Developing a Home practice Part 8

Next up was supposed to be the Jump back and blogging, but before I write about blogging I should probably say a few things about coming out of the Yoga closet.

First we have to separate London from the rest of the UK. And the UK from the US. I live outside London, the image of Yoga out here is probably still the Green Goddess from Good Morning TV or some such Breakfast show. She was this woman in a Bright, full length, green leotard. Production costs were low, a bare studio, she would do Yoga for couch potatos in front of their TV sets (and occasionally businessmen, accosted on the way to work in Paddington station, in one of those awful, yoga on the way to work segments). That was the view of Yoga out here, that or perhaps some weird thing they did in India. Guys didn't do yoga.

We tend to have packages delivered to work, books, Cd's etc. It would be a minor talking point, what you got, CD? put it on. Book, what you reading etc.

Yoga stuff started turning up.

The Swenson DVD, John Scott's.

Swenson's book.

A mat

A very very big mat (my Manduka).

At first I just put the package away, I wasn't hiding the fact that I was doing Yoga, so much as not coming out and saying hey, you know what, I do yoga now.

I think a mat turning up with YOGAMATTERS on the wrapping brought it out into the open.

'That for you?'

'............. yeah'

'...........You doing yoga?'

'.....................................yep.......................Ashtanga yoga'

'............................I think your Sax repad came in '

'......great, .....I'll get right on that.'

Nobody came right out and said that I had now been put in the box labeled 'Weirdo' but I guess I was already in the box labeled 'bit strange' so not such a big change.

It kind of amused me. By the time it began to come out, I'd been doing Yoga for a six months or so and was feeling good about it. I'd lost some weight, was fitter, feeling a lot healthier and I was loving it. I really didn't care what anyone else thought.

It started to amuse me to play on the uncomfortableness it elicited and how the subject would get changed quickly. A middle aged guy bouncing about on a mat in his pants wasn't the image some guys wanted to deal with.

Not everyone was the same. I've had a few people come up and ask me about it. Someone had a bad back or some other ailment and would ask about Yoga and if it might help, or I might suggest it. Interesting to see who was and wasn't open to it. After a couple of years doing Ashtanga and having lost almost twenty kilos and clearly looking healthier and fitter, people are asking about it more, curious, beginning to wonder if it might be good for them too. I wonder sometimes who I know who might be getting up a little earlier in the morning and doing a few Surya namaskaras.

Next : Jump back