TO: The University of Minnesota Recreation Center (Minneapolis Campus)
FROM: Jake Mohan
RE: Yoga music

Dear sirs and/or madams,

For a while now, I have been happily availing myself of the many diverse group fitness classes offered, for a nominal fee, to UMN faculty, staff, and students at the UMNRC(MC). I am especially fond of the yoga classes, and they have proven instrumental in staving off my “wintertime blues”—or as I’ve taken to calling it, my Remorseless Crushing Pall of Seasonally-Induced Despair (2008 Edition).

I have a “bone” to “pick,” however, with one admittedly minor component of one class, the “Yoga Flow” section offered every Monday at noon. My problem is not with the apparent shortage of foam “helper” blocks, nor the startling martial bellows emitting from the self-defense class in the adjoining room, nor the unfortunate personal groin duress occasionally resulting from hastily-executed Baddha Konasana (“Cobbler’s”) poses.

Rather, this letter concerns a specific moment during this most recent Monday’s class (which class, I cannot emphasize enough, is taught by a very capable and dulcet-voiced and petite and glimmery-eyed and sylphlike instructor, whose instructions are always clear and encouraging and whose backward kicks into the Adho Mukha Svanasana ["Downward Facing Dog"] pose seem to defy the laws of physics [namely gravity], so that I am hard-pressed to wrest my eyes away from the front of the room during such moments [and also all other moments]).

I realize that by giving your instructors a generous degree of “wiggle room” with their instruction, you have probably also allowed them a “wide berth” in their selection of the music accompanying our yoga practice. To wit, I have practiced yoga at the UMNRC(MC) against a sonic backdrop ranging from relative silence (save the aforementioned karate hollers), to prerecorded Tibetan singing bowls, to pleasingly generic ambient music, to shitty watered-down New Age trip-hop pablum that makes Deep Forest sound like goddamn Shostakovich. This “wide array” of musical accompaniment resulting from the ample “creative control” left to the instructors was never problematic—until Monday’s class.

Surprisingly, my “beef” with the music playing during Monday’s class arises not from any dislike toward the song in question; quite the contrary. You see, I was in the midst of the Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (“Bridge”) pose—a challenging maneuver even under the best of circumstances—when from the aforementioned sylphlike instructor’s iPod hooked up to the room’s stereo system there emerged the unmistakable opening cello figures of Badly Drawn Boy’s masterfully evocative ballad, “The Shining.”

Perhaps our instructor intended her inclusion of this song in her playlist to be soothing, but for me, the inevitable associations the song has with my Alcoholic Iowa City Winter Spent Underemployed and Lonely (2001 Edition) brought forth an emotional torrent of emotionally freighted emotions for me, so that I found my eyes welling with tears, and not just because the position to which our practice was now progressing, the strenuous Eryck Estradanassana (“Middlewise-Facing Tamarind”) pose, was causing my quadriceps to burn with the intensity of a thousand suns.

The episode was taxing and a bit harrowing, but ultimately, I admit, transformative. Consequently, I do not wish this letter to be construed as a complaint so much as a very reasonable request: that all yoga instructors submit a playlist of the songs they will be using in each day’s yoga practice, in advance and directly to me, at the email address provided. Should I find any of the songs disagreeable, I will be more than happy to “swap out” some selections of my own. In fact, I am willing to provide, free of charge, entire playlists I have curated myself, all encoded to crystal-clear 128-bit mp3 format, featuring songs which are extremely conducive to a satisfying yoga experience, as they are made up primarily of GarageBand compositions I’ve recorded at home under my ambient music pseudonym, Relaxative.

I trust you will be in contact with me very soon about this exciting opportunity for the entire UMNRC(MC) yoga community.

Namaste, etc,
Jake “Chaturanga Dandasana” Mohan