Jan. 23, 2008 | My dislike of partner yoga started with a stranger’s sweaty thighs. I had just moved from Brooklyn, N.Y., to the San Francisco Bay Area, and I was working my way through a Sunday morning Vinyasa class with the same discipline, determination and Type A drive I bring to most attempts at relaxation. But I kept getting distracted by the young man next to me.

To be specific, I was distracted by the moisture he was producing. No sooner had we started sun salutations than the man began to sweat, energetically and abundantly. By the time the class was halfway through, drops of perspiration rolled off his nose with the regularity of a leaking faucet, and a puddle had formed on the floor in front of his mat. Instead of wiping off his face with a towel, he removed his shirt. Now sweat began to drip from a new spot: his nipples.

I, too, was disgusting. Perspiration comes easily to me; I like to say I have a gift. So I was caught off-guard when, after a lovely series of hip openers, the instructor asked us to pair up with a partner. First, I was confused. (A partner? For what?) Then indignant. (I hate group work.) Then anxious. (What if no one wants to be my partner?) By the time I had worked through my emotional process, everyone else was paired up. The young man was mine.
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Apr 26, 2005 | The deputy peeks out of his cage, picks up the phone, and his deep monotone echoes through the pod. “Meditation, meditation, everybody wanna do meditation, make your bed, go to the bathroom.”

I thought at first he said “medication,” but I already got my T.B. test, so the nurse doesn’t need me for anything. I look around confused and then my Salvadoran celly blurts out bossily, “Joga. It’s joga time.”

What? Oh, yoga. In jail. Of course. Why not?

A moment later “Hawaii,” my other celly, asks mindfully, “Is it gonna be bitches?”

Good question, Hawaii. Is it gonna be bitches indeed. We’ll have to investigate.

Hawaii and I shuffle through the pod up to the classroom in our county-issue orange pajamas and flip-flops. Upon opening the door, however, we realize that instead of bitches, we’ve got two of the gayest, whitest, squarest hippies in America on our hands. In sweat pants. But it’s too late. We’ve entered the “calm zone.”

Nothing left to do now but sit cross-legged on the floor with our fellow inmates and listen to the spiritual musings of our sweat-panted man Jerry and his friend, the Michael Bolton of yoga. But it’s cool.

“Stretch it out, motherfucker.” This is what thugs must say to themselves as they sneak into downward dog. It’s what I say to myself. “Don’t be a bitch. You can do this motherfuckin’ backbend. Maaan, Michael Bolton can do this shit.”

I look around nervously and spot a dozen men from my unit contorting themselves in a serious effort to appreciate the “calm zone” — because, of course, outside that door is no more calm zone. Outside that door is psycho zone.

Giant corn-fed white boy goofy teenager is smoking ice with the shadiest Mexican in California, standing on a toilet seat ducked low enough for the deputy to miss it. That toothless Italian is messing with the fat comic book nerd ’cause he borrowed a chapstick without asking. My 400-pound Samoan neighbor is crying to the tiny Filipina nurse for some methadone because it’s day three without heroin and he’s drenched in sweat. The gay Filipino is trying to handle the gun-smuggling Chinese ponytail at Ping-Pong (the winner gets a clean set of laundries or a porno, depending).

It’s a circus out there. But this is the calm zone.

For the moment, corn-fed white boy is right next to me. He is pointing his chin at the fluorescent-lit ceiling, eyes gently closed, and twisting his torso toward the Pacific Ocean. So is orange-dreadlock gold-teeth kid over in the corner. And so is oily, scabby, HIV-positive, always hungry or sleeping “Hawaii” — my celly and best friend in this motherfucking circus.

My back is against the wall and Michael Bolton is leading us through the most serene, magic, flying-bullfrog fantasy forest I’ve ever floated by. I won’t say that clocks were melting down the chalkboard, or a majestic toucan flew through the room, but time passed. And it passed without “Fear Factor” or baseball or Ultimate Fighting or beauty pageants or tanks, tanks, tanks on television. There’s also no beer or heroin or stolen cars or bruised wives or hungry daughters inside the calm zone.

Gently, we float back out of the forest and past the safe zone. We find ourselves stomping back through the circus, under the suspicious gaze of those who have not joined us — “What they be doin’ up in there, man?”

Up in there, I saw serenity in the faces of needle worshippers and droopy dog-eyed wife beaters. Fuck Ultimate Fighting and the whole three-ring “Fear Factor.” I saw serenity.

Still floating, I cross the threshold of my cell, tumbling into my cardboard-thin mattress like a mountain of miniature marshmallows. My eyelids fall again and I half smile just as corn-fed whispers to me, “Man, yoga is weak. That shit don’t do nothin’.

       

Yoga — will we ever really understand it? Once the domain of what used to be called New Age types, the discipline is now practiced by an estimated 20 million Americans, according to something I read on the Internet somewhere. That means that up to 7 percent of the population could be running around in tights as you read this. Still, yoga somehow managed to elude me. That is, until I discovered a new regimen called Better Sex Through Yoga. Then it started to make a whole lot of sense.

Don’t get me wrong — it’s not as though I’m necessarily “getting any,” as the young people like to say. But the next time I get called into active duty, I want to be ready. Really, really ready.

Designed to “give your body an entirely new sexual awareness,” the Better Sex Through Yoga routine (with accompanying DVD collection), was created by licensed Chinese acupressure therapist and certified yoga instructor Jacquie Noelle and fellow yoga devotee Garvey Rich in 2002. San Francisco Bay Area resident Noelle stumbled upon the idea almost by accident. Having been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome in 1999, Noelle found herself largely bedridden for two years. In an effort to rectify the situation, she embraced a daily yoga routine. Not only did it gradually restore her energy but — as in most things that involve a fair amount of gyrating — she also began to notice improvements in her sexual well-being.

At around the same time, New York City resident Rich was doing a little yoga research of his own. He too began to notice a few changes “down there.” One thing led to another, and here I am standing between them in the Manhattan apartment of Better Sex Through Yoga associate and video series costar Jennifer Langheld, trying to find out what the deal is.

Under the guise of journalism, I have persuaded Noelle, who is in New York on a promotional tour, to give me a free hour of personal instruction. To say I am excited is an understatement. Not only will this be my first yoga experience, but as far as women in tight clothing with whom I’d like to be trapped alone in a room go, both Noelle and Langheld are exceptional candidates. They are quite beautiful and, in their tight workout clothes, are showing off bodies that make yoga seem like perhaps the best invention ever. True, Rich is joining us in the workout, but with a bit of imagination and the nonnegotiable demand that he set down his yoga mat several feet behind mine, I am able to convince myself that it’s just me and, you know, the two chicks, working together in the name of sexual awareness.

We start off with some light stretching exercises. As some sort of hyper-sexual remix of the Doors’ classic “Riders on the Storm” plays on a nearby boombox, we stand on our mats, breathing slowly and deeply, alternately bending over and reaching toward the ground and stretching our hands and arms over our heads. This series of movements is known in yoga circles as a “sun salutation.”

“The sun salutations help to warm the body as well as establish connections with heaven and earth,” Noelle explains. I’m not sure what this has to do with my penis, but for some reason I’m willing to do pretty much anything Noelle tells me to do, so I just go along with it.
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