Led Class

What I like least about most yoga classes is yoga class: the part where you wait around on your mat for the teacher to begin, where you have to half-heartedly socialize while perhaps half-assedly doing a few stretches, feeling half-dressed and with half a mind to leave before things even begin.

That’s why, in part, I was drawn to Ashtanga: the typical practice is “Mysore style;” you show up on your own time and terms, do your practice at your own speed and ability, and are into Savasana and out the door without having to interact with anyone but your own self (and perhaps, briefly, from time to time, your teacher, as he or she corrects a posture or assists you in getting into, or more deeply into one.)

For the introvert and/or self-motivated “Type A” personality, it’s the perfect approach: you learn primarily from the practice itself as opposed to mostly from a teacher, and best of all, you can get away without having to engage in small-talk with strangers before your morning coffee.

But within the Ashtange tradition, there’s also the so-called “led class,” in which a teacher calls out each step in all the poses and counts the breaths while students, simultaneously, as one, go through the series in something, that to the untrained observer, probably resembles a kind of freaky, cultish, slow-motion calisthenics class, or perhaps the strangest sort of Martian dance party ever conceived.

Surprisingly, however, even for one of those aforementioned introverted Type A people, the occasional (or here in Mysore twice-weekly) led class (the first time I heard the term I thought it was “lead class” and envisioned everyone holding heavy, old-fashioned barbells) is something to look forward to—or probably, more accurately, to look back upon warmly having survived it.

Two aspects of it are particularly satisfying: first, the way you can (or pretty much must) give yourself completely over to the count; you’re freed of the responsibility of pushing yourself and can always rely on your teacher (in my case, Saraswathi) to make you work harder than you would yourself; and second, the way in which having someone else direct things for you forces you to notice all the shortcuts and sidesteps you normally take on your own--(or, at least, it forces me to do so.)

And of course, it's also comforting that because of the norm of silence which is observed before and after while in the shala, you can still easily make your way off to morning coffee without having to small-talk.