The Screens Between Us: Pandemic Yoga (Camino)

On Friday, March 13th, I temporarily closed the yoga studio I own, doing my share to flatten the curve and help keep my students safe. But I didn’t want to stop teaching, especially since we were mandated shortly after to shelter in place. People need yoga now more than ever, I believed. So with the encouragement of friends, students, and family, I opened a new studio almost immediately after I closed my real one. I stepped into the Digiverse. I started teaching yoga on Zoom.

Oh, how I struggled. On my small laptop screen, class after class, lots of little screens showed lots of little bodies inside them or, worse (but typical) mere parts of bodies. Whole students were reduced to  knees, legs in the air without feet, a forward bend that’s nothing but a back and one hip, torsos without heads, bodies that end at the thigh. I couldn’t see all my students all the time (tragic) and they couldn’t see all of me (not so tragic). Worse, though, was that I couldn’t hear, or watch, my students breathing. I couldn’t feel and work with the collective group energy. I couldn’t sync up. I was suffering from somatic separation from my students.

The same couldn’t be said for the Zoom regulars. It was thumbs up and applause emojis and emails and chats singing the praises of Zoomtown Yoga.

"I love rolling out of bed and going to yoga! Or working to the last minute and then logging in for class!!! What an easy commute!"

"Since you mute our mics, we can play our own music!"

"It’s so great to see everyone on Zoom because we can’t be together right now." (My students form a tight, happy community.)

This was all so nice, but why were they fine with yoga online and not I ?

It was nearly two months into Zoom teaching—thinking every day oh holy cow how long can I continue this? this is SO not my scene!—when I made my biggest yoga teacher declaration to date, and for awhile it was my mantra: “Two screens between my students and me are two screens too many!!!” I’d put my foot down. By doing so, I was rooted. Rooted in a problem that needed to be solved.

I didn’t solve it. It got solved for me. On May 15, I had a dream so vivid it was like being handed a lesson from some storytelling guru seated opposite me spilling over with metaphor and meaning, a Sangha. The signs were everywhere.

**

I’m in a large white room. Many of my students, arranged in circles and arcs, are gathering for class.

I mill around, see a student in one of the circles. I ask him how his saxophone playing’s going. He says fine, that he’s practicing outside a lot since it’s summer.

Another student nearby pipes up: “Wait. You live in Ohio City?” Student 1 says, “Yes.”

Student 2 says, “I hear you playing all the time, dude. I live right near you. Awesome.”

More students to greet. One dressed in light-colored, flowing clothing. She’s peaceful, still loves Kirtan, she says. Some of my lovely staff are there, some long-time students —one with her dog, a couple with a couple of cats—and studio members, and regulars.

It’s time to start. But Students 1 and 2 are gone. I call the first exercise: Relaxation Pose with breath-counting meditation. All settle in, including pets.

Next I’m in an enormous room with a movie screen. Students 1 and 2 are on it, bigger than life. I step through the screen and we are together. I open my phone, press its screen, and out rolls a paper strip like a grocery store receipt. It’s a map back to the white room. I hand it to Student 1. “Class has started,” I say.

I go deeper into the screen, through a matrix of dark walls and green and barely lit screens.

Next I’m standing in a charming small town along Lake Erie. People enjoying outside activities along and in the water. Digital screens everywhere. Ice cream parlor signage? Screen. Boat dock regulations? Screen. Small signs staked in the grass along walkways announcing evening concerts? Screens. In a park by the lake in this town, I am standing under a tree. A small silver screen hangs from a low branch, like an ornament. I spy eye-height a phone-sized screen imbedded in the tree’s bark. I touch that screen with my phone's screen.

Then: back in the white room. The tree is there along with the students I’d left meditating. I walk to my tree and invite all those in meditation to rise, and all to then sit.

***

If a tree can have screens, so can I. If a screen can provide a map as a guide to a place where yoga is, so can I. If whole towns can exist in my dream with screens everywhere and still be charming as hell, so can I. And if I can move in my mind easily in and out of screen after screen, and if screens can touch screens and be with other screens, I can bring that ease to my teaching.

The ancient word ‘yoga,’ (derived from the more-ancient root ‘yuj,’) means ‘yoke’ (‘harness’, ’unite’). Whatever yoga was 3,500 years ago, it is rooted in and grows from this concept. And it’s the greatest concept, for yoking is a believed discipline and felt result of yoga; we benefit from the philosophy we put into steadied practice. If I teach to knees, living room furniture, and house pets roaming freely in and out of view, we are still yoking. Screens allow it and, true to the philosophy of yoking itself, are part of it.

Two screens between my students and me are not two screens too many.

Marcia Camino holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. She is author of Crayzee Aayzee: A Poetry Abecedarian; Oomee Boomee, Space Yogi; and The Pink Lotus Yoga Professional and Yoga Teacher Training Program Manual. She operates a yoga studio in Lakewood, Ohio.