Day 107: Metal Yoga

I've been working on a little yoga-related project on the side and attempting some new yoga classes. I'll tell you more about that in a few months, but today, I went to Tough Love Yoga for something totally and completely out of my wheelhouse--Metal Yoga. It's just what you think it is; heavy metal music plays in the background while students bliss themselves away on the current of breath and internal meditation.

No one would question that that's a strange combination.

However, they didn't create this type of yoga with no one in mind.

Let me recount a story.

As I pulled up into the parking lot, I targeted the building in which I would be taking class (the Young Blood Gallery), and saw outside something I had never seen before--a girl smoking and carrying a yoga bag. Now, I'm sure that happens all the time in New York, but I didn't think that would happen so blatantly, outside a yoga studio. It's just a little odd. Why she didn't smoke outside her apartment before leaving, I'll never know, but it was a smidgen weird.

I got inside, and placed my mat down randomly in the middle of the floor. Not too long later, a dog comes up to me, lies down at my feet, and starts peeing. On the floor. Not even in a peeing position. Buh-zar.

The people who attend metal yoga are urban twenty-somethings. They girls have shorter hair than most, the guys have longer hair than most, they all have tattoos or piercings, and an edgy style, but they're nice, genuine people who don't feel the need to put up a front. I love that.

Class started, and as much as I want to comment on the "metal" part of the music, I really barely noticed it at all. There was a particularly screamo-y song that caught my attention, but everything else just faded into the background. Then I was thinking about my "normal" yoga classes. I don't even really notice the music there either. There is one teacher I go to frequently who has absurdly wonderful taste in music, which I notice, but otherwise, if I don't know the words to a song or immediately love it so much I can't take my ears off, I couldn't care less what's going on. That must be an indication that I'm good at letting go of my surroundings.

If playing metal helps you enjoy yoga, by all means, go for it. I can see how tonight's ladies related well to a teacher who shared the same lifestyle and music tastes they did. Who wouldn't?

So did metal yoga improve my practice? Not exactly. But I did learn some things about myself. I can zen-out in my yoga practice no matter what the environment. I can interact with yogis of all lifestyles. And I can get past anything, even a dog almost peeing on me, and enjoy the present.