So, I’m a semi-recent yoga convert.

And while I am grateful for the practice and enjoy my flexibility, I have some issues.  Do I appreciate my toned back and newfound tolerance for way elevated heart rate meets ninety-two degree heat?  Yes.

Stretching, working hard, lifting one leg up high behind me while stretching one arm in front of me while breathing through my nose and focusing on my drishti? All good.

But the bullshit phrases people say?  Ugh.

For example:  Marni and I were on our backs, feet high in the air.  “Now,” the teacher said, “It’s essential that you do an inversion at the end of every class because this drains the fluids from your legs.” Okay, fine.  “When your legs are up, you are LITERALLY REVERSING THE BLOODFLOW IN YOUR BODY.”  As my husband pointed out, if you reverse the flow of blood in your body, you die.

And so on.  Here are some of the better ones:

“Being in the now makes you able to breathe through your hamstrings.”  Really?

“The present isn’t now, it isn’t what happened before, it is the breath of vision.”  You know, just because you put some verbs and nouns and adverbs together, doesn’t make them into a sentence.

“If you let go of the self, forget to stand, forget to force breath, you let go of the everything that isn’t.”  Yeah, and then you fall.

“Be light.  Have nothing and want nothing and be free.”

Or, have a muffin!

*PS – I joke here but I really do like yoga.  I don’t even mind the omming anymore.  I just could do without the phrase-a-day nonsense.