I used to be a yoga person. I’d go to several classes a week, generally whatever fit in best to my schedule. There was the severe Ashtanga class in the old Hearst Gym, taught by a gentle, reserved elderly man named Carl. There were the incredibly nurturing classes down at the studio in Emeryville, the kind of class that ends with the teacher pressing lavender oil into your neck. (Is there a better feeling in the world? There is not.) There were various studios in various other cities: some hot and crowded, some awkward, some emotional and some intimidating.

There were hard lessons about migraine triggers. (Hot yoga: not even once.)

For the last few years, I haven’t done much yoga, mainly because it seems literally impossible these days to actually make the effort to go to a class before, during, or after work. But at some point during my adventure with pneumonia, I decided to start doing some classes online. And then, like seemingly every person in the world, I became a big fan of Yoga with Adriene, who has taught me to forget everything I knew about asanas.

Here’s the thing: I’m not exactly a high-energy person. I can barely stay upright in a chair for more than ten minutes before I begin the slow slide down into some kind of quasi-horizontal position. I’ve often found that I need to lie down upon reentering the house after any kind of errand, as though I have a case of the vapors.

And yet, to my chagrin, I live in a culture that prizes macho energy: we give big props to people who don’t take their leave from work, and we applaud those who get up at the crack of dawn after a partial night of sleep to go “no pain, no gain” it out in the gym. We robotically chase productivity without being certain what we’re producing or why.

(I wonder: is producing the masculine cousin of creating?)

For me, both personally and politically, this kind of macho go-get-’em-tiger thing does not spark joy.

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