Music Class Musings

At Gaze, a music class is a 60-minute 26&2 practice that is practiced with a playlist (or possibly DJ (shoutout to Mr. Bongos) in the background. Oftentimes, the teacher also practices with the class, which is a departure from the more common format of having an instructor stand on a podium giving only verbal cues to guide the class. This month, the studio has added an additional “music class” to the schedule on Wednesdays at 6:30pm, in part to help facilitate the bingo challenge for March. I love music classes (to the point that I know that people think I’m a little too crazy about them), but this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I have changed in my thinking on music class. This may come as a surprise to many, but I used to not only dislike music classes, I refused to even go to them.

I’ve been practicing 26&2 since the mid-1990s and solidified the regularity of my practice in very strict yoga studios—even the color of your mat and towel was regulated as well as wardrobe (no green, no leggings or long pants, period!). For a time (that I do not recommend to anyone—it wasn’t a nice time), I practiced two 90-minute classes per day, one early morning, one late evening, working that non-stop NYC hustle in between. The classes were strict and formal, both attributes I tend to lean into comfortably in my professional and personal lives. 

When I moved to Tampa, I had a very hard time finding a studio that was a good fit for me and when I did, I wasn’t very happy about transitioning to concepts like “60 minutes” and “warm”, but I found that my practice blossomed in surprising ways when I did. Lately, I’ve found that maybe there’s more to my yoga life than a 26&2, although first loves are always the greatest loves and there’s a certain level of comfort that I have in a Hot 90 that I just don’t feel otherwise. Maybe it’s the practice itself, but maybe it’s nostalgic feelings of my youth before the more difficult adult periods of my life started to settle in and change me.

In any case, the hardest “new” practice for me to adopt was the music class. I lived a very solitary and rather regimented academic life. I am comfortable in silence, with stillness. Music was distracting. And all-consuming! I spent a very formative part of my young adulthood as a musician, serious enough a viola player to be in multiple performance and theory courses in college. I spent many hours alone in a small practice room perfectly content and happy. Broken hands and injury made me put that aside many years ago. But I love music of all sorts very much and very deeply. I spent most of my time at home alone with my music and it’s a time and a place where I feel safe and incapable of bothering anyone or being bothered by anything.

The first few times I took a music class as a student, I had a very hard time. I felt like I couldn’t balance, couldn’t be still, couldn’t focus. But over time, I got better, probably with the realization that I was just in the room and that was probably good enough. I was a very late adopter in teaching music classes at Gaze. I was very happy to go to other music classes and even allowed myself to be excited for a playlist with a genre or artist that I loved. But I get very fussy about things—timing things, breathing things, cadence things. I’m a linguist who used to play in the symphony and spent her time in pit orchestras in her spare time and linguistics labs in her working hours. I didn’t think that I could actually loosen up enough to do it well. The first time I did teach a music class was accidental. A class needed coverage and my need to be useful overtook my fear of failure. And that was that. Since then, they’ve become my favorite class to teach other than the Hot 90.

I was a child of the 1980s when a mixtape on a cassette tape was a love letter from the soul. You can tell a lot about people based on the playlists they make. This last month of music classes at Gaze, I feel exactly that feeling. Each music class playlist is a love letter from my soul to the studio. And with each class, I feel like I expose myself a little bit more and allow my heart to open a little more each time I let someone else listen. My teaching is looser and more fun and irreverent in music classes. I’m very aware that I can bring that into my other classes, but I choose not to do so. I’ve made creating playlists my hobby and in keeping those classes special for me, it’s also been a gift to myself as a time to reconcile myself to the tender moments of my past and to allow myself to grow in ways that I didn’t realize needed tending.

Some of you might be like me with my yoga practice, finding comfort and growth in the quiet reflection of the changing sameness of the 26&2 in 90 minutes. I get it. The heart wants what the heart wants, what can I say? But this year, I’ve forced myself to grow more and change more and even though not everything has gone the way I’ve wanted, I’ve felt my eyes stay open more easily with difficult forced experimentation of self. And if that’s not yogic, I really don’t know what else is.

Maryam Bakht is a fitness coach and yoga teacher specialising in purposeful movement and mental strength and clarity. Maryam holds a PhD in Linguistics from NYU and in her time as a college professor has developed methods for practicing calmness and rest as a way to become more efficient and effective in work.