Yoga and I have a complicated relationship. The simple version is that it's one of those love/hate things. I love the idea of it - a physical discipline that commingles with mental and spiritual discipline as well. I love the way that longtime practitioners carry themselves with such ease and comfort, as though their bodies were a very favorite pair of jeans. I love the breathing. The breathing is very, very good.

I hate that I always feel like a sweaty, clumsy, fidgety kid when I'm barefoot on my mat in a room full of people who are breezing through their asanas. And their feet? Their feet are not making that thwick, thwick on the mat every time they step to the fronts of their mats. Nor do their feet appear to be sliding in opposite directions as they struggle to maintain warrior's pose.

And when we all fold on the floor with our legs bent under us, shoulders on knees and foreheads on the floor, I seem to be the only one crying. Why would they call it the child's pose if we weren't supposed to cry?

The result of my ambivalent relationship with yoga is that, over the past six years or so, I've been in a lot of yoga classes. I've been in a lot of yoga classes one time, never to return.

I've endured, er - experienced a variety of yogic teaching styles.

There was the entrepreneurial yoga teacher who sold mats and other accessories to help cover the rent on her upscale studio space.

There was the homemaker who taught at the community center. Some yoga teachers are born; this one was made when her own teacher quit and suggested she apply for the job.

Then there was the yoga drill sergeant who brought to the mat the same techniques that make middle school P.E. class so fun and utterly dehumanizing. She loaded the CD player with one of those "Soothing Melodies of the East/ Rainforest/ Atlantis" discs, turned the volume to 11, then barked over the loud music that filled the gymnasium.

Imagine the Great Santini with long, blonde hair, yoga pants and a toe ring.

"Breathe deeply and don't compare yourself to anyone else!"

"Move your knee over your shoulder and exhale into the stretch!"

"Feel the heat moving through your fingertips! Feel it!"

Even if the room hadn't been filled with ultracompetitive, superflexible college cheerleaders, I probably wouldn't have gone back to that class. So, if I've never found a class where I felt good about myself or about the instructor, why do I keep going back?

I go back because of people like Bob and Peggy, two of many people I've met who are yoga teachers despite never having conducted a class.

Bob and Peggy are a couple in their 70s who are filling their retirement with adventure, good friends and service to their community. They approach life with equal measures of compassion, humor and fearlessness.

And they practice yoga.

So I keep going back.

And this week, I just may have found the class that will keep me coming back.

The teacher reminded me of my friends Bob and Peggy back in Florida as he guided the class through more than an hour of poses. Then he told us that sitting upright with legs extended and toes flexed (and this muscle pulled in and that muscle tightened and spine lifting toward the racquetball courts) was one of the more difficult poses for him.

Amen.

At the end of class, when we were all prone on our mats relaxing our bodies, the instructor tried, just as all my previous instructors have tried, to extract my tense little shoulders from my earlobes, where they tend to migrate.

And as I was about to silently berate myself for being so tense (stupid, stupid, stupid), the instructor reminded us to watch our breath, and try to watch it without judgment.

Oh, yeah.

I've got a long way to go before I can relax into THAT pose.

Elizabeth Trever Buchinger is a freelance writer who's trying to teach her downward dog to namaste. She can be reached at villagewordsmith@hughes.net.