June 2, 2009

One of the many benefits that I have received as a result of being ashamed of myself is that I shudder at the thought of ever being intrusive…..although I’m sure that I often am. The idea that someone would tell me that I’m invading their space or interrupting them scares me, for that person would be recognizing me as a kind of boor, which is among the many unflattering names I’ve called myself during this lifetime. The other side of this ridiculous coin is that if someone intrudes into my space or interrupts me I get an interior feeling of rage which, thankfully, I almost never express. It feels like the intruder believes that I am irrelevant, that I can be ignored, that I have no value, also beliefs I have held about myself. But these beliefs are mine and no one else is allowed to know these things about me and when it seems that they do I want to hurt them.

I attend an Iyengar Yoga class on Tuesday mornings and have been doing so for years. I enjoy this class and find it helpful to my physical and mental well being. Most of the people in the class have also been attending for a long time and it has become a comfortable place with most of us occupying the same floor space week after week and year after year. We arrange our spaces with a yoga mat, a bolster, some blankets, a belt and a few blocks for support during some of the standing poses. My friend John and I are normally the only men in the class which is quite pleasant from both a visual and competitive point of view.

This morning a new guy joined the group (hopefully for only one week) and squeezed himself between me and the person next to me. I immediately didn’t like him which is a typical feeling I get when someone new joins a group that I’m a part of. I was prepared to ignore him but thought that might be a bit obtuse so I said good morning. He is a very tall man and thin with a mustache and his shorts were very brief and he was being intrusive so I liked him even less.

The class began and I forgot about him for a while but then he started taking my “stuff”. First he took one of the blankets that I had gotten for myself and then decided that he could use the belt I had gotten for the class. Now understand that these implements are not mine per se but I had gotten them from the storage shelves and intended to use them for certain poses.

The class was ruined for me. I wanted to say something to him but didn’t know how. I felt like he believed me to be irrelevant and he occupied my mind for the entire class. An aim of yoga is to go inward but my focus was on this tall, skinny, mustached, invading creep who was taking my toys.

Chronologically I’m a long way from being two years old but sometimes my thoughts are right there in the first year of pre school. There’s a lesson here that I’ve learned before but I’ll just have to learn it again.