In honor of this week's publication of Stretch, I thought I'd reprint this little essay I wrote for The Faster Times back in June. Hope you all enjoy.
NP
Soon after yoga school began, three weeks that feels like three months ago, a small group of people asked the management if the doors could open a little earlier. They wanted to meditate, starting at 6:45 AM, to help prepare themselves for the rigors of the day. This particular subsection of the yoga world tends to operate on a little-old-lady schedule, light early-bird dinner and up before dawn, so the request didn’t surprise me.
Though I’d rather scrape my anus with a carrot peeler than do even more yoga, I also tend to move pretty fast once I finally do get out of bed. I’m usually one of the first people to arrive at any event, class, or function. Therefore, while I’m not part of the go-go morning meditation bunch at yoga school, I’ve tended to get there while they’re still at the end of their inward bliss of solitude. I sit on the front step and receive visitors.
The meditators have apparently noticed. On Friday morning, one of them came up to me as I sat on my mat, not stretching.
“Can you do me a favor?” he asked.
“Depends,” I said.
“For some reason,” he said, “your voice is the only one all of us hear while we’re meditating, and we were wondering if you could keep it down.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But you’re meditating, so ”
“I know,” he said. “Trucks go by and all. But still. You’re really loud.”





