[I have included quotes from memory of Emmy Cleaves and Rajashree Chaudhury throughout this entry.]
Your time is now.
Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the 5th annual Women’s Retreat in Texas with around 200 other women. It was an amazing event for a number of reasons, but the teachers truly made the weekend stand out.
Keep happy memories alive, let go of sad ones.
Emmy Cleaves is a Holocaust survivor in her mid-80s. I had read about the tragedies in her early life and was interested in her story and relationship to yoga. But during the course of the retreat, she never once uttered the world “Holocaust” or made reference to those events. She only made a single, passing remark about “tension headaches,” and the relief she got from Bikram yoga.
As you might expect, Emmy prides herself on being tough. When you learn of her story, Emmy’s dictum—“life is hard, get over it”—takes on a profound significance. She is old school, direct, and teaches you to practice yoga and life with as few crutches as possible. In other words, take ownership and responsibility.
Don’t feel guilty. You deserve to be happy.
Emmy’s fellow teacher, Rajashree Chaudhury, is the co-creator of the Bikram Yoga Teacher Training program. She is younger than Emmy but carries the wisdom of many lives. Her story is one of adaptation. She was married by arrangement and then had to integrate her old-world customs into her newfound California lifestyle.
You can feel Rajashree’s warmth as she teaches and lectures. She talks about the love she feels for her children, as well as the joys and challenges of being a businesswoman.
Sometimes you need to inspire yourself.
Discern the difference between pain and challenges.
The intermingling of these two different perspectives was fascinating. Some of Raja and Emmy’s core principles were the same. For example, they both preached the importance of working diligently towards your own happiness. But on the means to arriving at that end, they diverged.
Emmy’s past informed her realist perspective on life. Every day, every decision, and every pose is a challenge and you must stay focused through it all. Yoga is a key element to that constant vigilance.
Thanks to her much deserved success, Rajashree is much more of an optimist. Us women drew inspiration from her positive attitude and hopeful words. For her, yoga keeps one balanced mentally and physically and on the right track.
Yoga without mindfulness is just calisthenics.
Much of the insight they imparted would apply to any practice. But in this context, considering their life stories, the women’s retreat reinforced my choice to move towards my own happiness. These two women have experienced a great deal in their life. You can tell this just by listening to their wisdom and witnessing their health, personalities, and attitudes. Yoga has made them very solid in their belief that a physically and mentally challenging daily practice prepares you for the very real demands of life.
