The joy of being wrong: This time about Bikram yoga

I got into an interesting
semi embroglio
with a friend about Bikram yoga
a few weeks back

and spouted the
inner message/ judgment/ cutoff
I had in my head:

that it was too clunky
and rough
and disrespectful of the beauty of
real people
in real movement

Then I realized,
that the semi embrog
was about my wanting to divert from something
more important

AND
that I could be wrong

so
I decided to take up one of these lovely
"Try it out for a month for $49
packages"
expecting it to be the sloppy mess
I had it in my head


well, it was hot
I had that right

and they push you hard,
I had that right

but the structure
was far more amazing than I'd
remembered

and there was stuff I couldn't do
that I used to be able
to,
and that showed me
.... hmmm, there's some learning
to be had

and there were a lot more rests
than I'd remembered,
and rests are super important

and the emphasis on the spine
and taking poses to intermediate levels
and the abundance of balance poses

it was good

it almost killed me the first two
times
but that, too,
isn't so bad

because it was set up so it would
be hard to hurt yourself,
except coming out of Camel too fast,
which they don't warn or guide you through

it's all much safer than the average yoga class,
strangely enough

so,
joy
upon
joy

I was wrong

I'm not "in love"
with Bikram
but like it as a possible
was to spend a week a month,
say


of course, of course,
from a Feldenkrais and Anat Baniel perspective,
a lot more learning could take place,
but they aren't a learning system

they are a training system,
most specifically training the spine
to be more flexible

not bad
not bad at all