Man Yoga

I’m all for a bit of extra curricula. I once considered signing up for a CAE course - Pants that Fit and Flatter on the promise of pants that would not only a. fit (improbable) but also b. actually flatter (ludicrous given my large, white, hairy Italian arse). In fact, in a fit of enthusiasm I’d once gone a step further, enrolling in Trumpet for Beginners, mainly because I wanted to be Vince Jones. I’d met Vince, once, briefly, in the Galleon Café in St. Kilda. He was carrying a little plastic string bag of kiwi fruit. After the introductions, I panicked, blurting out - KIWI FRUIT? KIWI FRUIT? I LOVE KIWI FRUIT – I LOVE KIWI FRUIIT  - JUST AS LONG AS THERES PAVLOVA WRAPPED AROUND IT HA HA HA HA HA. Vince shot me a withering that scarred me for the remainder of the 80s.  Anyway, I rolled up to those trumpet lessons one cold wet Saturday morning only to find a note on the door cancelling the class (lack of numbers). 

Undeterred, thirty-five years later I enlisted in Yoga for Beginners, in an inner city suburb where yoga studios are out-numbered only by wine shops (and there are a lot of those). Why? I’d gone to see some mates play Masters League footy - a classy competition where all the players had names like Spanna, and Franga, and Chooka. The star was the captain coach, Bum-hole. No, really. It was fun watching them play, all red faced, leading for the ball, yelling out Bum- hole! Bum-hole! Bum-hole! but also deeply disturbing. Then it struck me - no one was bending over. There they all were - tearing around like rigid icy-pole sticks. And by rigid I mean as if the pole up Bum-hole’s bum-hole had a pole up its bum-hole. The inescapable conclusion? Middle aged men don’t bend. Can’t bend. That night I subjected myself to a  battery of tests (tried to touch my toes), and realised the terrible truth - I too was biomechanically compromised.   

So I paid my $170 for Beginners (what? no pants? are you sure?), rolled up in my Best for Less tracksuit, and spent three months twisting, turning, bending and collapsing valiantly trying to learn various poses (asanas) concocted by a friendly looking Indian masochist with eyebrows like John Howards’. ‘Asanas’ a good name for pose. They’re often a complete pain in the asana. In fact performing them will almost certainly kick your asana. Now for the uninitiated there are many things they don’t tell you about yoga, some horrible truths omitted from the brochures with their lotus flower motifs and smiley, glowing faces. Here are a couple. 

Spirelli’s First Law of Yogic Endeavour - bending causes farting, obviously.  It’s probably why you’re not meant to eat two hours before class. It’s so certain, so inevitable that it can be expressed as an arithmetic equation. Something like this. Yg = (Bn + Bn + Bn = Ft), therefore Yg = Ft. In my fourth class one of the women who apparently hadn’t quite mastered the art of yogic fart disguise let fly an audible one, followed up with a sheepish excuse me. I felt an instant urge to immediately abandon my asana, stand up and applaud her loudly. Bravo! They don’t warn you.  

Spirelli’s Second Law of Yogic Endeavour - it’s going to hurt. Sure, it’ll start off innocently enough. Stand up (that’s a asana). Stick your arms up (that’s one). There’s even one where you make a comfy little bed and have a nice relax (that’s one too).  They’ll calmly show you how to angle your feet, or align your arms, or lift your head. But it won’t be long before you’re manically wobbling around like some sort of demented, mildly overweight epileptic donkey in stretchy pants being jabbed with an electric cattle prod. The same sweet voice will now be barking out truly insane instructions. No! No! No! Come ON!  I said PULL IN that inside, left, upper back calf and REALLY DISTEND the right backward out-facing lower side flank. Keep that inner back side foot STRONG. STRONG! And just when you’re tittering  on the precipice of consciousness they’ll mentally torment you even further, ordering you to BREATHE  and to RELAX  and to SOFTEN YOUR FACE.  At that point, you’ll really want to soften their face too. 

Spirelli’s Last Law of Yogic Endeavour it’s all in the doing. Think John Kennedy’s famous three-quarter time peon to Hawthorn in the 1975 grand final…DON’T THINK. DOOOO!  Not as simple as it sounds. I’m up for just doing, but keeping a lid on my mind isn’t all that easy, strange given that I’m mentally vacant most all the time. But I try. I can sit with my legs crossed. I can close my eyes. I can even chant ohms - but it usually doesn’t end well.  Ohmmmmmm. Ohmmmmmm. Ohmmmmmmm …..Jake the Peg dittle, dittle, dittle,  dum, with the extra leg, dittle, dittle, dittle, dum and next thing you know I’m imagining Rolf Harris in a dustman’s overcoat, three legs poking out, trying to pull off a textbook trikonsana. Yoga is harder when you’re a born smart arse and sniggering at your own jokes isn’t allowed in class. 

But the most unexpected thing is that it works. There’s some sort of weird, inexplicable interplay between body and movement and mind that just sort of palpably re-sets you. Physically hard-core but not a sport. Mind engaging and mental but not a therapy. Neither but both at the same time. I’m happy to report that I’ve progressed at least a bit) and it’s as if WD-40 is being applied to my major muscle groups. So get cracking men. Grab yourselves a pair of stretchy knicks, avoid the egg salad sangers at lunch and pull up a mat. 

Nino Spirelli