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City YogaJourney to the Light SideBy Daniel JohnsonJul 17, 2007 Close your eyes. Imagine you are a pretzel, a knot of tension and urban rage so horridly twisted up by the modern world that you begin to look for ways to untie yourself. Now imagine that rumors of tranquil ground begin making their way to your ears, a place of calm, hovering Zen-like atop the Buhl Building. Let your imagination fill in the details until the thought of it goes from Skyscraper Aerobics to The Holy Place to which you will someday make a spiritual journey. Its name: City Yoga. You run into a friend. She mentions "Yoga For Everybody," City's Monday-night class for the unwashed, inflexible masses. You begin your pilgrimage. Now you are arriving, sweat-sticky and rattled after the trial-by-fire that is traveling I-75 in rush hour with a busted A/C. (Accept that tension.) Feel a weight lift as you ride the elevator up 26 stories before taking a short staircase to the secret 27th floor, and then, you are there. Take a minute to absorb your surroundings. Appreciate the oak paneling, arched ceilings and stained-glass windows of the former Savoyard Club. Go to the window and look down on Hart Plaza, its pavement dark gray from a recent rain. See the birds gliding in the cavernous spaces between buildings. Visualize your instructor walking to greet you with the kitten bounce of a ballet dancer. "Devotional, but not religious," Monica Breen rides a Suzuki GZ250 motorcycle and teaches yoga in the spare hours between doing freelance graphic design and Web support. (Allow yourself to feel relieved by her gentle, welcoming presence.) And then you are actually doing it. Yoga. You are kneeling on all fours with your forehead against the mat and your ass in the air. Allow the implications that years of viewing porn bring to this position to vanish. You are not porn. You are a cat. And while cats may copulate with porn-like indiscretion, they are also limber and relaxed. You remember to focus on your breath, keeping the inhalations and exhalations the same length. This would be a bad time to fart, but you don't think about that - you think about the breath because Monica says it's the most important part of yoga; the life force, the connection between the physical and spiritual worlds. Someone is stepping on your feet. It's Monica. She's walking up and down on them, emphasizing an awareness of places on the body we forget to relax. "Even the feet can rest." Now you are a cobra, with your back in an arch, feeling your chest and lungs stretch. Now you are a boat, finding the determination and boldness of spirit to balance yourself in the shape of a triangle using only your butt muscles. Now you are a plow, your legs bent backward over your head. You fart. It happens so fast you didn't even feel it coming. Visualize nobody noticing and feel the stretch of your calves and legs as your spine becomes taffy, your body increasingly warm and malleable. Now you are a tree; now the letter C; now laying sideways in a fetal position. And then you are a corpse, flat on your back, catatonic with calm. See yourself nodding off accidentally and the snarl of your snore snapping you back awake. Now you're scrambling to sit up with the rest of the class who are listening to Monica's parting words. "Namaste," she says. "Namaste," they echo back. You are rolling your mat up in unison with the others, a reverent silence abounding, light smiles on faces. And then you are leaving, not exactly enlightened, but peaceful with the confidence of someone who just self-administered a massage. See yourself driving home, the freeways untangled, the evening air cooler. Slowly open your eyes. Namaste.
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