Hare Krishna Hare Krishna

Tonight my roommate Maggie and I went to the Hare Krishna temple in Spanish Fork for yoga. I'm not so much a yoga enthusiast (since I'm not very flexible nor very strong) as I am a new-cultural-experience enthusiast. As the sign instructed, we took our tennis shoes off at the door and placed them near the few pairs of worn leather sandals already removed. We timidly walked into the quiet temple to be greeted by an older man with an old pair of headphones and an apron walking out of the kitchen area who we later found out is a radio personality in Japan on a short hiatus in Utah. We told him we were here for yoga and he didn't seem to know what we were talking about but pointed us upstairs to check and see, "somethings going on up there." We walked up to find four or five people sitting down on rugs in a large room with an ornate marble floor and vaulted ceiling with a few beautiful shrines along the walls. There seemed to be some sort of service going on but a couple gestured us up the stairs and we listened to the last minute or so of some teaching before getting started with yoga.

It is a different experience to do yoga at a gym for exercise and doing yoga at a Hare Krishna temple. Less emphasis on moving around and getting fit, more focus on mental control and breathing in good energy. Our instructor could do things with his tall muscular body that seemed frankly impossible, but all the time he reminded us how many times he had to fall in the process of learning. My body, while shaking and rejecting the new movements, felt invigorated and relaxed. At one point we had our bodies in some squatting pose I don't remember the name of and our teacher had us place our hands near the marble floor without touching it. The colorful stones radiated their cool temperature to my hands. A little later we were joined by four sweet older Bhutanis for our singing meditation. We all gathered on the rug near our instructor and his accordion-organ-like instrument and chanted and sang along with the small group. The woman next to Maggie and I must have been in her 70s and probably didn't speak much English, if any. And yet, we sat clapping our hands and singing with her in probably the only moment in which our two lives would ever intersect.

Maggie and I walked away from the experience feeling welcomed, enlightened, and definitely sore. The people were so happy to include us into the yoga experience. Never once treating us like the outsiders we were. So we will practice our crows pose and make sure to catch the buffet before for dinner next time!