Amidst all of the stories being released around the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I was reminded of my own experience soon after that tragic day. This is not meant to be a commentary about the event—there have been plenty of those already. Instead, I wanted to relate a relevant story, which highlights the benefit yoga has in traumatic times.
Thirty days after 9/11 my husband and I flew to New York for an international meeting of a scientific institute we support. Naturally I was nervous to fly. But I took comfort in my yoga mat, which I slung over my shoulder and felt securely against my back. Arriving at LaGuardia with heightened security was quite startling. There were police and dogs and more than once I was asked to open my yoga bag.
The meeting was at the mostly empty Waldorf Astoria. Soon after unpacking, I researched potential workshops and found one in the Village called “How to Improve the Quality of Your Practice,” taught by Mark Whitwell. I had never had the opportunity to practice with Mark, but had certainly heard about him. I signed up online and got up early the next morning to go downtown.
When I exited the subway in the Village, I was immediately overcome by the astringent smell in the air and the presence of silt everywhere. On the mailboxes, benches, windowsills, street signs, there was a film of the debris, which I knew had been the remains of the planes and buildings. It is one thing to see images of the aftermath on television. It is quite another to experience the devastation. The fact that so much rubble remained thirty days after was extremely startling.
I arrived at the studio to find close to a hundred teachers in a very agitated state. I heard a louder than normal buzz in the room from nervous chatter and students grabbing woodblocks and straps and bolsters and trying to find a place for their mat. I wasn’t used to practicing with props but I grabbed a couple anyway, feeling agitated myself.
In strode the striking presence of Mark Whitwell. Without much explanation, he encouraged us to let go of the props and start breathing. He seemed oppressed by his inherited responsibility as a master teacher to help all of us deal with the situation at hand.
But his practice was precisely what every teacher in that room needed.
This workshop forever changed how I will view a yoga practice. It wasn’t about postures, or sequencing, or props, or alignment. It was very simple asanas, coming to our breath, child’s pose. There wasn’t any music or adjustments. There was crying, moving toward healing, and repetition of simple postures. And a lot of sitting.
Mark revealed to me the true purpose of yoga: connecting the mind to the breath, linking breath to movement in order to still the fluctuations of the mind.
Processing trauma is very difficult. It takes a focused mind to move out of a harmful situation into the promise of a calmer self. What I participated in that day was something to which I and the other hundred teachers could immediately relate.
But, what about the hundreds of people I passed on the street and in the metro on my way to the studio? They walked briskly, heads down, as if trying to bore their way to their destination. They were still paranoid and stressed, like I had felt when navigating through the airport the previous day.
Mark Whitwell’s workshop reminded me of the skill set that a steady yoga practice provides. It is grounding. It prepares you for battles that you can’t anticipate in your life. But when they arrive, you are much more fit to face them.
