Yoga 2 Yoga

South America » Chile » Valparaíso Region » Valparaíso
July 14th 2006

Published: July 14th 2006

This fall I led a yoga course in Villa Hermosa, one of the shanty-towns circling Viña. Although ¨yoga¨ is sort of a mis-nomer, because what I lead is a blend of yoga, stretching, and ab work, with the breathing and mental discipline of yoga. I also couldn´t call it ´yoga´ because the señoras of V Hermosa only wanted something that would help them lose their bellies and they thought that yoga was just breathing and meditating.

So I called the course ¨Pilates¨- even though I´ve never done pilates - and since the abdominal exercises are designed for the CU Triathlon team (ie kind of hard), we ended up doing mostly ... yoga. And I was never found out, either, despite the 10-min long meditation at the end of every course. ¨We love Pilates,¨ they´d say.

I´d come twice a week, crossing the dirt fútbol pitch, down the stairs, right at the trash heap, and then left at the three-legged dog. Since the sede (wooden shack built by my organization, Un Techo Para Chile) doubled as library, kindergarten, town hall, workshop, and gymnasium, I´d have to hunt down teh keys from between a few different houses ... but finally I´d get the door open and move out the chairs and boxes to make more room and get a broom and sweep out the mud. Usually two 13-yr old girls, Katy and Estefanía, would come down and hang out with me, so I would sweep and they´d show me the dance moves for the latest reggaeton song.

About 15min after class was supposed to have started, my ladies would come bustling in (actually quite punctual for Chile) and lay out their little ´pilates´ mats -- baby mattresses or pieces of sponge stuffed into pillow-cases - and I´d have to convince them that Yes, they did have to ttake off their coats and sweaters. I would always practise in bare feet, just shorts and T, but to them barefoot is a sure way to pneumonia and a horrible death, so no amount of pleading on my part or slipping on theirs would change them.

The best part of the course was the atmosphere, of course. I´ve been lucky enough to have the best yoga teacher in the world (no, seriously), and the best part of the class is that she leads with a big grin on her face: it´s an intense but beautiful vibe, so that when people fall down, they laugh. Ok, well, I´m usually the one who falls down, but anyways ...the shack is just wooden planks and tin, and even though I sweep, the pine floor is usually muddy. More often than not there´s no electricity and so I´d have to leave the windows and door open, sometimes in the rain, and so random dogs and children would come leaping in and I´d have to chase them round the sede (3 x 6m - sorry non-metric people). This would almost always happen during the meditation at the end. Rodrigo would sense an opportunity to molest (hm, now there´s a ¨false friend¨) and come scampering happily in.
He wasn´t a bad kid, just no one pays him any attention other than to slap him around. When he figured out I wouldn´t, he took every opportunity he could to make me want to.

So, he´d romp round and I´d finally catch him, and then try to get him to go outside, except he could´ve taught MLK Jr. a thing or two about civil disobedience and so I would usually just have to hold him down while he squirmed. Of course, I´d have to pretend we were wrestiling, or else he´d catch on and yell.

All of this, mind you, is in a tiny dark shack, with half a dozen fairly large señoras sprawled out across the floor in blissful meditation. To chase Rodrigo I´d have to hop silently between the ladies (some snoring) and still try to maintain the flow of the meditation (¨And the light flows through the spine ... (whisper) ¡Rodrigo, stop messing around! We´re trying to have a ... (THUMP as he kicks the floor trying to break free) ... Uh, yes, let that sound be the RELEASE of all your tension as you sink into the ... (hopping over Ximena because Rodrigo has escaped) ... the, uh, mother earth¨).

This was on a pretty typical day. Other disturbances would involve reggaeton music (100%!d(MISSING)istracting at any volume), stuck-together post-coital cats, and once a sheep that got stuck on the roof next-door and clattered round for an hour before it attempted flight (unsuccesful).

And despite - or because of - all this, the class was still a blast... lots of laughing and falling over (this is totally the secret to Life, incidentally. If you ever are in a stressful spot, just fall down and laugh. Or vice versa).

One day, after I´d been escorted to the bus stop by Katy and Estefania (they doubled as my body-guards), I went to a yoga course in Viña del Mar (quick explanation. Viña is divided by a central avenue, Libertad. All streets east are Oriente and all west Poniente). It´s perfectly gridded and perfectly maintained and perfectly picturesque. That´s why no one lives there - just rich summer folk from Santiago).
Anyways, I got off and walked to 6 Poniente con 4 1/2 Norte ... ¨Centro Mandala¨ was a brand-new centre, with pink quartz stones arranged round the perimetre, and brilliantly white ... the course was free because they were trying to get people interested. So I went in and was ushered into a waiting-room by a woman in a business-suit and handed a glass of fresh-squeezed papaya juice.

I sat there awkwardly looking round, sipping on my papaya juice, the dirt from the sede of Villa Hermosa still clinging to my knees. The other prospective clients (funny, all middle-aged and plump as well) sat round reading glossies about how to be a better trophy-wife (Sorry, I´m being unfair ... more like medallion-wives).

The course was on Reebok yoga mats, to the sound of an elephant with a gastritis problem (or didgeridoos, whatever). And when we were 3/4 the way through the session, I realized that all we were going to do was - breathing and meditation. I couldn´t help it, I burst out laughing. And I fell over.

(ok, the next part is my typical pondering about The World schtick)

I don´t mean to take away from those women who came to the 6 poniente con 4 1/2 norte yoga course. The practise of yoga is such a gift, I´m happy for them that they discovered it. But that practise was not so enjoyable for me. It felt self-conscious and sterile - which I´m sure was because of the abrupt change of yoga-scenery - but there was no love, no joy...

One chilean mom once asked why I didn´t lead yoga for money (it´s just coming into style here and I could have made a pile of money, even for Chile). I don´t know ... it just seems anti-thetical to the whole idea of yoga to get paid to share it (Caroline, my teacher, doesn´t!). I can say that now because I neither need nor want money, but...
Yoga has made such an amazing impact on my life. You get life lessons from your sweat as well as flexibility, strength, and tranquility. An american from the exchange school asked me what I did for volunteer work here, and when I mentioned yoga, he snorted and said ¨Ha! THAT´s what the poor people need! Yoga...¨ and he was joking, but I thought about that for a while. It´s true that in the two months that I taught, the women didn´t make Hoosiers-type progress. They were still packing a little belly at the graduation. But for two hours they could relax and decompress and untie the tension they´d been knotting up for years. Every-one needs that, but their lives are a lot closer to Survival than most, and so they have a corresponding amount of stress. Most of their husbands work 7 days a week, and so they typically end up having four or five people (children, parents, etc...) dependent on them. What I showed them (Caroline through me, rather) was that they would trust the Pachamama (mother-earth) and let her support them for just these 2 hours. That control of breathing and consciousness are very important gifts ... as well as losing your belly, of course.

But what it really was about for me was sweeping out the sede. Having respect for a place and action: ... the señoras would notice it and take off their shoes to come in. We still probably would have gotten just as dirty without sweeping, but it was a ritual that turned our little wooden shack into a Yoga Sede, po, and something to be proud of.

Last friday was the graduation. There were a bunch of other courses graduating (hair-dressing, tailoring, plumbing, etc.). It was really cool. They were all really proud to be there (it was in a World Heritage Building, an old catholic school that Pinochet went to as a kid). I mean, they did have to bust their butts to get those diplomas... not necessarily in the actual work of the class, but walking the 30min to get to the sede, or coming when they had been working all day and easily could have just gone home ... So everyone was dressed up as nicely as possible.

The ceremony was fun and moving - the tailoring class getting up to model off what they´d made... women who spend all day in a hard ugly life, parading round in this beautiful hall with their hair all done up and the whole room clapping for them ... (I told the girls that they´d have to show their abs to the crowd as well, but they didn´t think it was so funny).

And at the end I got up and asked to speak. It was their ceremony and I didn´t want to take away from the focus, but I had something I really wanted to say. It was this, basically:

¨¡Hi! ... I´m a foreigner, in case you didn´t notice
(I was a good head taller than everyone and blonde ... because to them, any shade lighter than jet black is: blonde).

My parents are visiting Chile and are sitting in the back
(hoots and clapping).

And I could take them to Cerro Alegre and Concepcion (amazing but touristy hills in valparaiso)...
But the beautiful and good and precious of this country, for me, is right in this room.

It´s the barbeque with the plumbing workshop
(more hoots and clapping)
It´s Ana´s amazing thighs ...
(see ¨Nice Thighs¨ entry)

... But sometimes I get a little sad, because I know I can never give you a gift equal to what all you have given me.

But it´s a really beautiful and precious gift and I´ll cherish it.

So I´m immensely grateful to all of you.

Thank you.¨

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