On Being the Fat Yogi in the Group Picture
I can pinpoint with absolute laser accuracy the moment when, during my second weekend of 200-hr Yoga Teacher Training, I started to fully question my decision to take on this challenge. Halfway through our first day of the weekend, we’d completed two hour-long classes and a mindfulness workshop, and I was feeling good. Sweaty, stinky, and sure to be sore over the next several days, but good nonetheless.
And then we worked on the Primary Series, a prescribed series of Ashtanga Yoga postures ranging from pretty standard like Trikonasana (Triangle), my all-time favorite asana, to the patently absurd like Garba Pindasana (Womb Embryo Pose), where you bind yourself in a lotus position and roll around your mat nine times to represent the nine months of human gestation. For reference, Ashtanga was and is the basis for all of high-impact, fitness-driven “Power Yoga” programs of the 90’s and early Aughts, and while I firmly believe and hope to teach others that yoga is for everyone, the difficult truth is that the Ashtanga Primary Series and its variations and extensions are simply… not.
Somewhere near the end of the standing poses in the series, there came wrapping of arms around the outside of the legs to bind behind the back, pushing hands through lotus-posed legs to lift (and hold) off the floor, and I couldn’t physically do any of it. Forget the…
