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.
Ali moram tukaj povedati, da sem bil v teh letih samo tad odklopljen od telesa? Morda je boljši način, da to povem, da sem do tega trenutka v življenju svoje telo obravnaval kot najemniški avtomobil - zgolj posojilodajalec, pretepanje, limona, ki ni obstajala brez razloga, razen da bi svojo glavo prepeljala iz kraja v kraj, da bi lahko videla stvari, skrbela za stvari, razmišljala o stvareh in rešila stvari. In moje telo je to delo opravilo, čeprav nisem nikoli skrbel za to. Ali vsaj moje telo je to delo običajno opravilo - dokler moja kronična bolečina v hrbtu ne bi postala tako slaba, da me je preprečila spanja in celo od dela, ko so mišice okoli hrbtenice v tako globokem krču, da se nisem mogel dvigniti s preproge.
Toda to bi se zgodilo le nekajkrat na leto! In takšne stvari so bile povsem normalne! Ali pa je bilo vsaj v moji družini normalno. Spomnim se, da sem nastopal v srednješolskih muzikalih in na terenskih igrah z bolečim hrbtom. Počakal sem mize in jahal konje ter se zaljubil in plesal na porokah - vendar vedno z bolečem hrbtom. Vsi Gilberts imamo slabe hrbte. Ni se mi zgodilo, da nikoli ne bi mogel imeti bolečega hrbta. Toda prijatelj, zaskrbljen zaradi vse večje epizode bolečine v hrbtu, je predlagal jogo in, kaj za vraga - brez razmišljanja, sem šel.
Ko sem stopil v studio, bi lahko precej povedal, da te joge ne bodo zame. Najprej je bil tisti slovesni vonj kadila, ki se je zdel pretirano resen in nekako smešen za nekoga, ki je bil veliko bolj navajen na vonje cigaret in piva. Potem je bila glasba. (Petje, nebesa nam pomagajo!) Na sprednji strani učilnice je bilo nekaj, kar se je dejansko zdelo svetišče in očitno ni bilo namenjeno šali. In učiteljica - resna, starajoča se hipi v svojem resnem, starajočem se leotardu - se je začela spoprijeti o tem, kako je bil zvok OM prvotni vzrok vesolja in tako naprej.
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.
No. To je bila novica. To je bilo v resnici razodetje - in to sem vedel takoj. Brez dvoma sem vedel, da moja hrbtenica še nikoli ni naredila tako preproste, a natančne oblike - ta zasuk, ta doseg, ta globok podaljšek. Nekaj se je premaknilo. Nekaj dvignjeno. In tudi v mojih tesnih kavbojkah, tudi v srbečem puloverju, tudi v mojem neprehodnem sarkastičnem jopiču - nekomu od globoko pod vsem tem - moja hrbtenica je začela govoriti z mano in mi je skoraj jokala. Moja hrbtenica je rekla nekaj takega, o moj bog, o draga moja sladka nebeška usmiljenje - prosim, ne ustavi se, kajti to sem vedno potreboval, in to bom potreboval vsak dan do konca življenja, končno, končno ...
Potem je prišel tisti goofy stari hipi v njenem goofy starem Leotardu in nežno stisnil eno roko na kolk in drugo na ramo, da bi odprl to zasuk le še malo več ... in sem se zaletel v solze.
Prosim, razumejte - ne mislim samo, da sem se malo zarežal ali nekaj vohal; Mislim, da sem začel jokati, slišno. 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 sem napolnil pljuča in srce z malo nekaj ljudi v poslovnem klicu joge Shakti.
Te stvari joge niso bile le možna rešitev vseživljenjske bolečine v hrbtu, ampak razodetje. Domov. Občutil je občutek, da je eden z energičnim podlegom vesolja. Vau!
Nekako sem zamahnil doma, v zamikanju.
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.
In potem grem spet domov v lastno kožo, da bi se še enkrat zabodel pri življenju in poskusil narediti bolje. In stvari so boljše, toliko boljše. Mimogrede, nepredstavljivega jopiča ni več za vedno. In ne, moj hrbet ne boli več.
Elizabeth Gilbert je avtorica Jej, moli, ljubezen . Njena nova knjiga, Zavezan: skeptik sklene mir s poroko , je pred kratkim objavil Viking-Penguin.
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