6X you are not looking forward to this during a yoga class

I really love yoga. Hip yoga. Yoga-as-it-is-probably-not-meant-to-be yoga. Exercises to calm music, on a mat from Hermès or something, some raw nuts afterwards and a carafe of water with slices of cucumber and a sprig of mint floating in it. But that’s of course the yoga that real yogis are horrified by. But since I think you might be a bit like me: here’s a list of everything you’re not waiting for during the yoga class. At least I’m not.

‘Humming’ or ‘uhm-ing’

If you have to start in a cross-legged position with your index finger on your thumb and rhythmically say ‘uhm’, you’ve lost me. The real yogis are truly scandalized by it, but when I attend a yoga class in a five-star hotel or a trendy gym, I just want a bit of Coca Cola spirituality.

Breathing ending in a fit of laughter

I was recently on a press trip where we were offered a yoga class. Great plan because the food is good on these trips and usually we’re talking about the light version of a class. A colleague journalist already dropped out because she gets a rash between her toes at the slightest sweat, but I went. After a lot of uhm-ing came the breathing exercise. Breathe in deeply and end with a loud, weak laugh. I managed that after the uhm, but then not on command after the inhale.

Social reflections

When I recently enjoyed a yoga class, it was World Environment Day, a day on which we put pressing environmental issues on the agenda ‘together’. The ozone layer, the melting ice caps, the plastic soup. But what did the teacher bring to the table? That the world is falling apart due to negative thoughts. When she asked if we agreed with her, I just couldn’t nod in agreement. And then, of course, she later squeezed my solar plexus very hard during the class. At least, that’s how it felt. I’ll ask her next time if you can get squeezed there.

That the teacher speaks English

While she is Dutch. And you are too. And all the others as well. Why? Okay, for you: WHY?

Men in the class

That’s fine, that men also do yoga (although we don’t find it enormously juicy or sexy), but if possible, preferably not in our class. Why? Well. You (yes you, yes) breathe quite heavily and especially during a yoga class. Then we can only focus on that and suddenly we start looking at your toes and toenails and armpit hair creeping out of shirts and then back to the breathing and the toes and well, then we’re just completely out of our own moment.

Reciting sentences

It’s really nice that you went to India to attend seven workshops, but I’m just doing a little lesson. In between. It feels very unnatural for us to move along with someone else’s habits. Almost as if we’re putting on a Native American headdress. Just give us the exercises, maybe a candle, a cup of weak chamomile tea afterwards, a pling and a plong, but otherwise you can spare us the deeper life lessons.

Maybe it’s an idea to introduce a star system in yoga classes, like with the level of spiciness at the Indian restaurant? Because there are of course people who become very happy from a yoga class plus. But I, I prefer, just like with my old cigarettes and my cola, to go for light.