Tricks Are for Kids

Reports of my levitating skills are greatly exaggerated.

Yes, I’ve been in India a little longer than a month. Yes, I’ve been studying yoga with masters for something like eight hours a day. And, yes, I was so engrossed in these studies that I didn’t update the blog for almost two whole weeks. (Sorry ‘bout that.)

But I’ve yet to levitate.

I felt it necessary to address the issue after receiving several e-mails of this variety: “Wow. That’s a lotta yoga. You must be levitating by now.” It’s true I can do a few tricks. I can nail a few pretzel-ish postures. But I didn’t come to India to hone my tricks. My last home was L.A., yoga capital of the Western world, where studios devoted to pretzel production are as ubiquitous as Starbucks.

I came to the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram because pretzels aren’t prized here. It’s a school devoted to healing, and few of its students resemble the hard-bodied models in yoga magazines. They come with illnesses and injuries and prescription slips on which doctors have scribbled “KYM” and its phone number.

Among the students we met was an 8-year-old girl with rheumatoid arthritis who couldn’t turn in bed without crying out in pain. Her mother brought her to KYM in February, and today she bends and twists while chanting “poo” or “cha” or whatever mantra suits her mood. We met a 39-year-old man whose right leg is paralyzed because he contracted polio as an infant. He practices yoga because it allows him to walk farther and stand longer. We met a 31-year-old woman with pulmonary hypertension whose doctors recommended a lung transplant. They changed their minds after she came to KYM and learned breathing and meditation techniques that eased her symptoms. “They are close to God for me,” she said of her yoga teachers.

My first appointment at KYM left me slack-jawed. I met with “Dr. NC,” a yoga teacher whose full name is too much of a mouthful for Westerners. NC is a medical doctor, but I didn’t spot a stethoscope when I walked into his office. He watched as I lifted my arms and touched my toes. He placed his hands on my shoulders and ran his fingers along my spine. He listened to me breath. Then he told me how I feel.

“You have some pain in your lower back?

Yep.

“You have some stiffness here?” he asked. He pointed to the part of my neck I’d been kneading for days, still knotted.

It went like that for a few more minutes. He jotted notes in my file that another teacher would use to design a personalized yoga practice. “About 80 percent of the practice is breathing,” NC said as he walked me to the door. “It should not be thought of as exercise.”

I left feeling rattled. Partly because NC had read my body like a Dick and Jane book. And partly because, for years, my response to “What do you do for exercise?” has been “yoga.”

It took a month to really understand his meaning. On Friday, I finished KYM’s four-week yoga “intensive.” My classmates and I received lotus flowers and certificates in a ceremony attended by our teachers. We showed off our new chanting skills, looking less like yogis than kindergarteners in a Christmas pageant. Voices and hands shook. KYM founder TKV Desikachar sprang from his chair to congratulate us when we finished. He’s a bubbly man who turns solemn when he talks about yoga.

He turned solemn. “Without a strong body, with a weak constitution, you cannot pursue anything,” he told us. And I really got it. The aim of yoga isn’t a firm butt or toned quads. It’s a clear mind. But a weak constitution hinders that pursuit. Clarity is hard to come by when you have aching joints or an itchy throat. Enlightenment is stymied by sniffles. So we start by working on our bodies. Yoga improves our strength, flexibility and balance. It’s exercise, alright. But it shouldn’t be thought of as such.

I didn’t learn any cool “moves” at KYM. The hardest thing I did each day was sit on the floor, eyes closed, and breath. I’m working on that one. I hear it’s pretty cool when you master it. Feels a little like levitating.