Relationship with yoga both love, humiliation

Exercise fads come and go, but yoga has undeniable staying power. It’s been around for 5,000 years, and promises to remain long after CrossFit and jade egg pelvic “toning” have faded from memory.

By some estimates there are 200 million yoga practitioners worldwide. Their practices run the gamut from the deeply spiritual to “hot” classes more akin to a physical manifestation of Tinder.

A huge surge in yoga’s popularity has spawned recent innovative trends: yoga with goats; yoga on paddleboards; the male-focused “Broga.”

Many find yoga brings much-sought calm to busy lives.

It is embraced by age-defying celebrities such as Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. Little wonder, then, newcomers keep flocking to try it. Who doesn’t want a little of what Iron Man’s got?

Plus, it has the gear. It’s more hopeful to shop for stretchy yoga capris than concede you’re buying Thanksgiving pants.

Some newcomers take to yoga like penguins to water, entering an environment where every movement is streamlined and graceful. Others among us more closely resemble penguins on land: stiff and vaguely comical. We can’t reach our toes; our middles bend and bulge in ways unflattering to snug-fitting athleisure wear. Yet we keep trying, lured by rapturous accounts of post-yoga glow.

My first yoga experience was a children’s class at the YMCA. The highlight came at the end of class, when they turned out the lights for guided relaxation. We slackened each body part in turn, from our toes to the creases of our foreheads, consciously releasing tension. Kids often nodded off. To this day it’s my go-to strategy for bouts of insomnia.

Perhaps the memory serves to explain why, as an adult, I have repeatedly subjected myself to uncomfortable and at times humiliating yoga experiences, like a dope fiend chasing that first high.

There was that time in university when the instructor guided us into a pose, then warned — rather too late — “Whatever you do, don’t twist.”

There was the yogi who loudly passed gas, remarking it was perfectly natural, then resolutely carried on a bodily symphony without embarrassment or apology.

There was a mortifying attempt at post-injury yoga, surrounded by a fortress of bricks and bolsters to modify the poses. Each adaptation left me feeling less capable. A stream of suggestions from the relentlessly chipper instructor burned like a magnifying glass; I fled with a lump in my throat.

I mentioned this emotional fragility to a friend who once climbed Machu Picchu on a yoga retreat. “Oh, I do some of my best crying in yoga,” she replied enthusiastically.

Bolstered by this shift in perspective, I vowed to try again.

As a relative novice, I’m struck by how much yoga is about shifting perspective. We visualize ourselves rooted in tree pose, unconquerable in warrior pose, and graceful in the distinctly ungainly swan pose. We are encouraged to “breathe into” areas of tension, however distantly they may reside from our lungs.

The counterfactual technique is oddly helpful. Our perspective on events can literally alter the way we experience them.

We practise slowing our breath, drawing out the exhalations. The final seconds feel like a lung capacity test, forcing out the last gasps of air. But the yogi gently assures us what we’re actually feeling is calm.

Some poses can seem interminable, like my nemesis, swan. The instructor tells us that, according to yin yoga, the moment you want to come out of the pose is when the pose truly begins. Another shift in perspective. So the next time I decide to quit yoga, I’ll know I’m really just getting started.