I’ve been taking Power Yoga for about 3 months now. I’m really enjoying it, although every time I stick my ass in the air for downward facing dog, I can’t help but be taken back to 6th grade. I had just made a new group of friends at my new elementary school and I had accompanied them to Cue Connection for the first of what would be many sessions of Street Fighter II. This was my first experience with the game and as I scrolled through the characters, I landed on Dhalsim, an obviously Indian looking witch doctor. Being Indian, I chose him, proud that my ethnicity had made its way into such a high profile and popular video game. My pride quickly turned to dismay as I soon found that he’s quite possibly one of the worst fighters in the game, like ever. All the other fighters were cool and Dhalsim was, well, lame. He had two flame attacks which were paralyzing so that was actually kinda cool assuming you were able to pull them off, but his regular attacks were very strange. His limbs would stretch across the screen and while it seemed cool at first (Oh cool I can stand across the screen and still hit you!) it actually turned out to be not very useful. I soon found out that his “fighting style” was supposed to be Yoga. The developers at Capcom can suck my long one because Yoga is not a fighting style. Nor does it allow you to stretch your limbs like some sort of poor man’s Mr. Fantastic. That day I vowed to myself I would never ever go near a yoga class. Imagine being the new Indian kid at a school, and the only other exposure they have to anything Indian is Dhalsim. No wonder it was so hard to fit in. Everyone was probably wondering why I wasn’t wearing a necklace of skulls around my neck and breathing fire.

The instructor shakes me out of my flashback by telling us to bring our left legs forward for a crescent lunge and I find myself wondering the same thing.