Enlighten Up, Yoga Bitch

I’m sick and my husband is going out of town so I’m writing a post for your Friday enjoyment.

Earlier this week I wrote a post about the book Yoga Bitch and a friend commented to ask if I’d watched the film Enlighten Up. I have and there are some striking similarities between the two. They aren’t the same story by any means but I think they both begin with a flawed premise.

In life, if you go looking for A Thing to give your existence meaning I suspect you will inevitably be let down. It’s too much pressure, both on the Thing and on yourself. You’re attaching expectations to an Unknown Thing and it’s also putting pressure on yourself to 1) identify with and 2) attach oneself to that Thing. It’s a bit like hearing from everyone you know that The Alchemist is an amazing and lifechanging book and then reading it and finding it only mildly interesting and/or a little pedantic and thinking that maybe there’s something you’re missing out on. Why no, I’m not speaking from personal experience at all.

I got to yoga by being lazy. It’s a story I tell with some regularity, especially as almost everyone says “I can’t do yoga.” I don’t enjoy running. While I have been known to engage in running as a form of exercise, it’s not fun. In point of fact, I think running should be reserved almost exclusively for eluding a weapon-wielding psychopath although that rather undercuts my argument since without practice you wouldn’t get all that far but I digress.

So I don’t enjoy running. I also don’t enjoy aerobics classes. That’s why, in 2001, I picked up a yoga book on the clearance shelf at the local Barnes and Noble. I was 26,  married just over a year, had settled into our house after moving twice within 12 months and working a stressful job in outside sales. The odd hours of my job were not conducive to taking regular classes and I thought I’d see what this yoga thing was all about. I took the book home, tried some of the stretches and thought ‘Hey, this isn’t so hard.’ Some of the stretches were familiar from when I played sports in school. When I looked at the suggested routines at the end of the book, I thought perhaps I’d benefit from some live instruction.

Let me be clear: I was not looking for salvation. I wasn’t looking for enlightenment. I wasn’t looking for inner peace. Mostly I was looking for a way to work out that didn’t involve a gym (I’d tried that unsuccessfully) or rollerblading with my dog (epic disaster). I’d heard yoga was good for you and helped with relaxation. I’ve always had issues with quieting my brain and figured this couldn’t hurt, right? I was nervous though because I’ve always been a fidgeter. Ask anyone who ever sat in a meeting next to me or watch any of my sales videos. FIDGETER. I was not hopeful about my ability to fit into a zen environment.

My first class was at the only yoga studio in my city. It was the basement of a dentist’s office, complete with industrial carpeting  and cleaning crew noises overhead. The class was taught by the woman I found out later owned the studio and it was like a reintroduction to my body. It was stringing together movements and muscle actions that I’d never used before and I loved it. It was physical and I could see how it could be made more aerobic if I practiced on my own. WIN.

As I practiced more often and took more classes, yoga seemed more logical. My studio didn’t partake in chanting, which suited me just fine – not even an Om. Then I had the magical class – the class which, once having had it, means you never look back. During the class I was so focused on every single thing that I was doing – each muscle motion and the depth of each breath – that I literally didn’t notice the passage of time. I came out of savasana not just refreshed but energized and motivated. NOW I understood why people do this. It’s moving meditation.

I, who was never able to sit and meditate, suddenly understood the point of TRYING. That’s not to say I started a meditation practice – I didn’t – but I got the idea of focusing inward with practice. Truthfully, in all these years I’ve never been in a class where people are looking around at their classmates (though I guess it probably happens) because virtually everyone is trying so hard to be balanced and graceful that they can’t spare a glance for the person who is UTTERLY CONVINCED that they are the most clumsy yogi ever and replete with the knowledge that they will somehow knock down the entire room domino-style. That said, I now fully understood the concept of using yoga to still the mind – its primary purpose according to Patanjali.

So the more I practiced, the stronger I got and while not every class was in that zen brainspace I still enjoyed it. I didn’t get enlightened, I didn’t find god but I got what I needed. In fact I loved it so much that I wanted to be able to share it with people and I got certified to teach.

Yoga helped me get through a hellacious year where my dad was ill with terminal cancer. It helped me get through the year after his death which turned out to be almost worse than the year he was sick. Most importantly, it’s a space I can always go back to – in a hotel room, in a park, in my house and virtually anywhere I can stretch my legs. With music (I’m a fan) or without. Props or not. Decidedly not in matching designer yoga clothing. Because yoga isn’t about what it looks like or what you THINK it’s going to be, it’s only about what you do.

That old adage from schoolteachers about ‘getting out of it what you put in’ is entirely true of yoga. If you put in more muscle work, you will get more muscle strength. If you put in more concentration, your concentration will improve. In classes geared for 80 year olds, I manage to work up a sweat because yoga taught me how to change the way my body works and how I utilize my muscles. Through yoga, I was able to help 80 year old ladies better understand the geography of their muscles and how to use them.

That is what I love about yoga. No one can tell how much or how little you’re working just by looking at you. You can adjust your workout in mid-workout or in mid-pose. No one is looking at you. We all have our own shit to sort out and work through and sometimes it happens in Warrior II. Sometimes it happens in a class where you infuse your breath with intention.

I once took a Tibetan Yoga class and while much of it was forgettable, the thing which was transformative was the breath. We were to breathe in imagining we were taking in something that we needed. Our exhale was to think of someone we knew who needed something and send the exhale of that thing out to that person. Chock full of woo woo? Hell yeah. But I left that class FEELING like I did something. I was lighter and felt brighter. Do I know that it’s woo woo? Hell yeah. Was some of my euphoria probably from increased oxygen intake? Hell yeah. But in that class I did not cheat on a single breath. I didn’t shorten an inhale or exhale by trying too hard or reaching too far. And sometimes, imagery is what gets it done. Look at sports psychology, for fuck’s sake. It’s SCIENCE. It works.

Some people bring their religious practice into yoga. It can absolutely be done and pretty much any yoga instructor can help you do it. I’ve had students dedicate their practice to Christ or use a prayer mantra to maintain their breath. Yoga is a tool that can be used in a multitude of ways.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you’re looking for a global panacea, you are destined to fail. This may be a newsflash but we’re more complicated than that. I can’t say that this works for me so it will DEFINITELY work for you. The problem of Yoga Bitch was that she was looking for something that no one thing could give her. The protag in Enlighten Up got sold a bill of goods that ‘yoga will do X, Y, Z for you.” We’re individuals. We’re thinking individuals. What thinking individuals should instinctively know is shit’s not that easy.

I’m not trying to convert you to the cult of yoga because there isn’t ONE yoga. I push back EVERY time I hear an instructor say “this is the right way to do x.” We are all different structurally and there are things that my body will never be able to do. I embrace that and don’t stop trying, I just stop expecting a magical yoga fairy to loosen my ligaments or change the shape of my pelvic girdle. For me, yoga is about accepting where you are and just trying to be better. At what is up to each individual.

Ideally everyone picks and chooses the things that the want or need or like to use and everyone has a different result – with one caveat. I’ve never seen anyone leave a yoga class that wasn’t smiling. The key is not to expect a revelation, otherwise you’ll always be disappointed. I felt bad for the narrators of the book and the film because they had this idea that yoga could change their lives. The only thing that can change your life is you. Yoga is just a tool that can help you do it.