Hi guys!

Let me just make things clear: I am not a yogi. I don’t think hanging upside down until
my head explodes as I breathe with the intention of…sounding like an ocean (what?) is 
the way to find inner peace. I especially felt this in my first yoga class when I took it
in a room that used to be the meat aisle in an old Loblaws. However, in the spirit of the
Ampersand Health Hustle, I do take one nooner class every (well, most) Wednesdays. It’s
across the street from our office and there’s one teacher that is awesome. If she wants you
to stretch your arm, she’ll say something like, “Now, stretch your left arm” instead of
“Reach your left tree branch towards the sky and breathe life into its growth.” So after her
class I walk out feeling well stretched and refreshed, instead of in pain and confused.

This past Wednesday I went to yoga and walked in the door to find someone else
in her place. A man. A yogi wannabe. My co-worker and I spent the next 70 minutes listening to
our instructor talk and talk and TALK, about being thankful that we can do yoga, all the
while trying to contort our upper bodies into opposite versions of our spiralling lower
bodies (we’re still not sure what it means to “spiral”). Even the awesome sleeping part
at the end was interrupted with whale sounds and a loud bell that turned out to be a
real singing bowl sitting in front of our instructor whose smug face read: “Yes, it’s true. I
can make this bowl sing.”  It was everything I dislike about yoga and when we left the class
we were a sweaty, confused mess. It reminded me of my original feelings about yoga, and then
I saw this and it summed it up nicely for me.

– Tamara