As a new yoga teacher, experience is everything.

Everyone farts. It is a part of being alive. There is a book titled “Everyone Farts" I have read it to my children. I tell my children, there is more room on the outside, and I use this phrase for many things, things like expressing how you feel, farting, brainstorming, burping, etc. I know I am an eclectic mom, an eclectic person. I thrive on being just a little bit outside the lines.

The story I want to share with you is from the maiden era of my life. I was partnerless, childless and though I would not have said it then I was free. I was teaching a yoga class at the local YMCA - it was one of my first teaching gigs in the new cozy northern town I had just moved to from San Diego.

The carpeted floor of the studio muffled my voice and the sounds of footsteps. I often played Yo-Yo Ma’s album, Yo-Yo Ma Plays Bach, the sound filling the high ceilings, seeming to float softly down upon the students. The music was like a co-teacher, the waning and waxing melodious information that added to each of the poses.

On occasion, I would demonstrate some more advanced poses and would show the class two or three variations they could try within a sequence. On this day I forgot the trusty Yo-Yo Ma cd - and so the class would be done in silence, this was not unusual. The cd had been left in the cd player more often than I care to share. Sometimes It would be sitting on the table next to the sound machine, a different teacher would have set it there for me, unknowing that it was mine. I had burned at least six versions of this cd from my desktop computer at home.

The opening of the class is always the same: breathing, sun salutations and I often presented a theme. A quote, or a phrase, sometimes a piece of art or a thread of movements we had been working on, to weave together. I would walk about the room, speaking, observing, and directing the class. I began to notice that more than half the students in my classes are wearing pants that were see-through when they bent over. Revealing a thong or leopard print design gives a great deal of insight into the student’s inner secret personality. The awkwardness of knowing something about them that they didn't openly share drastically increased my heart rate. The contemplation about should I tell you I can see your underpants or should I just pretend I do not notice. It is a slippery and confusing slope that feels especially uncomfortable to a new teacher. I learned quickly to avert my eyes just enough to miss the sea of see-through yoga pants, a skill that I hoped would be sharpened as my career unfolded.

Today’s class was that stringing along of movements and poses that we had been building throughout the past few weeks. There were a few optional complicated movements, transitions, and breathing techniques to accompany them. Since I was on the new side to teaching I would often go over the sequences the evening before class. For this sequence, I didn’t make time to practice. I had begun seeing a new guy, and he took me out for Thai food, an exquisite new experience for me. I was fresh out of college where my diet consisted of lucky charm marshmallows, cheese, beer, and ramen noodles. Not (nessecarily) together. It wasn't just the food that was new, dating as a whole was brand new for me.

We get to the part in class where I invite them to either continue their flow or observe as I demonstrate how to move from one pose to the next creating a more challenging experience. Many students leave their mats and gather around mine. As I am moving from downward dog into three-legged dog I feel my stomach gurgle in a strange way, I don’t think much of it, and then a few poses later I am heading into a more complex transition between an arm balancing pose called crow into a headstand, with an optional leg bind. So basically slowly moving from a position that has your lower body balancing on your upper body, hands holding you up, and then gracefully setting your head onto the mat and slowly extending your legs to the ceiling and optionally twisting your legs together and bending that shape into your chest. As I was moving into the optional leg bind and bend, I ripped one. I farted so loudly that I fell over off of my mat. I wanted to curl up and disappear under my mat, this was not the polite poof that usually happened, this was a loud pfffffffff pootooptp tutuu.

It had two, maybe three distinct sounds.

It was deafening.

Everyone in class knew I just farted. I was beet red. I found myself inhaling deeply as if I could suck up all the smell with each inhale as if doing sowould ensure that no one else would smell it. I didn’t know what to say, my teacher told me if I ever felt uncomfortable teaching one strategy was to turn up the music. It was a good way to move past my anxiety, and redirect the class. But here— no music, no nothing to distract me or them.

I didn’t want to try again, I knew then that everyone farts but even the teacher? This couldn't be happening. People turned away, made space around the invisible cloud of odor that floated around the open room. I saw a few snickers, a woman holding her nose, and another fanning the air in from of him and saying “Whewwww!” Tears pricked my eyes, my stomach flipped over and my face flushed, I was sweating now.

I could not speak.

In what seemed like an hour had passed was likely three minutes, when a brave woman, stood up from her front-row observation and moved to her mat to begin trying the sequence. I was hoping no one was plucky enough to also impersonate the gaseous escape near the end of the flow. Many others began moving and doing their version of the sequence when a quiet voice peeped up, “What comes after the….”

A long pause.

I thought after what? Waiting thinking that maybe the name escaped him, another voice pops up “No, he meant what comes after the fart.”

"Oh my goodness you guys, this is horrible.”

We all laughed, even as I was mortified, and then in the back corner, I see the guy who I was dating, my mind whirling --"he is here, what? How did I miss him?" at this point I am seriously considering running out of the building.

I avoid eye contact at all costs.

Somehow I finish the class and sit in the women's sauna for 45 minutes after class hoping he has already left the building, I dress and sneak out the locker room exit.

No sign of him.

You see the whole class knew that everyone farts and that there is more room on the outside, but that doesn’t make it any more comfortable. This experience helped me to grow into the type of teacher that admits and honors her humanness, but it took many years. And to this day Brad and I do not try new food experiences if I am teaching and demonstrating within a 24 hour period. We didn’t talk about him coming to class for three weeks after he witnessed my fart, and It took thrice as long for me to bring it up and joke about it during class.