Fifteen years ago, on a cold winter’s evening in New York City, I showed up for my first yoga class ever, dressed in stiff jeans, cowboy boots, and a boiled-wool turtleneck. I’d made it to class on the recommendation of a friend who was concerned about my chronic back pain. But she had not mentioned, and it had not occurred to me, that I should wear something more athletic to class. Honestly, I had no idea that I would be expected to perform anything physical during the practice of yoga. Forgive my ignorance, but I’d somehow expected, I dunno, a lecture? Handouts and a syllabus? Anyhow, whatever was coming to me that evening, I knew I would need energy to get through it, so I stopped at a pizza joint right before class for a chicken calzone and Diet Coke.
Skal jeg sige her, at jeg bare var en smule afbrudt fra min krop i disse år? Måske en bedre måde at sige, at det var, at jeg, indtil dette var i livet, havde behandlet min krop som en lejebil - en ren långiver, en pisker, en citron, der eksisterede uden grund overhovedet undtagen at transportere mit hoved fra sted til sted, så jeg kunne se ting, bekymre mig om ting, tænke på ting og løse ting. Og min krop fik det job gjort, selvom jeg aldrig tog sig af tinget. Eller i det mindste fik min krop normalt det job - indtil min kroniske rygsmerter ville blive så slem, at det forhindrede mig i at sove, og endda fra at gå på arbejde, når musklerne omkring min rygsøjle var i så dyb krampe, at jeg ikke kunne løfte mig fra tæppet.
Men det ville ske kun et par gange om året! Og den slags ting var helt normal! Eller i det mindste var det normalt i min familie. Jeg kan huske, at jeg optrådte i gymnasiemusikaler og felt-hockey-spil med en øm ryg. Jeg har ventet borde og kørt på heste og forelsket og dansede ved bryllupper - men altid med en øm ryg. Alle af os Gilberts har dårlige rygge. Det forekom mig ikke, at jeg nogensinde ikke kunne have en øm ryg. Men en ven, der var bekymret for de stigende episoder af mine rygsmerter, havde foreslået yoga, og hvad fanden - uden at give det nogen tanke, gik jeg.
Jeg kunne stort set fortælle med det samme, da jeg trådte ind i studiet, at dette yogastater ikke ville være for mig. Først og fremmest var der den højtidelige lugt af røgelse, som syntes for alvorlig og slags latterlig over for nogen, der var langt mere vant til lugterne af cigaretter og øl. Så var der musikken. (Sang, himlen hjælper os!) På fronten af klasseværelset var noget, der faktisk syntes at være en helligdom, og tydeligvis ikke var beregnet til at være en vittighed. Og læreren - en alvorlig, aldrende hippie i hendes alvorlige, aldrende leotard - startede pratling om, hvordan lyden af OM var den oprindelige årsag til universet, og så videre.
flow-frisuren
Frankly, it was all a little too much for me to take. I was, after all, a young woman who never left her apartment without strapping on a tight, protective vest of sarcasm. And speaking of tight, my wool turtleneck had been a serious sartorial misjudgment, because the room was sweltering. Also, my jeans cut into my belly every time I bent over to reach for my toes—and the teacher made us bend over and reach for our toes again and again, which seemed a little pushy for a first class, to be honest. Worst of all, that calzone I’d just eaten kept threatening to make a reappearance. Indeed, for most of the class, I felt rather like a calzone myself—stuffed and baked and surrounded by something very, very flaky.
And yet. And yet, about an hour into the class, as the sweat was running fiercely into my eyes (eyes that I had been rolling in sardonic detachment the whole time), there came this moment. The teacher had us do this thing—this strange, twisting, lying-down thing. She put us flat on our backs, had us pull our knees up toward our chests, and then invited us to slowly (and I’m quite certain she used the word lovingly) tip our knees to the right, at the same time that we stretched our arms wide and turned our heads to the left.
Godt. Dette var nyheder. Dette var faktisk en åbenbaring - og jeg vidste det øjeblikkeligt. Jeg vidste uden tvivl, at min rygsøjle aldrig havde lavet denne enkle, men præcise form før - denne vri, denne rækkevidde, denne dybe udvidelse. Noget skiftede. Noget løftet. Og selv i mine stramme jeans, selv i min kløende sweater, selv inde i min uigennemtrængelige sarkastiske vest - nogle steder dybt under alt det - begyndte min rygsøjle at tale til mig, næsten råbte til mig. Min rygsøjle sagde noget i retning af, åh herregud, åh min kære søde himmelske barmhjertighed - vær venlig ikke at stoppe, for det er det, jeg altid har brug for, og det er det, jeg har brug for hver dag resten af mit liv, endelig endelig, endelig ...
Derefter kom den falske gamle hippie i hendes falske gamle leotard over og pressede den ene hånd forsigtigt på min hofte og en anden på min skulder for at åbne den twist bare en lille smule mere ... og jeg brast i tårer.
Forstå venligst - jeg mener ikke bare, at jeg saltede lidt eller sniffede nogle; Jeg mener, at jeg begyndte at græde, hørbart. As I lay there crying and twisting open, full of longing, full of prayer, full of doubt, full of the wish to be a better human being, full of the daring plea to become the first person in my family’s history whose back would not ache every single day, full of the sudden and shocking realization that there was a different kind of intelligence in this life, and it could come to us only through the body…well, I didn’t know the word for any of this stuff back then, but I have since learned that I was Fyldning af lungerne og hjertet med lidt noget folk i yoga -forretningen kalder Shakti.
midfade
Dette yogastater var ikke kun en mulig løsning på livslang rygsmerter, men en åbenbaring. En hjemkomst. En filt en følelse af at være en med den energiske understrøm af universet. Wow!
Jeg slags slappede hjem i en døs.
I need more of this, I kept saying to myself. I need much, much more of this. So, in the 15 years since that night, I have given myself more of it. Much, much more. I’ve given myself years of yoga, in fact; I’ve practiced all over the world, wherever I happen to be at the moment—from Mumbai to Nashville to Santiago and everywhere in between. I have stuck with this discipline in a way that I have never stuck with any other hobby, which only shows that yoga is not a hobby for me but a haven. For me, finding a good yoga class in an unfamiliar city feels the way it probably felt for the old-timey Catholics when they stumbled unexpectedly on a Latin mass being celebrated in some foreign capital: At the first familiar syllables of the ritual, they were back home.
And you know what? It doesn’t even have to be a good yoga class. Garrison Keillor once said that the worst pumpkin pie he ever ate wasn’t that much different from the best pumpkin pie he ever ate, and I feel exactly that way about yoga classes—that even the sloppiest or most rudimentary studios have provided me with the opportunity for transformation. Mind you, I have experienced some truly transcendent teachers, but I have also, I’m afraid, experienced some real dingbats (including one woman who kept urging our class, Push it! Look at your neighbor and try to do what she’s doing!). Either way, it doesn’t matter that much. Once I had learned the basics of my own yoga—once I had discovered the limitations and needs of my body—I knew that I could always reach my own point of perfect practice within somebody else’s instructional guidance, no matter how flawed they (or I) might be.
Over the past decade and a half of practice, I have come again and again to yoga classes tired and burdened and lacking, but something always happens, almost despite my weakness or my resistance. You are not what you believed you were, I told myself that night as I walked home from my first class in my tight jeans and sweaty sweater—and I have learned and relearned that lesson routinely, for years now. There always comes that one holy moment, usually somewhere in the middle of the class, when I suddenly find that I have shed my pain and failings, that I have shed my heavy human mind, and that I have metamorphosed for just an instant into something else: an eagle, a cat, a crane, a dolphin, a child.
Og så går jeg hjem igen i min egen hud for at tage endnu et stikk ved at leve og prøve at gøre det bedre. Og tingene er bedre, så meget bedre. Og den uigennemtrængelige vest er væk for evigt. Og nej, min ryg skader ikke længere.
'krølle frisurer herre''
Elizabeth Gilbert er forfatteren af Spis, bed, kærlighed . Hendes nye bog, Engageret: En skeptiker skaber fred med ægteskab , blev for nylig udgivet af Viking-Penguin.
