Today at Bikram, I experienced a mind-blowing interaction.
Fifteen minutes into class the (you supply your own adjectives) “lady” in front of me turned and said, “When you breath I can feel the warm air on me; try breathing through your nose.”
Now, I was breathing through my nose (this is like my 4,000th yoga class) although it’s possible in an intense moment I might have sighed or perhaps even heaved –– but I’d like to point out that I was a) directly underneath the heating unit that had an external fan behind it b) this is apparently the hottest Bikram class in the world [it’s 115 degree and 24% humidity] and c) given our mats, I was at least six or seven feet away from her … is she like a “princess and the pea” regarding air currents?
[FYI, as a test case, when I hold my hand out as far away from my face as possible, I have to breath in a “blow out all the birthday candles” way to really feel anything. A heartfelt sigh at 3 feet produces almost no effect on my palm. And again, did I mention the room is 115 degrees with a fan blowing on her and that she’s six or seven feet away from me?]
More importantly, what was astonishing is that she felt free enough to confront me rather than just move away. The class was only half filled and I was in the back row, she was in front of me, and there was no one in front of her. IE, if someone’s breathing was bothering you, wouldn’t you just pull your own mat a few feet away before confronting another student in class?
I said nothing to her –– merely plotted revenge strategies for about 20 minutes, something that’s encouraged during yoga classes –– but then I began to turn the situation around in my head.
You see, I have two actually sweet characters in my life that I’ve been postponing conversations with about some iffy behavior. In both cases, however, there’s no question in my mind that they are in different ways sweetly, but deeply, misguided and that there’s actually something substantially “off” that should be addressed.
Suddenly I began to admire the (you fill in the adjective) “lady” in front of me for her utter freedom to express herself.
She had no problem telling a stranger in a yoga class that she didn’t like his breathing, and that it must be changed since even in a room of 115 degrees where a fan was directly in front of her blowing hot air, his excess breath was simply too much heat.
How can it be that I’m holding off explaining to someone in the most sensitive way possible, “here are the sixteen ways those repeated remarks were bizarrely inappropriate” and yet she has the delusional chutzpah to critique strangers for their basic biological functioning. [I began to wonder if I was perhaps sweating too loudly, or maybe my handsomeness was simply too distracting?]
It’s almost like she stole that part of my entitlement. I mean, why is that I’m mustering up the courage to have a conversation about clear boundary violations, whereas she’s able to determine how other people get to breath around her wherever she’s plunked down her mat.
I have a lot to learn from her.
[Or maybe I should just hire her to have those kind of difficult conversations for me. For her it comes as naturally as, well, breathing.]
[P.S. I do love this Bikram studio –– the first he established in America –– and I think all the teachers have been awesome and NOT Bikram-Nazis at all. But even more fun now to have an “enemy” there!]
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