Traverse City, MI – Students and teachers alike are growing irritated by Frank Driscoll’s Om in the 6PM All Levels class. It is routine to bookmark each class with a group “Om,” but Driscoll has a way of sounding a notch louder than the rest of the group, as though his Om is the most important.
“I don’t want to discourage anyone’s love of chanting Om,” said teacher Lucy Towers, “but I can’t even hear my own Om some days when Frank gets going. It’s more like a cry of pain than an Om.”
Driscoll will rise in volume once the Om is in full swell like he’s emitting some kind of spiritual battle cry. “You’d think he was recording an Om album or something,” said a fellow yogi.
Driscoll told Egobaby he envisions himself on the top of the Himalayan mountains when class begins. “When I chant ‘Om’ I want Lord Vishnu to hear me.” When we told him that Vishnu is a formless metaphysical concept and not an actual person, he replied, “Tomato tomahto.”
The class also has to wait about ten long seconds for him to complete his drawn out Om to its last ‘mmmmmm.’ These final humming ‘mmmmmm’s have gone for a full minute at times.
“There was one class where the teacher told us to all get into downward dog and Frank was still ‘mmmmmm’ng from his Om,” said a fellow student. “He’s typically up in seated position during shavasana, eagerly awaiting the concluding Om, which he’ll jump start. The teacher will say, ‘we end each class as we began, with the sound of-‘ and then he’s off.”
