OK Yoga Boomer!
Picture it:
A young black girl has recently started her journey in yoga training to become a teacher. She’s joined a local yoga center and has found camaraderie with like-minded individuals, exercise both relaxing and intense, and something to keep her cakes firm after her knees got shot running for so many years. She goes to a gentle class one Sunday morning to begin the day and hears a screeching “I’d like to speak to the manager” voice from the mats behind her. It’s a woman who might be named Karen. She’s responding to the yoga' teacher’s announcement that there will be a small change in scheduling this upcoming season. The Woman Who Might Be Named Karen says, “Well, no one asked US. I didn’t get asked! Did anyone else get asked? Why is there no conversation about this? I’m a paying customer—this is a customer service business! The customer has to be happy!”
She went on like this for fifteen minutes of class. Fifteen minutes of an hour and fifteen minute class. The yoga teacher was too nice and pragmatic to do anything but nod and verbally pat-pat the Woman Who Might Be Named Karen. Meanwhile the young black girl, who generally does not have time for middle-aged buffoonery, could do nothing but think about the choices she’d made in life which brought her to this exact space and time.
Ladies and gentlemen, that young black girl… was me. And that Woman Who Might Be Named Karen… is on my shit list.
The most frustrating part of it is that yoga is supposed to be (and usually is) a relaxing escape from the daily bustle of NY life. No one wants to hear your screeching opinions. And why, if you think your opinion is so noble, shouldn’t that “conversation” take place after class?
And for the record I hate it when people use the word conversation to mean let me rant at you and try to get my way because that is not a conversation.
I know what you may be saying.
“Robyn,” you say to your computer screen or tablet or phone, “yoga is typically full of middle-aged women. You’ll just have to get over it.”
To you I say it’s not middle-aged people I have a problem with. As a matter of fact, I quite like them. They call me skinny and give me candy. My problem is when they start getting their feathers ruffled over loss of routine, thereby messing up someone else’s routine, and by the way isn’t yoga about release? Relinquishing control and being serene in that lack of control? Send me a letter if I’m wrong. To PO Box I Couldn’t Care Less.
A few of her comrades even got started and the thing that REALLY grinds my gears is that insistence on customer service. First of all, ma’am, yoga teachers aren’t working behind a counter at McDonald’s AND even if they were, you shouldn’t just shout at anyone about how you’re the reason their business is thriving. No, you aren’t; the reason McDonald’s thrives is because people like cheap and easy and the reason yoga studios thrive is because people see the value in the practice. I was so angry I wanted to cry and flail my arms at her.
Anyway, so that’s a lesson learned for me. Never going to that class slot again.
(Another protip: if you’re coming to yoga with the mindset of complaining, maybe go out to brunch with the girlfriends instead.)
