly report? Your campaign idea is three days late. Your PTO request was declined.
Damn, I forgot to feed my cat this morning. Great. Now I need to add Kitty Smalls to the infinitely expanding list of “Those Actively Plotting to Shove Me Into a Wood-chipper.”
We finally reach the end of the class, where we meditate in the afterglow of dimmed ceiling lights. Eyes closed, legs crossed, and bottoms firmly planted on the ground, we exhale. And with that collective whoosh, suddenly it feels as though I am releasing the weight of the world. My body pushes toxins out through my pores, my soul escapes my body, and I feel like I’m riding a unicorn down a rainbow, drinking children’s laughter out of a goblet made of diamonds.
“Thank you for sharing your practice with me today. I hope you will invite some more joy into your life.”
If this is what it takes to bring joy into my life, then yoga can only be described as mindful sadomasochism for wellness nuts. But with another soft breath, I begin to feel peace wash over me like a gentle current. And then… oh, wait. Dear god.
Fuck — it’s only Monday.
