Yoga as I know it

Once or twice a week, I walk over to my neighbor Marj’s house, yoga mat in hand, for an hour of stretching, bending, balancing and core strengthening, guided by our teacher Ajita.

Ajita is a serious yoga practitioner, tiny, reed thin and buff — not out of vanity, but the result of a disciplined lifestyle, of doing her asana religiously, and eating strictly vegetarian food.

I’ve been doing yoga for three years but I am hardly a poster child for a healthy lifestyle. Far from it. But I like the way Ajita makes me stretch my body beyond its regular limits and twist it into impossible positions in a slow, meditative way, accompanied by soft chanting of “babalam kebalam” from an mp3 player.

Some years back, I walked in on my cousin Ciay Misa, a yoga teacher, doing her morning ritual facing the rising sun on a bluff in Eden Nature Park in Davao. She invited me to try it, and slowly, gently and expertly, she pulled and twisted my stiff limbs in a way that I never thought they could. It was amazing. I wanted more.

I looked for a yoga teacher in my neighborhood but found no one. Three years ago, I was invited by Babeth Lolarga to a yoga session with her teacher Ajita.  We were five people in that first class who invaded each other’s floor space on a borrowed crowded living room.  I was hooked.

People ask me what kind of yoga I do. I honestly can’t tell between Bikram and Hatha, or Anusara and Kundilani yoga. And there’s hot yoga, senior yoga, nude yoga, etc. I just like the idea of bending and stretching my body beyond its limits so that at the end of an hour where I am pulled in all directions, I feel taller and thinner, my tummy flat as a board, and my posture perfect. What a way to start a day!

And even when, in the shower, I see my old body as it really is, it doesn’t matter. I feel strong, rejuvenated, energized, balanced.

After three years of doing yoga off-and-on, I am far from acquiring its discipline. For one, I still eat meat. I still lose track of my breathing, and my footwork is terrible. Once, I exerted too much and suffered through a painful upper arm for months. And when I tried to do a headstand, after the session, my neck hurt and I was dizzy. A series of x-rays brought home the reality that people probably shouldn’t attempt certain strenuous exercises for the first time when they are already of a certain age. I was horrified to learn that, like former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and other people of our generation, I had age-appropriate early signs of cervical spondylosis. 

The doctor said I could continue doing yoga but to keep away from death-defying stunts like the headstand.

I now find that my balance is better — I can stand on one leg with my arms spread wide, and bend forward without falling. I still cannot touch the floor when I bend from my hips, and I can’t hold on to my toes and stretch my legs straight like others do, which makes me wonder if my arms are shorter than normal. But my core is stronger, I feel healthier, and my mind is more alert. After a yoga session, I can last the day without taking siesta.

Last year, for three and a half weeks in Kathmandu where I attended a workshop on peace mediation with 20 or so other women from South and East Asia, I did an hour of yoga every morning on an open deck blessed by the sun rising behind near-by mountains.

On the first week, Kamla, a feisty gender guru, took us on a feminist exploration of our bodies and helped make us comfortable with what it can do. To those who live in conservative societies bound by patriarchal restrictions, it was a liberating experience. Every day, more women came to Kamla’s emancipating yoga sessions.

After Kamla left, no one else seemed interested in yoga.  So I sought Roshmi, one of the workshop organizers and a yoga practitioner, and asked if I could join her in her morning asana. We met one-on-one every day with a salutation to the sun and went silently through our poses –— warrior, dog, cat, rabbit, cobra, peacock, child, bridge — she leading me with such grace, and ending each session chanting reverentially, “Om, om, om shanti.”

I still miss those glorious Kathmandu mornings when my days began with a union of mind, body, spirit and nature in my yoga sessions with Roshmi.

The best part of yoga is at the end of the hour, when I lie flat on my back in a dead pose, exhausted and sweaty, summoning energy in the form of an imagined bright light entering my body through my toes, and up to my ankles, knees and thighs. The light swishes in my pelvis, abdomen, diaphragm and chest, caressing my heart before it runs up my shoulders and down through my arms, hands, and up again to my neck and face, until it exits like a skyrocket from my third eye at the center of my forehead.

Energized and aware of every pore on my body, I empty my mind and meditate. This is hard to do. The mere suggestion to empty my mind brings images to mind, of somewhere pleasant like Eden Nature Park, or something stressful like an unmet deadline, bills to pay, a leaky faucet that needs fixing. But on a good day, I actually fall asleep, virtually dead to the world. 

Yoga hasn’t caused a dramatic transformation in me. I don’t think it is meant to. But thanks to yoga, I have become more resilient in body, clearer in mind, and stronger in spirit. Namaskar.