What 50 Years of Yoga Taught Me
I’m forever grateful that, back in 1971, my dear girlfriend, Mary Lou, came up with the idea of us doing yoga. She thought we could lose some weight and learn to relax by participating in a 10-week course at the local YMCA.
I knew nothing about yoga. If I had been able to google “yoga” in 1971, I would have found references to the Beatles and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Ram Dass and psychedelic drugs … and TV shows with women in Lycra leotards and stiffly sprayed hair.
Mary Lou and I arrived at the YMCA class and took up our cross-leg seated positions on gym mats. I sneaked a peek at the 15 or so other students – not a man in sight. That part of yoga has not changed much.
Leading the class was a slim, lively yet calm woman in her mid-60s. Dorothy Tomarelli told us, by way of introduction, that her husband had died a few years previously. As a result of her grief, Dorothy went into a rapid emotional and physical decline. Her muscles atrophied and she lost strength. Her doctor, seeing her depressed state, advised her to take up yoga. Dorothy decided that she had nothing to lose and searched for a class. It turned out to be so much of a lifesaver that she went on to teach yoga.
This is often the way a seed is planted for future yoga teachers. We are inspired by a teacher. As I listened to Dorothy, something stirred in me. I saw a glimmer of hope in her story – the possibility that health, happiness and even longevity could be mine.
That first yoga class was so much fun for me! Dorothy did something that, as a yoga teacher now, I would never do with a raw beginner. She encouraged us to stand on our heads. Up I went … and stayed up. The tumbling child and teenage gymnast in me came alive. If the truth were told, so did the show-off. It was going to take years of yoga practice to tame the attention-seeking me. However, discovering that physical yoga was something I could shine at was a confidence boost that I needed.
I wasn’t able to continue the YMCA classes so I bought Richard Hittleman’s book, Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan. On 3 x 5 inch cards, I drew stick figures of poses from the book, and noted the names of the poses. Every day I put the cards together in different “sequences”, although I wouldn’t have used the term then.
That was it. I was off and running, so to speak. Through thick and thin, major surgeries, cross-continent moves, marriage break-ups, and all the stages of a long life, yoga has been my constant companion.
“At my age, I need more strengthening practices but also more restorative poses. Sometimes I do just a plain old yoga relaxation (savasana), which could look from the outside like a nana nap.”
Of course, my practice has changed – that is the beauty of yoga, its breadth and depth and malleability – and what I do now is very different from the decades when I subscribed to a strict Iyengar yoga practice.
Over the years, I’ve experienced a number of injuries, as well as the usual side-effects of ageing, and they’ve all been teachers, shaping my approach to yoga, and even my attitude towards life. Learning to adapt your yoga practice to circumstances is good practice for adapting to your life.
In the ’80s and ’90s, I was managing a yoga school and teaching, running errands, keeping appointments, attending meetings, rushing in traffic, managing a home and fitting in a hectic social life. Cramming this much in, I was often tired and wouldn’t admit it. I really needed to relax! Although I’d been teaching my students how to relax for years, I didn’t take the time to practice it myself.
To remedy that, I began listening to recordings by Dr Richard C. Miller, letting myself surrender to his soothing voice. I still submit to Miller’s yoga nidra and to the meditations of Jon Kabat-Zinn. I expanded my repertoire of restorative poses in my own practice – hardly a day goes by when I don’t take time out for several of these – and taught them to my students. I also practice a loving kindness meditation every day.
In my approach to my body and mind, I am gentler and I am more thoughtful in what I do on the yoga mat. I used to do a daily yoga practice (except Sundays) because I’ve always thought that any good teaching has to come from one’s practice, out of one’s bones. But these days I do a 90-mintue practice on Mondays so I’m ready to teach my two weekly classes.
At my age, I need more strengthening practices – such as free weights workouts three times a week – but also more restorative poses, to help me recover from doing heavy work, such as a long gardening session. Sometimes I do just a plain old yoga relaxation (savasana), which could look from the outside like a nana nap.
I keep looking for ways to evolve my practice so I’ve just signed up to attend a workshop on pranayama (controlled breathing). It seems like just the thing to inspire me for my next decades of yoga practice.
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Eve Grzybowski has been teaching yoga for 40 years. She lives on the mid-north coast of NSW and blogs at eveyoga.com
Words_ Eve Grzybowski
Photos_ Julie Slavin; Amy Chung/Pexels