Susan Gorman

After over twenty years, I have returned to yoga. And nothing in my life is the same.

I first took yoga in college to help with upper back pain. It was wonderful. My teacher was East Indian, and I would hear his melodic voice encouraging us to "ba-reeth rythimicallleeeee" all week between classes. He coached us through a classic Hatha Yoga practice made up of postures and resting meditations, and I performed everything easily. I left feeling good after every session. I did sun salutations at home in the morning every day.

Once the back pain stopped, I stopped yoga. Anytime in my twenties or thirties that I tried to start practicing again, I made it through two or three classes and then.....my lower back would wrench out, or I would become incredibly emotional, or ashamed of my stiff muscles, or I would start comparing my fitness to the others in the class, or I would decide I didn't like the instructor, or my schedule would tie me up. One time my back went out so very badly, I couldn't get up off the floor. Luckily I was taking class with a girlfriend who scooped me up and drove me home.

I decided that my body just didn't like yoga.

Recently, I've started back again. I've sort of snuck myself back into it. Because if I stop too long to think about what I'm actually doing, my brain will start chatting about why it's impossible to keep going. And yes, my back did go out, and I went back to class. I went to acupuncture and kept walking through the pain and kept going to class. My back got better. And stronger.

My experience now is nothing like it was in my college years. Gone is the ease and grace with which I performed my yoga. I use "perform" intentionally. A few months ago my yoga instructor talked about our particularly Western liability in yoga-the need to perform yoga perfectly. Instead of experiencing yoga, or practicing yoga-we Americans tend to attack it with a perfectionist attitude that leads to injuries and frustration. Talk about being called out!

Bikram yoga is performed in intense heat. We're talking 105 degrees. It is a specifically choreographed routine of postures and breathing exercises done in a 90-minute session. And I am absolutely awful at it. My body just won't do what I wish. It doesn't look like I want it to either, and it is very stiff from years of aerobic exercise without stretching properly. My heart and lungs are still developing the strength to deal with the intense heat, and so I must kneel down frequently during the class. I get nauseous and feel faint.

And I cry. Oh do I cry. Bikram yoga is as spiritually and emotionally cleansing as it is physically tonifying. Students are encouraged to look only at ourselves in the mirror and not to compare ourselves with others in class (I'm still working on that one). All that looking oneself in the eyes is very confronting. The tears and the sweat roll down in equal measure. Up come the hold-outs: like dandelion roots, that have sneakily remained underground even when I thought I got them all, the weeds that tenaciously block my soul: all my last-remaining damaging beliefs, repressed feelings, suppressed hopes and strength, ego-driven fears.....Bikram yoga helped me dig underneath them to pull them all out successfully.

I absolutely love it.

I love going up against my extreme expectations of myself every class, my need for perfection, and have those smashed down into little bits. Talk about surrender! Just standing up and breathing is sometimes all I can do-when I want to do so much more. My yoga practice has helped me ask myself, "Why is being accomplished so important to you? To any of us?" I'm searching deeper and deeper into myself for that answer, and as I journey I discover more parts of myself that I have neglected. More parts of myself I have abandoned for an image of the me I think I should be. The Grand Illusion.

I love finding out who I rightly am. My heart is more open. I naturally have the patience to use love and humor in situations which used to baffle me. I'm moving into a realm of radical self-acceptance that I never even knew I needed.

I love how clear my skin is, how my tendinitis is all but gone, how I stand up straighter, sleep better, hydrate better, eat and digest better, how my once borderline high blood pressure is back down into the normal range.

But most of all, I have begun to love being the most below-average yogi in the room. For I have learned more by being awful at yoga, and continuing anyway, then I ever would have learned being good at it.