THE YOGA CHRONICLES: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT YOGI

 

            I was a cardiologist's wet dream: a fifty-one year- old white male, twenty-five pounds overweight, with a high stress job and in a torrid love affair with fried foods. To be fair, I was also a runner with five marathons under my ever-expanding belt, even though I now competed in the spectacularly unflatteringly- named "Rhino" division, having somehow leap-frogged the somewhat -less- insulting- but -still unflattering "Clydesdale" division altogether.

            But after over thirty years of relentless pounding, I was now face to face with the specter of my own running mortality. Plantar fasciitis gave rise to chronic runners knee, resulting in the only protracted injury-related layoff of my extraordinarily average running career. Joints ached under the additional strain of the extra bulk and it took two Advil, a knee brace and a back support truss just to get me out the door.

And then one day I just stopped.

            Over the years,  I willingly accepted the abuse of running as part of some battered, psychologically mutated protestant ideal that Texas boys of a certain era absorb on the bristly brown grass of August two –a–days. Please forgive me as I may have failed to grasp the gentle wisdom of my high school football coaches but I was too busy watching the heat rise off the ground like amoeba. Most all of it essentially carried the same general theme in any event: If it doesn’t hurt, it’s not doing you any good.

No pain, no gain.

You ain’t hurt, get back in there.

Water? You don’t need water. That’s why you have salt tablets.

But they didn’t tell me what happens when you quit.

In my junior year in college, I was sixty pounds overweight, smoked two packs of menthols a day, hadn’t eaten a fruit or vegetable other than a Frito in three years and polished off a bottle of rum before sundown most days.

But in late May of 1981, I had the Austin Flood Epiphany. On May 24, 1981, I rolled all the dope I had into a joint the size of a panatella, which I smoked during the worst flood in Austin history, not knowing until later whether or not I actually dreamed up the white Volkswagen micro bus floating down South Lamar carrying four old hippies and two cases of contraband Hawaiian shirts.

During the previous semester, I had lost one girlfriend, several critical GPA points for law school and in general touch with the bounds of propriety. On the other hand, I had rediscovered Taco Bell and marijuana.

It was when my roommate found me nude on the floor looking under tables, mattresses and stereo equipment that I had my very own personal moment of clarity.

He asked, innocently enough, what I was looking for.

To which I replied: April.

Whether it was an epiphany or whether I had simply run out of dope, I can’t be sure.

Armed only with the Socratic teachings of my high school football coaches, I unwittingly took my first steps to yoga. It was, to be sure, a circuitous route.

The next day, I quit drinking, dope and eating red meat. The Over and Under among my dearest friends was anywhere from six to fifty-seven hours. (For those of you keeping score at home: Drinking- 120 days. Grass- 180 days. Red meat- 18 months.)

I also found myself on the track at Memorial Stadium at 3 o’clock that next afternoon with the sun throwing daggers at Austin, Texas even though priests and nuns might be outside. The amoeba patterns emanating from the synthetic track, while different from those of my scorched high school football field, were somehow comforting. 

That day I made it almost a lap before I had to stop and retch.

I was twenty-one years old.

Every step on that track that summer was simply a step. I required of myself only one more step, not daring to think beyond that lest the attachment of performance poison the otherwise pure process. All I wanted was that calm feeling at the end of my run when my heart rate subsided and all I could feel were the toxins pouring out of my body. It was utter self-containment. That was enough. There was no thought or distraction- not even a sense of commitment.

In retrospect, even my running wardrobe seemed almost obstinately anachronistic: white tee shirt, gray gym shorts and brown suede (yes, I said suede) Adidas Samba soccer shoes- perhaps the worst possible thing a human being could put on the their feet in order to run. In the seminal age of polyester Dolphin running shorts and New Balance shoes, I needed only the act of running, not the accoutrement. As ever, I felt enough of the interloper as it was without trying to take on the airs (and thus the responsibilities) of a real runner.

Six months and sixty pounds flew by.

            Thirty years later, the idea of not running terrified me. What if I could never run again? It was far more than the fear of inactivity or the aging process- it was the fear that there would be no escape-  no sublime catharsis- for me against the monumental pressures and petty indignities of my daily existence. I feared I would grab an Uzi and start looking for a McDonald's inside of two weeks.

            Other than my rather unnatural fascination with thrift store shopping, running is the only remotely Zen-like experience of my day. There is just something about a loop around White Rock Lake late on an October afternoon with the crisp air, the smells of fall in my nose, the leaves crackling beneath my feet, and the sun sneaking below the tree line which somehow majestically transforms me into a larger, more worthy, human being.

            What would happen when that went away? What other passions would I be deprived of? And how quickly? The softball which was now my left knee simply appeared out of the void. It frightened me in a way I was not prepared to be frightened. Is this a sore knee which it swollen or is this a queen of-diamonds kind of tumor? Remember, you’re getting to that age, a little voice was telling me.

 

NEXT TIME: “OM. Really?!?“

(c) (2013)