Rowdy applause erupted behind the double doors and the groupies rushed out soon after, their faces beaming under sopping wet hair, their parched mouths plugged with water bottles. After two sweaty, ecstasy-filled hours of moving around in such close quarters, their hot, steamy musk poured through the doors and spread out around us like the fog covering Twin Peaks. One shirtless guy with dreadlocks, perspiring from every available pore, squeezed past me in the crush of people and slathered my right arm with sweat as if prepping it for basting.

Was I in the 4 AM coat check line at some mega dance club like Pacha? It sure felt like it, but no, my dear friends, I was at yoga class—my first very first one in om-filled San Francisco. Since arriving in the City by the Bay, I'd been looking for a new class, and a friend recommended one of the most talked-about teachers in town. Of the two Saturday morning classes he taught, I chose the later one, which started at 11:00, still rather early for this night owl accustomed to evening classes, but do-able.

I arrived with minutes to spare, but the earlier class hadn't let out yet. Surveying the jam-packed lobby, I foresaw chaos: when that class finished, its students would have nowhere to go. When the doors finally did open, I watched as swarms of arriving and departing students peeled off and pulled on layers, kicked off and stepped into shoes, and emptied and refilled a dozen bursting cubbyholes with a surprising degree of efficiency. Amid the mayhem of the classroom changeover, two students—one dripping, one dry—eyed each other and reached over to hug like giddy teenagers. Overall, the degree of commotion caught me off-guard. While I'm no stranger to crowds this dense or devotees this gung ho, in my experience, that usually means there's DJs and alcohol nearby, not incense and sticky mats.

We entered the huge room, a sauna thanks to its prior occupants, and mats quickly filled every inch of the sweat-spattered hardwood floor. A few yogis went right into perfect lotus poses, while others gabbed, did headstands, or gabbed while doing headstands. I sat, eyes wide, remembering my first time at the circus. Then I glimpsed those soggy dreadlocks again, plopped down not far in front of me. Evidently, the arm-slicking stranger decided that his two-hour yogic pore cleansing wasn't enough; he was going for four.

Then in a flash: doors closed, inverted yogis flipped upright, and silence fell—only to be swiftly chastened by a tambourine, that musical instrument I knew primarily from kindergarten in the '70s. Our teacher, the local legend, walked up and down between mats, religious revival-style, shaking his rattler and chanting in Sanskrit. Many broke out in full-throated song, echoing his words, and I mangled a few as best I could. The little metal disks, their sound forever immortalized in a Byrds song older than me, jingle-jangled on their wooden frame, and I thought, Welcome to The Vishnu Vaudeville Show!

I'll be the first to say that the electricity in that room was palpable, and I was happy that it stuck around a while to help us through our asanas. Tambourine Man surprised me with a more vigorous and enjoyable (not to mention hotter) class than any I'd previously taken in New York. His groupies' energy, distracting at times, was also something of a marvel when I stopped judging it. When class was over, I felt lighter, possibly because a few gallons seeped out through my own skin as well. Amazingly, this had the unexpected (if illusory) effect of making me feel clean and refreshed.

In the end, though, things just didn't click. I'm naturally suspicious of charisma, which makes for a bad groupie, and I'm definitely not a sweaty-hugs, back-to-back-classes kind of yogi. So on the next jingle-jangle morning, I didn't come followin'. In a city with more yoga studios than MUNI bus stops, I had numerous other choices. Still, I smile when I think of those happy yogis following the Pied Piper guru who shakes his magic tambourine.

Take inspiration wherever you can get it, I always say.