"I was pretty nervous about being there because I didn't like putting myself into unfamiliar physical situations when I was so out of shape."

Erika Dillman

The Yoga Dictator

I had done some yoga breathing once when a yoga teacher came to my office to conduct a relaxation workshop. The breathing exercises had helped my lungs and my head feel better, although I felt a little funny lying on the floor making breathing noises in front of my co-workers. Something that the teacher said had stuck with me, even though I didn't fully believe it. She said that yoga helped balance and unite mind and body.

Curious to find out more and propelled by desperation, I signed up for my first yoga class, despite a lingering skepticism. Breathing exercises in my office were one thing, but I was sort of a jock. I had never appreciated the value of an exercise that didn't involve sweat, pain, and competition. And weren't yoga people kind of weird? I wasn't too sure about meeting them on their own turf.

I associated yoga with a murky, mystical, other-worldly aura. I imagined dark rooms filled with patchouli incense and rows of thin, ascetic men and women sitting in the lotus position, chanting in trance-like unison. I couldn't shake from my mind the pictures I'd seen in yoga books of gaunt, solemn men, wearing what looked like giant diapers, with one leg wrapped around their necks, and cold, expressionless women in Jack LaLanne-style polyester unitards nonchalantly twisting, bending, and lifting themselves into torturous positions.

These images intimidated me because I knew that MY body could never do that, but also because I didn't feel any energy or joy from the pictures. They were too serious and nobody seemed to be having any fun. I thought that they must all belong to a secret club where everyone was miserable. That was the price you had to pay for enlightenment.

Unfortunately, my worst suspicions were confirmed when I attended my first yoga class. I was pretty nervous about being there because I didn't like putting myself into unfamiliar physical situations when I was so out of shape. I didn't know the rituals, the lingo, the protocol. And I had long before lost all confidence in my frail body.

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