(This originally appeared in my old Blog, February 2014)
Last year at this time I was SO EXCITED for a local Yoga school (Coolidge Corner Yoga) to open up. It was in a prime location, one that I had looked at for a while and said, "if I owned a Yoga school, that's where I would put it." It was going to feature warm classes, Forest style (which I'm not a fan of-- So Anusara and Bhikram Yoga are evil because their founders proposition sex to their students and teachers, but Ana Forrest can take pride in killing animals, creating an industry that matches animal murder with Yoga, and that's completely okay? Ahimsa, Anyone?), Vinyassa, but it was the location, the beautiful rooms, the changing areas, the teachers they had initially signed on, that made me so excited.
And then the school opened, I got my special "30 Days for 30 Dollars" (which EVERY school should have) and stepped onto the floor for my first week. First class, warm, not warm enough, but still warm--stop opening the windows in the Winter and Spring!--, teacher kind of disinterested, no personal attention (being an obese tattooed male I am used to being the triple-threat of teachers not wanting to work with me), but an okay class. At the end of the class, the door to the back of the room opened up, a little tiny, adorable blonde-haired face peaked in, and then went back behind the door. Okay, cute, that stuff happens. The class ended, the door swung open, and the room was flooded with children running to hug their helicopter moms, barely able to control their 75-minutes of agony away from them.
Here's the picture: I'm a 44-year-old male, drenched in sweat, my black guinea-T barely concealing my chest, my Occult tattoos vibrant and abundant, my shorts clinging to me and my large junk. I'm exhausted, I'm dehydrated, I'm tired, and there are little tiny people running all over the room, across my mat, and I have gone from calm Yoga mode, to hearing baby talk, kid talk, and being a scenic inconvenience for questioning and terrified eyes.
Two more classes happened at this Coolidge Corner school before the third class, the end of my stay there. I left class one day, more kids running into the room, I walked into the changing booth, two children attempted to walk into my booth while I was completely naked--sorry for the eventual therapy they will need--and then I found myself waiting, standing forever, while children jammed up the hallways, jammed up the two bathrooms ("Hey, I gotta pee!") and I shivered in my clean clothes, waited 15-minutes to put on my shoes, while eager moms crammed grapes into their children's mouths, opened baggies of animal crackers, opened and read child-approved books to their broodlings, and in general, children sat and laid down on the floor, crouched in little balls, huddled around their parents, cried, yelled, screamed, laughed, ran, whined, and babbled on and on while I just wanted to get to my shoes and jacket and leave.
This experience is not unique to this one school (which, by the way, advertises that it's a "child friendly school" even offering day care while mothers are in class--a trend that's rapidly taking over Boston schools), more and more schools in Boston are allowing children to wait for their parents, run into the rooms, offer day care for the 60, 75, God Forbid 90-minutes, that child and mother are pried away from the death grip of attachment parenting and then restored, as if combat families far away surprisingly returned and reunited at a local sports event. Yoga schools in Boston are now more than ever offering child Yoga classes, teen Yoga classes, Mommy and Me Yoga classes, and time slots that could, and should, be filled with serious Yogis, with passing the line of transmission from teacher to student (another future blog will indeed focus on the lack of teaching in Yoga these days, for the skill of leading), or at the least valuable time slots that could be used for adults to have the privacy away from family, responsibilities, and the over-crowding and infringement of other people's families and responsibilities into their own, independent lives.
Another school that recently opened (Down Under Yoga, Brookline) in Boston, offered no changing rooms, but two bathrooms, two showers, an entranceway to stand and shiver in (where, every time the front door opened, a gust of cold Winter air raced across you) after your hot class. Then, when a local child-friendly and birthing center went out of business, that Yoga school took on mothering classes, birthing classes, and soon enough, children and teen classes, and now I am standing in a small ten-foot space, my clothes stuck to me, waiting 10-minutes to get into one of the two bathrooms because someone is washing little princesses' cookie-covered face, children racing into me, past me, through me, and I'm freezing to death and catching bronchitis because someone designed a Yoga school without realizing that open doors lead to cold air and all the bathrooms (the only place to change) are taken up by parents and children running on helicopter-parent time.
Yoga schools in Boston are turning into Yoga Day Care Centers. While the Yoga school was once a place to pass on the traditions of India, a place for physical and spiritual growth, they have adapted to the USA so much, that they now resemble all that's wrong with this culture.
Don't want to sweat?
We'll turn the temperature down, we'll make sure that when you leave, you won't even have to change your clothes!
Don't want to have a different religion in front of you?
Don't worry, we'll conceal the Hindu origins of Yoga and give you white-washed Buddhism (with trendy Buddha head statues), Jewish Yoga classes, Christian Yoga classes, we won't talk about Hindu philosophy, Yoga will be as un-Hindu, as un-India as possible, no decoration that will remind you of India at all. Oh, and don't worry, we'll de-sexualize the practice as much as possible so that none of your "triggers" (emotional, psychological, or physical) are set off.
Can't bare the idea of being away from your little princess or your little soldier for 75-minutes, and they need therapy to deal with the separation itself, well don't worry, they can sit in the next room, they take classes alongside you, they can take a class before you while you run next door and get a latte, and then you can take your class while we watch them, they can run into your wanting arms the very second class is over. Because you need to squeeze in a rushed Yoga session, while still helicoptering around your precious, unblemished, overly-controlled minion copy of everything you wanted to be but won't do for yourself because of your victim mentality, the practice of those who are seriously giving themselves to Yoga, is hindered, most precisely, because what we love about Yoga, REAL YOGA, is choking to death on the leash you've strapped to your child.
Yoga schools are rapidly no longer interested in being schools, shalas, being places to grow and push and find yourself, they are another attachment, another commodity, another pitched business deal, another security, another convenience that you won't have to be inconvenienced by.
If the Cold Yoga invasion of Boston (most schools here are 66-72 degrees, something also prominent now in nearby cities like Portsmouth, Portland, and Providence) was the first wave of the death of Yoga in this city, the teacher mill industry (thank you Back Bay Yoga!) the second wave, the absurdity Yoga craze (Hip Hop Yoga! Madonna Yoga! Lady Gaga Yoga! Thank you Back Bay Yoga for pissing all over the face of Yoga in Boston!) the third wave, the Child Care movement is the next, and possibly most dangerous wave.
It speaks really terribly about our society that we are more and more attached to our children, more and more they are attached to us, and there is no healthy solitude time (for parent or child), and with the increase in attachment comes, ironically, an increase in hours worked, nannies, day cares, scheduled sporting events, dance lessons, play dates; in this society, the attachment is increasing but the time away is increasing as well, and the result of that is, in the places where adults once found solace their children are now coming with them, invading these spaces with them, but still insisting on living a life well-expanded with isolation, and false-remedied through attachment. The places where we once went to be adults are now places where we must bare the burden of other's children: coffee shops, book shops, fine restaurants, yoga schools, concerts--FUCK! kids don't even go to college anymore without the direct hip attachment of their parents constantly calling, constantly texting, and constantly having their children come home on the weekends. I have students who live on campus but go home Wednesday-Sunday because, "I'm close to my family."
Look folks, you like your children more than I do. Let's be honest here. Your child is precious and wonderful and beautiful and talented and amazing and the center of the Universe to YOU, your direct family, and only them. I wish them happiness and success, I wish they become brilliant and liberated members of our society (and we need liberated people more than ever), I wish them a long life, I just don't wish them running around my bookshops while I'm thumbing through Bukowski, I don't wish them pulling on my shirt when I'm sitting in a coffee shop trying to enjoy an espresso and read Dante, I don't wish to say, "Hello!" and wave a gentle hand at them while I'm ripping through my third bottle of wine in my favorite Italian restaurant, I don't want to navigate them on the concert floor or have my view of the stage blocked by them (I work too hard to buy tickets to a show), and I don't want them opening my changing room curtain and looking at my cock, I don't want to stumble around them when my muscles are sore, my vision and body strained with sweat, wait for you to delicately hand feed them goldfish crackers, one-by-fucking-one, while I just want to put on my shoes and jacket. I don't hate children, but I come close to hating you, and the Yoga studio owners who allow you into the schools, for making my spiritual and physical solace a Disneyland Day Care, and by the way, I don't owe you, nor your children, the niceness, pleasantness, and consideration of pseudo-caring interaction, any more than you owe me a hand job when I have worked so hard to complete a 90-minute yoga class in a 300-pound body, although, I will gladly be nice to your child if you are willing to be nice to me.
Enough Already. Okay? Let's keep Yoga for the seekers and the adults, and find ways to spend time with your children that don't infringe on everyone else around them.
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