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SPRING 2004

NAMASTE,

For so many of us, the new year is the time for a fresh start. For me, the brightness of a new beginning was dimmed with sadness upon learning of the death of two colleagues, Riki Middleton and Esther Myers. Both died of cancer. Riki was 60 years old when she died on New Year’s day. Esther was in her late 50’s.

A resident of Toronto, Esther Myers was an internationally known yoga teacher, author of several books, and a senior student of renowned teacher Vanda Scaravelli. I got to know Esther over the years when we worked as members of the teaching staff at conferences all over the US, first for Unity In Yoga and then, later, Yoga Journal.

I met Riki Middleton nearly thirty years ago when we both began teaching yoga in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. There weren’t many yoga practitioners around here back then and even fewer teachers, so our paths naturally crossed as we studied, taught, and shared our knowledge and skills over the years.

Riki used to advertise her classes, most of which were in her apartment in Silver Spring, under the name of Lotus Yoga Center. Her ads showed her in a yoga pose with the phrase, "Look Good, Feel Better, Live Longer".

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I always had mixed reactions to that slogan. My experience as both a yoga practitioner and teacher over the years is that yoga can definitely help you to look good and feel better. Look good not necessarily in the Cindy Crawford/Pierce Brosnan sense, as in gorgeous or handsome, but look good in the vibrant, radiant sense of the word. Sometimes when I look out at the students in my classes, especially those who have been at it for a long time, I am struck by the bright light of their eyes and the inner glow that shines from them. This kind of looking good has nothing to do with Maybelline, Yves St. Laurent, or Dr. Nipandtuck and everything to do with a positive attitude, sensible exercise, and learning to live life fully.

Of course, everyone wants to feel good. Most of us, though, have less than perfect bodies and less than perfect health, physically and mentally. Again, I don’t mean a perfect body in the sense of Hollywood glamorous or professional athlete buff, but perfect in the sense of flawless structure and function. Nearly all of us have little - or not so little - glitches that we have to deal with - unnatural curves in our spines, lumps on our feet, weaknesses in our organs, allergies, old breaks and sprains, not to mention more serious illnesses or diseases. And all the stresses and demands of work, family, and just being in the world can create mental dis-ease and illness in even the steadiest of us. Feeling good with all this going on can be elusive. Years of teaching and practice confirm for me that all these challenges and difficulties notwithstanding, yoga can help us to work with the imperfections in our bodies and minds and feel better than we would if we weren’t doing yoga.

So I agree with Riki that yoga can help us "look good" and "feel better".

But live longer........? That’s where I get stuck. Certainly the health benefits that come with the practice of yoga - with taking a deeper, slower breath, with moving our bodies, with clearing our minds and learning to pay quiet attention - these increase the likelihood of our living longer. They improve the odds, shifting them a little (or perhaps a lot) more in our favor. But let’s face it. Anyone of us could be walking down the sidewalk and get hit by a runaway bus. Doesn’t matter whether you can put your feet behind your head or hold your breath for five minutes. When death taps you on the shoulder, you’re heading out.

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I think you can truthfully promise that yoga can make you look good and feel better. I don’t think that you can promise that yoga will enable you to live longer.

This bothers some folks. I and other teachers I know have encountered the reactions of students surprised and disappointed to learn that their teacher or some long time practitioner has come down with an illness or has died at a relatively early age. And on more than one occasion, I have detected from those who don’t practice yoga almost a sense of satisfaction or vindication in their response.

"Lotta good all that yoga did them," I have heard them say.

For me the practice of yoga isn’t about living longer, although that would be nice. Neither, for that matter, is it about looking good, which would, of course, be nice, too. It does have something to do with feeling better, though. I do feel so much better when I practice. And I don’t only mean physically better. I find that yoga helps me be more alert, to have more energy, to feel more positive about myself and the world around me. In these times of war, environmental degradation, social instability, and political divisiveness, that is not a small thing.

Even at times in my life when I haven’t felt good, yoga has helped me to feel better. I think that’s an important distinction. Over the years, I’ve had friends and students who practiced yoga and who suffered from a variety of injuries and ailments - car and motorcycle accidents, chronic fatigue, brain tumors, surgery, asthma, cancer, depression, and on and on. Although I can’t say, nor would they say, that they felt good, many, if not most, of them would say that yoga helped them to feel better.

But more than all of that, the practice of yoga holds the promise of living more fully whatever length life we have and however we feel or look. Yoga can allow us to step past self-centeredness and open our hearts and minds to those around us. Yoga can help us to stretch out our arms and wrap them around the lives we’ve been given and in that embrace, feel the breath of the universe flow around and through us. And whether our lives are long in years or short, yoga can teach us how to awaken to each moment, to look at it clearly, to taste it fully and when the time comes, let it go.

       

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