new student, old student

I went to class in a yoga studio.

Hubby thinks this cannot possibly be eventful or newsworthy. “You’re a yoga teacher!” he laughs, “why wouldn’t you go to yoga class?” Ha ha, of course any teacher would find lots of reasons why not, and not so long ago one of my teachers gently chided me for regular class attendance! It’s not cut and dry, I find when I observe teacher friends: some go to class regularly and often (mostly those who work in studios I think), others never go.

Since I moved towns I’ve felt very much outside the local yoga scene and I don’t have any desire to start up my own class. But as I don’t know anyone here, going to class seemed a way to connect with people, if only for that hour. And I am still in recovery from the weirdness of my previous home studio (regular, frequent, long-term attendance… until it all got funny in a bad way and I stopped very suddenly). So pace Hubby, yes — it was a big deal to go to class.

I went for Hot Yin as something I’d never done before so it couldn’t trigger too many memories or comparisons in my emotional landscape. And the class and teacher were just fine. The class was spacious, not to say minimalist, in that there was very little instruction: we were guided into a pose and pretty much left to it without any extra commentary or yoga teacher chattery space filling. I liked that. I didn’t go there to be ‘taught’ in a didactic sense, I just wanted to be led through a sensible practice within a group. Tick!

The teacher managed well with my weird mix of erudition and anxiety before class, and we chatted while he showed me around. He provided all the usual information about studio etiquette and facilities as we toured the rather labyrinthine building, and I quizzed him on his policy for hands-on assists and his opinion on the relevance and inclusion of meridians and TCM as part of yoga.

I know I didn’t appear as the average studio newbie and he even explained after class to another student the significance of me turning around for savasana so my feet were not pointing towards him! Hubby wondered why I didn’t just introduce myself as a yoga teacher, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to feel unencumbered by that role (if that’s in any way possible!), I wanted to be a new student at my local studio, just taking a mid-week class like a ‘normal’ person. I wanted it to feel like a new beginning. Not a new yoga home, but at least a fresher perspective on what a yoga studio could feel like.

Afterwards I felt nicely relaxed as I wandered home and gently proud of myself for my class attendance, just as any regular student trying out a new studio would likely feel. When I got home I confronted the once-familiar conundrum of what to eat at such a late time in the evening, settling for cereal and fruit (the fancy, slightly sugary cereal — not the healthy morning-time one 🙂 )

And then I popped onto social media to leave a nice comment about the studio and incidentally picked up the very sad news that someone who used to come to my yoga class had died of cancer. Though he never mentioned it to me himself, I knew was sick when I taught him. Days later the news is weighing on me more than I expected it to, given our very slight acquaintance. So I think I will go back to class next week to be held again in that space for an hour. It would be good to allow myself a little more unravelling of some of my yoga knots. They sometimes feel so biting, though they are not so terrible when your perspective is suddenly widened to encompass the whole of a life’s span.