Two minutes with Danny Katz: Knowing the yoga position for fresh air

Q. Attending my usual yoga class, I opened up the window, since I like fresh air. The teacher came along and closed it again. Do yogis have a right to fresh air?
S.R., Erskineville, NSW

A: The first thing we should check is that this isn’t a Bikram yoga class, which is also known as hot yoga, which is also known as Hey, Shut The Window, You Imbecile, We Have To Keep The Temperature In This Tiny Airless Room Above 38 Degrees So That Everyone’s Forced To Inhale Each Other’s Reek For Up To An Hour yoga.

If we’ve determined that this is just a regular, non-hot, less-reeky yoga class, then we probably need to check that opening a window isn’t going to be distracting to your fellow yogarians – that the class isn’t situated on a busy street or within 300 metres of an active volcano.

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And if we’ve confirmed that the yoga class is located in a quiet, non-volcanic spot, then we might want to make sure your yoga teacher isn’t some kind of divine higher being who could activate her cosmic powers of healing and love to zap a lowly, window-opening yoga-goer into a pile of ash and melted lycra. And if we’re confident that the yoga teacher is just a lowly, unzappy person like the rest of us (though a bit more bendy), then you can now politely remind her of the old business adage: the customer is always right.

Especially when the customer is paying $230 a month to do stretching exercises they could be doing at home for free, with every window in their house wide open, watching a YouTube yoga class set in a Costa Rican rainforest. Or watching their own pooch give a perfectly good downward-facing-dog demonstration.

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