About a month after my dad died, I found myself in a deserted college town for the summer with an emptiness that I could not tame. A co-worker of mine at Duke University Press invited me to come to her yoga class and that invitation led me down the path to practicing Astanga Yoga for approximately ten years.
Astanga yoga is a paradox: it's all you have heard of and it's not. It's rigorously athletic, has devout followers, and has been called the yoga for type-A personalities, but there is much more to it than that. The community of Astanga practitioners, even here in NYC, is fairly intimate and fostered a home for me when I first moved here. But most importantly, it was a form of yoga that still had a living creator--Shri K. Pattabhi Jois, or, as many of his followers called him, Guruji.
My best yoga experiences ever were practicing with 300 other New Yorkers in the Puck Building when Guruji would come to town in September. I'd wake at 5am, schlep into Manhattan, and gather with hundreds for a 6am practice time (for non-yogis, when you do yoga it's called your yoga practice). Guruji, his son, his grandson, and his daughter would circle the room and adjust us. The positive electricity in that room was indescribable. Praticing with that many people and with Pattabhi Jois himself were moments of my life I'll never forget, and never replicate.
September 11 occurred during one of Guruji's visits here. He paused and then continued the classes, convinced everyone needed yoga then more than ever. He also held a prayer service for those of us who felt lost--an Indian service that I didn't really understand, but I was very thankful to have the opportunity to gather with others and just sit, think for a bit, and pray in my own way.
During those times practicing with Pattabhi Jois, some folks set out to make a documentary about Astanga yoga and its thriving life in NYC. I'm in the trailer twice--when you see Guruji for the first time and he's counting and says "One" and in the ending scene when he says "Good" that's me he's adjusting--the young blond girl in a white tank top and black pants. Wow...young and blonde...two words that don't describe me anymore...
Guruji passed away this May. He was very old, had an amazing life, a supportive family, and a global community of people who loved him. I don't feel sad...I feel thankful that I was able to experience him and his life's work. He will be missed.
(Photo from Mysore, India, Summer 2006. While in India I went to Guruji's house--even though there were no classes at the time--just to see it.)
You need to meet my friend Holly! She is also a practitioner and was supposed to study with him for the month of June in Mysore, but he died the week before she left. Now she's hanging out in India and going to the center when it re-opens. Small world...
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