girlfiend

My usual Wednesday yoga class moved from 5 to 5.30 so more people could make the class. Directly after, at 6.30 is a Tai Chi class. The owner of the gym is a nice guy, but he’s never taken a yoga class in his life and doesn’t realize that yoga tends to go over. It’s usually only an extra 5-10 minutes, but it almost always goes long unless the instructor teaches another class afterwards. So last week was the first 5.30 class. When we went over the Tai Chi instructor started knocking on the door and loudly complaining. This was during shivasana, corpse pose, the relaxation segment at the end of the class. We were pretty annoyed.

This week we knew that we shouldn’t go over, but one thing with yoga is that whatever you do on one side you have to do on the other. Another thing about yoga is that since you’re using and stretching muscles you don’t ordinarily use you have to do complentary poses to balance things out. It’s 6.25 and we still had a whole series to go. One woman in the Tai Chi class was early and waiting outside. The door was open and we could hear her sighing and muttering under her breath. The instructor who obviously felt bad about going over, but didn’t want to rob us of the full yoga experience closed the door.

We ended up finishing at 6.40. The Tai Chi people came in as we were rolling up our mats. The woman who came early walked in telling us how “goddamn inconsiderate” we were. She was all, “Who give you the right to keep me waiting.” She just kept going and going, yelling at us and our instructor as we exchanged uncomfortable glances and nervous smiles. Some of the people in our class tried to appease the Tai Chi-ers to no avail. A few of us whispered about how we thought people who practice Tai Chi are supposed to be centered. After the enraged woman yelled, “I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with y’all,” for the third or fourth time our instructor picked up her bag, smiled, and loudly and clearly chanted, “Ooooooooooommmmmm,” as she walked down the stairs. The nasty woman glared and growled, “You keep right on humming, cause I’m gonna gather up my Chi and knock y’all out.”