yoga teacher potluck

Yesterday afternoon, I left work early so I could go to a potluck for yoga teachers in the Catskill-Woodstock-New Paltz corridor.  So, so nice to be surrounded by my fellow yoga teachers (most of whom I didn’t know) for a few hours.  There were about 30 of us; I was one of just four men, which was an even more skewed ratio than I was expecting.  I had interesting conversations about teaching yoga to Alzheimer’s patients, and salvation of the human race via alien intervention (which, for the record, is not an issue on which yoga takes an official stance as far as I’m aware; but this was Woodstock, after all, so one must be open to these sorts of conversations).

There is a deep, laughable irony in the fact that as I was driving to the yoga teacher potluck, I was totally freaking out about being too early (ie, getting there on time), and then, when I (inevitably) got lost, I immediately switched gears and started freaking out about being late.  And I recognized the stupidity of all of that as I was going through it, but still felt much better once I actually got there and could put down my inner dialogue/slapstick comedy routine for a while.

It looks like there’s a great deal of interest in the local yoga community in fostering an alliance of sorts between the different yoga schools, or at least in opening some lines of communication so that we can start working together on projects of importance to all of us.  I am very excited by this idea, which I think and hope will curb the tendency towards tunnel vision.  There’s a much wider community out there.  It’s easy to forget that.  As one of the organizers said, “We’re teaching yoga to people who can afford to take our classes, and meanwhile there are people here in the Hudson Valley who can’t afford to eat.”  So I’m happy to find myself a part of a group that’s interested in working to address that schism.