Book Review: Finding More on the Mat

Michelle: Hi Meredith: This was hard because your questions are very good and thoughtful. Here are the answers:

• Question: You start out early in the book with a traumatic story from your youth, which immediately made me tense up. However you changed the tone immediately from “woe is me” to “whoa, it’s me!” You’re self deprecating humor switched the channel from you being a victim to being a strong female. In fact, through all of your trials you appear strong. I sense that this fortitude comes from the females in your life, would you agree?

Answer: I owe so much to the women in my life. First of all, there was my grandmother, Sarah Schrieber Weissman, who passed the bar to become a lawyer in 1920. She went to law school before it was even legal for women to practice law! Her mother, my great-grandmother, marched in the suffragette demonstrations both in England and in Syracuse NY. My mother is also the bravest and smartest person I know. She has two Ph.D. degrees (because one is not enough?). She lives her life as a maverick, raising me as a single mother and keeping the secret that she was gay for years. These were very different times when that kind of thing could ruin you professionally.Getting up and brushing myself off after the “incident,” was the profound turning point to my life. I know many people who have had something life-changing happen to them and not recover. Everyone has had trauma, truly, of one kind or another. So what makes one person survive, and grow better? And another becomes a victim? I don’t know. But I am particularly interested in this. I have begun a series of interviews on my blog called “Finding More,” which focuses on people who have moved through something awful to the other side. I hope to help others find the strength within, as a means to move to more in life.

• Question: You are great storyteller and my favorite story in the book is the one about your father and the turtles. Up until that point the portrait of him is fairly black and white, but you really brought him to life with the narrative. Was your relationship with him similar in that way?

Answer: My relationship with my father has deepened over the years. When I was younger, like many men in the 1960’s he worked all the time devoting himself to building his animal hospital and career. I was very young, three years old, when my parents’ divorced so getting to know my father was effort. I am the first child from the first marriage, and he went on to have another marriage and a new life. There’s a very good book in that scenario, but I’m not ready to go there yet. I do adore him, and admire him, and call him about once a week just to share a joke. He loves a good joke. His latest is about an alligator who suffers “reptile-dysfunction.” OMG!

• Question: I appreciate your need for being an “advanced” beginner. I’ve had that turning point in my practice when I asked myself “why am I trying to keep up with all of these fancy pants poses when they weren’t working for me anymore?” Yet every once in a great while I bust out something I know I probably shouldn’t and usually regret it. Do you do that?

Answer: Just because I am better, wiser and stronger doesn’t mean I don’t have ego! I have an ego, and a dose of pride, and I can bust out many poses on the mat. Recently I attended a workshop with Kathryn Budig who is known for her arm balances, and I did a variation of Titibhasana and Eka Pada Bakasana that was insane. But I nailed it. Damn straight. I didn’t regret it at all, but there was a lot of jumping forward and back that I regretted and needed to take a hot bath afterward.So, there is a fine line between working on what we need to work on, and giving up. I have fears being an older yogi, because if you fall you will have a very long recovery time. A broken hip is anathema to an older yogi. However, we cannot feed the fears, and part of the reason why I practice is to face my fear everyday of being a better person. But I choose my teachers carefully. Desiree Rumbaugh, Christina Sell, Darren Rhodes, Amy Ippoliti can get me into any pose because they move with respect to the body with great alignment. Older teachers understand older bodies. But if I’m in a younger yogi’s room who is dancing around going into one-legged balances and hopping into inversions, forgeddaboudit. I will just practice safely in the back row. I am also very careful about Vinyasa these days. It’s just not speaking to my joints the way it used to. I wrote in “Finding More” that Power Yoga was super fun, like “sex with a cowboy.” But now it feels more like sex with a jackhammer, a very unpleasant and disruptive jackhammer to my body.This very issue is why I teach the Wisdom Warriors ™ class developed by Desiree Rumbaugh. This class is for experienced and seasoned older yogis who DO NOT GIVE UP. EVER. We go to the hardest poses, but we go smarter and maybe a little slower. But we definitely get there.

• Question: One of my favorite expression that you use in Finding More is, “there is no ‘I’ in team.” You also say, “yoga, although practiced alone, is actually a group effort”. This makes me wonder what your view on private yoga instruction is. Personally, when people ask me for it, I tell them I would rather they come to my classes and experience the community. How about you?
  

Answer: I think there is a place for private and group instruction. I work privately as a teacher and as a student. When I am a student, my teacher can “see” me clearly and let me know where I am misaligned or need work. It’s hard to see ourselves in our practice. I like to practice with one other teacher and then we can “see” each other and offer advice. But when I practice in a public class, I often go places I never thought to explore. It’s good to let go of that control now and then and be taken on an adventure.This quote, “There is no ‘I’ in team,” was referencing that there is an “I” in “Mind.” The Mind needs to play well with the Body and Spirit, and it really doesn’t. The Mind is kind of a playground bully. We need to keep it in check when the Spirit wants to soar.

• Question: I was thrilled that you brought up the voices in your head that appeared during menopause. I’ve begun that journey, and for a while there, I thought I would completely lose every last of my marbles. Did you use any particular meditation or asana sequence that was particularly helpful?

Answer: Yes! I now use drugs. Seriously, this is my next book I hope to get published in 2015. I had a very bad menopause, and the voices in my head were the least of it. I was sick, very sick, murderously sick and I should have gotten my ass off my yoga mat and into my doctor long before I finally did it. My book will be about what yoga can tell us if we listen. I should have known when I couldn’t do Pincha Mayurasana for two years that it wasn’t because I was afraid. It was because I was sick. I am gathering stories from people who had medical illnesses that they discovered through their practice. It’s fascinating what yoga can tell us about our bodies.But in general, when you want to quiet the voices in your head the best pose is meditation. How we each get there is personal. For me, I need a hip opening sequence and strong core work to sustain the sit. Also, I found that very hot yoga, like Bikram, was helpful. If you make yourself go into the suffering heat, when you come out your own heat is much less intense. If you suffer for 90 minutes, the rest of the day is usually a picnic.