There is a hierarchy in yoga classes. It's not so bad in mainstream gyms - the real clique effect is reserved for the specialized yoga studios. I've never been to a yoga retreat but I can only imagine the Yoga Alpha competition there is fierce.

At my gym, it's not so much a clique/hierarchy/Yoga alpha thing as a collection of yoga class stereotypes:

• The Ballerina - this, in our class, was the instructor. A real mastery in yoga is not just the poses themselves, but moving seamlessly and gracefully from one pose to another. The instructor was a small woman, perfect body, lovely long hair and she just flowed from one pose to another making it look not only beautiful, but effortless. This person makes you feel like a hippo having an epileptic fit.
• The Porn Star - there's always one, isn't there? The person who goes "oooooooh" and "mmmmmm" and pants effusively. Go get your camera out and do a Paris Hilton in your own home where I can't hear you, you silly cow!


• The Feelgood Factor - this is that one person in the class who - thank God! - is crappier at yoga than you. Every position that I couldn't hold, by the time I collapsed into Child's pose to rest, I saw she was there already. Every time I lost my footing in a balance pose, I noticed that she had stumbled before me. But this person is no fun when you are stuck in a pose and you have to hold it, every muscle quivering, because the instructor is correcting their stance... again.


• The Chatty Cathies - these are two friends who have come to the yoga class suffer from a shared delusion that they are at a tea party, that their stage whispers are inaudible to others who are standing two feet away from them and that they are so fucking important that it is OK if they are despicably rude.