Kerry Howley

I spend probably six hours a week in a yoga studio. I’m there because I like standing on my head and building lean muscle, not because I think there is some connection between my third chakra and my cosmic energy field. (As Julian says, “I don’t need any metaphysics with my workout.”) Still, it’s a singular experience to exercise with 20 educated women and together absorb the complex, earnest nonsense of yogic wisdom. The philosophical abstractions are less interesting; lines like “Meditate on the marching spread of the cosmic sound” and “It is in surrender that we explore our chakras” and “Now is a good time to stop judging” are lovely wisps of nothing, yogic liturgy, and they wash like white noise. But the anatomical claims are insane, and they stick like the pieties do not. I’m quite sure part of me really believes that as I twist I am “wringing the toxins out of the organs,” that as I stand on my head I am “jumpstarting the lymphatic system,” that bending backward “increases immunity.” I can’t help it; every time I twist, I picture last night’s pinot grigio seeping out of my contorted spleen. We’re strangely susceptible to bogus claims about bodily purification–organic food, yoga, promise rings. And why not have an extra beer if you can just wring it out later?