Farting at Gentle Yoga
It should happen even more than it does if you think about it. I am in gentle yoga at the Y on Tuesdays. Average age I’m gonna guess is probably mid 50s but we have a pretty big age spread. And this month the specialty is “spine work” or as it should be called “fart conjuring.” I have a couple friends in the class from having been a regular for a year plus. My friend Emily’s mom goes, let’s call her Danielle, cause I for sure don’t know her name, sorry about that Danielle. There’s some lady who knows my friend DeVon from classical music stuff. I’m closest with Brian. He’s a retired fireman who wears ankle high socks and spends time in Florida in the winter. I have personally never farted in the class. As a 43 year old my anus is not yet fully autonomous from my control. In my experience, there is some age where any control of the farting schedule is completely placed in the hands of the anus itself. Nothing better than an old couple with one rogue anus and the other member of the couple keeps on hopelessly saying the other’s name; Robert, Doris, Ted, Helen, Anne. We need a punctuation mark that is a half exclamation mark because that is how it is always said.
As stated above, I have never farted in the gentle yoga class. Have I felt a fart hanging at the gates, looking around, deciding if now is a good time? Yes absolutely! Have I miraculously willed a fart back into the butt waiting room with sheer force of will? That’s a yes. Have I stopped doing some form of stretch and pretended to address a non-existent muscle cramp just so that I didn’t fart? I did that yesterday. But I have not farted. But I have thoughts:
The farts from the youngs are stronger and louder. Any fart a younger lady is letting out has been forged into diamond strength in her butt crucible. She has done everything she can to not let it get out. When it gets out it is fully pressurized. Same for a young man, but there aren’t many young men there besides for me, and like I said, I haven’t farted in the class.
We don’t have a God bless you equivalent for farting. When someone sneezes you say “God bless you” or “Gesundheit.” I believe when someone farts other people should say “you farted” with no emotion, no exclamation mark, no grabbing a doorknob. Just a simple “you farted” with sort of an accepting tone.
You don’t say excuse me when you fart in a yoga class and I get that. When you do fart in a yoga class, you don’t say excuse me. I’ve ran through the scenario for me and I believe if I fart I will go “oh my gosh Brian, fighting some fire this morning are we?” and then get up and walk out of class with my fingers clasped around my nose. But I believe you should have to slap the ground lightly after you fart. Everyone in the class is doing echolocation to figure out who farted and that extra piece of acoustic action would really help. I won’t do anything with the information, I just want to know who farted. So toss a slap out there, for the culture.
You should leave if you fart twice on one exercise. I’m no fart detective, wait yes I am. But look, if you fart twice in one position, it’s time to call it a day for that class. Come back for the step class, but you’re done with gentle yoga. Hit the fart showers, fart friend, cause it’s done. Farting twice isn’t terrible, but no one has ever farted twice. If you’ve farted twice your body is just letting you know there’s more where that came from. And we don’t want more where that came from to come in this full ass yoga class. If you fart twice, you’re out.
Reporting live from fart yoga, over and out.