My first yoga class as a student was a complete disaster

The very first yoga class I took was a very, very, very bad experience, but nonetheless, by the time it was over, I knew yoga was for me.

Back in 2015, a close person decided he wanted to retake yoga classes, and I tagged along for my very first yoga class ever. It was at a very well-known yoga studio, a very nice studio, and with a great group of well-established teachers in the field.

My exposure to yoga had been very limited; I had a very vague idea of ​​what yoga really was, and my main goal was to do physical exercise. In other words, the reason I approached yoga was purely physical. I've never been a gym person, and the atmosphere of a yoga studio appealed more to me.

I've always been a shy person, and being in a group intimidates me for the first 10 minutes as I gradually become more comfortable. Usually, after these first few minutes, I manage very well, but at first, it's a struggle. On this particular occasion, since I was accompanied, my shyness was present, but not completely uncontrolled. I would say it was rather a bit subdued.

We arrived at the yoga studio, and at the reception desk, we signed up for the class that was about to begin. Afterwards, we went to the classroom, found a suitable spot to spread out our yoga mats, and sat down to wait for the class to start. There were already a good number of people waiting, and there were only a few free spaces left, so we sat at the back of the room, to the right. A few minutes later, the teacher arrived, greeted everyone, and when she noticed us, she realized we were new faces. She then asked us if we had done yoga before, and my partner answered yes, and I replied no… and everything went south from there on…

Upon hearing my “no,” she looked at me intently and from her position, standing at the front of a large room full of people, told me that this class was intermediate level as if I knew what that meant… and then there was a very tense moment of absolute silence because by that time everyone had fallen silent, engaged in what the teacher was saying and I felt they were all eyeballing me. I felt exposed, vulnerable, and for some reason that I still didn’t understand at the time, a little “scolded” by the teacher. My reaction was to simply give a shy, crooked half-smile while my mind was going ballistic with anguish because all I wanted was for the earth to swallow me.

When I remained silent, she spoke again and said that this level of yoga wasn't for someone who had never done yoga before because the postures weren't explained in depth, and the change from one position to another was quite “fluid”. And again, silence... her gaze fixed on me, and I still had my silly, crooked smile. Finally, she told me that she thought it best if I didn't take the class because I would find it very difficult. To which I, in a tiny little voice, and with my shyness at 100%, replied that we had come a long way for the class and that no one had told us it was an intermediate level. And again, the awkward silence...

By then, my mind was in a state of panic, and my shyness was at 150%, beating me up internally and my self-esteem was on the floor. On one hand, an inner voice told me to run away as fast as possible and never look back, and another inner one told me to stay, not out of self-respect or confidence in my abilities, but rather out of a kind of growing resentment towards the teacher who had exposed me to the group in that way. Her defiant and unkind tone made me feel angry. So, in the midst of that internal struggle, still with a silly half-crooked smile on my face, I chose to stay. When she saw that I wasn't moving, she simply told me to look at the people next to me to try and mimic the positions…

And so I did, but during the entire 45-minute class, I felt totally vulnerable and at the mercy of others. Personally, I prefer to believe I didn't do too badly, and I was grateful for having a flexible and healthy body that allowed me to more or less get into the postures. But every minute of the class, which seemed endless, was a challenge beyond the physical. It was a mental challenge where all my inner demons of insecurity, shyness, and fear of failure came together. And the worst, was they all stayed with me way beyond the class. It took me a week to shake that off, and it has taken me 10 years to accept that I haven´t been able to let it go or forget how bad it was.

At the end of the class, as we all collected our mats, a woman next to me told me I hadn't done too badly for my first class. It was very kind of her, but it only confirmed the fact that the teacher could have handled the situation better. It showed this woman also felt I had been exposed. She had been one of the students I admired and tried to copy in the class, and I was amazed she was able to get into the postures the way she did, and I couldn't believe that this woman, much older than me, could achieve what she did with her body.

Even so, I left my first class certain that I liked yoga despite having hated every minute of it and that this was the exercise I wanted to start doing from that moment on. I swore to myself never to return to that yoga studio again, and that has been the case ever since. I never went back in my life, not even when I had an intermediate and an advanced level of yoga. I completely blocked it as an option for my practice, and all because of a teacher…

Ten years later, I still feel it was a disaster for several reasons:

As a renowned yoga studio, they could have provided better guidance regarding the class level, starting with the front desk. The board displaying the classes scheduled for the week only indicated the type of yoga being taught, not the group level, which is why that particular class was labeled Hatha Yoga.

The teacher lacked tact, consideration, and warmth. She could have approached me and told me in a more intimate tone of voice that this level wasn't for me, suggesting I skip the class, but instead, she bellowed from her position of power as an instructor standing at the front of a room with at least 25 people listening.

And finally, although I prefer to tell myself I didn't do that badly, I must have actually been a disaster with the asanas. Knowing what I know now, it's not as easy as telling someone to copy the positions of the person next to them: there are alignments, muscle activations, and in many postures, a series of contradictory actions with which you direct your body to reach the complete position... in short, a very complex world of body movements that make yoga wonderful.

The beauty of it is that I learned a lot from that very bad experience, especially about how to run a more accurate yoga studio in terms of customer service and how to be a better yoga teacher when dealing with students by knowing how to better guide people, especially when they are new to yoga. Everyone feels vulnerable in their first yoga class.

As yoga teachers, and in life in general, we definitely need to be tactful. As in any situation, being new is usually uncomfortable, and as a yoga teacher, you must make your students feel as comfortable as possible, because in a way, they place all their trust in you, in your instructions, skills, and knowledge. A yoga class should be a space where you feel free of judgement, where you feel at ease, and where you feel you can fail without shame.

In some bizarre way, that disastrous first yoga class made me a better yoga teacher.