I went to a yoga class once while on vacation with my family in the Philippines. My aunt went to yoga regularly, and she wanted us to come with her. So my mom, my younger brother, and I attended the class. I didn't have anything to wear, so I wore my sleep shorts. My brother wore jeans. It was a quiet, moody class in a quiet, moody room. It wasn't bright or energetic. It was calm and serene.
I always thought of yoga as boring dance class. The poses were simple enough for me, but my brother and mom were straight up struggling. They kept looking over at me and making faces. My brother had one eyebrow raised skeptically nearly 80 percent of the time. He was pushing his glasses up and straightening his jeans out every five minutes.
Toward the end of the class, the teacher had us lying down on our backs, hugging our knees. She instructed us to flex every muscle, every part of our body. Feel the fire within. Flex your face, your whole body, all the way down to your toes. Feel the energy. Feel your life force. Engage your entire being.
That's when someone farted. In that quiet, quiet room-- a tiny fart. Pffttt. Just a split-second fart. You might question if you even heard it. But no! You realize, that was DEFINITELY a real fart. I opened my eyes, which had been squeezed shut in an effort to feel my life force, and I looked over at my brother who has actually laughing silently. My brother, a person who avoids smiling at all costs, was grinning from ear to ear. He opened one eye and looked at me, checking to see if I, too, had indeed heard the fart. And I had. I laughed out loud.
The great thing about it was the utter denial of the fart by the rest of the class. Everyone else was content to just ignore the fart. Who had farted? We'd never know, because to those yogis-- the fart never happened. It was swept under the rug. No, it was swept under the yoga mat never to be mentioned.
And to think that anonymous farter was probably holding in that fart the whole time. They gambled when they flexed their whole body. They rolled the dice, and they lost that game to their anus.
You win some, you lose some. You win radiant energy. You lose gas. The gas that you passed. In yoga class.
-j
