My Yoga Journal Day 21: Queefs Happen

Yoga teaches me that it’s okay to fart or queef or whatever in public...gas happens! Yoga works not only on the muscles and bones, but all the tissues, including the organs. On a summer's day in late 2010, I attended a Hatha class with Mandy Eubanks at Yoga Yoga North.

As is customary in most anusara classes, there was partner work in class. My partner, 6'4" & 280 lbs, was to assist me as I floated into a handstand against the wall; and conversely I was to pray as he elevated his trunks toward the same wall. He went first and halfway got there after two attempts. With a sweaty brow, he nodded his head in conceit and acknowledgement that it was now my turn to try.

​I ascended in the way instructed, making it to the wall upside down quite easily, and there I stayed for 45 seconds or so before deciding it was time to dismount and take a break. That's when it happened.

A full 30 seconds of flatulence emerged from deep within my vagina. As I sat cross- legged, eyes locked with my partner, I tried to shift positions to make this terrible sound stop, but no amount of shifting made a difference, it only shifted the tone.

I was humiliated as this had never happened to me before! A bit of gas had snuck by me, but nothing like this extended release of old gas from the recesses of my being.

But then I thought, "I think this may be as bad as it gets." There's freedom in letting my moola bhanda flap in the wind in front of a complete stranger. All the etiquette and focus on perception as beautiful or lady-like goes out the window and you're just another human being who farts like the rest of us.

So, if you fart in class or hear someone else do it, know that it's part of the releasing process of yoga and is completely natural. Just don’t go around being proud of it - then it becomes a distraction.