Monthly Archives: April 2013

A teacher’s gift: faith

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For some yoga students, the act of walking into a yoga class is a leap of faith.  It’s true for many of my students, who bring woes ranging from gout to bulging vertebral discs to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Karin O'Bannon looks here much as she did when I met her in 1997. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth O'Bannon.

Karin O’Bannon looks here much as she did when I met her in 1997. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth O’Bannon.

That I am standing in front of them teaching yoga is an act of faith as well. I must constantly draw on the words of the teacher who taught me to teach, Karin O’Bannon.

She asked me on my third day of yoga teacher training if I was teaching anywhere. I stammered, that, no, I wasn’t.

Was she crazy? Here I was with all these people who were actually GOOD at the poses. And she addressed me while I was struggling my way into ardha chandrasana, my elevated leg mere inches from the floor, restricted by such impacted hip joints that two years later I would have them both replaced. My back was to the wall, and my hand was on a chair seat.

“You should be.”

I was shocked. I was there because my teacher at a health club had urged me to get some training so I could sub for her.  After my first day of class, I was sure I could never teach, but I was there to get more of the learning Karin provided, which had immediately taken hold of my heart.

I struggled with more than my utter inability to do the poses with even 10 percent of the quality of my fellow students.

I struggled with the concept of ishwara pranidhana, surrender to God. As an atheist, I didn’t even know how to begin to deal with this. A few weeks later, though, Karin gave me something to hold on to. In response to an assignment, I had written that at the end of a yoga class, I felt that the possibilities of all the individuals within the class were magnified far beyond the strength of any imagining. She had written: “For some, this is God.”

When I started teaching, it was with her faith in me.

Over the years, perhaps encouraged by my own limitations, students came to me with problems and encouraged friends to come, too. Their courage inspired me. Over time they learned to have faith in yoga. When they thanked me, I had to point out that they were the ones doing the heavy hauling, that it was the yoga and their work that they should thank.

One day a 30-something student came to me who was in such immense mental pain that I felt overwhelmed. I was so frightened of doing her harm. I contacted one teacher by e-mail. She told me to trust my instincts. I realized later that what I came to trust was the student’s determination to heal herself and the ability of the yoga itself.

A few months later, I was able to see my teacher Karin and ask her directly for advice. (She had moved to India a few years earlier.) She said the same thing, to trust my instincts. Then she looked me straight in the eye and said: “And know that she is a gift.” I had no idea what she meant at the time.

Her workshop that evening touched on Sutra 2.15, that it was the “axial aphorism” for the entire text.

“The wise man knows that owing to fluctuations, the qualities of nature, and subliminal impressions, even pleasant experiences are tinged with sorrow, and he keeps aloof from them.  (Translation: Edwin F. Bryant.)”

Eventually our discussion went to ishwara pranidhana, my old nemesis, as she knew. And she said it might also refer to surrender to “absolute truth”. As a former journalist, I found the idea of an absolute truth perhaps even more difficult to grasp than the concept of a supreme soul.

The 30-something woman and I attended the Iyengar yoga conference in Washington, D.C., in May 2012, in large part to be able to study again with Karin. We also attended Professor Fred Smith’s discussion of the Yoga Sutras. Here I came across another explanation of the niyama: surrender to the “lord of yoga”, to trust in the act, the doing of yoga.

I thought I had come to that point, teaching as an act of faith in yoga. Then I learned my teacher Karin is terminally ill , and I realized that, no, I was still teaching from her faith in me. Without her, how could I find the courage to keep teaching?

Student by student, the answer has come. Sometimes from someone who knows I am quavering, but as often not. Over the past weeks, many students have told me that I am an inspiration and that is why they have found healing in yoga. Rather like when I heard my teacher Karin, I have no idea what they mean. I am so very ordinary. But I find that I must accept their faith if I am to keep on teaching.

And so the gift I have wanted to give my students, faith in yoga, has come rebounding back, multiplied many times over.

Wanda and Mildred

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Wanda could come to any class, but she sticks with the slow-paced class she first joined with her mother.

Wanda could come to any class, but she sticks with the slow-paced class she first joined with her mother.

I can’t see Wanda without thinking of her mother, Mildred, and missing her. Wanda comes to class even though she can’t help but think of her mother and miss her.

They first came to class in 2003, perhaps 2002. Wanda did tai chi, got acupuncture for neck problems and sought whole health. She and her mother loved great jewelry and getting great deals on beautiful eyeglass frames in LA. They both loved their family and helping others.

The first time they came to class, Wanda brought her mother, and yet smiled and detached herself from the outcome.

Mildred gave me a kind of Missouri “show-me” look, pretty startling in a 70-plus-year-old girl from Puerto Rico.

Mildred always had a slight smile.

Mildred always had a slight smile.

Mildred arrived a skeptic to my first class. I thought at the time she had been pretty much dragged there by Wanda. Over time I learned that Mildred couldn’t be dragged anywhere, but she was willing to try, often repeatedly, something that might help make life better. A few weeks after she started, she showed up with a tiger-striped mat. For several weeks when ill-health kept Wanda away, Mildred came on her own.

One day Mildred complained about how difficult her outing had been at an outlet mall. I showed her how to do virasana, hero pose, while sitting in a chair, one leg at a time. About a month later, she reported she was back in full shopping form.

With Mildred’s asthma, lying on her back, even with support, often left her breathless. She had tight hamstrings and getting up and down off the floor was tough. Still, she did it. I watched over the years as she kept trying the poses that challenged her asthma. And 10 years later, there she was, doing bridge pose.

It took a few years, but after a while, Mildred was the one bringing people to my class, some with minimal problems, one with Parkinson’s.

Once after I had been gone for a couple of weeks, I started a class by saying “next we’ll do” and she filled in the pause with an answer: “jumping jacks!” and I learned how she had faced down a sub with a refusal to try jumping her feet apart.

She was what I want from all my students: to be a discriminating student of yoga. She questioned, prodded, experimented. She never gave up. She was attending class until just a few months before she died of cancer. She was 86.

It was a few months after that before Wanda came back to class. When she did, it was to encourage another friend to come to yoga. She greets the Dial-a-Ride bus each Wednesday morning as it brings a woman who must use a wheelchair after a terrible car accident.

Someone else now sits in Mildred’s spot. Wanda has found new students to help. It’s a full class, but even so, I miss Mildred.

Real bodies in yoga, students

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These students demonstrate how supported uttanasana can be adapted to varying flexibilities, from the most flexible in the foreground to least so on the far right in back. The student on the far right has had a hip replacement and spinal surgery.

These students demonstrate how supported uttanasana can be adapted to varying flexibilities, from the most flexible in the foreground to least so on the far right in back. The student on the far right has had a hip replacement and spinal surgery.

 

 

Yoga students have come in all shapes and sizes and configurations: ages 5 to 87; male, female, transgender; straight, gay, lesbian; slender, curvaceous, overweight; flexible or stiff, better described as mobile or steady.

 

 

 

 

 

Cynthia was in class a day after she broke her arm. She took care but found ways to do poses that helped her heal.

Cynthia was in class a day after she broke her arm. She took care but found ways to do poses that helped her heal.

Jody uses a block to learn the lifting action of the legs in head balance.

Jody uses a block to learn the lifting action of the legs in head balance.

 

They come the day after they break a shoulder, wearing a cast, or while going through chemotherapy, wearing a head wrap, or after a knee or hip replacement.

Susan finds yoga helps with her scoliosis and some other issues, as well.

Susan finds yoga helps with her scoliosis and some other issues, as well.

They come to yoga for help with fibromyalgia, degenerative joints, bulging discs, scoliosis.

Real bodies in yoga, teachers

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The Internet is replete with images of young, slender, flexible yoga students. Here is my attempt to balance that out with a few images of my own, starting with four Southern California teachers: myself, Denise Thibault of Orange, Tammy Gingerella of Riverside, and Marie Harris of Riverside.

Denise challenges us all, taking teenagers and septuagenarians past perceived limits.

Denise challenges us all, taking teenagers and septuagenarians past perceived limits.

Supported ardha halasana may be restful, but it does not provide the most flattering abdominal views.

Supported ardha halasana may be restful, but it does not provide the most flattering abdominal views.

 

 

 

 

Tammy Gingerella demonstrates how props can create lightness in a pose.

Tammy Gingerella demonstrates how props can create lightness in a pose.

A student of mine mentioned how much she enjoyed Marie’s teaching of this pose, garudasana, eagle pose.
A student of mine mentioned how much she enjoyed Marie’s teaching of this pose, garudasana, eagle pose.

 

 

Head balance

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Head balance is a favorite among many of my students, as Robin demonstrates here.

Head balance is a favorite among many of my students, as Robin demonstrates here.

When I was a child, I wouldn’t do a cartwheel. I didn’t like somersaults. I detested being upside down. It terrified me.

Karin O’Bannon taught me my first head balance. I was 38 years old and a few days into her teacher training. Truth to be told, if I had known there were headstands in yoga, I never would have walked into a yoga class.

Some frightened students ask me, what’s the point of it? The same question might be applied to asana in general. What do the poses have to do with yoga? And if yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind, head balance in particular might seem antithetical to yoga.

BKS Iyengar offers a concise explanation in hisLight on the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali: “Asana, for example, offers a controlled battleground for the process of conflict and creation. The aim is to recreate the process of human evolution in our own internal environment.  . . . The creative struggle is experienced in headstand: as we challenge ourselves to improve the position, fear of falling acts to inhibit us. If we are rash, we fall, if timorous, we make no progress. But if the interplay of the two forces is observed, analysed and controlled, we can achieve perfection.”

Keep in mind that Patañjali defines perfection in asana as effortlessness, not in terms of its physical attributes.

I knew none of this the day I faced my first head balance.

That day in 1997, Karin noted that some people were terrified of headstand.  Shrinking inside, I told her that I was one of those who were terrified. She taught me the finger interlace, the placement of the head, the actions of sirsasana. Then she helped me upside down, with a wall behind me for support. After quite a few hyperventilating breaths, I realized that the world was not going to come to an end. After my breathing slowed, she assisted me down, and asked what I thought. I answered without thinking: “That was great!”

It was six months before I tried it outside of class. It was several years before I could hear a teacher announce “sirsasana” without feeling dread. Then, for years, the pose was the mainstay of my practice.

Of late, head balance has become ground again for the creative process Iyengar described. Now I face, not fear of falling, but fear of injury. Now, again, it has become that battleground for my fears, as I seek to perform the pose without injury, and yet to progress as well.

No matter. When I’m in the pose, the fluctuations of thought do cease, I focus completely on the interplay of forces. This is the epitome of yoga.

Laugh, be present

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Marit practices head stand regularly on her own.

Marit practices head stand regularly on her own.

Marit’s story could be most any beginner’s. She came to her first class immensely unsure of herself. She had good reasons to be scared. She had suffered a small stroke and couldn’t stand in mountain pose without falling over.

She brought a strong asset, however: her willingness to laugh.

She was in her early 60s. A friend had urged her to come. She arrived with a big smile and very little expectations. After more than 10 years of regular class attendance and home practice, her headstands fill fellow students with awe. She started practicing headstands regularly at home because they can help with motion sickness. Now she can go on a cruise, with nary a moment of nausea.

With help, she can kick up into handstand.

She can step wide for utthita trikonasana, extended triangle pose. Like all of us, she may wobble. Like many of us, sometimes she sits down abruptly. And laughs.

Mountain pose? Piece of cake.

Of late, she has been getting her husband, once several inches taller than she is, to try a bit of yoga at home. He might even come to class, she says. And then she laughs.

Satya, what is

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(I first posted this in February 2013. Two months later I learned that Karin has lung cancer and soon will be gone. I will miss her deeply.)

It took me years to learn to do a handstand, and now, again, I’m too afraid to do it.

It took me years to learn to do a handstand, and now, again, I’m too afraid to do it.

Behind all the physical excuses, the true excuses hide.

Fear.

Fear of looking silly in front of other people.

Fear of not being as good as other people.

Fear of the unknown.

Fear of trying and failing.

Fear of not having any more excuses.

Seven years after I took my first yoga teacher training classes, I told my teacher I was considering quitting my management job as a low-level editor at a newspaper with a good paycheck to become a full-time yoga teacher. Karin O’Bannon no longer lived in the area, not even in the country, and I had tried to discuss this with her two weeks earlier and had not found the courage. I knew she would give me an answer in the best interest of yoga students. I trusted her honesty, and feared it.

Given my last chance before she left again, I hesitantly brought up my, not dream, driving impulse. She gave me her direct gaze, referred to in a magazine article as the “eye of the tiger”, and said a bit witheringly, “I’m surprised it took you this long to figure it out.”

I told her I just hadn’t had the courage. She gave me another withering gaze and said she knew few who acted with such courage. I was shocked. How could I be considered courageous when I was afraid of everything? She delivered a message that I have encountered many times since. It was new to me then. Now it has a sort of “duh” quality. Being courageous isn’t being without fear, it’s acting in the face of fear.

When I quit my job, it meant walking away from all the “if onlys” of my life, walking away from the obstacles to santosa, contentment, accepting complete responsibility for my joy and my sorrow.

Defined as acting in the face of fear, I had to admit, I had courage.

So do we all, truth to be told.

No more excuses

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Students here range in age from 42 to 82. One is blind. One is a guy. One has fibromyalgia. One has post-polio syndrome.

Students here range in age from 42 to 82. One is blind. One is a guy. One has fibromyalgia. One has post-polio syndrome.

Reasons people give saying they can’t do yoga.

–I’m too stiff.

–I have arthritis.

–I’m overweight.

–I have a bad back.

–I’m too old.

–I’m a guy.

Let me describe the people in the picture here. 

Their ages range from 42 to 82. One is blind. One has scoliosis and deals with chronic pain from post-polio syndrome. One has fibromyalgia. One’s a guy.

Let me describe their teacher.

I am 54. I took my first yoga class in 1995, shortly after I learned I had advanced osteoarthritis in my left hip. I had been told at age 25 that I had the knees of an 80-year-old. I had my first joint surgery a few months later. It left me more crippled in the knees than before. I had suffered from crippling back pain since I was 18.

By the time I took that first class, I could walk about a quarter mile. I could go up and down stairs only with assistance. I had to use my hands to move my feet onto the gas pedal and brake to drive to that first class. I sat on the floor and burst into tears from the pain. My teacher gave me a stack of towels to sit on and I could stop crying. An hour and 15 minutes later, the back pain was gone.

I began studying how to teach and then began teaching in 1997.  Fifteen months later I had to have that left hip replaced. The doctor told me I would have been there much sooner if it hadn’t been for the yoga. Three months later, I had the second hip replaced. My recovery period: five weeks. At week four after each replacement, I was walking up and down Mt. Rubidoux, a 3.5-mile round trip on a big hill in my hometown. My doctor also attributed that recovery pace to the yoga. The doctor also noted that my entire spine was degenerating, as were all my joints.

In 2004, although my back pain was mostly gone, I was aware that damage existed and I had sharp pain in my neck. I had X-rays and then an MRI done. The lowest disc in my spine was completely gone; next one up was half gone; I had ground bone away from my lowest vertebra; I had bulging discs and bone spurs in my neck. I set to work on the neck problems in my yoga practice and the pain was gone in about two weeks.

When I started practicing yoga and for years after I started teaching, I couldn’t come anywhere close to touching my toes. I couldn’t do backbends, I couldn’t do forward bends, my standing poses were narrow and wobbly. Even as a teacher, I felt frightened in most poses all the time. I still do.

What got me going in yoga: pain.

What kept me there: hope. And that’s what keeps us all coming back.

 

Detaching from pain

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(I wrote and originally posted this item in March 2011.)

Much is written relative to Yoga Sutras 1.12, on practice and detachment, and 1.15, on renunciation as detachment from desires.  Most writings deal with how to detach from pleasure. Perhaps this is because commentators view that as the harder thing to do. I don’t agree and I wish more had been written about detaching from pain. I could use some help on that. Pleasure is fleeting, and most of us know that. Pain seems so much more enveloping and hard to escape. And maybe that is the problem, that we try to escape pain. This is far from trying to detach.

This topic came up while e-mailing about a yoga workshop on grieving that was to include a discussion on “embracing change”. My correspondent felt this meant accepting change “happily or willingly”. There is a place between being happy about change or hating it. Neither is detachment. I think that the trick, the pratipaksa, contrary thought, to hating change is not to embrace it, but to find equanimity within it. That seems like a good thing to aim for, given change happens, no matter our will.

I think back to some things Manouso Manos said during a workshop in March 2011 in Los Angeles about luck and free will and our lives’ involving both. That to do yoga, we must “show up”. This is our act of free will. In the midst of luck, good or bad, or change, good or bad, we can act from free will. This seems to me to say not that we are embracing change or pain or pleasure, but that we exercise the will to exist within ourselves in the midst of it. This is the path tosantosa.

What is paksha pratipaksha?

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Yogacharya B.K.S. Iyengar describes the process of paksa pratipaksa (spelled phonetically above): “Paksa means to take one side (in an argument), to espouse one view: while pratipaksa conveys the idea of taking the opposite position.” (From Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali, B.K.S. Iyengar.) Iyengar advises studying “opposite forces with calmness and patience.”

“Purva-paksa: The opposing point of view.” That’s the glossary definition provided by Edwin F. Bryant in his book, The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary.