Yoga

Real Guru Visited My Studio for a One-Time Yoga Class

But I couldn’t sit still and stop my giggling

“Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental”

Introduction

I’ve done many silly things in my lifetime, but sometimes it’s the things around me that seem silly, and I can’t help but laugh.

A real Yoga guru

As an owner of a dance studio, I needed to keep filling it up with classes to help with expenses, bring in new people, and open myself and others to new experiences and different types of classes as people have varied interests.

It came to my attention that a friend of my son’s, who was in the Army Reserve program and traveled extensively had a friend who would be in the area. His name escapes me, but he was the real-deal Yoga guru and traveled around the country, maybe even the world, giving Yoga classes — real Yoga classes. She said she could set up an appointment with him to be at my studio for about an hour if I wanted him. Of course, I said yes.

After she set up the class with him, I received a picture to include in my flyers which I sent to my current students, put in my online ads, and hung in stores. The picture was just a head shot of an older, bearded man, who looked the part of what one might picture a real Yoga instructor to look like.

On the day of the event we had around 30 women show up at the studio with their mats which they arranged in a semi-circle around the mat I left out for him. We waited in the reception area with anticipation for him to arrive.

And there he was. He made an amazing, awesome entrance. He was a serious-looking older man completely covered in white robes, with long gray hair and beard, quite good-looking, and very distinguished as he greeted everyone quietly then slowly walked into the studio and took his place on the mat I provided.

But, something about the whole situation was already making me feel a little giddy, nothing I could explain, maybe having a celebrity there was making me emotional, but that’s just me. We walked into the studio with him and took our place on the mats we had laid out earlier.

He explained in his thick accent, what we would be doing and asked for perfect silence and our undivided attention. We folded our legs the way he showed us, put our hands on our knees, palms up, with our index fingers and thumbs touching, and closed our eyes, as instructed.

All of a sudden he starts making this ah-uu-mm sound and asks us to join in! It felt strange to me but I went along with it for a while. It seemed like sitting and making this noise went on for about 10 minutes. I could feel myself becoming bored, and I felt silly. I know this is serious for some and very rewarding, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.

At some point, I opened one eye, even though we were told to keep them shut, to look around the room to see if everyone was going along with this, and there was Evie on the other side of the half-circle sneaking a peek out of one eye as I was doing. As soon as we laid eyes on one another, we erupted into laughter. We knew it was impolite and attempted to stifle our amusement.

The instructor, with eyes still closed, turned his head in my direction. After a very quiet apology, I tried again to sit still but could not, once the giggles started there was no stopping them. I got up as quietly as possible and tiptoed out of the room, followed closely behind by Evie, who by now realized she couldn’t endure the class, either.

The class went on for the whole hour and everyone loved it, except me and Evie, the other one who couldn’t sit still. For some reason, we both had the giggles so leaving the room was best.

We sat in the reception area and ate the cupcakes I baked instead.