High Maintenance Yoga anyone?

-this photo has nothing to do with this story - except his shoes do stand out don't they?

Quite consistently when I lived in the West End of Vancouver, around the first couple of years I lived there I would go to Yoga. There was/is this fantastic teacher at the West End Community Center named Sandra Leigh.

Sandra is in her late 30s (well actually, god forbid, she might be 40 by now). She was initially trained at the Ashram in the Kootenays and she is one of those people who continually learns and adds to her knowledge. She teaches Dru yoga, and combines Hatha and Kundulini and restorative yoga with spiritual teachings and sound throughout the 1.5 hour class.

Hers are the best yoga classes I've ever been to because of her way of being and how she shares her extensive knowledge throughout the class. She also works at Banyen Books in the Yoga section and she started a thing on Friday nights called Give Peace a Chant. In short, she's FABULOUS.

In the entire time I went to her classes, not one person would be doing something other than what she was working on. I'm not sure she would have even allowed that (but in a nice way).

I've only been to yoga a couple times here on Salt Spring but I just find it so strange/annoying that inevitably there are always one or two of THOSE people in the class who might as well be doing yoga in their own living room, not in a class because they are in their own little world. If they were in a marching band, they'd be marching sideways while everyone else was trying to move forward.

I always say to myself when I see them. Oh, here we go. Welcome to Prima Donna Yoga. Welcome to High Maintenance yoga. Welcome to I can't afford therapy so I thought I'd try Yoga. Now, I know. I know what you're thinking. Why does this bother me? What's it to me? What does it say about me that it bothers me at all? I've asked myself that and here's the answer. Ready?

They're a pain in the ass and they bug me!

So yesterday I go to Yoga. And sure enough there's not one but 2 of 'em. One's a guy. He's pretty much doing his own thing throughout the whole class. Lying on his mat on his back with his eyes closed. At first I thought he was one of those homeless-by-choice "park people" who just needed a quiet place to lay down.

The other one has body language that screams bitchy, pouty, victim louder than well, a bitchy, pouty victim. She comes over to the woman behind me and goes, Do you need the corner? The woman looks at her. "I need the corner" she says "because I have to do an inverse double whammy transverse, downward dog, Sun Salutation levetation" or whatever the hell she said.

Then she starts dragging over enough crap for a weekend camping trip. She's got the two folding chairs, a bolster, blocks of every kind, a blanket. Pretty much the only thing she's missing is the buntzen burner to heat up her Soy milk for after the class.

At some point I have to ask her something and she just stares at me, not an ounce of warmth in her victim-tired eyes. So, I just turn around and pretend she's not there. Maybe she's just come back from a silent retreat but she's forgotten that she can actually talk now I think to myself. Just as well.

Is this just a Salt Spring phenomenon I wonder or does it happen elsewhere?