April 19, 2021
Yoga and Me
Many people before me have no doubt written much more beautifully about their relationship with yoga, but this is a piece of my story, inspired by this morning’s roll around on the ground and functional movement time.
My first influential teacher of yoga was a woman named Janice Metzel. She taught classes at my college and I started going when I was in my late twenties while in graduate school. Her classes were a great contrast to the one my mom and I did together where we laughed so much at people doing ujjayi breathing that we were chastised by the teacher, who was a grand dame of yoga in my hometown.
One day Janice Metzel said something about probably being the only non-Christian in the room. Silly, naive me thought to myself “Wow. She must be a pagan or a Wiccan or something. The yoga. Ah…” Never once did I think that she might be Jewish. Hello. Metzel. I just didn’t have that frame of reference at that time in my life. Anyway, Janice Metzel was a very practical yoga teacher and it was before the ubiquitousness of fancy props. About what to use for a yoga mat, she said “Just get a camping mat. They are cheap and sturdy.” So I did. For YEARS I used a really thick (probably 1.5-2 inches) bright blue camping mat made of squishy, foamy something. It was made for sleeping on, obviously. When I would attend more mainstream classes years later--still with my blue camping mat--teachers would sometimes question me about why I was using that or whether or not I had a “real” mat.
It wasn’t until many years later that I got a different mat--a fancy and expensive Manduka at that. I have one for home and a thin travel mat that both serve me well, but I will forever remember baby yoga Jan carting around this big camping mat to classes.
Janice Metzel also recommended a yoga book to me that I have to this day. Hittleman’s Yoga for Health. It’s very 1970s but was actually published in 1983. It was a good guide to me for many years in my home practice of yoga. It has recipes in it (none of which I probably tried) and a whole section titled “Philosophy and Meditation” that covers principles like “What We Are Not,” “The World Without the Mind,” “Reincarnation: The Consequence of Desire,”The Illusion of ‘Identity,’” “Action without Karma,” “The False God of the Ego,” “The Function of the Guru,” and finally, “Yoga, the Universal Practice for Here and Now.” I’m not sure I ever read that part of the book either, but I did read all the information about the postures and how to do them and what they are good for.
My second set of “real” yoga teachers were a middle aged couple in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I don’t remember their names, but they were very serious about their “practice.” I used to carpool about 40 minutes to Yellow Springs with three other women. I was the youngest of us and really treasured the insights about life I’d glean from our car rides each week. The classes themselves were interesting and challenging and I started to feel like a real “yogini”--Sanskrit, Indian music, more philosophy. My mom came to visit me at one point and we went to a pretty typical hippie dippy store in Yellow Springs where she bought me a 14 foot purple yoga strap ( so I could do assisted downward facing dog by draping the strap over a doorknob as I’d been told to try in class--which I’ve done maybe once in 25 years), a wool blanket, and one (?) purple corduroy yoga block. The strap still holds my mat rolled up, serves as a handy prop when needed, and I treasure it. The block does what soft blocks do. And the blanket eventually became too scratchy for my sensitive self but lives in my house still.
There was a brief stint where I --with no real qualifications except that I had done some yoga--taught a yoga class at the famed Antioch College. The bathrooms would have signs in them that read “If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down.” It was a radical place, with good intentions. My clearest memory from that time was my tone-deaf attempt at authoritarianism in trying to get two young college students to participate. They were sitting along the wall and I asked them to come join the group. One of them said of the other, “she’s getting an abortion later today” or “she just had an abortion.” Either way, I was a bit thrown off and didn’t really know what to say but whatever it was I’m sure was not helpful. I wish I’d been able to tap into the more adult / mom me at the time, but that part of me didn’t yet exist.
I credit yoga with getting me through childbirth--the breathing, the mobility, the mantra “this is only a sensation, I need not label it pain” that I learned from some yoga experience.
Once I returned to yoga classes after having my child, my next significant teacher was a gentle, pleasant, and goofy joke teller, Hampton Thrower. I will forever be grateful for his kindness when I was unable to lie on my stomach for certain poses because my breasts were too full of milk. He offered other ways to do the pose, was understanding and comforting, and his classes helped me come to know my new body--one that had been pregnant, had given birth, and was now forever tethered to this other human on the planet in a way that was previously unimaginable. Incidentally, Hampton has once again been a regular teacher of mine pre pandemic.
Then there was Christine Navarro. Full sleeve Tattoos. Super Strong. Smiling. Playful. Crazy talented. She would sing to us while we were in Savasana. It was a bit magical.
And Adrienne, who would trace an infinity sign into our backs while we were in child’s pose and pull out our feet and swing them while we were in Savasana.
And Emily, whose class I had to stop going to because she said that people who are unhappy get cancer and was very invested in cats. No thank you.
The next most influential yoga teacher I’ve had was someone who I’ll use a pseudonym for because our relationship did not end well. Our first exchange went as follows when she showed up as the new teacher at the Y where I was taking classes.
“Hi--I’m Jan. Welcome!”
“Hello. I’m Sienna.”
“What brought you to Charlotte?”
“Life.”
She taught a form of yoga called Ashtanga. It was originally developed for young boys and is a series of sequences that anyone joining a class can follow, if they are familiar with it. Well, there were four of us who were devoted to Sienna’s classes for about two years. We went at least twice a week. I was in awe--of what my body could do, of Sienna’s presence (she was also an Ayurvedic doctor), of how immersed one could be in this world. I could do all sorts of fancy poses. I felt strong. I turned forty during this time and have a picture of me doing a double plank on someone else on my actual birthday since I insisted on going to class before my birthday dinner.
It was during this time in Sienna’s classes that I sustained a left hip injury--something I ignored and kept practicing in spite of. Sienna often talked to me in ways that made me feel super special and “not like the others.” I was “serious” about my practice and dedicated to yoga in a similar vein as her. Eventually, she moved away, not without leaving behind some drama. And my sore hip.
There have been other teachers, of course, but the one who helped lead me to where I am today is Sybil Nance. She is smart, attuned to the moon, and someone who understands anatomy and how bodies work. I took private lessons with her and gained a great understanding of my body’s abilities and limits and places for growth. She no longer lives in town, but from her teachings I found the kind of movement and knowledge that I needed. Having that, the next important teachers have come, the most important being Brea Johnson. Canadian, beautiful, smart, also trained in anatomy, eagerly challenging so much of what American yoga has promoted in the past few decades. I take her online classes, follow her on Instagram, and even traveled to Toronto one weekend to take a workshop with her. She and others are helping yoga make an important turn--toward something that maybe started as yoga but has evolved into functional movement with none of the pretentiousness or strict ideas about what a pose looks like.
There are many ways to move our bodies. I’m grateful for yoga for getting me to this post-yoga point.
Lame ending, I know. But I have to go do my real job now. Thanks for reading.