Yoga and Times Square. How un-alike can two things be? Calm and commercialism really do not mix. Yet mixing it up is always invigorating. Just so, the Bikram yoga class on 46th and Broadway last Monday, on a sweltering day just past high noon, was so much fun.

Organized by the Times Square Alliance in honor of the Summer Solstice, the eighth annual Yoga In Times Square day drew some 5,000 people to register for its various classes and programs, all free. For the Bikram class, nearly 500 souls showed. About half admitted to practicing Bikram regularly, but many others were new to yoga, attending the event just for its novelty. And it really was a scene–Broadway quilted in yoga mats of every color, a patchwork rainbow on the drab concrete street.

When I arrived, I wedged myself onto a spot on Father Duffy Square, which, as it turned out, was askew, tilted, I suppose so as to slough off rainwater. It completely threw me. My pride took a hit as I fell like a newbie out of every single balancing pose.

But the pedestrians who stopped to watch the scene–Broadway, interrupted!–burst into applause at the sight of 473 standing bows, and I was elated that non-yoga-people responded to the beauty of the pose. It was exhiirating too whenever I had to look upwards–during the breathing and the backbends and the floor series. The sky full of skyscrapers and drifting wisps of cloud made me feel utterly tiny. Which is an apropos feeling when doing yoga, I think.

During the savasana, an astonishing, almost eerie hush was born. It was so quiet I could hear the photographers’ camera’s shutters clicking. The thrum of the city was so distant. Midtown will never been the same for me again, and I like to think that some yoga energy seeped down into the paving beneath us, changing it forever too.

Namaste,
Yoga Lily