Hair Today Gone Tomorrow

I do not want to give the impression that I have in any way superior knowledge about yoga compared to, say, your average aardvark. Anything I may think I know is bound to be different in a week as I discover more, or realize I was hallucinating. Possibly, the only thing I have learned definitively is that a double chocolate fudge brownie will not always effect your class adversely. Hardly a piece of information that I should tout because, as the piece of phrasing implies, more often than not the brownie will pose a problem. I've just learned not to skip class because every now and then, you can still get a really great backbend with the brownie still churning away in your gut. 

That being said, I think I found a winner here. Now, as I've said, this may change. I have been conducting experiments and believe I have discovered, drum roll please, the perfect hairstyle for long hair in the yoga room! Thank you, thank you. Hold your applause, please. 

I am sure many with longer locks have had the same issues I have. My Ashkanazi mane has been growing for three years. Three very long years.* Many hairstyles have been tried. Let me diagram what is problematic about each of them:

Example A: Down

This is obvious. Hair is everywhere, your mouth, stuck to your face and eventually knotted up like starter dread-locks. While dreads are lovely, if you are not seeking to achieve the look, finding it on your head is rather dismaying. 

Example B: Singular Braid

This style gets in the way of wind removing pose. When you tuck your chin in you have a lump of twisted hair just behind the nape of your neck preventing you from getting your neck-spine to the floor. While, if we are being honest with ourselves, most of us are less than full-bore in wind removing, knowing before you start that you have no hope of achieving the posture is decidedly silly. 

Example C: Top Knot

Good for Wind-removing pose, as it will allow you to put your neck all the way on the floor, it gets in the way of separate leg stretching. Try touching your head to the floor with a three-inch wad of hair in the way. No dice. Same issue for rabbit. Furthermore, if you have the basketball-sized mop I have, standing head to knee is about impossible. When you start lowering your head, the basketball flops, shifts your weight forward and you find your center-of-gravity suddenly three inches in-front of your toes. Down you go. 

Example D: Pig-tails

This is the style I have preferred for the last year+ as I have been growing the mane. This will allow every one of the poses, with no impediment. The only problem is that 90% of your class is spent wishing you did not have a wet, clinging, scarf of hair wrapped around your neck. The room is hot enough without hair-made accessories appropriate for snowboarding. 

Example E: Two French braids

I imagine this would be great. Imagine. While most girls were learning this skill I was hanging out in a tree competing with my best-friend to see who could eat yogurt the grossest. If a yoga pose included french-braid lessons, I might be able to pick it up. As it does not, I am excusing myself of learning this skill. 

And The Ideal: Pig-tails with a third hair-tie holding them loosely together

Note that all the other styles have nice concise names and this one does not. I would like to believe this is because it is brand new and I have discovered something that will catch on like wild fire. I should patent this! The truth is that this is ugly and no person outside of the yoga room would ever consider this presentable. But hey, I am willing to sweat so bad I soak multiple towels, wear underwear and breathe using my arms. Really, a stupid hair style is not going to matter one iota. 

And now that I have discovered the ideal hairstyle for long hair, it is time to chop the mop and donate it. Hooray! I feel like I should send it off with an apology note, "I am sorry it is so unruly; I swear I tried to train it. It gave me nothing but grief. I hope you have better luck with it than I did."

I bequeath the actual hair to cancer patients and the hair data (presented above) to yogis.

* I have been growing it out for donation. During this process I have re-discovered that long hair and I do not get along.