Yoga Is Like...Comedy?
Trusting our intuition, noticing discomfort, and a 50-minute yin practice
Last week, my husband and I drove over the mountain at night to a comedy club in a nearby city, where a work friend was reprising a once-popular sketch about a washed-up ex boy-band member. It was an off-brand date night for us - we tend to stay closer and quieter, especially on winter evenings - but we thought it might be a fun departure from routine, and besides, we wanted to support his colleague.
I’ll spare you the long exposition. It…wasn’t funny. The act billed itself as “R-rated”, which meant in this case that no theme was off limits: women’s intimate hygiene, people with disabilities, fat jokes, child sexual assault. The mood was less “edgy adult laughs” and more “a bunch of aggrieved guys decide to air their worst thoughts and then say lighten up, it was a joke!” We weren’t alone in our lack of enthusiasm: the audience chuckled lightly, sporadically, with more discomfort than amusement.
It got worse at dinner after the show, when one of the troupe, seated across the table from me, continued the night’s entertainment by describing a queer female couple in the front row as “d*ck adverse” by way of explaining their lack of comedic enjoyment and snarking that “they should go listen to some Melissa Etheridge or something so they feel better.”
Now - look. I’m no comic, humor is hard, and there’s really nothing worse than someone trying to explain a joke. To quote E.B. White, “humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.” A good joke is difficult to define - you know it when you see it (just like that other thing that’s hard to define.) I’ll also freely admit that I’m a tough audience for a lot of what passes as comedy these days. Comedy requires a bit of irreverence toward the subject matter at hand, and these days reverence for my fellow humans tends to just feel better. I tend to want a world that feels more sacred - not less.
Despite this tendency, a thing that like my love of dietary fiber makes me an absolute blast at parties, I can get behind a little self-deprecating humor; the human experience is often kind of silly. I’m also a big fan of the goofy things you say to make kids giggle - “you’re a hippopotamus!” Poking fun at those in positions of power - “punching up” - can be cathartic, making our collective bogeymen ridiculous for just a few minutes. But I have a harder time with the “punching down” style of humor, the kind that serves to further humiliate those who might already be experiencing pain or ridicule. I just don’t get it. Our world, frankly, feels cruel enough already; I have a hard time enjoying anything that makes it feel unnecessarily crueler. Particularly when I’m paying a cover for the privilege.
It is true that things that are funny are usually just a little bit awkward, challenging even. Comedy requires intuition - both the comic’s (is this bit provocative, without crossing the line into just being the drunk jerk throwing punches at everyone he sees?) and the audience’s (are we all in on this, or have things crossed the line into just plain mean, maybe even threatening or dangerous?) To enjoy comedy is to be a little bit uncomfortable, but safely and companionably - maybe even productively - so. To be mentally flexible - without stretching so far that we invite injury.
Yin yoga is, at least in this respect, much the same. The goal of this practice, with its long, passive stretches, is to gently stress the body’s connective tissue, promoting resilience. Just as what’s funny to me might not work for someone else - and what’s funny to you might be stretching things a bridge too far for me - there is no “right” version of a yin pose, just the one that works best in your specific body on a given day.
Over our last five yoga practices, we’ve been working our way up the chakras, arriving finally this month at the third eye, or ajna, seat of our intuition and deep inner knowing. Here, too, what applies to comedy applies to yoga: it is important to notice what you feel. You must inquire with the body, noticing the difference between a little, sustainable stretch, mild discomfort that is good for you, versus a bigger, potentially injurious stretch - committing to the bit while ignoring signals that it might not be what’s needed in the moment. In both circumstances, it’s essential to trust your gut.
Speaking of the gut, today’s practice also involves some gentle twists, meant to give the abdominal organs a little massage. We’re in the season of rich, heavy meals and various other forms of excess, all of which can challenge the digestion. And a little digestive malaise can, in turn, do strange things to our ability to accurately perceive the world around us, as Charles Dickens so astutely noted in A Christmas Carol:
“Why do you doubt your senses?’ said Marley’s ghost.
‘Because,’ said Scrooge, ‘a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”
This holiday season, let’s honor our guts, both literally - giving them the tools they need to rest and digest - and metaphorically, noticing what feels good, and what does not. Fewer undigested bits of beef - more comfort, connection, ease, and joy.
Do these yoga practices, meditations, recipes, and reflections help you feel more Well Rooted?
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Below, a 50-minute yin yoga and guided relaxation practice emphasizing intuition, and the audio version of this post.
