YOU MUST TRY YOGA
You must
try yoga! they enthuse.
A few sun salutations
and hasta la vista
chronic anything!
Yogi Namastanley is the best,
they gush.
He trained in an ashram
in Lloret-de-Mar
during the pandemic.
Also, they whisper,
their tone thick
with winks and waggly eyebrows,
Namastanley is super
HOT.
As a spell of incense curl
in the candlelight
and otherworldly wails
escape the speakers,
you close your eyes,
you breathe in, exhale,
and enter Doolallyland.
You maximise your
Natural-Born-Hyperflexion,
folding yourself into
asshat asanas,
deepening them,
because he said so.
You mock your meniscus.
Poopoo your herniated disks,
Ignore the worrying cracking noise
that just escaped the mysterious innerworkings of your hip-flexors;
you are – Namastanley exalts – adding life-juice
by crushing your pigeon.
Namastanley moves stealthily
In the Nag-Champa fug.
You are
The Chosen One,
Abundantly Anointed,
You tell yourself,
As his Yogic Excellence squats on you,
And settles there,
Possibly deep in a meditative trance
Brought on by an endless
Krishna Das track.
Following circa
Three million and thirty-three
Sitarams,
you find yourself wishing
Namastanley
might consider levitating his tonnage
faraway from your pelvic girdle.
You ponder the possibility of
granting yourself
A subtle wiggle-groan
As surely those peculiar
snap-crackle-pops
can’t really be the sound of your chakras
realigning?
Right?
At long last,
Namastanley resumes
an upright position,
and invites you
to engage Mulabanda
as you stretch up to
Downward Dog,
and then melt into child’s pose.
And you silently grunt and groan,
untangling your tattered tendons,
confused by the scores of blissed-out faces
heaving orgasmic sighs,
frogging down on synthetics as though for the night.
You do as you’re told
as best you can,
because Namastanley
is legendary in yogic circles,
and you saw a book
about being the placebo,
and saw an Instagram reel
about pain being in your head.
Then Namastanley launches
into an esoteric soliloquy
on plumbing the exquisite depths
of discomfort,
asking it what it reveals,
insisting that
your findings will surprise you.
And yes, you mutter,
surprised and infuriated by
your idiocy
as you stumble into the night
and fall into your car,
and into your bed,
before later – much, much later –
waking your husband
and asking him
to please drive you to the ER.