by Donna Drejza
Besides selling real estate, I have an
assortment of other irregularly paying jobs.
One of them is teaching yoga.
Because committing to a regular gig would
interfere with my other jobs and more importantly, travel, I am a just substitute
yoga teacher. So, I’ll typically be dispatched to one of the 11 club locations
at the last minute. This is usually because the teacher has taken ill, or has
been in a car accident. This seems to happen a lot.
So, after racing across town, I’ll run in and
start tampering with the unfamiliar sound system. As I am one of the oldest and
fattest yoga teachers in America, an unwitting student will invariably bark,
“What are you doing? That’s for the teacher only!” When I announce I’m the sub
and ask how to work this new fangled hi-fi, the students will get quiet and start eyeing the
exit.
Have you ever had days where you feel so
fat, that you hope people will think you’re pregnant? This is what it is like for me. The students probably
think: should she really be doing Tri-pod headstand in her condition? Or at her
age?
Why did I become a yoga teacher so late in life?
This, like all career moves, was spawned by love. Well, lust —unrequited lust. I had been doing yoga for 10 years when one
day I developed a crush on a handsome yoga teacher. He looked so good in Halasana.
I would eventually be bitten by the yoga bug,
and decide to become a teacher as well. Now this is no small feat. Many do not
know that it takes 200 hours to become certified in yoga. That’s a lot of Down Dogs. To become a Realtor, where one is
handling someone's life purchase, takes only 40 hours.
Why does it take 200 hours to become a yoga
teacher? Not only does one have to learn all these crazy pretzel poses —one has
to know the names for all the crazy pretzel poses. There is the descriptive name, like Half Pigeon, and then there is the corresponding Sanskrit name, like Eka Pada Rajakapotasana.
Learning how to pronounce that one pose takes up about 120 of the 200
hours. Why do teachers even bother with the Sanskrit names? I think this was a
system designed to cover you for when you cannot think of the next damn pose. You
just have to pause, then say something in Sanskrit and it will seem like you know what you
are doing. It doesn’t even have to be right, no one will even know. Well, except
that one annoying person: the minder of the stereo.
Many of the hours are spent learning how to
prevent injuries. Sometimes I’ll have an
age range from 20 to 86. The class will invariably start with the old people in
sneakers, detailing their infirmities in gory detail. An impromptu modification of the routine is required to accommodate Esther’s Sciatica, Irving’s detached retina and Missy’s 3rd
Trimester. This eliminates all poses which require bending stretching, standing and kneeling. This leaves 3 poses.
Not only do they tell me their issues, they ask
me for medical advice. To become a doctor is 4 years of medical school and 5 years of residency. This is about 27,000
hours, not 200 hours. Do not ask your yoga teacher to diagnose your Spinal Stenosis or gall bladder inflammation.
If you read my post titled, “How to get a Husband
in 1,147 Easy Steps,” you should be advised that this is no place to meet
men. There will be 28 people in a class
of which 3 will be men. The other 25 will be beautiful young women with tiny
yoga butts. Of the 3 men, one will be
gay, one will be married, and one will be a playboy. As there is not much
talking in yoga class, this information will take months to glean.
Why don’t more men go to yoga? Most say they
just aren’t that flexible. The truth: they can’t get through an entire hour
without two manly things happening: One involves
something that your old Beagle would do after getting into the bean dip. The
other is something that straight men suffer from when there are 25 tiny yoga
butts in their line of sight.
Besides learning the names of poses and how not to injure people, the rest of the 200 hours are spent in something called, "exalted wisdom opportunity." According to the yogi masters, this is to designed to make us humble in our practice. This involved mopping floors and crying.
Despite all this, there is no greater joy than having taught a yoga class.
Despite all this, there is no greater joy than having taught a yoga class.
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