What's so funny

I taught two yoga classes this week, my usual Monday morning class and a Tuesday evening class that I subbed.

The Monday morning classes might as well be taking place in a cemetery the gym is so quiet at 7am. I don't use music for the class and the silence and the sound of the breathing is meditative and peaceful.

Evening classes are a whole different story. The yoga studio has windows on one side that look across a hallway and into another studio that in the evenings is used for ballroom dancing classes. This leads to yoga cues during the standing balance poses that go something like "Direct your gaze straight ahead and fix your gaze on an undancing spot in front of you."

In addition to the dance class, there was another class going on in an adjoining studio that we couldn't see but we could hear: it sounded like some sort of Brazilian streetfighting. I think someone may have been actually killed at one point. I think I could hear the perpetrators going through his wallet.

Seven people came to the Tuesday class which, I am both pleased and embarrassed to announce is the largest class I have ever taught and it, like many of the classes I teach at the gym, featured an awkward mix of levels. I taught to the least advanced level and believe I succeeded in leaving everyone unsatisfied. One beginner woman kept making these harumphs and whimpers of disbelief at the poses we were doing. It reminded me of a guy who used to show up sometimes in classes at my Washington DC yoga studio. He was an older black guy who was in pretty good shape and who would spend the entire class laughing. Every instruction the teacher gave, he would just chuckle appreciatively but incredulously as if to say "That would be wonderful if it weren't impossible."