I picked up Poser; My Life in 23 Yoga Poses by Clare Dedingham last week, on the recommendation of my friend Julie, and am so glad I did.
Poser is a very funny book. You will be sure to love it if any of the following things are true:
a. you have spent a lot of time practicing yoga
On her first entry into a yoga class she writes, "Little did I know that only very occasionally in yoga do you stumble into a room of people who are good at it. And when you do, they often turn out to be assholes.
b. you have been raising children in the past 10 years
"Weaning wasn't allowed until at least one year. This was by the consensus of who, exactly? Us. We were mothers with books. We looked things up. We knew stuff, like, for example, that the American Academy of Pediatrics said that at least one year of nursing was optimal for the baby's immune system and brain development. For the kind of mothers we were, optimal meant mandatory, and one year meant a few. Seattle at that time was a town where little dudes strolled up to their mothers at the playground for a quick top-off, said "Thanks, babe" and rejoined the soccer match.
Lucy wasn't yet ten months, and I wasn't supposed to quit nursing until at least a year. If you think this sounds like a frivolous dilemma, or not worth losing sleep over, then that just goes to show you were not a new monther in a liberal enclave at the end of the last century."
C. you were raised in the 60s or 70s, particularly if your parents were divorced.
I don't have a perfect quote for this one, but its all throughout...
D. You have tried to understand what it means to be married, while raising small children
"We were not in the mood for a night out, but there we were, huddled over a table at Cafe Campagne, celebrating that vaunted American custom, date night. When you are married, date night buzzes irritatingly on the periphery of your consciousness, the way New Year's Eve does for single people...Date night, like any kind of enforced fun, bore little resemblance to actual fun. Our best date nights came when we resisted the orbital pull of the restaurant dinner...I thought I was supposed to like restaurants. And restaurants were supposed to mean romance. The whole thing was like a strange Ponzi scheme of obligation."
If none of these apply to your life, you may still find it enjoyable because it is well written and funny. However, if like me, all four of these apply, you will certainly want to pick this book up.
She uses her discovery of yoga, slightly after the birth of her daughter about ten years ago as a frame for her life story, told partly in flashbacks, and partly in real time, as she becomes a mother and raises her children. Each pose has some metaphorical or philosophical significance that informs that chapter. Its not the most clever concept, but it works.
Essentially it is a story of a woman learning to overcome her own perfectionism, and deep need to do everything "right" and "good" by letting things be a little more real and a little more messy. At the end she muses, "I thought I would do yoga all my life, and I thought that I would continue to improve at it, that I would penetrate its deepest mysteries and finally be able to perform a transition from scorpion directly into chaturanga. But here's the truth: The longer I do yoga, the worse I get at it. I can't tell you what a relief that is."
A nice, easy read. And boy does it make me want to go back to yoga class!
AZ
