Friends, family, strangers, yogis, and the like: Guess what? I’m still practicing yoga! Are you still coming here to read about it?
Might I suggest wandering over here instead…
It’s quite a modest party, but you’re welcome to join all the same. I like company.
Posted in Yoga
One of my favorite yoga teachers once told me that, in yoga, we all become story-tellers.
In class recently, as she strode among our mats, pressing her flat palms against the rise of our backs, pulling at our upturned hips, smoothing the line of our spines, she said, “Thank you for coming and sharing your story with me tonight.”
We rippled, shuffled, a murmur of limbs adjusting, of lungs filling—we weren’t speaking. What story-sharing was she talking about?
“This is the story I know well,” she continued. ”The story of your arrival, the story of your work, the story of your yoga.”
It was such a fitting observation, considering I have been thinking of my yoga story a lot lately, largely because I just finished Benjamin Lorr‘s “Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga.” Part-memoir, part-research, and part-expose, “Hell-Bent” tells quite a story about Ben’s personal journey through discovering and practicing yoga, as well as many other stories about Bikram Choudhury, about other yogis (professionals and average practitioners), about Bikram’s teacher training program, about extreme back-bending, about yoga-induced weight loss, about science and physiology and philosophy and the deep, confusing, fascinating history of yoga itself.
Even if you aren’t a yogi, the average reader would likely appreciate the humor, candor, strangeness, and humanity of Ben’s tale and of the yoga world he picks apart and analyzes.
I admit, however, now that I’ve finished it, that I have struggled to pinpoint exactly how I felt about the book. Did I love it (hundreds of pages devoted to my yoga!)? Did I hate it (learning truths about people in my yoga community, truths that I don’t care to know)? Why did I blow through some parts and struggle reading through other parts?
I was impressed at the effort, of course. (Bravo, Ben!) A bit jealous of the byline, the yogi-turned-published-author? Absolutely. Entertained and educated throughout, indeed. Inspired to haul my own knotted body into the hot room? Yes, a thousand times over.
But…what about the story itself?
That has been my struggle. And, I’ve finally found my answer.
Here’s the thing:
We each have our yoga story.
Many of them start the same: We wandered/stumbled/were dragged into a hot room, usually by someone who loves us, someone who knew the yoga would work on our tired bodies, our battered hearts. The first class passed in a haze of sweat, nausea, emotion, frustration, amazement, confusion, terror, humor, maybe even humiliation—largely because we watched, in stunned wonder, as the yoga waged war on our big, old American egos and won. We left swearing we’d never return.
Later, we felt transformed.
Later still, we did return. Whether it took one day or 100 days or even a whole year. We came back, maybe to a different studio, maybe with a different companion, maybe even more tired and more battered than we were the first time around. But, we came back to the yoga. And kept coming back.
And then, our mats became churches, our holy place of communion with our true self. Our practices became our best friends: we are wholly devoted to one another. Our teachers morphed into prophets. We each became willing, eager, dutiful students. The studios shifted into homes, communities, places of refuge.
The yoga takes hold, and we hold it back, and we become obsessed with breaking down, understanding, knowing, memorizing, and honoring every last little detail. It is one of the greatest love stories I’ve heard told over and over and over again.
Throughout the six-plus years of my own practice, I have read countless blogs, books, essays, magazines, and articles about this one subject. It astounds me, even now, that so many people—present self included!—are so eager to talk and write about their yoga, “get” it, analyze it, share its teachings, praise the lessons we’ve learnt from it.
And for what? Why? (Side note: the irony of this question is not lost on me, given I’ve devoted nearly five year’s worth of blog posts to own my yoga practice.)
Especially given yoga is, I think, an incredibly intimate form of therapy, both physical and emotional. A dedicated yoga practice is grueling, messy, difficult, wondrous, and profoundly life-changing. Old injuries resurface, old hurts bruise anew, a past long buried suddenly and completely cracks through the walls we built to protect ourselves from those old wars, those old ways. On our mats, we can’t hide; we face and work through it all. (Although “Hell-Bent” tends to focus more on the physical effects of the yoga, the moments when he touches on the emotional blowbacks of a particularly intense class or workshop are incredibly touching and real.)
Why are we so inclined to share the arduous steps of that journey, that transformation? Why do we ask others to bear witness? Are we seeking validation? Are we seeking praise?
Are we so enamored with our yoga, so enthralled by our practice, that we’re blinded by our adoration, our pride? We are in love—with this yoga, with this new self! And we want all the world to see! Is that it?
“Hell-Bent” is an attempt to answer all sorts of questions, about Bikram yoga, about yoga’s vast history and complex origins, about the author’s own skepticisms, about the actual physiological ramifications of doing 50 back-bends a day or logging 6+ hours in a room heated above 100 degrees. The book also provides a rare inside look into the Bikram Yoga community through copious interviews, research, quotes, and first-hand experiences and, in doing so, validates that this yoga is powerful, yes, but power can lead to corruption, hatred, extreme and unhealthy behaviors. I found these explorations interesting, if not a little overdone. I appreciated Ben’s meticulous research. I liked that he did answer a lot of questions—but also left a lot unanswered, unsaid, open to the reader’s own conclusions. I applaud his honesty. His writing strikes a nice balance between journalistic, comedic, and soulful. And, throughout, his wit and willingness to poke fun at himself and at the yoga community he’s a part of helped buoy a narrative that, like many a yoga-memoir before it, could have started sinking onto the bottom shelf of the self-help aisle.
However, I realized, come the book’s end, that the one question that plagued me—the one question that has, over the last many months, swayed me away from this here blog—is: So, what?
And what I mean by that is:
We each have our yoga story. And no two are alike.
But why are we so compelled to tell them?
In the good moments, I found myself throughly engrossed in “Hell-Bent,” to the point I couldn’t put it down or couldn’t wait to get into the hot room to determine if I saw or felt my practice differently, based on what I’d read.
And, in other moments, it was as though I just left a tough yoga class, and I’m sitting outside the hot room, satisfied and satiated and utterly spent, grinning stupidly, sweat dripping from my ears and my fingertips, my mind empty, my skin tingling, and suddenly I hear people going on and on about how they hated *this* or *that* about the class or thought the room was just too damn hot or didn’t understand WHY they couldn’t talk to each other or couldn’t *believe* the X, Y, and Z of the yoga that I love and that has changed my life. The yoga and the community that has, for the most part, treated me quite well.
It took me a long time (read: a lot of yoga) to understand that type of reaction wasn’t wrong or bad. It was, quite simply, that man or woman’s individual experience. It was, simply, his or her story, and it didn’t matter whether I agreed.
Ben’s story and the various stories he tells in his book are just that: his. And I have mine. And you have yours. And we all tell them differently.
None are right or wrong, better or worse, bigger or smaller, more or less justified at being told in the first place. None are more or less deserving. We can’t expect that every last story will resonate. But, each should be respected.
It all comes back to the yoga, of course. The point isn’t the story we’re telling (or selling). In the same way that the point isn’t how deep you can curl your spine in your backbend or how high you can kick your leg in dancer or how lightly you leap into chaturanga dandasana. The point isn’t how much weight you lose, how cute your clothes are, whether the teacher knows your name, or how wet your mat is by class end.
The point is that you showed up. That you came back, despite fears, against reservations, a pebble of hope caught in your shoes.
The point is that you arrived honestly, that you bared your blackest, bloodiest demons and your best, truest self and didn’t turn either away, that you opened your heart again—so much so, in fact, that you fell in love, over and over.
And who, really, doesn’t want to tell that story to anyone willing to listen?
Growing up an athlete, I learned my body in component parts:
I needed lean biceps to rein in my horse. Or, I needed powerful quads to propel myself off the wall after a flip turn. Strong shoulders were essential for thousands of yards of freestyle and butterfly. And calves tight and clenched as fisted hands helped push me that last mile further down the road during a long, arduous jog.
It doesn’t help that, growing up a woman, I was also bombarded by magazines that explained how exactly I could firm up my abs, or how I could obtain that high, well-rounded bottom, or how I could make certain I’d rid my triceps of flab, or how I could play up just my eyes with makeup while leaving the rest of my face clean, “natural.”
Bits and pieces, I was told—work on one bit and one piece, isolate one muscle group, hone in on one, lone sliver of limb, dramatize one feature, and work it right, and make it perfect.
Rarely did I think of my body as one, complete moving thing. Rarely did I think of how all those component parts actually worked together, let alone fit together.
Until yoga.
There, I learned the inhale fuels the stretch and the exhale feeds the compression. I learned how, by tightening my quads, I could loosen my hamstrings. I began to understand how my forward bends built and strengthened my backward bends. I was taught how the ankles line up to the knees, which line up to the hips, which line up to the spine, to create a clean, solid line of muscle and might. It took a good two years before I began to fully understand how what I put into my body—from fluids to food to too little sleep—grossly influenced what it was able to put out. I learned the body followed the eyes; the breath led the heart; and the mind, sometimes, needed let out to pasture to rest, to recover, to rebuild while the rest of the system worked for awhile.
Yoga taught me that one thing builds on another to create a whole—the same way one thing can topple everything, and break it apart.
Tonight, in a particularly sweaty and soul-twisting class, the teacher kept reminding us that we don’t come to yoga to gain anything—not strength, not flexibility, not peace, not a better waistline. Because, in truth, we have everything we need already within us. The yoga just strips away the excess, the unnecessary. Yoga sweeps out the clutter. Yoga helps us see and appreciate the whole of ourselves.
Yoga wipes clear the misperception that we are not whole to begin with.
I thought this lesson fascinating and quite fitting, given I haven’t been feeling all that whole or even semi-put together these days.
Case in point: When we set our intention at the beginning of class, my goal was “be strong and love myself.” Usually, my intention is to let go or to forgive or to try or to relax. Fairly basic. ”Be strong and love myself” even gave me pause—but I knew I was thinking that because I’ve felt frayed, separated, my heart in one place and my head in another, my knees hurting while my elbows kept cracking, and all the while, berating and blaming myself for a seemingly endless series of disappointments.
I spent the entire 90 minutes of class awash in sweat, breath, heat, and energy. I took every instruction and applied it. I listened to every last word. I broke when I needed to break, and I powered through when I least expected myself able. I paid attention to and doted on every last fiber and inch of all 5’11″ of me.
When I walked out of the studio, I suddenly remembered my intention. And I thought to myself how I have always been strong—I will always be strong. It is innate within me. As is love. Simple as that. The fact that I thought I’d lost or needed a replacement of either is a testament to the intensity and pressure of these last few weeks. Perhaps even these last few months.
The truth is this, though: It takes more than one yoga class to repair the damages, of any kind, but I am convinced that we keep going back not because we want our arms to show more sculpt and our butts to show less bounce or our cheeks to grow more hollow.
No—we go back because we begin to crave that clean mirror, that sensation of fullness, of completion, of a whole self seen and appreciated.
We come back to our yoga, time and time again, because it reminds us of who we really are, underneath everything else.
And it is our choice:
Are we brave enough to stand and embrace the all of her?
Yes. I hope the answer is, always, yes.
Posted in Yoga
We, as sisters—
We were blond-curled and brunette-topped, we were long and skinny, we were muscled, tight, wiry, and working, always working: to do better, be better, to please, to make happy, to make proud, to succeed, to show: we can do this, oh yes, we can, just you watch and see.
We were excited easily; we were rarely frightened—we were protected.
We were pink little girls, we were dirt-brown tomboys, we were bejeweled gypsies tripping in our mother’s wedged heels, tangled in our mother’s 1970s bangles and beads. We were taught how to weed and how to wash floors and how to clean windows and how to peel potatoes. We learned how to read poetry aloud (slowly, carefully, thoughtfully, honestly). We were young women, gowned, glistening, ripening, restless, ready.
We were athlete, equestrian, captain, dancer, tumbler, flutist, pianist, soprano, writer, poet, painter, rebel, social butterfly, senior prankster, collegiate graduate, master of English, a J.D. recipient, and, finally, mother to our own.
We were creative, brave, tenacious. We were confident: we weren’t afraid to own and deliver our authentic selves.
We were certain; we were, also, never so unsure.
We were sensitive, emotional, we were tear-streaked, we asked silent “why’s”, and we knew the answer was too sharp, too dangerous, too, too black and deep to wade out into alone, and so we were together, we were intertwined hands, we were braided hair and rubbed backs and heads resting on shoulders—we were the last pillars standing when the house fell.
We broke free, we blazed, and we left, and then we got lost, many times.
We told ourselves we needed to find our own way: sometimes on cut knees, with torn fingernails; sometimes in silk, with polish; sometimes in nothing but the skin over our bones; sometimes in the glory of victory, sometimes in the anguish of defeat; but always together, though, we were always together—
We, sisters.
——————–
We, as single women—
We were confident we wouldn’t always be like this.
We were brazen in our confidence, actually, because we knew we were worthy, we were beautiful, smart, we were coy, we were not easy to catch; we were setting traps long before you took a nibble. We were engaging, friendly, witty, delightful. We were sexy. We were fresh, we were clean, we were perfumed and painted and poised, lips puckered.
We were so unfamiliar that we became fascinating—for a moment.
We were punching bags, we were stepping stones, we were test cases; we were one nights, we were rarely mornings. We were ignored; we were quieted by the echo of silence. We were rattled, we were worried, we were angry, we were sad, we were told to wait. We were struggling to bear the badge of Optimist.
We were wondering: why?
We were the ones our friends pitied, just a little, even though we were never so mean as to call them out plainly.
We were the ones who learned how to take care of ourselves, by ourselves. We were the ones who tended to our own lonely wounds. We were the ones who fought for, and gained, a great assurance of our greatness. We were the ones who knew: If I do not have this, embrace this, strengthen this, celebrate this self, I have nothing.
We were willing to remain romantics.
But, we were hungry. We were not waiting around for scraps. We were not here when you came back.
We were searching, hoping, climbing ever further, reaching ever higher, getting closer.
We were patient, we were kind; we were humbled by our loneliness, and we were willing to accept our need and our want, and we were truthful in saying so. We were full-lipped and full-hipped and full of the future.
Because we were happy, loved, appreciated—not by you, but by lucky others, to whom we had given our hearts and received theirs in return.
————————
We, as yogis–
We were willing to do the good, honest work: of showing up to our mats and to the mirrors of our practice; of sweating, stretching, struggling, surviving; of letting go; of believing; of accepting we were not meant to be perfect; of forgiving you.
We were of breath and of body.
We were taught a faith without using a gospel, a choir, a mandate of right and wrong in the eyes of another.
We were the best of ourselves, and the worst of ourselves, but mostly, and most importantly, we were the unavoidable and amazing all of ourselves, and we were awash in the prayer of gratitude.
————————
We, as lovers—
We were slow, deliberate, cautious, we were fearful of our own curiosity. We were clumsy; we tumbled.
We were talkers, we were walkers, we were swigging beer and trading stories and pocketing memories. We toppled tables with our heavy elbows and hardy conversations. We buckled at the knees. We were laughing, teasing, goading, gaming: whose turn is it this time?
We were surprised by one another.
We were wary of one another.
I think we knew: we were breaking one another, crack by crack.
We were letters; we were music; we were details; we were young; we were late-night discussions about movies or politics or literature or third-grade embarrassments or senior-year heartaches or college soul-searchings or early-twenty-something mistakes. We were trying to remember it all.
We were flirtation, we were stolen glances, we were tipsy on promises. We were friends fired through with lust.
We were bedsheets tangled, we were eyes open at sunrise, we were flush, we were arches, we were caved in, our walls covered, stained, in kisses. We were pressed against cars, curled into couches, laying atop the ceiling of the ocean. We were the long of it, the short of it, we went around the whole of it, and, still, we were wanting.
We were of the monuments and the mountains. We hiked through the woods; we drove through the country. We got lost in a bad, bullet-torn neighborhood once. We broke into empty houses; we brushed against the dream and quickly closed the shutters.
We fought, and we were both too weak with love to win, and so we lost and conquered each other’s heart instead.
We were sprawled on the banks of a river, hands beneath our heads, sun on our swollen lips, buried alive by the bright sky and the boundless hope of more of this. We were seasons unfolded, we were holidays, we were sugared and ballooned birthdays, we were beneath the mistletoe, we were mittened, we were sunburnt and salty, we shuffled through blooms and sand dunes and scorched leaves and snow; we rang in another New Year.
We were mighty road warriors. We were without a real home. We were without real possessions. We were never so full.
We were wrestled under by love.
And we bit back.
We were trying, we were reaching; we were closing in, we were pushing away—we were shrinking because we had outgrown the space we carved out for the “us” in our lives. We were shavings, we were splinters, we split open, we were strewn, like scraps.
We scattered; we were unsure what else to do.
We were the great loves, one day.
And then we were done, over, finished, filed to the past, folded into the drawer of the old cherry dresser in the bedroom of the house I no longer live in but pass through, from time to time, when I need to sit within the shadows, the cool comfort, the whispering memory, of those years we spent in the wild, wonderful company of our greatness, our gusto, our glory, the all of us, in our lovely, imperfect love.
——————–
As inspired by this.
The other day, while nursing my body through a soggy Bikram yoga class, the teacher said, mid-dialogue, “It’s the mind that gets in the way of absolutely everything—even breathing.”
I couldn’t help but smile. To think: our mind might stop us from doing the very thing we most need to do in order to survive, all because, in that one, heightened moment, we are uncomfortable or scared or excited or nervous or trying too hard or not trying enough.
She then told us not to mind our minds for the rest of class.
This, of course, proved difficult.
The worst thing about not getting to the yoga studio on a regular basis is that while your body might remember and embrace the poses, your brain has a much harder time sinking back into that wonderfully silent, relaxed, meditative state of being that comes hand-in-hand with a daily yoga practice. Instead, you get a brain that’s alternating between shouts of “Come on! You used to be able to go way deeper and stretch way farther!” and cries of “Ouuccch! No more!” and sighs of “Just breathe, relax, let go, the only way out is through.”
To say yoga is a workout—mentally and physically—is an understatement.
I certainly tried, though, I promise you. I always try.
Body over mind. Breath over mental beatings. Letting go of thoughts rather than chasing them. Stillness over agitation.
And then, as we were nearing the end of our spine-strengthening series, and as I laid on my stomach, my cheek pressed against my towel, sweat dripping down my forehead and off my fingertips, I looked across at the man laying next to me. Normally, I am diligent in keeping my eyes fixed firmly on the corner of my towel so as to stay focused on my breath and my body versus the sights and sounds of everyone else in the room. But, my mind that night—it wanted nothing of focus.
My gaze landed on this man’s shoulder blade. More specifically, a marking on this man’s right shoulder blade.
And suddenly, I was spinning a short story idea in my head, of a woman laying in bed with a man whom she’d married quickly, hastily, back in the days when men and women only met a few times before deciding to settle down together, and when one morning she shyly asks him, this sullen stranger of a husband, about the scar—circular and dark, centered on his right shoulder blade, the one closest to her when they laid atop the sheets at night, him resting on his stomach, her curled on her side, the antique Salisbury clock ticking the minutes of silence past from its perch on the bedside table, and all the stories they had not yet told one another crowding the room like hauntings, like ghosts—his unexpectedly upbeat answer made her laugh, because he replied, “It’s not a scar, sweetie pie; it’s a beauty mark.”
And then I remembered the story idea I’d fiddled with a few nights before, about a woman who works at a prison and is responsible for preparing the last meal for inmates on Death Row. What meals did they request? How did she prepare them—with kindness or with cruelty? Did they eat alone, or did she keep them company? Did the men (never women) actually eat the food, and did they compliment her cooking, and was she ever saddened to see her culinary masterpieces slipping past the lips of crooks, rapists, and murderers? When she went home at night and stepped into the shower, was she washing off the grease of the skillets or the guilt of existence in a life crowded with crime and death?
Then, my mind jumped to the conversation I had with a yoga teacher recently, in which we were talking about my lack of motivation to crank my rusty yoga practice into the robust, invigorating practice it was in months past, and he told me, “You know how to do this. You have been here before,” and I nearly burst into tears, because that one phrase could be applied to so many things in my life lately, and because my gut response of “I remember—and I don’t know if I have what it takes to return anymore” sounded so defeatist, so resigned, and made me wonder if I have given up in other areas, too.
All this in the span of about 20 seconds, give or take.
Yes, this is how my mind works. I think in stories. For better or worse.
On my way home that night, my inability to successfully follow my teacher’s instruction nagged at me. Sure, I’d worked hard, and sure, I’d sweated quite a bit, and yes, I stayed faithful to my practice by breathing through discomfort, pushing when I knew I could, easing up when I felt overwhelmed, and taking every pose step by step, motion by motion, slowly, carefully, bravely. I’d held nothing back. But, I’d thought…a lot. I hadn’t let go of, well, hardly anything.
Maybe, though, we don’t always need to let go. (Gasp.)
Those story ideas? I should cling tight to them and make them more than ideas.
And that wave of anxiety and self-doubt I’d felt? I shouldn’t toss it aside; in fact, I should examine it closer. How else do you understand and overcome something?
And the prideful satisfaction I enjoyed when I climbed to my knees and began the last breathing exercise and stared at myself in the mirror, delighting in my bright eyes, my red cheeks, my shining body? I do not want to let that image or that delight or that unwavering acceptance of myself go anywhere.
Yoga, like life, is never about one thing. It’s a wonderfully complex composition of contrasting elements, both internal and external.
Perhaps yoga, like life, is mind and body.
Letting go and holding on.
Ideas and creation.
And the stories I keep trying to tell are found somewhere in the middle.
