No where to run, no where to hide!

OM

The topic of a past blog was mindfulness, the title is The Art of the Theory: brought to you by a friendly zombie, Tuesday, May 15, 2012.  It dealt with everyday life challenges that take us away from our bodies and into strange places.   Here we are again with a different spin.

A recent story came from the Bay Area and stayed alive through social media. The tale goes like this: a yoga teacher is fired for giving a student an allegedly “disapproving” look for accepting and responding to a cell call during a yoga class.  End of story…not so much!

It gets better; the Facebook employee complained that the teacher gave her a look of “disapproval”.  A complaint was filed and the teacher was summarily fired.  The company holding the Facebook workout contract was sitting on the horns of a dilemma.  Support an employee or face jeopardizing a large paying contract.

There are countless layers to this incident that make my head spin.  Let us move to the first layer, yoga is a method of mindfulness that allows students to leave their “stuff”, focus and perhaps relax.  Having cell phones in a class is no different than listening to random fire alarms, police sirens and people screaming in your ear while attempting to deeply concentrate or sleep.

Next layer to unpeel, a logical question me thinks, if a person is expecting such an important call why attend class?  Could it be to share one’s importance with the entire class?  Perhaps this is the new grown up version of the old show and tell and now it is called yell and tell.  “Can you hear me now? “

And then there is the following layer: our practitioner, a legend in her own mind, is of such elevated stature that all social norms don’t apply.  A class would surely understand our yogini’s need to take a phone call during half moon pose.

Several articles mentioned that handling a phone during a complicated yoga pose could be dangerous. A politically correct way to step delicately around the elephant in the room, while dodging elephant droppings, allows safety to be the focus.  Bottom line… it is pure rudeness!  However, if there is no turning back to mindfulness, let’s have two classes one for “users” and one for those that crave mindfulness and need silence.

Next and last, where are we going with device boundaries?  My imagination sees several scenarios.  A funeral, must call, must text, must do email, and of course create a video for YouTube. A doctor delivering life-threatening news stops mid-sentence and checks a text from his tennis partner.  I would mention making love or in the middle of massage but that I hear is already fairly standard.

Apparently we all are so important that we must be connected during all rituals and silence is unacceptable.  We have become legends in our minds, thank you Carly Simon for giving us the future in a song.