sugarduk's blog

“Asked whether he also does yoga to build strength and agility for his stage shows, Mr. Cohen, his demeanor courtly but reserved, smiled and replied, “That is my yoga.”’
- The New York Times. Feb. 24, 2009.

Last year I saw Leonard Cohen in concert. Wearing a sleek dark suit and a black fedora he did his amazingly elegant and sexy brand of yoga for three hours in front of a full house. And the audience responded with their own asana, one called Standing Ovation which occurred after almost every song.

My yoga teacher is taking us through a lying down pose, a twist. “You’ll meet your neighbours tonight,” she laughs, meaning that because we’re all so close to each other there’s liable to be touch. To my left is a young man and to his left is a young woman. As we twist he gets perilously close to touching her rear end. Just a stretch of his fingers and...and...and he does. He touches her.

I’ve been doing yoga since before I knew the name for it. Which is nothing unusual: children roll and leap and twist into asanas without knowing there are verbs and nouns for what they do. I can't remember when I learned the word "yoga" but as I grew into adolescence I searched my school library for books about the ancient art. In those days, in my neighbourhood, yoga was so uncommon as to be suspect, an activity only for freaks or hippies or beatniks. I may have been one or all of those things but labels did not affect my love of bending and stretching and breathing into poses.