2.6
February 16, 2010

Bikram Yoga and Me: No Use Crying Over Spilt Eggs.

There’s no use crying over spilt eggs. But I did.

Or rather, the eggs were used, eaten, gone. They were organic and from an Amish farm somewhere in NY state. One of my roommates ate my last two eggs. Or maybe he threw them at a puppy. I don’t know exactly what happened; I only showed up for the aftermath. I intern for a living, and as a result oscillate between broke, and really really broke.

When someone eats my food, and no, this wasn’t the first time, I can’t always replace it right away.  I should add that I’m moving to LA in 10 days, so rather than confront them and try to make a better living situation, I am just going to deal with it. It’s not just eggs. One of my roommates is really misogynistic (I’m one of those “this is what a feminist looks like” people), one is rude, and the other, well, he’s fine, except he left water soaking in my cast iron skillet overnight, discovered in tandem with missing eggs.

Yes, I’m venting.

The funny thing is, I maintain a yoga practice, so that these things, the things we can’t control, like Craigslist roommates, don’t leave you crying in the kitchen on Tuesday morning when you were supposed to leave for work 10 minutes ago.

I have been going to Yoga To The People, but I heard that Bikram Yoga in Union Square had $20 for one week unlimited yoga, so I thought it might be a good place to practice for a week.  Last night, I left class feeling more agro then I went in. Maybe it was what Bryan Kest calls “If you bring your sh*t to yoga, your yoga becomes sh*t,” or maybe it was being yelled at for 90 minutes to go deeper, lock my knee, etc.  I think it’s a combination of both, making both worse.  Also, I know it’s good to push your body once in a while, but I also know when to push and when to respect my limitations.  Let’s just say the yoga teacher and I were at some odds when it came to certain poses.  To be fair, everything that I’ve disliked about Bikram Union Square is what I liked about Bikram Yoga on the Hill in Boulder.  Rasa Zubukte, who owns the studio, once said, try any pose you don’t feel like you can do for three breathes, and then if it’s not working, come out.  That I can live with.   But I’ve never found another Bikram studio that echoed her approach.  But for me the real test came this morning.  All the reserve and calmness I normally have when I have a consistent yoga practice, it wasn’t there.  I started crying, I called my mom, bitched to my brother and his girlfriend on Gchat, and complained to my friend and fellow contributor Kelsi, on facebook.  And then the moment I needed came.

I asked Kelsi if it were possible that doing Bikram was making me more aggressive than calm, and she said “I don’t know… that whole yoga series is founded and copyrighted by a douche bag, so it only makes sense that one,  you also must be a douche bag to enjoy Bikram or two, if you are not a douche bag, it will make you feel like hot hell.”  And I laughed.  That’s what I needed—laughter.  The best yoga teachers and the best yoga practices teach us to be humble and to laugh at ourselves.   I am not getting that from the Bikram Yoga at the Union Square location, so it’s not for me.  To be fair, I know it’s for some people, and I don’t think only douche bags practice bikram, and Kelsi doesn’t either, but her snowboard got stolen yesterday at Snowmass, so she thinks everyone is a douche bag right now, and I don’t blame her.  Luckily we both believe in karma, and hey, maybe it was my karma that led to my roommates eating my eggs.  The great thing about karma is that we don’t have to figure it out to learn from it, we can just try to put good out there.   So I deleted my facebook status about my rude roommates, and I am going to heat up the homemade chicken soup my brother’s girlfriend made for me.  Ironically, when she handed it to me, she joked, “Here’s some chicken soup for your soul.”  Turns out she was right.

Maybe the universe wants me to go vegan? Photos for this article found by the lovely Kelsi Coia.

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