Yoga in the Warhol
On the last Friday of March, I walked into one crowded lobby of the Andy Warhol Museum in my universe-style leggings and yoga mat strapped to my back and no real expectations. We were invited to take our practice downtown and vinyasa in the house dedicated to pop-art creations. I arrived with an open-mind and left filled with inspirational strangeness.
“Art is what you can get away with.”
It was a special field trip organized by our instructors for the teacher training. I was overly excited and absolutely clueless...which made it all the more thrilling. A deep red velvet rope sectioned off an area of the lobby for us and our practice. It faced a large window to Sandusky Street and to the right of the museum's bar--location, location, location. Most of us set down our mats and quickly swept through the different exhibits prior to practice...Dani and I did so barefoot. Frolicking through the balloon room perhaps helped fill some with a certain lightness, but upon returning to the lobby it had dawned on us--other people were still in the lobby. Practice was about to commence and it was then a sure thing that these people were NOT dispersing. In fact, the exact opposite had occurred. Every Friday in the month of March the Warhol was free, this happened to be the final Friday so all sorts of people came out to take advantage of the free admission. I'm sure they had no idea they would be exposed to such a live spectacular. Once the teacher LA called 'Children's Pose' and we all took our positions on our mats and rested our foreheads, it became clear what everyone else who was not dresses in some rayon / spandex suit had turned their attention towards. We could neither anticipate nor predict the response of the spectators who came to see pop-art and soon got exposed to yoga art. I (as I'm sure my fellow yogis) dug deep to focus on breath as we glided back into our first 'Downward facing dog,' feeling eyes follow down our spine. I thought how impossible it could ever be to do something abstract or different at the Warhol. If anything we were really the ones fitting in. No room for embarrassment.
“You have to do stuff that average people don't understand because those are the only good things.”
As practiced moved and we began to flow, a certain magic sparked. I felt like I was flying from one posture to the next. Absorbing all the distractions and loud craziness as energy. It took some time to register LA's cues due to all the chatter our practice provoked. She gracefully shouted and after awhile I honed in on her voice and it got easier to make it through the series. She spoke to the DJ and requested to switch up the music and lights. In sync to the music and collection of background noises, we turned into a traveling performance group moving our bodies to yoga in the Warhol, and illuminated by a pink fluorescent glow--it was beautiful.
“Beauty is a sign of intelligence.”
We were unknowingly producing art. Not because we were at an art museum or doing something other people might not feel comfortably doing or even think to do--We were doing what we love. The fact that we displayed it in public wasn't much different to what we do every time we come to our mats. But I never came to this conclusion until after I unintentionally exposed what I love to do to complete strangers.
"Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches."
My mat faced the windows. The captured faces of people completely startled, with their weird-ass reactions as they passed by, was unforgettable. Especially those who stopped, stepped closer to the window, and watched with gaping mouths as if those of us in Warrior I could not see them .
“I never fall apart, because I never fall together.”
Friday's experience not only served me in ways I hadn't even realized yet (still processing), it also started the intensive training weekend off with a theme. Vulnerability. And as our first experiment would later have us realize, vulnerability wasn't such a negative or uncontrolled emotion to experience. When we finally arrived in "savasana," or corpse pose, my body and my mind completely let go. Throughout the hour our initial "audience" had settled themselves or refocused their attentions to the new faces at the bar, until 35 people laying flat on their backs with their faces up in stillness brought their attention back. Not that we were expecting or inviting it, it just happened. It was hard to zone everything out and zone in to final relaxation. I know some yogis had a hard time settling into this posture because at that point we had been practicing for 75-minutes in a place we've never practiced before and surrounded by so many changing distractions. As LA circled us she laid one stemmed flower next to each of our quiet bodies. After practice ended we were requested to give our flowers to someone in the lobby--someone outside the red velvet roped area...
In a way that ended our 75-minute series of postures and brought us (me at least) even closer to that edge of discomfort and insecurity felt at the beginning.
In a way that ended our 75-minute series of postures and brought us (me at least) even closer to that edge of discomfort and insecurity felt at the beginning.
“The idea is not to live forever, it is to create something that will.”
Together we embraced this unique adventure. From start to finish, in just a little over an hour, different surges of energy and waves of emotional weirdness mixed up a class we would usually attend any given day at a studio. As a practitioner of yoga we demand our bodies to work. Sometimes it's just about the sweat, deepening a certain stretch, building a bit more strength or reaching to re-energize our body. Sometimes (perhaps unexpected at first) we work towards an edge of emotional discomfort. Either way it leads us to discovery. And in the off chance that we're lucky, we get to do that inside the walls of inspirational art. But if we're even luckier, we get to practice everyday surrounded by people that bring us inspiration on and off our mat.
thanks for reading.
thanks for reading.