Here is my latest excerpt from chapter eight.
She thought back to her first introduction to yoga. It was in high school and it was all about
the lotus position, head stands, and for the first time she had found something
she was good at in PE classes.
She
sucked at team sports, but she was flexible and excelled at yoga.
She could put both her legs over her shoulders and balance,
even walk, on her hands.
Good party trick.
She continued with her yoga practice as a young woman living
in a small northern town, and would go to yoga retreats now and again as she
was raising her children.
For a time she even explored the Hindu religion and went to
Satsang on Sundays. That had been during
her atheist phase, when she was looking for something to fill the hole that
leaving the church had created in her.
She became a vegetarian and would sit quietly in the mornings and
meditate and practice pranayama.
It hadn’t last long.
Well, the vegetarianism had last sixteen years, but the
meditation was never her thing.
She had reconnected with yoga, religiously, about eight
years ago – and now it was a weekly or bi-weekly practice. She had participated in three thirty day
challenges. Ironic, no? Three? Thirty days?
She sometimes practiced at home, but wasn’t disciplined
enough so preferred being in a class with a teacher guiding.
Her mother had taught yoga for a time – and once they were
going to go to a yoga class together. It
wasn’t to be, as the class was cancelled that day because it was a statutory holiday. She regretted that she had never
practiced beside her mother. She would
have liked that.
She had practiced beside her husband, her son, her daughter
and her sister. She had practiced with
different friends over the years. But
her mother? No. Not even once.
She liked all the teachers she had ever had. They were all
different – the young, enthusiastic gay man with eye-liner and nail polish who
would sing to them during shavasana, the incredibly handsome owner of the yoga
studio who always brought a deeply spiritual meaning to each class, the hippie
mom, who taught the kundalini classes, all of them.
She had never met a yoga instructor she didn’t like. They all had something to teach her.
Of course she had her favourites, and followed some of them
around like a groupie, looking on-line for where they would be teaching
next. But if they were not to be found
she would always be satisfied with the person at the front of the room.
She had done hot yoga (and loved it) – where she finally
could get a sweat going. She had done Yin
classes, tantra classes, flow classes and restorative classes. She had gone to beginner classes and power
classes. She liked them all. She had toyed with the idea of taking the
teacher training to become an instructor herself, but she pulled back.
She always ended up teaching something she was involved
with. She wanted to be recognized,
acknowledged. She wanted people to
appreciate her.
She had finally realized in her fifties that she didn’t have to
always be the teacher. It was okay to just
be a student.
She knew she was ‘good’ at yoga. She also knew that striving to be ‘good’ had
caused her injuries now and then.
She liked her current teacher because she reminded them
while they were practicing to check their egos and pay attention to themselves
when they were being too proud as they looked around the room.
Something she was working on for sure.
Imagine. Her? Being too proud.
Ironic. No?
