Last week I went to my first yoga class in Vancouver and experienced what can be best described as an ecstatic yoga class. After doing a summer of hot yoga at Power Yoga Canada in Oakville, I was eager to return to my mat. I had heard good things about a studio with a few locations in Kitsilano, so I consulted their website to see what kind of classes the studio offered. After some deliberation, I decided that I was going to make my grand return to yoga by going to a Kundalini class. The studio’s website described it as a dynamic and fast paced form of yoga with benefits that include enhanced creativity, lymphatic cleansing and liver detoxification. I hadn’t heard of Kundalini before, but I’m all for an experience that is going to enhance my creativity and detoxify my liver. I figured this had to be the right class for me, so I packed up my yoga mat and made my way over to the studio.
The first thing I noticed when I got to the studio was how earthy the people in the class were. I know that I should have expected this since I was going to a yoga class in Kitsilano, but you must realize that I had previously practiced yoga in Oakville, Ontario, where half of the class drove BMWs and everyone wore Lululemon. In this class, half of the people rode their bikes to get there and everyone seemed to be wearing hemp. (I exaggerate. Vancouver is the world’s Lululemon capital.) I made my way into the darkened studio with about sixty other people, and I found a comfortable spot at the back. The class began with some meditation followed by a lengthy chant. I’ve spent enough time in a yoga studio that I can “om” as well as the next person, but two syllables into this chant I realized I was lost. By the third round, I was doing something that sounded more like the opening of “The Circle of Life” than the chant was supposed to, but I was satisfied with my effort. Next, we were called to raise our hands to the sky and make a wish. Then we raised our hands and made another wish, and then another. By the time the sequence was finished, I could have wished my way up to a mansion in Malibu. This process had done little for my creativity and it certainly didn’t seem to have detoxified my liver. I stood on my mat and wondered if anyone else was feeling the same way. And then the electronic dance music started.
The teacher told us to hold our arms in the air and start to shake out our hands. I started with some jazz hands, and then some waving, and eventually I was doing a dance move I like to call yoloswag. By this point, the class was a mass of flailing bodies. Someone in the corner was so moved by the music that she let out a “Woo.” I began to wonder if the point was to flail our way towards a point of yoga ecstasy. Then the teacher told us to move our bodies to our own rhythm. As I said before, I was at the back in a darkened studio. When I was told to move to my own rhythm, I became Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You. I did every dance move my friends have ever feared I would do in public, while a chorus of woos sounded throughout the class. A shirtless man had turned on his mat so he could lead the people around him in a series of full body shakes. A man in the middle of the room was full out pogoing, and two girls were moving across the mats like they were at a hoedown. After a good forty minutes of dancing, we were finally lead through a couple of sun salutations and downward dogs. I thought we had reached the end when everyone was sitting cross-legged on their mats, but what I hadn’t realized was that following the dance number came the song. Yes, everyone around me was singing, and no, I did not know a single word of the song. I thought about going back to “The Circle of Life,” but out of respect to the surprisingly good singers in the class, I remained quiet.
After an hour and a half in the studio, the teacher closed the practice by saying, “Choose to be happy.” I liked that. I didn’t have the ecstatic experience the rest of the class seemed to be having, but I enjoyed the experience anyway. It was a good workout and the most fun I have had in Vancouver on a Wednesday, so I am definitely going to return for another Kundalini yoga class. I may only be a few classes and a couple of hemp t-shirts away from having an ecstatic experience myself.
Song of the Day: Afterglow by Wilkinson
