Better late than never

"Getting into yoga" is an excellent, and popular, new year's resolution. Many of the members of the gym where I teach yoga have made this one of their goals for 2009. What they have not resolved to do, as far as I can tell, is be on time to class. For some reason, people coming to my yoga class for the first time always come in late. Maybe they waffle up until the very last moment about whether to come or not; they may even stand outside the door shifting uneasily from one foot to the other for several minutes, trying to will themselves into the room. I don't know. All I know is that, inevitably, the more inexperienced they are, the more likely they are to come in at least 10 minutes late when it is most difficult for me to help them have a good experience.

I had one woman last week come in 40 min late to an hour long class, take what looked like some sort of seat cushion from near the pile of yoga mats*, plop down on it and join in with the class, trying very hard to blend in and look as though she had been there the whole time. As if perhaps I simply hadn't noticed her there before.

This morning was no exception. At 7:03am when I started class it was all** my regular students, so I launched into our typical medium-advanced level class set to a playful Cirque de Soleil soundtrack. Sure enough, at 7:11am in slinks a new student. She sets up over by the wall on the far side and starts trying to join in with the flow but it is immediately obvious that she has never in her life been to a yoga class before.

As the teacher, this creates something of a challenge: you need to keep the flow going for the rest of the class, but you also need to help the new person flailing around near the wall to keep her from having a really bad experience and even potentially hurting herself. So I give more detailed instructions than I normally would for just my regulars, I offer all the beginner options to help her get oriented and find her way, and I walk over and help her as often as I can without letting the rest of the class grind to a halt.

I try to be graceful in my incorporation of different options for the newcomers because I really want them to feel good about their experience in the class, but sometimes it still sounds like I am pointedly singling them out. For example, I might take the class to a pretty basic pose and then say "some of you may stay right here. Those looking for a more advanced option might try balancing on your right leg and lifting your left." In a small class with only a few students, this feels painfully euphemistic. I might as well say "new girl stay right where you are until you collapse in a heap which seems to be imminent, people who actually know what you are doing, transition into artachandrasana."

*I have no idea where she even found it and in what universe someone would confuse this item of garden furniture for a yoga mat
**"all" = 3. But doesn't saying "all" make it sound like a lot?