In a city so grand, with so many fantastic writers having confessed love to it in some of the best works of literature of all of time, you would never imagine that yoga is the one thing that creates community.
In the center of Midtown, in none other than Bryant Park, Athleta and Yoga Journal magazine have been hosting yoga classes by some of the most renowned instructors every Tuesday morning and Thursday evening for free. With no registration necessary, but available online, one can just walk up to the über-friendly representatives sign-in, grab a rewards card (yes, they give out gifts for attending free yoga classes too), and pick a mat in the endless sea of light red yoga mats already set up on the lawn by Athleta. With no other requirement than a pair of leggings, one can find themselves laying on their back amidst NYC staring out to the contrast between the sky and the skyscrapers only to fade out in between the two.
Flanked by a black gothic art deco building outlined with gold that is the American Radiator Building and the beaux arts gray NYC Public Library, Bryant Park is a mini-collection of all the best things that NYC has to offer: architecture, people, and an atmosphere of belonging. I challenge you to find a free table during lunchtime and I already know that you lost. The area is always bustling with activities and people.
At exactly 6 p.m., for almost 4 months from May to September, over a thousand individuals show up to practice yoga. The entire lawn becomes a reunion space for those returning and those discovering. Office clerks, businessmen and women, professional athletes and even little children strategically change from their day clothes to more comfortable ones without flashing their nude bodies to the crowd. While some people are simply lying down, enjoying the self-imposed break from technology, others are doing a mini-warmup, reading, or meeting new people.
A blonde girl next to me started conversation about her plans of eating a bucket of chicken wings and drinking champagne at Birds & Bubbles later tonight (added to my own list). Behind me, French tourists are confused and completely shocked by what they just got themselves into. Several rows ahead of me, a frequent yogi and acquaintance of mine brought his son and daughter with him to share his usually private practice.
As my conversation about the combination of chicken wings and champagne makes me palpably hungry, others of that sort continue around me.
Class starts with us standing atop our mats with hands in prayer pose at our center. "I must get a manicure," I think as I take one brief look at my nails. We extend our arms upward to the sky, tingling our fingers and then bending over to land our palms on the mat. "And a pedicure too," I think eyeing my toenails. As practice evolves, all such thoughts leave my mind with only a few complaints from my body and a laugh here and there from accidentally bumping into my neighbor. Our instructor asked us to introduce ourselves to those around, knowing that such accidents were bound to happen.
We are practicing yoga in a well-manicured park in the center of Manhattan for free with a myriad of other people just as wild in this jungle. If the city is a jungle, we are clearly the marmosets, but a completely different NYC kind of species.
Thousands of people, including those watching, share the most intimate version of themselves by "rolling around in the grass," as some people have described it. But it's not just rolling around, it's sharing the space that we all build lives in. In the end, we are all as much part of each others' lives as is NYC, and sharing this time with each other physically demonstrates the strong ties in the community, even if most of these people are strangers to one another. Whatever the practice means to one personally, as a whole the practice symbolizes everything that those authors loved about NYC.
