Becky Bowman

Until May, I wasn't the biggest fan of yoga's triangle pose.

For those not familiar, the triangle pose creates not one but several triangles, with the body's arms and legs held quite straight and pivoted at geometric angles. Imagine placing your feet a yard or so apart and pointing your right toes out to the side. Now hold your arms up straight at your sides, and look to the right. Lean forward, and when you've leaned as far as you can, drop your right arm down to bisect your leg and raise your left arm toward the sky, windmill-style, to keep the line straight.

(Now just look at all those triangles you've made!)

This pose does not require an undue amount of skill. After all, it's not standing on one's head, or balancing nearly upside down, such as in a dragonfly pose. But my muscly calves hinder my flexibility when it comes to straight-leg poses --or so I tell myself -- and as I dislike failure, I've had lots of uncomfortable memories associated with triangle.

That was, until I started doing yoga in a cathedral.

Living in a city blesses me with many opportunities, and not the least of late is that a cathedral in my neighborhood offers donation-based yoga, once a week, inside its sanctuary. That's right: On the cold stones where San Francisco's religious residents and tourists alike trod day in and day out, seeking quietude, blessings, absolution, my friends and I have been upward- and downward-dogging, often dressed in what might pass for pajamas, barefoot, sometimes sweating.

It's an unholy of holy experiences.

I still feel a bit uncomfortable in a spandex tank top in a space I had recently associated with Advent, Christmas, Palm Sunday -- with my best clothes, with modesty, with proper behavior and decorum. And I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that, since I started doing yoga on the labyrinth, I haven't been to a single Sunday service. For better or worse, my 90 minutes on the floor of the sanctuary now seems to substitute for the 90 minutes I once spent in the pews. Is this what church should be about?

Despite my small discomforts on the rights and shoulds, however, the class has been an eye-opening experience -- not the least big of which comes poses like triangle. As previously mentioned, I've not always had reason to look forward to the twists, to obeying the command to pretend I'm bending between two pieces of glass. Now, however, I get to look up from those poses, each time, at a new bit of stained glass, concrete blocks and candles, with a new angle of light, a new sense of wonder.

I saw my first blue-tinged stained glass windows in high school, when I was part of a singing group that got to travel to Mercersburg Academy, a local private school, for an event. To me, stone-walled sanctuaries like the Mercersburg chapel, with jeweled windows, footsteps echoing and lots of hushed voices, were places to get married, places where God's presence could be felt, places full of soaring music. At least, that's how they looked in The Sound of Music.

Over the years, I've had occasion to visit many chapels and cathedrals, from the U.S. to India to France, full of the trappings I so admired as Maria Von Trapp, played by Julie Andrews, walked down the aisle. Each has had a slightly different feel, but none so far has failed to produce in me that small sense of awe I've harbored all my life.

Doing triangle pose at Grace Cathedral is an unusual way of experiencing that awe, but it's also refreshing. Twisted into virtual knots, with my head, eyes, gaze at odd angles, I get a chance to see snippets of the whole, a quick take on something that might otherwise become stale in my mind, become something I take for granted. If for that reason alone -- to see the world from a new vantage, however strange and limited in scope -- I'm glad to be a little unorthodox.