(From 2016)

A week before the end of the month and the last yoga class I needed to take for March, I was crossing a parking lot and stopped on the way to my car to talk to Kate.

Kate and I are friendly acquaintances. We’ve worked together here and there, and share some similar interests in nerd culture, like “Dr. Who.”

She asked me about how the yoga was going, and if I planned to stick with it.

I told her I thought I would, but maybe not do so much.

The toughest part about the last month has been making the time, but I thought I’d like to try a couple of classes a week and work in a yoga DVD to follow along with some.

A DVD alone seemed pointless. A recording can’t tell you when you’re doing something wrong.

Matter-of-factly, Kate told me, “I’ve never done yoga.”

That seemed unlikely, I said.

“Because I’m female?” She asked.

Young, long and lean, and the owner of at least one pair of stretchy, black pants, Kate seemed like someone who would be all about yoga, but she swore she never touched the stuff.

She said she’d thought about trying yoga a few times, but hadn’t. Classes sounded expensive and sure it costs.

Classes in the Charleston area run around $10 or $15 each, depending on the studio or the deal being offered. Some places offer packages that bring the cost down, and there are places where you can get yoga for less.  

“Yoga doesn’t cost extra at the YMCA,” I added.  “The India Center has a class they do for the community, and there’s a pay what you want class Sunday afternoon at The Folded Leaf.”

“Really?” She asked.

And then like some kind of wide-eyed convert, I told her what I’d gotten out of doing yoga so far –my tricky right shoulder wasn’t bothering me. I felt more flexible, my core muscles were a little stronger, and yeah, after a class, I usually felt really good –yoga buzzed.

“The endorphins?” Kate guessed.

Yes, endorphins, the natural chemical the body produces creating a feeling of well-being or euphoria.

Yoga can make you high.

Doing yoga made me feel relaxed and gently blissful. Coming out of classes at The Folded Leaf on Bridge Road, I’d stopped at Sarah’s Bakery three Wednesday afternoons in a row.

I’m still a vegan. Sarah has nothing on the menu I can eat –except maybe the minestrone, which is homemade, she says.

“You can eat vegetable stock, right?” Sarah asked me. “There’s no meat in it.”

I keep meaning to ask about the noodles, though, but three Wednesdays in a row, I picked up pastries and brought them back to the newsroom to distribute.

Doing yoga, I told Kate, made me feel nicer, kinder –or at least like less of a jerk.

Then, I added, “There’s a whole spiritual/cosmic side to yoga, but I’m kind of just in it for the physical stuff.”

“So, just white people yoga?” she asked, pointedly.

It felt like she’d dumped a bucket of water on me.

Taken like that, it sounded like what I’d been doing was opportunistic and wrong-headed –like going to church strictly for the free donuts and coffee.

The metaphysical part of yoga had come up a couple of times throughout March.

Yoga instructor Jeff Hippler said he came to his practice to help him meditate. Yoga helped him able to sit for extended periods of time without distractions from the body, so he could focus on his mind.

April Woody, my host at The Folded Leaf, and I had talked about it, too.

She acknowledged that there was an entire spiritual side to yoga you could dig into if you followed it long enough. The practice, which originated in India thousands of years ago, came from the same place that birthed Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism and is intertwined with these religions, but April told me to worry less about cultural appropriation, and to go back to the intention of the thing.

“At its core, yoga is about alleviating pain,” she said. “It’s about peace, tranquility, and bliss. It’s about gaining control of your mind and body. It is meant to be universal.”

Woody likened the meditative side of yoga to a form of prayer.

“You can pray whether you’re a Christian, a Muslim, or a Buddhist,” she said. “Who owns prayer?”

The answer, she said, was everybody and nobody.

If doing yoga made me more peaceful, tranquil, and happier, then it was doing what it was always intended to do.

I struggled with yoga in the beginning. I’m still struggling with it, but it feels like I’ve made some progress toward undoing some of the damage from spending a couple of decades seated behind one desk or another. 

In one month, I did not learn everything that could be learned about yoga. I barely cracked the surface, but I did discover I had a little more balance than I gave myself credit for. Sure, I had trouble holding some poses, but at no time did I end up face first on the floor with a bloody nose.

Everyone was very encouraging, whether it was April, the other teachers at The Folded leaf, Andrew Price at the YMCA, Jeff at Lifespring or the dozens of people I took a class with.

“Just do what you can,” was repeated over and over.

If something became too much of a struggle, the best advice was to take the hint, and back down a bit.

“This is not supposed to hurt,” the instructors all said.

Yoga was more than what I’d thought it was, and so were the people who came to class to learn to practice. Sure, the classes were mostly women, but men did yoga, too, and not everybody was perfectly fit or as flexible as rag doll –in fact, most people weren’t.

There were a hundred different reasons to practice –from rehabilitating old injuries and recovering from medical conditions to just taking a breather from a busy workweek.

 For me, I think, the final selling point for continuing was when Jeff asked me, “How do you want to feel in five or ten years? Do you want to feel five or ten years older?”

Of course, not. Who in their right mind wants that?