I was lying face down, on a floor, in a hotel room. This is not that uncommon. I travel a lot both for speaking and for teaching yoga. When I travel, I bring my pink mat and, time permitting, I try to practice before I begin each day. I do a series of poses, one of which is called chatturanga dondasana. Basically this pose is coming up from the floor into a yoga version of a push-up but holding it about two inches off the ground for an extended length of time. It is very demanding. I am longer than my pink mat so my face, whether my nose or the side of my cheek, touches the carpet before and after each time. I have been doing chatturanga dandasana in hotels for years.
Recently, I have been struggling with this pose, not physically but mentally. I have become more worried about the germs and who know what else that might be living in the hotel carpet. My new concern for carpet purity started slowly. First, I started making distinctions between hotels. – chatturanga in a Motel 6 is definitely out; a Hilton maybe; a fancier one, is okay. Then the whole thing crumbled. I had the thought that price of the hotel probably did not matter as much as how dedicated the cleaning person was. The truth is that once I started thinking about what lives in hotel carpet or who’s been doing what over that carpet, I was a goner.
Suddenly, I was facing an existential question that everyone must eventually confront: To germ or not to germ?
My new concern about hotel carpet is the aging process work. Over the last few years, I increasingly think about what can go wrong, about risks, about how I need to be more careful, less trusting. This comes out in all sorts of ways, mostly harmless but still beginning to form a pattern. This is a defining pattern I have witnessed in many elderly people. I do not want it. I want to love, believe, and not be fragile in the world for as long as I possibly can.
So I am lying face down on a hotel room carpet in Cartersville, GA. As I am about to come up into chatturanga dandasana, my mind begins to think about all the life living in that machine weaved carpet. It would be foolish to believe that those germs and such do not exist. Of course they do. But I can believe that they are not going to kill me. To my knowledge, no one has died from lying face down on a hotel room carpet. I went up into the pose and released down and felt the carpet on my face. At least for the time being, when faced with the question to germ or not to germ, I choose to germ. And surprise, surprise, I am still here. I must confess, however, there are limits to my risky behavior. I have nothing to prove. I did not lick the carpet.