Confessions of a wannabe yogi

BY ALAN CLARKE

Adho Mukha Svanasana, the downward-facing dog, can be a deceptively mean mongrel and difficult to master.

It looks an easy enough exercise – you simply lie face down, palms at shoulder level, and push your bum skywards until your arms straighten and your feet are flat.

It's tempting to relax into it, take a breather, cheat – but a half-decent yoga teacher will spot a newbie slacker in a heartbeat, and poke and prod you into position. And your shoulders will shudder, your arms shake, your hamstrings will twang and your Achilles tendons ache. In other words, this dog can bite.

I first met the yoga mutt – along with the cat, the cobra and a range of other beasts and postures – with Maureen McKain at the Nelson College night classes, perhaps 18 years ago.

I bowled up unsuspecting and unaware of what to expect, responding to a nagging internal voice that suggested there must be more to the whole yoga thing than hippies in tights crossing their ankles behind the backs of their necks or mentally imaging the sound "om".

I figured I was pretty fit, spent a lot of time walking the Grampians and biking, and had a flexible attitude too.

I quickly found how testing yoga could be. Humiliating, if you let yourself worry about what others are capable of. That the old girl across the room was able to serenely hold strength and endurance "warrior" postures, long after I'd given in to the shaking and aching muscles. Or that the overweight balding bloke could stretch out far further in the forward bends.

I persevered, however, along with the rest of the class. Maureen knew which buttons to push, and soon had us pulling half-decent salutes to the sun, spinal twists and everything else in the basic yoga box of tricks.

Relaxation time at the end of the 90-minute session always seemed like a special treat. Talk about taking a chill-pill – there surely cannot be a better way of tackling stress and ever-rising blood pressure. Even better, the pharmaceutical multi-nationals can't put it in a bottle and flog it off.

I eventually switched colleges, joining Birgita Haas at Nayland because the time and place suited better. Her teaching was every bit as inspired and inspiring.

Under either teacher, the classes were testing – though we quickly learned the futility of worrying about what others were capable of and to compete solely with ourselves – and life-enhancing. They were also exceptionally good value.

In the days of the three-term year, night school was built around 10-week sessions and from memory it cost us $30.

At $3 a session, it was half or less than the going rate at the private yoga businesses which were around for those ready to stretch themselves, as it were, at a higher level. Of course, they also had higher overheads and all sorts of snazzy equipment that wasn't available in the college libraries or classrooms where the night schools did their stuff.

But still, night school made learning new skills accessible to just about anyone. And while the cost is now 50 per cent higher ($45) and the typical course duration cut back to eight weeks, it remains a significant opportunity for people to get a taste of a healthier, more aware and empathic way of living, regardless of income.

Enter, flashing her razor, the Minister of Education, Anne Tolley.

Despite having a budget of $10.8 billion to play with, her Big Idea, to slash the school sector adult education funding from $16 million to $3.2m a year, is short-sighted, arrogant and mean.

While I accept that some of the subjects currently listed on the Nayland night school programme might be tailor-made for a ministerial snort of derision – ukulele for beginners, Gok-inspired "cheap chic" fashion, bead jewellery-making – Mrs Tolley's folly is to dismiss the positive power and value of enhanced social interaction that such courses allow.

In a world that is increasingly centred around introspective, computer-based "networking" which encourages people to "connect" in a virtual world without leaving their homes, the very courses that Mrs Tolley so readily ridicules might well be the most important of all.

Simply joining a ukulele orchestra, getting a few fashion pointers or learning a new artistic skill would likely be heaps better medicine than Prozac for someone depressed, sad and lonely. Might even save a life. Music, fun and laughter sounds like the perfect green prescription to me – along with the likes of yoga, pilates, nutritional and parenting skills which are also offered this term at Nayland.

Rather than pulling the plug on the so-called "hobby" courses, a case could be made for the Government fully funding them – if not from Mrs Tolley's billions, then how about Tony Ryall's mind-blowingly large health vote? If more people attended the sort of classes available at Nayland, the staggering sums spent on those who cannot or will not look after themselves would be decimated.

But Mrs Tolley and the other smug lot in Cabinet seem determined to toss out the baby with the bathwater, perhaps out of some purist philosophical quirk which has them seeing night school as carrying an unacceptable socialist taint.

So it's privatise adult education classes – let them sink or swim without central funding.

Of course, some of the courses will survive in church, school or community halls. The more popular ones might even thrive. But that's no reason to dismantle a rich social fabric that has been brightening communities for years.

I did opt out of yoga 13 years ago, and now regret doing so sufficiently to sign up for night school again, as a rank beginner. Monday evenings work best, and I'm looking forward – I think – to Birgitta's gentle persuasion once again making me ache, shake and sweat.

With tight tendons, dodgy knees and no muscle-tone, it's time to tackle the dog again – and I don't mean the minister of budget-slashing. Adho Mukha Svanasana will soon be back nipping at my heels, with or without government funding.

- © Fairfax NZ News