Normally I love my yoga classes. I like how challenging they are, how I get to be around other people, how tired I sometimes feel by the end. Thursday was a good example of why I enjoy going: it was probably the single hardest class I've ever taken (Mike is starting to give Alise a run for the title of toughest teacher!) and by the end just moving into child's pose was an effort. But Wednesday was a totally different story. That class, jivamukti, is longer than other classes and can be very hard. I've only gone 3 weeks -- I wanted something more difficult than the open flow classes on Wednesday -- and the quality has been a little erratic and occasionally too new-agey for my taste. Nevertheless, I was there on Wednesday when the teacher announced that she was going to try something new: play a yoga CD she likes. Huh? Sure enough, rather than the usual personal iPod mixes we get from teachers, she put in a commercial yoga CD and we all started to follow along. Now I know that I do not like that. Apparently, one of the things I enjoy about yoga is the human element and part-way through I started feeling very resentful about the voice telling me what to do. I work with computers and machines all day long and yoga gives me that human break. After 15 minutes I was thinking the whole thing was Orwellian: 24 of us were in neat rows in a darkened room, all trying to move in unison to a disembodied voice giving instructions. I was also reminded of those scenes of factory workers in China doing calisthenics to loud-speakers blaring bits of philosophy and propaganda intermixed with commands to touch ones toes. Exactly. It is a pretty funny scene, in retrospect, but if a teacher decides not to teach and gives it over to a CD again, I'm leaving.