Day 281 - Sat 20th Oct - The day I was barred from Bikram Yoga

After Thursday's rant and display of anger, I thought I would write about anger.

I used to be known as 'Angry Nick'. Never shy of venting my spleen and pointing out the truth. Patience and tolerance have never been my strong point. It's an Evans family gene. My father was never shy in bombarding various DIY projects with several expletives. 'Arseholes' being his favoured term.

He was also very keen on arguing to himself with imaginary enemies which always ended in the term 'fucking wankers'. It's in my genes. That inverted arrogance & confrontation is something that courses through my veins and i have no time for perceived injustices, no matter how small. In fact the smaller and more pathetic the better. Hence Grand Designs on Thursday.

I'm calmer these days. Why? Well sobriety definately helps. In the past I used to get pissed off with something that bothered me and then drink heavily and explode into a frustrated monster at the drop of a hat. Loose canon.

These days I still get pissed off and frustrated and impatient and intolerant about all manner of things but now I have prayer, meetings, sharing with friends, writing it down and a 11 year knowledge that I am the problem not everyone else. Plus I'm older though not necessarily wiser. Yet.

The more sober I get the less angry I get, The more faith I have the less angry I get. When i first stopped drinking I was furious. Christ my 'go to' method of dealing with frustrations had gone so I was left with me. I was fuming.

Over the years I have gradually mellowed though it has taken about 10 years. I was a nightmare and still have my moments.

In early sobriety I was kicked off buses for arguing with the driver for not picking me up from the stop, resulting in me booting the door, pressing the emergency button and getting on the bus when all the passengers were telling me to fuck off.

I was barred from Marks & Spencer for purposefully dropping a yogurt and pint of milk on the foot of a security guard when he refused me service due to not having a top on after running in the sun for an hour, even though I had been queuing for 15 minutes and was next in line to be served.  All of this is supposed to happen when drunk not in sobriety.

I trumped all of that in 2007, surpassing all my ridiculous pits of fury when I was barred from Bikram Yoga in Richmond. Show me a man who is barred from yoga for arguing and I'll show you a man who has anger issues. It was my rock bottom in anger.

I had been doing Bikram for a few months and have followed it since. I'm not particularly a Yoga fan. It requires patience and inner peace. Hence why I hate it. But Bikram is heated. You sweat. I love the heat and it's 70% females in skimpy swimwear. I took to it immediately.

It's 90 minutes of 26 postures and a heated room of nearly 100 degrees. It's like a mini holiday and flushes you out. It makes me feel cleaner and purer as i put so much shit in my body. I'm not really sold on the spiritual side of it as it's very expensive and Bikram is an ego maniac multi billionaire. These things don't have any relationship to spirituality in my book. So i took it all with a pinch of salt and just got on with it as a relaxing health flusher. Lots of bullshitters go on like little Bikram disciples but i put them in the same category as born again Christians except these are born again Bikrams.

I practiced at Fulham which is great. Super chilled, really relaxed and you weren't given a hard time by the teachers to get every posture 100% right. it was professional but relaxed. Just how i like it.

So when a studio opened in Richmond near where  worked & lived. Nice one. Result.

The only downside was the owner. A militant intense Hitler style teacher. Non smiling, cold, unfriendly and hell bent on rules. He ran the studio like a Yoga equivalent of a prisoner of war camp. No water in class. No shoes. No talking. No smiling, No laughing. No fun. Do all postures properly otherwise you get sent to solitary confinement for 21 days. It was harsh and not really for me.

I dipped in and out and immediately struck up a hatred for the owner. Even his missus was a sort of female version. Except worse because she had a whiny American nasal accent. The sort of voice that made you want to scream. If you could make rape alarms out of that voice there would never be any sex crimes ever again.

On this particular week I'd had man flu. A really nasty bout that in my mind should have been treated with intensive care and 24 hour team of nurses coming up to me rubbing my brow and going 'aaahhhhhhhhhh you poor little thing. Who's a brave little soldier for not complaining.......for 20 minutes'. I was in a bad way.

I reached Saturday feeling weak, so i thought a nice gentle afternoon sweat in Bikram would aid my recovery. I went with a girl who i was trying to woo into becoming my girlfriend (remarkably she did and became a Bikram teacher) and there were 3 other people in class who I'd recommended to the studio. I thought i was doing my bit for local new business. Being a good citizen.

The class was 3pm and i set up on the 2nd row in my ridiculous Gay speedos and settled behind a big girl so i could hide from the teacher and not be picked on. I wanted a chilled 90 minutes. Maybe even a little snooze in savansanah.

The class was taken by the owner and it went OK for 30 minutes until we got to position number 8 (i forget the name of it) which involved bending forward putting your hands in prayer and extended in front of you touching the floor. In Fulham they weren't fussy about putting your hands in prayer, however in Richmond failure to do so was treated as a flogging offence and more serious than GBH.

I was feeling weak, so I didn't put my hands in prayer and so followed the oddest 5 minutes of my yoga career;

Owner - 'put your hands in prayer Nick'
Me - (Glancing round room to see 50% people didn't have their hands in prayer - Ignored him)
Owner - 'and change - other side'
Me - (didn't put my hands in prayer)
Owner - 'Nick can you please put your hands in prayer'
Me - (Ignored him)
Owner - 'Nick put your hands in prayer please'
Me - (Ignored him)
Owner - 'Nick that is not the correct posture - Put your hands in prayer we do all postures properly in this studio'
Me - (I had my face down in a position at this point - ignored him)
Owner - 'and change 2nd set'
Me - (Fucked if I'm going to put my hands In prayer now just to wind the little Hitler up)
Owner - 'Nick i have told you put your hands I'm prayer and do the posture properly or not at all'
Me (In position) 'J****y (i will not print his name) Leave me alone I'm just here for a relaxing class'
Owner -'It is my class and studio and i ask that everyone does the postures here so put your hand in prayer'
Me (fuming now) 'Listen I've had Flu all week and I've only come here to chill out leave me be'
Owner - 'and change other side'
Me (Yes you've guessed it hands apart definately not in prayer)
Owner - 'Nick if you're not going to do it properly don't do it at all'
Me - 'Can't you pick on someone else'
Owner - 'This is my studio. I am the teacher. If you will not listen to me there is no point in you being here'
Me - 'Listen I haven't paid £16 to be talked to like a kid. I've brought 3 people here and i just want a quiete class (yeah right) and you're picking on me. Just chill and leave it be. Leave me alone i don't appreciate being talked too like that'
Owner - 'Well I'd rather not teach you if you're not going to listen or try to do it.'
Me - 'Are you asking me to leave?'
Owner - 'Yes it's best you are not here'
Me - 'I paid £16 for this shit, who the fuck are you to talk to me like that. You've picked on me all day & half these people are doing it the same as me. You're totally out of order'
Owner - 'I' think you should leave and not come back. This is for true Yogis'
Me - 'Tell you what you stick your fucking yoga up your arse you arrogant cunt'

And that is when i stormed out of class, leaving everyone in the tree position looking embarrassingly at the floor. Not the ideal Yoga class I must admit.Yoga is supposed to make you peaceful, calm, relaxed. I was fuming. Angrily showering, getting changed and then before I left I so needed to have the final word (why do i need the final word. Quit when you're behind idiot!) I poked my head in the studio, however before I could fire off a volley, this girl at the back of the studio who looked close to tears turned around and shrieked 'Just leave'. I left.

I sat down at a cafe had a cup of tea and immediately rang my sponsor (It's through the fellowship - like a more experienced mentor who helps you with your mentalism)

My first words to him were, 'I've just been barred from a yoga class and i don't know why'. It was an awkward conversation. And what of my girl? She's never going to want to go out with me now?

It was all cool afterwards and in time she learnt to laugh about it, though it took her about 2 years. I never went back to the studio and used to see the owner around Richmond. I was always tempted to assume the 'awkward' position but never did. Live and let live is the code I'm supposed to live by, but he was truly a c**t. A Bikram c**t.

I returned back to Fulham studio which I love and the word got round. People laughed but I reckon all the teachers thought 'oh god there's that miserable bastard in my class'. Apparently the owner in Richmond has got a bit of a reputation and I think other owners were secretly glad it happened. It's all Coconut water under the bridge now but it showed me at the time I had anger issues.

I know I'm getting better i haven't been barred from anywhere in a while, even Bikram yoga. And that was the day i got barred from Bikram Yoga. Can you trump that?


xx