Let’s talk tattoos.

An observation, if you will.  A lot of people who practice yoga have tattoos.

Or, perhaps, just a lot of people in general have tattoos and in yoga you’re forced to show them, thanks to teeny-tiny tops and skimpy shorts.

A second observation, if I may be so bold. More yogis in Boston have tattoos than yogis in Washington, DC.

Okay, okay.  Now I’m just making gross generalizations.

But, really, friends.  Each time I sit up on my mat in my Boston studio and look around me, taking in the great array of Bikram devotees practicing alongside me, I marvel at the artwork on display.

One woman who I’ve seen only a few times has a single sentence of text running down the back of her left arm, the lean muscle of her tricep serving as the dotted line.  I’ve never practiced close enough to her to read the writing, but, I love the idea. Our bodies—a page upon which to pen a thought, a bit of poetry, a favorite quote.

A man I see every once in awhile has a Celtic symbol slapped onto the middle of his back.  It’s big and black, aggressive, angry.

Another man, gray-haired and wrinkled just about everywhere, wears his old U.S. Army tattoo on his right shoulder. That badge of honor has faded to a blur; but, I look at it every time, in salute.

A younger Asian woman bears a sprinkling of stars across her lower abdomen, a flat band of skin acting as sky. Some nights, before class has begun, I catch her trailing her fingers lightly across that dimly lit cluster, an unnamed constellation.

One of my yoga teachers has an intricate but unidentifiable marking on her lower back.  I have yet to ask her its significance, but I always wonder what it means, what it symbolizes.

Several women, in fact, have tattoos on their lower back. Pictures of dolphins diving through imaginary surf. Sometimes a flower, all but one of its petals out, or a sun that has, sadly, stopped shining. A lot of Celtic symbols. Only a few Chinese characters, perhaps one or two Sanskrit markings.

My yoga crush carries his tattoo on his outer bicep, like many a men.  It’s not particularly attractive—possibly an impromptu decision, a last-minute trip to the tattoo parlor. But I like it, because it is his, and because it is on his body.

As for me…  My skin reads like a blank page, minus the dusting of freckles on my shoulders from too many summers in the sun.  I don’t even have a birth mark. Scars—those I have. Those come in droves. After all, we used to pretend your lips tattooed my skin, your kisses creating my unique markings.

Lately, I’ve begun to think I might like a tattoo—a real one, that is. The idea of having something permanently placed on my skin doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it used to, especially if I chose wisely, carefully.

I wonder what “Strong, brave, true”—one of my mother’s classic sayings—would look like written in another language, perhaps Spanish or possibly Sanskrit. I imagine where I’d let the needle go in—the inside of my wrist?  The top of my foot? The flat ridge between my shoulder blades?

As I think about placement, interestingly, many of the tattoos I see each night in my yoga class are covered day in and day out.  Meaning, my fellow yogi might work with the same person for five years and that coworker would never know about the palm-sized print laying beneath those blouses. And yet, I see it. And I don’t even know her name. There’s something incredibly intimate and revealing about that.

Maybe I’ve just finally been seduced by the painted flesh I see day in and day out. Perhaps I’m just smitten with all this body artwork, those symbols and shapes, the strange pictures, these sharp, silent etchings in ink.

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