Superstar Yoga: LeBron WHO?

I admit it without flinching. I don’t like sports. Even though I live in Cleveland, where I understand they have some, I just don’t care. I don’t play ‘em, I don’t watch ‘em, I don’t talk about ‘em, and I don’t bet on ‘em. Sports+Yogalove Pinkpunk=total disconnect, or as we used to say in the cable world (night auditor job in college), “total disco.”

Even so, I’d be living under a rock not to know that fay-moos LeBron James is now a free agent in the world of basketball. All I can say is that I hope he does the right thing for himself in this next venture.

But what about for us who might be left behind?

We are saved. If he leaves, I just want to let you know that he will be immortalized here in Cleveland, at least in the Cleveland yoga scene. How?

He has a YOGA POSE named after him! Yes. He does.

And that’s better than his face appearing on every third shoreway billboard! Or IS it? Here’s how it came down.

I was at a yoga studio several months ago, and we students were doing our thing: sweating and posing and (some of us) breathing and tuning in and stretching and focusing. All that yoga goodness.

Suddenly, the teacher, who’d been calling out poses for us to practice said--all too perkily cheerleader-ish, I might add—“Okay everyone, rise up and do the LeBron James Pose!”

I thought I’d misheard her, but we all rose up and did the pose she was demonstrating, which breaks down to being nothing more than a Warrior Lunge with the arms outstretched shoulder height and fingers outstretched to represent, what?, the easy holding of a basketball in each hand? My good hearing was affirmed when after about 30 seconds she said, “Okay, everybody, LeBron James Pose on the other side!”

Truthfully, I felt as though I had stepped out of the groovy zone of yoga and into the land of competitive athletic grunt, or into that annoying land of American Yoga, Inc., where corporations, sponsors, clothing lines, hugely paid athletes, and sportstocracy drive the day and the yoga itself.

But then, letting go of that as best I could, I laughed to myself.

Americans are always naming things like highways and park benches in order to honor their heroes and those who’ve left the scene. Yoga is not immune to this practice, either. As much as I wish it were, it isn’t. Right?

So if LeBron goes, practice his pose. Someone will thank you. I guess. But you might not get offered a contract for anything by doing so. After all, it's just yoga.