You’re in the Maya, Neo: Philosphy of Yoga and Therapy

Sarva is sitting on the floor just under the long wall of windows – outside, the view is still of deep fog. She’s wearing all white, and her gold hair cascades on her shoulders.

I have troubles breathing when I sit down. I focus on not judging myself for it.

She greets us with a namaste, and recites a mantra in Hindi. For the second mantra, we repeat after her. Three Oms, three Shantis, 22 voices together. We have no idea what we’re saying.

During that first philosophy class, we discuss the goal of yoga: to find the true self. “Yoga” comes from “Yoke”, “unite” in sanskrit. Through Yoga, we thrive to unite with our cosmic self. For that, we must free ourselves of the chatter of the mind, of the diktat of the ego, and of the old beliefs (Sanskaras) that hold us back. We live in Maya, illusion, and we are kept there by the Sanskaras, may they be physical (addictions, bad breathing,…) or psychological. On the path to enlightenment, we clean all of that up with the postures (yoga asanas), breathing exercises (pranayama) and meditation. After this class, I keep repeating to myself and everyone around: “You’re in the Maya, Neo! Take the yoga pill and break through the lies.”

I realize that these are new words for what I’ve been doing in therapy for eight years. The quest for enlightenment, in its practical side (the other side is Kundalini energy and supernatural powers, that I don’t get on board with right away), is really what we’ve called the search for happiness and authenticity. “Old beliefs” is one of my therapist’s favorite expressions.

“So you think you’re not allowed to create… What is this called, Hannah?

– An old belief, I know, I know.”

Together, we got me out of the little whole in which I was hiding and eating at myself. Now that I’m not constantly on the edge of the abyss anymore, we explore who I am and how I can be better: when do you feel most centered? When do you feel closest to your truth? What feels right? What, of your old habits, old ways of thinking, vieilles croyances, can you part with next? What is it that doesn’t belong to you?

I’m happy to find a familiar search in a faraway setting, and I am confirmed in my resolve to make this month a time for an Extreme Inner Make-Over. It’s time to decant everything I’ve learnt in my year in Australia, in my relationship and in my travels. It’s time to become the oh so fucking brilliant butterfly.

“OK, so I’m done, do you have questions?” We have just a couple, and Sarva assures us that “Within a week, you’ll be so talkative we won’t fit in the hour. Now it’s time for your juice break.”

 

The first yoga class with Mahi

 

200 Hours Yoga Teacher Training, first two hours.

It’s 7 and white through the window. Mahi is watching us settle in in silence, on the floor with folded legs and a very straight back – his legs are not just crossed, they’re melted together. He sings a mantra, and we clumsily join him for the OMs. “Bow your head down in holy gratitude.” The class begins. Today we learn to stand.

“Press on the outside of your foot, the round of the big toe, press on the heels. Press the heels! Raise your knee-caps, rotate your inner thighs, stand straight up – more up, more up! Tilt your pelvic bone forward. It’s more like this way!”

Standing still in this Indian man’s class might be the hardest work-out of my life. We use the standing technique to deepen each posture. Focus on your alignment, as much weight on each foot, straight back, and the round of the big toe! Stay, stay more. Breathe deeply. My thighs are shaking, I am sweating like a pig. It turns out that even though my legs like to hike in the Malaysian Highlands, they do not like to stay in Warrior Postures – no, please, stop. Breathe. Unsure my muscles can handle much more of this, I can’t help but glance at the digital clock on the floor – it’s been twelve minutes. Only 48 minutes and 199 hours to go.

The Mahi Magic show lays down its ground rules. He quickly decides that Arthur, “the only brave man in the course – because he’s the only man, hahaha!” will be his guinea pig, and that Sarah (a dancer) and Nathalie will be his flexibility demonstrators. He on the other hand will be the main attraction: “Look at me, I’m a seventy-two year-old man, and I can do it!” “No wrinkles on my stomach, because I stand like this!” There’s triumph in his smile every time he says “this!” with a high-pitched voice.

In two hours, he makes me realize how very little I know about alignment and feeling strong in your foundations. And that learning a lot hurts your butt.

 

The joyful routine

(En Français plus bas)

I open my eyes at 6 to see a new friend in bed with me. I sit up, I stretch my arms and she stretches hers with me. We smile at each other: I know she’s here to stay, she knows she’s most welcome. I call her my joyful routine.

Gratitudes and morning prayer, smile to the sky, dance while the shower is warming up – she walks me up the quiet stairs, to the yoga hall.

The month in Baghsu is a story of the two of us, taming each other. With her, I learn to say thank you as soon as I wake up, even (especially) when the rain, pouring on the wall of deep green outside my window, makes me grumble before the day has come. Thank you. Thank you for the rain: it feeds the world. After a dream in which I found myself gross, she tells me “just look”, and I draw myself. I am smoking. Thank you for my body: it allows me to taste the world. Thank you! When I harm my shoulder, she tells me to be kind, patient. She says “pay attention, find what’s good and what you need – to eat, drink, say”. We learn moderation. When I feel hidden by a bushy wall of falseness, she says “check it out, you have the keys”, and I listen. She rocks.

And when I go out to the café in the clouds, when I stay up late to chat with those guys I’m loving more and more, when we watch Louie, Friends, and Disney movies, when I converse in silence with Baba, and when, back to my room, I only have time for one sentence in the Body, Heart and Mind diary, when I skip, when I adapt, when my evening Gratitudes are just a quote from Asterix, she says “do what ever is best for you.” She’s foldable and flexible. We love each other.

With the strength she gives me, I express myself better, and I fall in love, every day a bit more, with myself and each of the 21 magnificent people who surround me and live all of this next to me.

When I leave, I take her along, tall and gorgeous, with my backpack and Magui. In the night trains of India and the streets of Istanbul, in the veranda of the family house, in Berlin, Hamburg and London, and now back home, I let her change me, she lets me forget her – and come back to her. On the Decathlon yoga mat that decorates my room and in the crystal-clear song of the tibetan bowl I brought back from the mountain, she whispers “I’m staying”.

 

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La routine gaie

J’ouvre les yeux à 6 heures et je trouve une nouvelle amie dans mon lit. Je m’assois, je m’étire, elle s’étire avec moi. On se sourit : je vois qu’elle s’installe, elle se sait accueillie. Je l’appelle ma routine gaie.

Gratitudes, prières du matin, sourire aux cieux, danser en attendant que la douche se réchauffe – elle m’accompagne jusqu’au hall de yoga, en haut des escaliers calmes.

Le mois à Baghsu  c’est l’histoire de nous deux nous apprivoisant. Elle m’apprend à me réveiller reconnaissante même – surtout – quand la pluie sur le mur de verdure par la fenêtre me fait grisailler avant le jour. Merci. Merci pour la pluie qui nourrit le monde. Après un rêve dans lequel je me trouvais laide, elle me dis “regarde” et je me dessine. Je suis une bombe. Merci pour mon corps qui me laisse encore goûter le monde. Merci ! Quand je me blesse l’épaule, elle me dit d’être tendre, patiente. Elle me dit d’être attentive, de voir ce qui me fait du bien, ce que j’ai vraiment besoin de manger, de boire, de dire. On apprend la mesure. Quand je me sens tapie derrière un buisson humide de faux semblants, elle me dit “va voir, tu as les clés” et je l’écoute. Elle est sympa.

Et puis quand je sors au bar dans les nuages, quand je reste à discuter tard avec ces gens que j’aime de plus en plus, quand on regarde Louis, Friends ou des Disney, quand je parle en silence avec Baba, quand je n’ai le temps que pour une phrase dans le body, heart and mind diary, quand je saute, quand j’adapte, quand je me contente de “moi je chante la vie, je danse la vie, je ne suis qu’amour”, en guise de gratitudes du soir, elle dit “fais ce qui est bon pour toi”. Elle se plie, se fait flexible. On s’aime.

Forte d’elle, je me dis mieux, et je tombe amoureuse, chaque jour un peu plus, de moi-même, et des 21 personnes sublimes qui m’entourent et vivent tout ça juste à côté.

En partant je l’emmène, grande et belle, avec mon sac à dos et Magui. Dans les trains de nuit d’Inde et dans les rues d’Istanbul, dans la véranda de la maison familiale, à Berlin, à Hambourg, à Londres, et maintenant de retour chez moi, je la laisse changer, elle me laisse l’oublier et lui revenir. Sur le tapis de yoga décathlon qui décore ma chambre et dans le son cristallin du bol tibétain ramené de ma montagne, elle me murmure “je reste.”

 

Writing and the Truth

(En français plus bas)

I’ve spent the past two weeks struggling to post something – anything – on the blog. I wrote and I dismissed, I tried and I threw away.

“Mom, I wrote something, it’s horribly boring… can you read it and tell me it’s not boring so I can post it?

– It’s very boring…

– Dad?

– Should I be honest?

– Yeah…

– It’s bad…”

I know, I know…

I’ve been running into the wall of reality. What I’m trying to write, the yoga training, is not only mine anymore: it belongs to a group of people that I love and who (for some of them, I hope) will read me. So I say everything. I ask for precisions, I panic, I’m bogged down. And I end up writing three pages about how I brushed my teeth with a smile.

Don’t you worry so much, Hannah: reality is overrated.

To free myself from the thorny claws of The Truth, I hereby announce a change in paradigm. From now on, reader, assume that everything here is fiction. This story is a mosaic of faces and ideas, that I want to tell by soft touches. There won’t be any constraint in the way the tales come out – of veracity, chronology, or other.

Like in The Great Dictator: “Any resemblance between Hynkel the Dictator and the Jewish barber is purely coincidental.”

What is reality other than fiction some people agree on?

*

L’auteur et le réel 

Depuis deux semaines, je galère à poster quelque chose sur ce blog. J’ai écrit et j’ai jeté, je n’ai rien fini.

“Maman, j’ai écrit un truc et c’est vraiment très chiant. Tu veux bien me relire pour me dire que c’est pas chiant, histoire que je puisse le poster ?

– C’est vraiment très chiant.

– Papa ?

– Faut que je sois honnête ?

– Ouais…

– Franchement, c’est un peu nul…

Je sais, je sais.

Je me heurte au réel. Je me sens porteuse d’une histoire qui n’est pas que mienne, qui est celle d’un groupe de gens que j’aime et qui (pour certains, j’espère) vont me lire. Alors je dis tout. Je demande des précisions, je m’affole, je m’embourbe. Et je finis par pondre trois pages sur comment je me suis brossé les dents avec un sourire.

Petite flamme, tu t’étioles ! Pas de souci, la vérité, c’est très surfait.

Pour me libérer des doigts épineux du Vrai, j’annonce un changement de paradigme : désormais, tout ce que vous lirez ici sera potentiellement fiction. Cette histoire n’est pas linéaire. C’est une mosaïque d’instants, de visages et d’idées, que je veux vous dire par petites touches. Il n’y aura plus de contraintes dans la façon dont les textes sortent – de chronologie, de véracité ou autre. Comme dans Le Dictateur : « Toute ressemblance entre Hynkel le dictateur et le barbier juif est une pure coïncidence. »

Et de toute façon, c’est quoi, le réel, outre une fiction sur laquelle certains sont d’accord ?