Hang on to Your Ego

This hilarious post by Miss Tanya made me go back to my international yoga bitch slapping.

The most humiliating moment I've ever had re: yoga was staying for a short time at an ashram in Rishikesh, India. Every morning and afternoon we would gather to do yoga (in addition to meditation and spiritual instruction). I am the first to admit that I don't do yoga enough to be very flexible at all and it isn't anything that I can even attempt to hide in a class. I just do my thing as well as I can and try not to be competitive (competitiveness is bad energy, dontchaknow).

One day the instructor came up to me as I was struggling to get my nose to my legs while in the lotus position. I was sweating and internally whimpering, kind of shocked that I could even get into the lotus position, and the instructor came off of his yoga dais to see how everyone was doing. Right away, he got a look on his face as if he were looking at a dog trying to do its own taxes. He really wanted to correct the dog, but he couldn't figure out why it even had a tax form let alone was getting the deductions wrong. Sitting next to me, the yogi folded himself over like a wallet then looked at me as if he had blinked instead of impressively showing off his flexibility.

Thank god we left soon thereafter because the ego I was trying to tame would have strangled him if he did that again.

The End.

Ask me later sometime to tell you about trying to shove a piece of rubber through the back of my mouth up into my nose to "floss" the connecting hole. That's a lovely tale.