Reflections on Yoga, "Notyoga," and Pilates the last two days

[Joe Harder]

I've been doing yoga for about four years now, primarily enjoying the teachings of Jeannette Payne, and recently I have also added a weekly men-only "stretching" class with Allison Wilkie, that a "Rude Boys" softball teammate (and intense rugby player) got me involved in.

Then, today, I went to a mat Pilates class at Studio 206 in Charlottesville, my first ever Pilates class. I had read an article recently in Body and Soul magazine about the difference between the two, and knew that Pilates would be more physical and a lot less spiritual, and I found it incredibly challenging (which could just be the shape that my "core," which Pilates really targets, is in at the moment). Still, I suspect if I keep with it, that will certainly improve, and it's a nice way to spend a Tuesday noon hour.

Working backwards, last night at 6:30 was the stretching class, also billed as "not yoga." The "not yoga" informal title was intended to draw men to the class who somehow may be averse to the idea of yoga ("real men don't do yoga?"). It turns out that in the three classes so far it does involve a lot of yoga, which would be fine with me, but it's a lot of "power yoga" (2007 Santa Clara students may remember the yoga class with Julia Wilson-Bailey that was modeled on Baron Baptiste's Power Yoga). Allison challenges us, and last night, as we were holding high plank pose for ten breaths (the "up" push-up position), and then low plank (lowered from up push-up to about three inches off the ground) for ten more breaths, her mantra became "Come on...let's get stronger." I thought yoga was supposed to be easy :-).

Finally, Jeannette's noontime Monday yoga class, formerly known as "yoga for stiff guys." It was a pretty normal Jeannette class (that is to say enjoyable on many levels), and I did a new pose that I had never done before, so that was cool. But what was funniest to me was that I was the first one there and picked a good spot near the center of the room, and the second person (also a regular) plopped her mat down within a foot and a half of mine! There's no way we could do sun salutations, twists, anything with only that much distance between us, but she had "her spot," and by god, she wasn't going to vary from that. It made me think about superstitious learning, habitual patterns, and being in "the box," as I moved well away from her, picking a new spot that wouldn't violate Dan's "normal spot" if he showed up (he didn't).

Anyway, just one of those wonderful life moments...