Sun salute with bedpan
The hardest and the best bit for me about yoga is when you are doing something difficult, when it feels like your bones just cannot move the way you’re asking them to. It’s uncomfortable and your initial reaction is No—enough; I can’t do this. But then you notice the discomfort, acknowledge it, breathe in, and then, as you breathe out, move past it. You ask an open question of your body, and sometimes it responds in surprising ways. Things unfold, settle, stretch. And you realise that the thing you had thought was unimaginably difficult … well, you’ve already been doing it for thirty seconds. The answer was there all along, within you; you just needed to ask the right question, and to listen patiently for an answer. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it is good. It restores my faith, it reminds me that sometimes my body knows more than my mind.
When I’d still been in the trauma ward, I had been desperate to move my creaky body, all gummed up with bruises. What I really wanted to do was yoga—some kind of yoga that was possible with my broken bones and wounds.
I left a long, garbled phone message for a woman in the physiotherapy unit at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, where I had attended a yoga session only a few weeks before we left Sydney. This wasn’t the usual yoga environment, with candles, pictures of lotus flowers or other hippy accoutrements. There was hospital carpet, a sensible colour scheme; it was institutional, rather than inspirational, décor. I hadn’t been to this class before and didn’t know anyone, so I shrank into myself a little. The room was packed with very pregnant women, all taking up more space than they were used to, and with no non-pregnant people to make room for them. So entrenched was I in solitary mode that it took me a moment to realise I did in fact know someone—an old friend—and that she was waving at me.
‘Hello, Renee!’
‘Hannah!’
We hugged, making an awkward A shape over two big bellies. ‘When are you due?’ she asked.
‘February! How about you?’
‘January! And you know Karin is pregnant too? Due in December.’
‘No, I didn’t know. That is hilarious! Three in three months. Are they still in Paris?’
‘Yes, having a little French bébé! Um, we’d better …’ The instructor, an older woman with a loose grey bun, had come in and class was about to start, so we found our places and smiled at one another in a ‘Let’s talk later’ way.
•
The RPA instructor didn’t get back to me, so it wasn’t until I’d been released from rehab that I ventured out to a yoga class. I’d spoken on the phone with the owner of the studio, as I needed to deal with someone who understood the backstory. Penny and my sister came with me, flanking me as I, with my crutches, worked my creaky way up the long staircase to the yoga studio.
•
Yoga was my answer to my official rehabilitation plan, which mostly involved taking Panadeine Forte and screaming into a pillow while the physio put his body weight into forcing my knee to bend. Afterwards, he would measure the new degree of flexion with a giant Perspex protractor as though I were a Year Nine maths project.
‘Why does it hurt this much?’ I asked him.
‘Your knee was healing straight for three weeks, so we need to break down a whole lot of scar tissue in the joint.’
‘And when you say “break down”, do you mean tear it? Because that’s what it feels like.’
‘I guess so. But it has to happen if you want your full range of motion again.’
He was a nice enough bloke, but I hated him for his casualness, for the fact that he didn’t take my pain personally, and that he was more concerned with refining the details of the TAC paperwork than with my suffering.
•
Before the yoga class began, the teacher approached us, noticing that we were new.
‘Hi, I’m Jess,’ she smiled.
I explained that I’d called in advance to say that my knee could only bend so far, that I was also recovering from a C-section, that our baby died. It is hard to remember that first conversation with Jess without the overlay of all my subsequent conversations with her, and all her gently worded yoga instructions. But I know that she contained her shock, that she didn’t do the ‘tragedy recoil’ that so many people unconsciously do. And after offering her condolences, she smiled—not to trivialise what I’d just told her, but as pure kindness; as a reassurance that she would watch out for me, that this was a good place to be, even if I came here broken.
At home, in our new bedroom, I laid out my yoga mat, and stood, feet hip-width apart. I flexed my toes, spread them as wide as I could and, from little toe to big, re-placed them on the mat. Breathe in, hands to heart; then, breathing out, I swung my right leg back behind me, making a broad-based triangle. No, nothing was really triangle-shaped. I was rusty and bruised, still regaining sovereignty over the remodelled territory of my body. My body facing to the side, I raised my arms to stretch out my hands to either horizon, and turned my head to face my left hand. I breathed in; and then, with the out-breath, I bent that once-broken knee as close to ninety degrees as I could, and focused my gaze along the middle finger of my left hand, like a magic laser beam. Warrior Two. Rima and my mum stood in the doorway and cheered. My gaze took a direct line, into space and into the path of a hurtling silver four-wheel drive. Bring it on, universe—if you want to mess with me, I will take you on.