A few years ago,in
my early twenties, I didn't really believe I would ever age. So
far life had only been a ripening, a growing into coordination.
I never woke up stiff or sore, I healed quickly whenever hurt, I
could even fold in half like a jack-knife and cup my knees in my
eye sockets. In the back of my mind was the thought that one day
the flexibility of youth would evaporate and decline would set in.
The stiffening of joints, the lack of endurance, the body breaking
down. Looking around North America, I see most people over the age
of thirty engaged in a rapid backpedaling, trying to reverse the
process of aging with exercise, creams, surgery, yoga, therapy,
retreats, you name it. The goal, it seems, is to reclaim the ease,
flexibility and immortality of youth.
For myself I simply hoped it wouldn't be that way. I would be
one of those rare people who stay fit in mind and body until one
day I just stopped. It would be almost effortless.
Recently I sat with three women many years older than me and
we talked about Hatha Yoga: Swami Durgananda, who is seventy-five;
Kate Anderson, who is sixty-eight; and Alanda Greene, who is fifty-two.
They are all vibrant examples of people undoing the assumptions
that aging equals deterioration and youth is beauty. These assumptions
become reality when we don't put in the effort to rethink them.
It is not luck which keeps us healthy but care and awareness.
I'm learning not to limit myself
and not to make assumptions.
At seventy-five, Swami Durgananda is the oldest one among us.
When I first met her four years ago I was surprised to discover
her age. Here was a woman who in no way resembled my grandmothers
(virtually the only people over the age of sixty with whom I had
contact). By seventy-five they were slow and set in their ways.
But Swami Durgananda started to shake up my myth of aging, a term
she isn't all too ready to identify with: "I've noticed as a supposedly
'aging' person that I'll come up against a limitation in a pose
and start to make assumptions. 'Oh, I guess I won't be able to
do this any longer because I'm getting older and my body's changing.'
This kind of ridiculous assumption is a trap. If I keep coming
back to the pose, keep trying it, all of a sudden I will be able
to do the pose again fine. So what was the problem? I'm learning
not to limit myself and not to make assumptions."
When Swami Durgananda says this I immediately think of the assumptions
I have brought into this conversation. One is that, as a younger
person talking to older people, I am the only one in a position
to learn. Another assumption of mine is that I have all the time
in the world to make changes, there is no need to rush. These
assumptions reflect an inflexibility of the mind, which then plays
out in my body unless I challenge myself to think differently.
Since I've grown up more or less accepting the basic cultural
assumptions I was presented with as a child, something powerful
must come along to make me want to live differently. What was
it that each of these women came in contact with that made them
want to change? It wasn't always a big bang. For some it started
as quietly as picking up a book and being attracted to the pictures.
When Alanda was a teenager in the sixties she picked up a book called Yoga,
Youth and Reincarnation, which had in the back a collection of Hatha exercises.
She started with those and for a couple of years followed a very disciplined
practice, sitting in the middle of the living room floor doing asanas
and now and again trying to teach her mother yoga. "At an early age I had a
sense of wanting to not get tightened up and inflexible," she says. "I remember
very clearly when I was first learning reading a comment about 'you're as old
as your spine is flexible.' It struck me and gave me a real sense of being something
I want to maintain."
I have much more a sense
of embracing the body as part of the whole,
rather than it being something I have to rise above.
Then Alanda took up a meditation practice which required her
to give up all other practices, so she stopped her Hatha exercises.
Something stayed with her; perhaps that initial attraction kept
simmering below the surface, maturing to a point when she could
come back to Hatha Yoga. "It's been such a re-entry, but quite
different from in the beginning when I didn't know what the attraction
was. Now it is so conscious. I have much more a sense of embracing
the body as part of the whole, rather than it being something
I have to rise above."
It was when she came back to Hatha in her thirties that she
met a woman who embodied the comment "you're as old as your spine
is flexible," which had originally drawn her to Hatha. The woman
was a Hatha instructor, and to Alanda she represented an "older'
woman. "She was completely grey, but she was so flexible. I remember
having this real strong sense that this was a model of aging that
I really wanted, rather than being progressively more limited
and incapacitated.'
Most of us look to people older than ourselves for examples
of behavior and responsibility. I can remember being in elementary
school and thinking the kids a few years older than me were worlds
more mature; they were impossibly big and powerful simply by virtue
of their age. As a seven-year-old it made sense to me to emulate
a nine-year-old, because that was an age and stage I would soon
be arriving at. As I grew through my teenage years and into my
twenties, I began to consciously choose my role models, understanding
why I was inspired by one person and averse to the choices of
another.
Now, from my vantage point of twenty-six years, each of these
women I am talking to is a model of how to live with quality and
awareness, in body and mind. Even so, they represent various stages
along the path. I see Swami Durgananda as a woman who has fully
integrated the principles and benefits of yoga into her life.
Kate came to Hatha in her late fifties, undoing the assumption
that it's ever too late to start. Alanda has built a solid foundation
on Hatha on which she is learning to live with quality and awareness.
I'm learning not to
limit myself and not to make assumptions.
When I first approached these women to talk about Hatha Yoga
in their lives, I lumped them more or less together as "older
women" (which, for the sake of this article, I defined as over
fifty). Then as we were talking I realized that Alanda is twenty-three
years younger than Swami Durgananda, and someone twenty-three
years younger than me is three years old. I'm not exactly sure
what this means except that there will always be someone older
than me and always someone older than them. Though we come to
the path of yoga in our own way and in our own time, there will
always be living examples of people who are succeeding at the
very thing we are attempting to do.
Through her commitment to yoga, Alanda is learning that by taking
care of her body and mind in the present, the future is also being
cared for. "I'm laying down the tracks that I'm going to follow
in. I have a choice in where I'm laying them, but once I've lain
them then I'm going to move along those tracks. I have a sense
now that I am living out the direction I have set, and that I've
got to continue to set my direction."
Yoga promises a transformation that is much deeper than physical
beauty. It comes with recognizing the mind-body-spirit connection,
a self-knowing that resonates outwards to become the vitality
that I see in Swami Durgananda, and that Alanda met in her teacher.
Through care, attention and regular practice they have aged into
increasing health and awareness, on all levels. This is the promise
of yoga. "I find there are two aspects to Hatha," says Swami Durgananda.
"One is that it will take me to a deeper, quiet place within myself,
and the other is that it helps me lead my outer life with more
awareness."
In 1995 Kate took a three-month yoga course in which they did
two hours of Hatha every morning. It was a chance for her to see
how subtly change happens. "We would do the Plough,' she says,
"and in the beginning I couldn't touch the floor over my head.
Then at some point during the third month I went over and my toes
touched the floor. We hadn't been doing the Plough every day,
but I had this concept that I would have to keep doing the Plough
over and over in order to get any movement. Then I realized the
subtle changes that took place mentally and physically eventually
brought about the change and allowed me to do the pose.'
Kate teaches yoga in community centres in Vancouver to people
who are often coming to yoga for the first time. "I see a lot
of people come in who have never ever done yoga, and a lot of
people who are really out of touch with their bodies. At the beginning
I talked about it as a process of bringing mind and body together,
but I don't talk about that very much any more. Over a period
of time—if they come back and do two or three ten-week sessions—I
see them become more comfortable with their bodies.
I've seen people come and in the beginning with the Mountain
they are wiggling and looking around and absolutely not able to
stand still. Then at the end of ten weeks there is a sense of
them being solidly there. You can see the changes. I always acknowledge
it to them, because I think that part of the process is to name
for them something that's happened. What I really appreciate about
yoga, especially for women, is that it's so process-oriented,
so permissive. It gives us the opportunity to be okay about our
bodies and not to have to achieve a certain level of performance.
The process becomes our own."
At twenty-six I have been inspired to try Hatha, and have been "trying" it
for five years. At thirty-six will I really know what it feels like to be transformed?
To persist with this practice I have to believe in both my mortality and the
control I have over my own body. As my own aging makes itself apparent I realize
change is always happening, and I can only choose to direct it or ignore it.
I do not want to live in ignorance. At fifty-six will I be as knowing of myself
as these women around me? This is not intellectual knowledge I am seeking, it
is body knowledge.
Yesterday I went swimming for longer than usual and today the
muscles are tender. My body is speaking to me, and I am learning
to listen. I know I can do some stretches and work the soreness
out of my lower back. I know I don't have to accept this stiffness
as inevitable.
I see these women, myself included, as a lineage of people practicing
body-mind awareness. We are a lineage because there is something
being passed along the line: knowledge and inspiration. If I didn't
see the health and strength of Swami Durgananda, or hear her stories,
what would I think was possible in the progression of my own life?
Swami Durgananda, Kate and Alanda each represent a step along
the way, bringing to life the journey of a life of health. Each
of these women carries her intelligence intact and honours the
body that is housing her spirit. They know the secret to being
one of those rare people who stay fit in body and mind. It's a
secret I am learning.
