I laid in savasana after yoga class. Intruding thoughts came about the teacher: she's clearly an impostor. I'm not that experienced in yoga, but she made us warm up as you do in a physical education class, these asanas clearly don't belong to any tradition, and sequence progression jumped all over the place.
Again, looking at the seams rather than marveling at the self-knitting pattern. What does this mean?
To the rational mind, I signed up for a low-budget gym that pretends to offer yoga classes, and I'm frustrated at it. The train of thought takes me through a detour: I've seen first hand the anxiety, the bitterness, the resentment that this so called rational mind causes. It would be more accurate to call it the irrational mind. How rational is is it that you feel resentment rather than relaxation in savasana?
Say you see a dog resting after a walk. He's there, chilling out. Seemingly out of nowhere, it frowns and bares its teeth. It growls slowly. The dog is not dreaming, it is awake. It is not directing its hostility at anyone or anything. You figure out that it has summoned an enemy in its imagination.
"Crazy dog!", you would think "you are causing yourself distress!". And yet we constantly do this by bickering in our own mind. In the worst cases, we take our enemies home and we unsuccessfully try to sleep with them! What foolishness!
The Stoics came up with a great way of dealing with problems: they are either in your control, or they are not. If they are not in your control, why be concerned about them? Accept them as part of your condition. I don't like that this city is unwalkable, but there's nothing I can do about it (without dedicating my entire life to it) so let it be. Indignation without action is poison.
As I lay in savasana, I breathe in and breathe out, focused in relaxation. The spiritual heart yearns for a deeper yoga practice. This teacher is not an impostor, she is simply pointing at the fact that I will not find what I'm seeking for in a gym. The practice must be deepened, either on my own, or with the help of a good teacher.