The story of one life changed at Yoga to the People
About fifty breaths into my first yoga class I realized that my life had been saved. In the beginning of the practice my shins and the tops of my feet were on fire. Each inhale I took in struggled against a cage of tension in my back body. While my lungs strained to fill against the knotted resistance and my legs burned the teacher was telling me that this pose, the child’s pose, was a resting position. The name of the posture was innocuous enough, but the experience of it made me worry about what I had gotten myself into. I was sure that the next sixty minutes would consist largely of me embarrassing myself in front of the pretty girl practicing next to me. When the time came to tuck toes under and come up into downward facing dog explosions raced up and down the backs of my legs. My arms quickly tired just from holding my own ass up for a minute. But as I pushed the floor away I created a life changing stretch that traveled up my spine and over my hips and shot all the way down to my heels. I could feel each inhale finding and filling the outermost cracks in my armor and each exhale began to melt away at these cracks.
It didn’t feel very good but it also didn’t take long for me to figure out that I was being given a second chance at life. I quickly learned how to discern the difference between the pains that came from coming into postures incorrectly with poor alignment and the pains that came from living life incorrectly with poor judgment. The former, I rectified. The latter, I happily accepted as my penance.
Six months earlier, I rang in the New Year by puking my brains out. I had drank a lot of beer and whiskey that night, but not as much as I might have in the past. I was taken by surprise by the sudden vomit. I rinsed my mouth out and felt much better and far less drunk. I drank some more beer and avoided the whiskey and blacked out on my buddy’s floor. When I came to I staggered out into the bitter cold and treated myself to a gypsy cab ride back to my parents’ house instead of taking the bus. I had been planning my breakfast the whole ride back and by the time I made it to the kitchen I was retching into the sink. Eventually I had nothing left to throw up but the retching wouldn’t stop. It felt like my guts were ripping themselves up. I spat blood and bile into the sink for what felt like forever before I could finally curl up on the cold kitchen floor. My insides felt like I had eaten broken glass and all I could do was moan.
This was to be an almost weekly occurrence for the first half of the new year. First I would vomit liquids and undigested food. When I had nothing left to empty I’d cough and spit out bloody bile in between tortuous retches. I would beg for it to end, I made wild and desperate promises to gods I never believed in, if they would just make it stop I would give anything, do anything. It didn’t stop. It just kept on going, seizing me and throttling the life out of me.
There came a day where I didn’t even have a chance to crack open a beer or light up a blunt before the agony found me. All it took was breakfast and I was out of commission. I couldn’t lay down flat on my back or extend my limbs away from my center without causing paroxysms of suffering. I hugged myself into the tightest ball that I could and realized that I was not ready to die. I spent hours waiting for it to stop and as the shock wore off and I settled into the misery of it all I took stock of my life. Here I was, 24 years old, in my parents’ house, no job, no girlfriend, no college degree, and beyond those trivial details the awful truth was that there was no purpose to my life. I wanted to live but I had no idea what it was I wanted to live for. I searched my memories for some meaning and the best I could come up with from the previous twelve years was a blurry mystery occasionally punctuated by vivid snapshots of savage violence and horror.
The abusive relationship I had with my body mirrored the abusive relationship I had with the world. If I wasn’t being a victim, it was usually because I was victimizing somebody. People were always trying to take something from me, whenever possible I would flip it around and take something from them. Come up off that watch and run your pockets, kid. Lucky I don’t take your shoes. Those words were just as likely to come out of my mouth as they were to be spoken to me. Everybody I ran with carried knives. Knives on their ankles, at their waists, in their pockets. Small blades concealed in sleeves or belt buckles. Say the wrong thing, turn your back at the wrong time, get your face cut a buck fifty short. That was understood.
Some of them had guns. Sawed offs and pistols mostly. Serial digits rubbed off. Many likely had bodies on them, I wasn’t dumb enough to ask. Winter was always the most dangerous time. So many pockets, so many thick coats. You never knew what somebody might pull out. In the freezing New York cold, you could easily feel the death in the metal. It would stick to your skin and cling to you.
Everybody had drugs. It would get weighed out and bagged up on digital scales under a cloud of weed smoke. Somebody would count money and sniff coke and somebody would get sent to the store to buy alcohol and sandwiches. We did this instead of going to school. The city was our classroom. The world was our teacher. The lessons were often harsh.
When we were little it was just playground squabbles. Then it became brawls in the streets and bars. Then it became wars. Street generals and soldiers would mobilize and maneuver and mothers cried and cried. First, it was people in the periphery of my life that it happened to. So-and-so’s cousin’s friend got stabbed. Then so-and-so’s cousin got stabbed. Then so-and-so. For all I knew, I was next in line.
As the hours passed and the suffering lingered, the memories contained no relief. The sun was setting and I was still balled up in bed, unable to escape the weight of the past in a miserable present. I determined that if I made it through the night and lived I would build a future that didn’t revolve around hurting myself and hurting everyone my life touched. There would be no visit to the hospital. I would not call for help. I was going to accept whatever came without complaint.
The night passed. Eventually, I was able to lie down flat on my back. By morning, I could walk with one hand on the wall as long as I didn’t try to stand up straight. I managed to keep a glass of water down in the afternoon and I had a piece of bread for dinner. No more alcohol, I decided. No more drugs. No more weapons. No more cruelty. It starts today, I told myself.
The next month and a half was spent in isolation. I had nowhere to go. I had nothing to do. I had no one to be with. I was already skinny but I lost weight anyway. My hygiene was terrible and what little sleep I got was plagued with nightmares. The willpower and determination I had that first day had faded almost completely and I began to wonder if I wasn’t better off drinking myself to death instead of trying to make a new life.
Many people that I had thought were my friends turned their backs on me because I was no longer any fun for them. The people that were actually my friends and stood by me suggested I find a hobby to pass the time. I had no money, so somebody suggested I try a class at Yoga To The People in the lower east side of Manhattan. The classes were donation based and it was $2 for a mat rental. They even spotted me the $2. I had nothing to lose but an hour of my life. I gave it a shot.
Financially, I had spent $2.25 on my metrocard to get to the studio. With my efforts I purchased a new life. I wasn’t sure what was happening to my body and my mind during those early weeks of practice, I just knew that I had to keep doing it. The asana practice was vital to my recovery, but what was really at work was the environment and the people that made that environment possible. This was a place where I was safe and I was trusted and I could be trusting. It didn’t come overnight for me to feel that way, I had to work at it, but it was there if I wanted it and I wanted it desperately.
The staff at Yoga To The People were nice to me. That might not sound like much to you but it meant everything to me. At first, I thought they just wanted a donation from me. No stranger was ever nice to me if they didn’t want something from me. I let it be known that I had no money to offer, that I couldn’t always afford $2 to rent a mat. They didn’t mind. They were happy I was there. These people didn’t know me or owe me anything, I had nothing to offer them besides my awkward presence and my broken self and they were happy to see me. What saints they must be, what a choir of fucking angels, I thought. They couldn’t possibly know what they were doing for me, they just did it because it was their nature as much as it was their job.
After a couple of months of showing up every day without ever paying for class I began to feel the guilt gnawing at me. Here I was taking and taking and not giving, I thought. Same old story that I was trying to change. I offered my labor and they let me close the studio with them. I scrubbed toilets and my soul sang. Take care of the space and the space will take care of you, one of them told me. Time proved them right. Caring about the space taught me how to care about people. Trusting the yoga taught me how to trust and be worthy of trust. I learned how to love somebody, not just for what they did for me but love them for who they are, to love their flaws and everything about them, without conditions and expectations. I learned how to stretch and do a few poses, but mostly I learned how to be a person.
My story is not unique. Everybody, of every race, of every economic background, has suffered in life. Yoga is a healing art, with a profound ability to change lives. Yoga does not care about the color of your skin. Yoga does not care how much money you make. Yoga does not care where you have been, what you have done. Yoga is only interested in your effort and your attention. The more of each you give it, the more it will do for you. When we put a big financial price tag on this tremendous gift, we remove it from the realm of possibility for so many people who are suffering. They don’t even consider it as an option because it is so remote, so inaccessible. To really reap the benefits of the practice it must become part of your life’s routine. If it is something to be indulged in occasionally only when finances allow then the benefits will be small.
Yoga To The People, the name is its mission. Like the yoga, they do not discriminate against your race, your beliefs, your income, your appearance. If you are willing to share the space you are welcome. There are no camps to divide people in, no barriers to erect, no upper class, no lower class. Here, we are just people, healing ourselves and healing each other, just by sharing the space and sharing our practice. This yoga is yours the moment you start exploring it. These are your arms, your legs, this is your breath, your body. You have full ownership over everything that exists within the borders of your own skin. Nobody has the right to tell you that you can’t explore your own body, expand your own consciousness, heighten your awareness. This yoga is for everyone. Yoga To The People!
