my yoga bio
a view from inside the studio
I started practicing yoga Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2008. It was a New Year’s resolution. It’s the only resolution I’ve ever made. I had quit smoking about three months before and was in hell. I stayed there, stuck, lost, for a year and a half or so. I started at 15, in high school, and stopped at 42. My entire adult life and then some. I had no memories, no experiences, that felt like me that weren’t me-smoking. I wasn’t one of those people who know it’s bad for you and want to quit, but can’t. I had no intention of quitting. I was perfectly happy with smoking.
And, then it stopped working for me. That, and a few other habits, crutches, ideas, assumptions & denials about life, about myself – all stopped working for me. I think now that it was my body rebelling. It gave me no choice: I had to stop. I was miserable not-smoking and it didn’t matter. I had to go on not-smoking. To whatever was on the other side of this. I hadn’t had any great epiphanies; I wasn’t steeped in faith about my decision. And, living it totally sucked. I just knew in every cell of my body that how I had been living no longer worked for me, and I had to face that. Regardless.
What I mean by how I had been living: Smoking a pack and a half a day, drinking coffee from morning to bed, sleeping no more than five hours a night—ever [weekends and weekdays were the same to me]—and skipping a night altogether whenever a 19-hour day just wasn’t enough for me. There were many things I wanted to do and many I felt I had to do. My days were very full–job, projects, people. Spending most of my time seated in front of a computer, getting no exercise, fresh air or sun. My commute to work was an hour and fifteen each way and my office was at the end of the earth, where there is no decent food or reason to go outside. I ate what was in the vending machines at work because I just couldn’t get it together to food-shop, much less make my lunch. When I ate Twix, I got some substance with my chocolate.
I was insane. I can’t imagine talking to me back then. Though, I suspect, most people experienced me as high energy, busy, good at what I did. I got things done. Helped others get their things done. Did some unusual things like making v-portraits; traveled to some interesting places, had lots of stories. I like to make things work, and think that there’s always a way to do that, so I easily and often got involved in other people’s projects. For a long time, I managed, and thought nothing of how far I had taken the idea of multi-tasking [nor how predominantly, I lived life through my head]. In any case, there it was and some tiny [smarter] part of me was meekly in charge, and it decided that yoga would be a good idea. Moving back into my body would be a really good idea [I had no idea what that meant then] and gently to start.
I picked the studio that was convenient for me – I did want to succeed – and oddly, that meant it was 40 blocks away from my apartment, but right on my subway line, and a block from the bus. It was on my way home from the office, too. Yoga to the People on St. Marks Place.
Keep in mind that I was raw all over. I had no bearings and no idea how I got through each day. Everything felt wrong. I was weak. WEAK. Physically, emotionally—mentally, too. I had been performing a 25-year sleep deprivation experiment on myself. Layered on that was that I was in horrified shock that there was no way to assuage how shitty I felt, and busy trying to hide it all. By 7:10 pm, the 7:30 class was a bubbling mass of mainly NYU kids, chattering away to each other and on the phone, mats lined up right next to each other [there would be about 60 people by the time class started]. I did not talk to anyone. At that point in the day, I couldn’t imagine making sound with my voice. Which was fine because no one asked me to. Nothing was required of me here. Just lay down a mat, and see how it goes.
Amazingly, I made it through the class. I couldn’t take anything like deep, nourishing breaths. I would falter and cough when I tried. I had no arm strength, no leg strength, no core, damaged ankles [my podiatrist called me Clutz to my face and that just made sense]—and no confidence that this would work. I took a lot of breaks and was annoyed that I was so goddamn weak. But, I stayed.
And, I came back. I couldn’t say why. It was like not-smoking, I just knew I had to do this, regardless.
I got lucky. The first few instructors I had, not only took us through the poses in a way that I could manage, but they would say these surprising, encouraging things (each different and not-feeling-like I had to sign up for anything) that both interested me philosophically, and distracted me from turning what was going on on my mat into a pass-fail test. I didn’t know then why I felt a little better after class. And, I didn’t have to know. Just to keep showing up. I see now that I had begun to loosen my grip, just barely at first, but I was beginning to let go of my pass-fail attitude toward life [read pass as perfection and fail as unacceptable]. That attitude had taken me a long way. I was productive, capable, had all kinds of experience and skills.
It’s not that I regretted it. It’s my life, my stories, my relationships. I just didn’t want to experience anything that way ever again and I wasn’t clear on what that meant. Practicing yoga, initially, gave me a place to be that was between the life I had built for myself and the one I still knew nothing about.
— July 1, 2010
practice makes present posted August 6, 2010, about my big revelation back on August 7, 2009. A year had passed, and it was still resonating in me, so I wrote about it. I’ve come to appreciate slowness, things — experience and understanding — unfolding over long periods of time & all the small moves that take us there. I suspect this will continue to resonate for a long while. We’ll see.
August 22, 2010: last night I graduated from the teacher training program!
some of us with our certificates, clapping for the next one of us to graduate
