Yoga at Heathrow

During my very lengthy layover at Heathrow on my way to Tbilisi, my body was calling me to do some yoga. It could have been that, the fact that it was a completely separate room with door and smokefree and perhaps the fact that I found myself dragging a 10 pound/6 kilo yoga mat through the airport. After having done the rounds entirely through terminal 4, the time difference and the fact that I can never sleep on transatlantic flights going eastbound, I decided to check out the nondenominational prayer room. I mean, some people call yoga and chanting religious so why not venture to the next level and actually use that to my advantage. I actually was in a yoga class, Bikram style which is controversial in its partake of the yoga circuit, where the teacher who essentially memorizes a monologue that they recite through a set of nonvarying postures in 100 degree heat. For tree posture, which involves placing your hands together at your heart, called prayer position or samistiye, the teacher requested that we place our hand in non-denominational prayer posture. The act of making yoga politically religious and trying not to stun students to get them to stay to make more of a profit made me want to go running from the room, but so I diverge we trek our substantially large amount of carry-on baggage into the prayer room after the young devout Muslims had finished their worship. You see, I wasn't too sure how they would take to the chanting and yoga.

I had always seen these rooms and joked about doing yoga in one but never had ventured that far. I guess I never had a long enough layover and a mat handy as well. The room itself had a lot of Korans, prayer rugs, and tons of other stuff. I was doing some meditation and chanting when the Mecca seekers came in for a bit. There is actually a compass on the ceiling showing the direction of Mecca. Muslims practice prayers 5 times a day in the direction of Mecca in case I am being too vague. They even have showers so you can cleanse yourself for the ablutions before you pray. The British are quite good at respecting non-dominant religions which I think is quite impressive considering that sometimes some individuals around the country can be a bit close-minded about that sort of stuff.