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Viewpoint
The Airport Yogi
by Daphne Carpenter
When I walked into the waiting area at Gate 29 of the Dallas airport, I saw a spectacle unfolding. As my eyes scanned the room for a seat, a man was on the ground in the middle of the room, in Supported Pigeon pose (Salamba Kapotasana), a hip opening yoga posture.
He was balanced on his right thigh while his left leg was extended behind him, and very true to the posture, his chest was lifted with bird-like majesty.
I blinked my eyes. Was this guy doing yoga?
Yes, he was.
The airport yogi was a Caucasian middle-aged man wearing dark grey slacks and a mauve-colored business shirt. He was practicing a full-sequenced set of yoga postures (asanas) right there in the waiting area. And this wasn’t your ordinary gentle yoga-stretch sequence, the kind you read about in magazines under headlines like “Stay Calm: Yoga Your Way through Highway Traffic” or “Stretches from Your Airplane Seat.”
Oh no, this had to have been at the caliber of a Level Two Vinyasa Flow class. His stretches were very vigorous.
It was December and there were myriad travelers shooting out from all directions. You could feel the swift wind of human bodies crossing paths momentarily in the rush to make it to their holiday destinations.
I spotted a seat and quickly made my way into the small sectioned-off area where I would wait for my transfer flight to Brazil—which wouldn’t be leaving for another nine grueling hours.
Now I was right next to the yogi. He stretched himself further out into pigeon position and walked his hands out in front of him until his chest met the ground. When his strawberry-blondish crown of disheveled hair was pointing right towards me with his face towards the floor, I looked around, slightly bewildered, to see other passengers’ reactions. Was this as strange to everybody else as it was to me?
Then I saw that a man across from me was watching my reaction with an amused smile on his face. His eyes were lifted like crescent moons and he looked like a happy-faced emoticon. He saw that I was the newest person entering the circus scene and when our eyes met, I started to laugh, although somewhat quietly.
Damn. I didn’t want to do that. It was all his fault, that happy faced-emoticon guy. If our eyes hadn’t connected in complacent glances of amusement, I might have been able to restrain myself. I truly didn’t want to offend my fellow yogi. But honestly, I found the situation funny and had to look away to avoid triggering a chain reaction of laughter around us.
Then I wondered if the situation was a setup for some TV reality show, where they secretly film people’s reactions to bizarre events.
When the yogi moved into Cat-Cow pose—with his torso vacillating up and down, accentuating the arch in his back—he did little to restrain the blissful look on his face as the energy traveled up his spine and out through the crown of his head. With his close proximity, it was hard not to “feel” him and his deeply concentrated Ujjayi breath blowing in my direction.
As the session continued, I started to get annoyed at what felt like an erotic performance of yoga at Gate 29. I caught myself starting to judge him. I knew I was wrong, but in my flawed human-ness, it just happened. “Couldn’t he just move closer to the wall, out of the way?” I scowled to myself from under my breath.
But really I was just jealous of his profound sense of not caring what anyone else thought. He lacked the self-consciousness that prevented any of us other yogis from living out our practice so freely, and in such proximity to strangers. He didn’t feel like he was in anyone’s way or doing anything wrong.
He was focused and centered in his Light Body and he had cleared away the energy blocks that had lodged themselves in the backs of his legs and in his lower back—those mean ones we get from sitting on the airplane for cruel, prolonged periods. This guy was ready to board that plane as a new man, flexible, and refreshed.
A loud cleansing-breath escaped his mouth. “Haahhhh,” he exhaled, indifferent to the curious stares in his direction.
“Flight 2079 to Burbank has been delayed,” announced a female voice over the intercom.
I wondered if that might have been his flight. If it was, he didn’t seem to be the least bit concerned. He just kept flexing and pointing his toes, which were warmed by a pair of knee length, thin black dad-socks.
Wondering what he would do next, I started taking notes in my journal, partly to be able to write a story about him, but mostly to pretend that I wasn’t completely intrigued by what he was doing.
“Inward focus,” I had to remind myself. But the airport yogi was the shining centerpiece of the room and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him for more than 20 seconds.
Meanwhile, the next pose was Tree (Vrksasana), a balance posture, and I continued to chuckle inside. His expression was so serious, and as he faced me, he looked like a lone tree in a forest of animals. On his face was neither a frown nor a smile—only a pure look of deep concentration. At this point, I noticed two athletic looking guys in baseball caps talking about which postures they thought they could pull off. But their voices indicated a touch of sarcasm—they were mocking him.
Still riding the eternal om wave of consciousness, the yogi worked his way into a very flat-footed Downward Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana) and then slowly walked his hands back to his feet. Finally, like ice cream melting on a summer day, he began to roll up with his eyes closed, half a vertebra at a time.
He stood up tall like a mountain and stretched his hands above him, as if lighting bolts were shooting out from his fingers. I could almost see the energy radiating out of him like fireworks.
His hands came together at his heart center in Anjali Mudra. With his eyes still closed, amongst the chaos of holiday traffic and ridiculing stares, he tucked his chin in and bowed his head slightly. In his moment of peace, I saw his lips whisper, “Namaste.”
I finally stopped judging.
Daphne Carpenter is a time traveler who stays healthy by surrounding herself with people who have positive attitudes and by contorting her body into strange positions while trying to remember to breathe. Contact her at daphnestree@hotmail.com.