Doing yoga in The Philadelphia Art Museum’s Great Stair Hall
One train, an Uber, and $12.36 later, I was standing at the back of The Philadelphia Museum of Art, trying to find my way to the infamous Rocky steps that lead to the museum’s entrance.
I wasn’t here to run the steps.
I wasn’t even here to look at art.
I, a lover of art but a skeptic of yoga—not that I had ever tried it—was there for Yoga at the Art Museum.
Yoga at the Art Museum is offered every Wednesday at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. Both sessions are one hour long and currently take place in the Great Stair Hall Balcony. During warm weather, sessions are also offered in the Sculpture Garden.
Admission to the museum on Wednesday from 5 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. is advertised as “Pay What You Wish,” which to me means free. What I didn’t realize was that there was an invisible asterisk next to “Pay What You Wish” that said that if you don’t pay anything, they’ll make you feel like you just stepped on a puppy.
So after I reluctantly handed over $5, the woman smiled, knowing she had broken my miserly spirit, and handed me my ticket for Yoga at the Art Museum.
I had the opportunity to look at a small selection of the art in the museum before my class began. As someone who is interested in art history, this was one of the clear benefits of doing yoga in an art museum. The Philadelphia Museum of Art houses one of the greatest collections of works by Marcel Duchamp.
And fittingly, the confusion and difficulty in attempting to analyze Duchamp’s work was about to manifest itself in my yoga experience.
At 7 p.m., I walked up a marble staircase and strategically placed my yoga mat—borrowed from the O’Pake Recreation Center, which loans them out for free—on the outskirts of the 30 or 40 people in attendance.
This moment was when I got my first glimpse of the instructor. Amanda Medina is in her early 20s and looked incredibly fit. She was an instructor at Dhyana Yoga, which has three locations in the greater Philadelphia area. Medina taught the entire hour-long session at the Art Museum and had the pleasure of watching me butcher every yoga position in a variety of ways.
After the first 15 seconds, I knew it was going to be a difficult hour. Medina said yoga was demanding, but I took that statement much more lightly than I should have. I’m not the most flexible person, but there has never been a time when my lack of flexibility was more exposed than my time on that yoga mat.
My arms trembled after we had to hold downward dog for two minutes for what felt like the 30th time. It felt weird being in a room with a bunch of men and women (mostly women), many of whom were twice my age, and knowing I was struggling more than all of them. After an hour, I finally collapsed on my mat.
Medina said yoga often has a reputation for being froufrou and easy because people only think of the easiest levels of yoga. In actuality, Medina said yoga has tiers of difficulty, and the higher you go, the more difficult it becomes.
Yoga in the Art Museum is medium difficulty. This news was kind of depressing to me because I knew if the class had gone a couple minutes longer, I wouldn’t have lasted.
Yoga is promoted as relaxing, but only after you’ve done it for a certain period of time, Medina said. The physical demands of yoga are too overwhelming at first to really appreciate the mental aspect, and I agree with her.
After the session had ended, there was only one way to describe my condition, and Eminem said it best in his 2002 song “Lose Yourself”:“His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. There’s vomit on his sweater already, mom’s spaghetti. He’s nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready.” Minus the vomit, that lyric accurately describes my first yoga experience.
I sat on the Rocky steps, feeling incredibly stiff, to collect my thoughts before I had to make the trip back to campus.
Pablo Picasso said that, “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” Every Wednesday different personalities, backgrounds, experiences, and ages converge in one building, all seeking one thing: An escape. Yoga in the Art Museum is that escape from the everyday stresses that plague all of our lives.
For one hour I was able to forget about papers, tests, and all the other bothersome aspects of my life. Thanks, yoga.
