After the event at independent bookstore Malaprops in Asheville, NC, I spent the next three days teaching both adaptive and traditional yoga students at One Center Yoga (www.onecenteryoga.com). Often when I travel, I remember why I founded Mind Body Solutions and do the work I do. Because I teach across such a wide spectrum of ability and disability, I gain access to unspeakable moments of shared humanity. On Friday afternoon, I taught a class for yoga teachers on adapting yoga and then I taught an adaptive yoga class in which the yoga teachers also attended and participated. Every body learns in such a setting, including me.
For some reason, this particular adaptive class affected me more than usual. There were about 25 yoga teachers and 6 adaptive students, including 2 men with spinal cord injuries, a woman with MS, a woman with post-polio, a 13 year-old boy with muscular dystrophy, and a woman in her thirties who sustained a traumatic brain injury when she was about one year of age. The 13 year-old I have had in class before. His name is Brendan. (See photo below) He comes with his mom. They live in TN, but have made the nearly 6 hours trek to both Cincinnati and Asheville over the last year. The mother Michele has also taken our adaptive yoga training for yoga teachers at Mind Body Solutions in Minneapolis. They come because in no other context does Brendan get as seen and acknowledged as when he is in class. It is a huge undertaking for Michele to bring Brendan on the road. I am honored by their presence.
Amanda is the woman who sustained a traumatic brain injury early in life. Amanda has short brown hair and sparkling eyes that hint of secrets lying below. (See photos below) Because of contractures (shortening of muscles over time) and an asymmetrical firing pattern between her brain and her body, Amanda’s body is pretty twisted up. Amanda is someone that most of us would look away from if we passed her on the street. We might tell ourselves we were looking way out of respect when, in fact, we were protecting ourselves from a life that we cannot imagine. Difficult lives are hard for our cultural training to handle.
Amanda gets around in a power wheelchair. She definitely speaks but one must really listen to access her particular words. Amanda can feel this disconnect and often seamlessly repeats herself so she can be understood. On the back of her wheelchair, there is an assortment of stickers. The two main ones etched into my memory are “One Planet” and “All One Family.” I imagine her moving though her life carrying this message of hope.
While I was working with her, I noticed she avoided my eyes as she struggled to move her body. I asked her to start connecting with my gaze directly. I have noticed through my years of experience that people with difficult bodies tend to shy away from eye contact. This serves multiple purposes, one of which is to avoid mutual discomfort. As her teacher, my strategy was to help her body straighten out, to have her feel the relief of better alignment, and then have her make eye contact with others. For her, this constitutes a yoga pose.
After awhile, I asked Amanda to share her lifelong struggle to make eye contact with people. I was essentially asking Amanda to share incredible vulnerability and step forward and become a teacher with me. She leans forward in her chair, struggling against her spasming body and, with defiant but hopeful tears in her eyes, utters, “I hate not being able to look at people.” This from a woman who carries, “All One Family” on her back. All of us, nearly 40, drop into both our hearts and our bodies and feel her utterance resonant through the room. In this moment of silence, we have merged, our humanity sharing the hopeful weight of truth. We do not feel sorry for Amanda, but for ourselves, for our inability to see transcendently into each other’s sparkling eyes. With one sentence, Amanda has changed us.
Two remarkable things continue to happen throughout the rest of the weekend. First, Amanda’s face and eyes soften and shine to everyone in the room. More than that, her body begins to unfold. She sits straighter and more open to others; she moves more gracefully. She becomes part of the One Family and we experience Amanda as Amanda for the first time. A second thing happens. The weekend propels into new dimensions of learning and sharing. Everyone feels the underlying truth of living in both a mind and a body. We all move more deeply into the paradox of living and dying.
This is why I do the work of Mind Body Solutions. Get on board.