Negative psychic tension

I've just come back from a yoga class, for which there was a substitute teacher today. The class was fine except that right at the beginning, while we were supposed to be concentrating on regulating our breathing, the teacher told us to keep repeating to ourselves "I deeply wish to release any negative psychic tension." Once she'd said this a few times I'd lost all ability to focus on my breath and was convulsed by extremely negative psychic tension and the urge to run screaming from the room. This is just the kind of thing that made me resist taking up yoga for so long. Since I've started, though, I've been fortunate to have teachers who keep the spiritual stuff to a minimum, letting me get from yoga what I want from it: flexibility, focus, and less physical tension.

I was also reminded by this little mantra of Harry Potter: "I do solemnly swear that I am up to no good." I spent the rest of the class reflecting on the fact that the Harry Potter incantation at least shows a sense of poetic metre, something completely lacking in "I deeply wish to release any negative psychic tension."

To compound this, the teacher later told us to ask the universe for what we need, because the universe would provide. I'd like the universe to take care of some of my grading and class preparation this afternoon, but unfortunately I suspect it has more important things to be getting on with.