latching on and unlatching: part one
When I was 24 I thought I’d cracked the code to life. And I thought it all came down to the entry level yoga philosophy I was learning. It’s the kind of philosophy that can be chewed up and repeated in soundbites in yoga classes. The stuff skimmed off the top and I was here for it. Part of the thing is that I am quite gullible and impressionable. Well at least I was, maybe less so now, maybe the opposite now? But for a time if you were compelling and told me how things are, I would believe you. I’d come home from weekends in studio basements where I’d had no natural light and too much Pret and feel changed for good. I’d relay what I’d learnt to my boyfriend like I was telling him the truth about life. It was a bit like saying to someone paralysed by inertia to try just doing it or have they thought about going for a run? But it felt that simple to me. And surely I could tell someone else.
I had this yoga class on a Friday evening at a dance studio in Haggerston. Nothing else would ever be as good as that was. I walked there from my flat in Kings Cross and rehearsed my sermon as I walked along the canal. One time mid rehearsal I walked past Russel Brand (pre cancellation and Jesus ok!!). I was so convinced of the Koolaid that I was drinking and generously sharing with the world that I interrupted his phone call to invite him to class. I was genuinely sure that he would walk through the door (he didn’t.) But I believed in the magnetism of what I was sharing. Like someone had told me the secret to life and if only I’d get a platform big enough to share it.
The thing is I was sure I’d get a platform big enough to share it with the world. I truly thought it was only a matter of time before someone wanted to fund me to become the next yoga with Adrienne or ask me to do a TED talk. That’s the beautiful thing about youth and hope. When you can believe in things being that simple, when you can assume life is linear, when nothing has come to disrupt the way you want to see the world yet. It’s why I often think yoga teachers can be the best in the first two years. After that the lack of pay, support and thanks will start to make them jaded. Catch them when it’s just love and light if you can bear the insufferable. It’ll feel nice. Because it’s not a lie. It’s a genuinely authentic thing, that overflowing of, I just want to help the world be a better place with yoga.
Yoga doesn’t exist without dogma and you can find it on varying scales. FURTHERMORE, being told, this is the way is more bearable at certain moments in your life. In fact it can be a relief. To be told: this is the way. My tolerance for it didn’t last that long and I can thank that for everything that would come next. Even when I was giddy beyond belief with hormones and endorphins from SANTOSHA I could be questioning. You can have my unwavering devotion until you let me down. And let me down they all would. It’s why I went through so many teachers.
My first teacher thought the room should fall silent as she entered and perpetuated disordered eating in the name of purity. And sure I drank soya milk and my body puffed up accordingly for a good year or two, but I knew there was something off about it. We’d watch her tell us to mostly eat fruit and vegetables and then buy Pret croissants for herself. She ran late, failed to manage the organisation of the group and had nothing left to give in the way of feedback by the time it was our exam. We felt collectively put out and the tide was turning on the hero worship we’d started with. She was by all accounts a magnificent teacher and an egomaniac. When I decided not to be a disciple, there was little left for me.
So I sought out something more organised and far far more dogmatic. It was a gap in me, tell me what to do and I’ll do it. The most sore my body has ever been, still puffy, vegan leaning, repenting, devotional they said, a place to put all of my feeling, into Krishna I guess. Anyway I still love the singing. Anyway, I stand outside the gospel church round the corner from our flat on Sunday mornings even now. Sway to the beauty of it. There is nothing more moving than spiritual song in chorus. I just couldn’t go back, not now. It’s a funny thing with yoga teachers, you crave their attention, their seeing you, getting closer and then you get closer and it starts to warp. That’s what happened here. Across the table in India from the most powerful London yoga teacher (for a moment in time), realising it didn’t feel that nice to be near her. That I felt desperate all the time.
I can’t remember the final straw there, I think there was a series of straws… the fucked up shoulder didn’t help. In one over-subscribed Saturday morning class in Islington, she pulled me deeper into my backbend and said, ‘that’s a funky shoulder’ before putting me back down. No further care required. So it was time for me to swing another way. I needed another system that would make sense of life for me. Another protocol, another routine, another teacher.
END OF PART ONE.
PS. Last night to sign up to write your story with me this summer. The story of my life, kicking off this week.