Dr. Dawn M. Dalili
Have you ever gone through something challenging and thought to yourself, “I learned my lesson. I’ll never do that again”?
The problem with this line of thinking is that many of our most important, and most challenging, life lessons require repeats (and sometimes three- or four-peats). Each time we go through them, we get the lesson a little bit deeper.
And so it was with my yoga practice.
This particular time, it was the fall of 2009. The blistering heat of the Arizona summer was barely beginning to ease, and I was returning to the mat after a long hiatus. The door to the studio opened and out poured the heat, steam, and potent odor of fifty-plus sweaty bodies that took the previous class. That familiar, pungent smell did not diminish my excitement for being back on the mat or in a studio. Waving my hand in front of my face to clear a path through the humidity as I walked into the room, I found the back corner where I suspected I would have a little more space and the air might smell fresher. The room slowly filled around me, and I was afforded the luxury of neither space nor fresh air.
I hadn’t been in a studio for over three months, and I wasn’t sure what to expect from this class. The last time I was on a mat I felt strong, powerful, beautiful, magical even. On this day, I was excited, nervous, giddy, anxious, and … to be honest, I was also tired and achy. My body didn’t feel like my own.
After a few minutes, the teacher entered the room. The stereo was turned up; the lights were turned down and we started in child’s pose. My hips creaked as I shifted my weight back, but it felt good to lean into them.
As I pressed into the first Down Dog, I remember thinking, “Isn’t this a resting pose?!” My arms did not seem to have the strength required to support my body. My hips and hamstrings were too bound to let my legs participate in bearing the weight of this posture. My neck did not recall how to relax the tension ingrained in its fibers.
On this day, I was a beginner to the yoga practice—all over again.
The First Beginning
The first time I was new to yoga, I was almost ten years younger and my body was strong, even if my mind was a bit rigid and inflexible. I had entered the yoga studio reluctantly after a chiropractor suggested I stretch my hamstrings to prevent another back injury. Yoga was simply a means to an end. My objective was well defined and very specific. The goal was to improve my flexibility so that I could continue running.
I strongly identified as an athlete, and I was clear that I wasn’t interested in any of the “hippy dippy bullshit” that came with meditation, chanting, or a spiritual practice. Out of sheer obligation, I returned to the mat three times a week to stretch and sweat—no more.
Am I Better Than Yesterday?
From the outside, my practice was innocent, benign even. I didn’t levitate, nor did I contort my body in ways seen on magazine covers. I simply touched my toes without bending my knees. No one realized how I felt on the inside. At this point, I was still convinced that yoga, like all things in life, was about goals and objectives. Secretly thrilled by touching my toes, I gazed up to see if balloons were falling from the sky. They weren’t.
However, what followed changed my practice and turned my life upside down.
“Now you can work on extending your spine and the inward spiral of your thighs.” The instruction was simple: take the length, space, and experience you have created and create more length, more space, and a deeper experience.
For me, running had always been about two variables—speed and distance. I found comfort in activities with measurable outcomes. Daily, I looked at my run times to assess my progress. This was how I answered the question: “Am I better today than I was yesterday?” Days on which the answer was no were gloomy and filled with reproach.
When I was encouraged to explore spaciousness and length, it struck me as being vague. “I can’t measure that!”
My world opened up. And my world fell apart.
My teacher’s guidance opened doors that I instinctively knew led to more doors and, behind them, even more doors. She showed me that yoga was an ever-expanding path. The further along this path I traveled, the more of a beginner I would become. While balloons did not fall around me, on the inside there were fireworks! I began to question my reliance on measurable outcomes as an indication of my worth and the determinant of my well-being.
That night, I threw away my running shoes.
Not a Member of the Spandex Club
I exchanged my gym membership for a membership at a yoga studio and experimented with classes that incorporated chanting and meditation, but I was still attached to my image of what it means to be a yogi. That image was long, lean, flexible, and smokin’ hot in spandex.
My body was bulky from twenty years of playing soccer and running. I couldn’t do handstands and other arm balances, and I felt terribly self-conscious in spandex. I would sit before class and look around the room wondering if I would ever do the things I saw others doing. I wondered if I would ever look the way the others looked. I bought into this idea that I had to eat a certain way and dress a certain way to be yoga.
I was convinced that yogis had their own exclusive club, and I was not a card-carrying member. I could pay to take classes, but I was simply an outsider looking in.
This belief changed slowly as I played around with smaller, quieter classes that naturally encouraged a more introspective and personal experience. I remember the day a teacher, whose class I was new to, whispered in my ear, “Consider that how it feels might matter more than how it looks.” He often suggested that we do short sequences with our eyes closed, not to challenge our balance, but to go inward and feel the postures. When I closed my eyes, I felt a serenity I could not attain when watching and comparing myself to others.
Voted Off the Island?
I lived in San Francisco, so I had regular access to some of the world’s most famous yoga teachers. Of course, their wisdom influenced my progress. But my three greatest teachers were the situations that forced me to begin my yoga practice again: a bike crash that cracked a rib and kept me from practicing for six weeks; a skiing accident that crushed my knee, required multiple surgeries to repair, and prevented me from walking for over three months; and pregnancy, a journey that changed everything about my body and my relationship to it.
Over the years of practicing, I was becoming more long, lean, and flexible like the others who took classes. Without noticing, I had become deeply attached to what my body could do. But these wise teachers forced me to see the ways I defined myself. When injured, I would panic. Will I get fat? Will I lose my membership in this club?
Each of these situations forced me to question all that I assumed about myself and yoga. Injuries and life changes moved me one step further from goals and measurable outcomes that marked my worth and one step closer to presence and acceptance of what is.
Yoga slowly became a platform for me to learn about me. My practice led to questions such as Who am I? What do I feel? and What do I want out of life?
Giving Birth to All That I Am
During pregnancy, I started to feel truly feminine for the first time in my life.
Growing up, I was all tomboy. I played soccer and climbed trees; if I wasn’t covered in dirt, I wasn’t happy. I felt grossly out of place in junior high when other girls gravitated toward cheer and dance and I still wanted to chase a ball. I didn’t want to wear skirts, dresses, or makeup, but the pain of not fitting in was so palpable that my belly constricts as I type these lines today. It wasn’t until I found yoga at the age of 21 that I began to explore a more feminine side of myself.
When I got pregnant, it had been more than ten years since I had last purged following a meal, and what I discovered is that I still viewed my body as something to shape and control. Having struggled with disordered eating and an eating disorder in my teens, my softness and curves were not a thing I welcomed. Just like when I got injured, when I found out I was pregnant one of my first fears was of getting fat.
And then one day, I felt him move. I felt the life within me, and I discovered my magic. I saw my body as a vessel that creates and supports life, and I let go of all my anxiety about weight and shape. I continued to practice yoga, but with an ease and softness I had not experienced before. My yoga practice became an exploration. It was for us, not me.
In forty-one weeks, I had gained roughly 55 pounds, and I’ve never felt more comfortable with food or my body. I felt confident. Strong. Womanly. Graceful.
My birth experience was equally affirming. My son was born at home with the help of my midwife. My mother was there to offer her support. After six intense hours, I held my son and, at the age of 30, learned the meaning of the word love.
I embraced the baby moon, as my midwife calls it, the four-week period of recuperation and bonding following the birth. I found humor in the weird things my body did, like spray milk when I was in the shower. I looked at the loose skin around my belly and considered it a comfy place for my son to lay his head during a nap. I remained caught up in the magic of the process. I was in awe over what my body had done and what it was doing to support and nourish this precious person. No amount of fatigue could rob me of the pride or joy that coursed through my system.
At the end of the baby moon, I wanted back on the mat. And slowly, like catching a cold, I began to have thoughts about wanting my pre-baby body back.
The Horror
Even though I didn’t think it was possible, the yoga room on that crowded day got even hotter. My body warmed up, and the achiness faded. Perspiration collected at my brow. The salutations began to feel familiar, like catching up with a friend I hadn’t seen in years. I slowly began to relax into the postures.
Twice my instructor gestured toward my belly and suggested I engage my core. “Isn’t it engaged?” I thought as I glanced down at my navel, which stubbornly refused to respond to my greatest efforts to pull it up and in. “Why doesn’t it move? Will it ever move?”
The mind chatter was off to the races, and I began to feel very self-conscious. “Should I be in spandex? … Wow, look at her, she’s beautiful … Will my body ever do that again?”
About thirty minutes into the practice, as sweat dripped from my hairline and brow, my breasts began to leak. My shirt was soon damp but not with sweat. My milk was letting down.
Shame. Humiliation. Horror. If I could’ve wrapped myself in my mat and disappeared, I would have.
Beginning Again
Every time I held Everett in my arms, I remembered my magic. I felt spiritual in a different way than I had ever experienced, even in yoga and meditation. When I looked at my son, my connection to life could not be questioned.
In spite of that deep connection, I walked into the yoga studio and felt self-conscious, insecure, and fat. I completely lost touch with what, just moments earlier, felt beautiful, magical, and connected to the source of life. I couldn’t complete classes without taking breaks. I couldn’t do handstands or gracefully jump forward after Down Dog. My breasts, triple their pre-pregnancy size, got in the way of everything. I felt awkward and felt self-conscious about looking lazy.
But I was lucky. This was not my first experience as a beginner on the yoga mat. The first time, my body was strong and my mind was rigid. This time, my body was softer and so was my mind. I had the gift of ten years of slow, steady learning that culminated with my first experience of love.
Yoga taught me to look inward. I recalled the whisper, “Consider that how it feels might matter more than how it looks.”
Yoga taught me to notice my judgments and get curious. In my first teacher training, I learned to fall back frequently on the phrase “Isn’t that interesting!” Through yoga, I learned to stay present when tempted to distract myself from an uncomfortable experience. Yoga taught me to allow, especially when forcing proved to be so ineffective. Beginning again and again taught me that I am far more resilient than I had given myself credit for being.
Somewhere along the way, I had learned that I could only love another as much as I loved myself. Accepting this as truth, I realized that I must love myself as much as I love Everett.
Stepping back from the shame, stepping back from how I thought it looked to others, and stepping back from all the shoulds and shouldn’ts with which I had been berating myself, I decided to extend myself the gift of love.
The next time I walked into the studio, I reassured myself that all those people doing handstands before class were more likely to be looking in the mirror at themselves than at me, so what did it matter if I modified every posture to suit myself? When I felt tired or discouraged, I pictured Everett and felt my connectedness to something much higher than I could ever comprehend. I traded nitpicking for embracing the new shape of my body.
My Yoga Mat, Myself
Did practicing yoga heal my body image or did my eventual acceptance of my body save my yoga practice? I may never know the answer to that question. What I do know is that yoga and my relationship with my body are intimately intertwined. My yoga mat is a safe place for me to be me; and at one time, it was the only place that felt safe for me to explore my relationship with my body and self. As I got comfortable with revealing myself on the mat, I was gradually able to extend my authenticity outward. My yoga practice has become where I discover my truth.
And that truth is not always beautiful. Sometimes, I get on the mat and find anger, frustration, sadness, and judgment. Other times, I find spaciousness, relaxation, and peace.
Yoga has opened a dialogue with my body. In these conversations, my body has taught me that no matter how hard I push, it will push back harder, giving me whatever reminder I need to listen to its needs, not what my mind thinks it needs. It is infinitely more efficient to ease up on the reins. My body has taught me that I will never be perfect, but it is always interesting to explore my beliefs around perfection.
Rx: Yoga
I have taken these lessons from the mat to heart, and I now apply them through the lens of being a naturopathic physician. I became a naturopath because I deeply resonated with the idea of practicing medicine that honored body, mind, and spirit. But my education left me with a deep understanding of body and little of mind and spirit. Fortunately, my mat has taught me the rest.
Herbs, supplements, a healthy diet, exercise, and well-placed acupuncture needles are useful in helping a body to heal, but they pale in comparison to time, patience, compassion, and acceptance. One’s willingness to go inside, listen, and respond to the feedback a body provides is not just the key to a meaningful yoga practice; it is the key to a meaningful life.
Everett is now four, and since returning to the mat after pregnancy, I have had the opportunity to begin again a few more times. I have dropped my resistance to the process, recognizing that these great challenges are the doorway to life’s greatest gifts.
My lessons on the mat, my lessons as a mother—and even more so, my lessons with starting over again and again—give me a unique depth of compassion as a doctor and mentor. My clients are frequently startled when I say, “That’s great!” after they’ve come in telling me they’ve fallen off the wagon in one way or another. They are startled because they can see that I mean it. And it really is great! It is great because they showed up again. It is great because they are blessed with the opportunity to be a beginner again and to experience beginning with a newly informed perspective. It is great because they’ve learned something about how they face challenges.
I would never have been able to walk someone safely through their own learning process if it hadn’t been for my own struggles with beginning again.
Dawn M. Dalili, ND, is a naturopathic physician licensed in the state of Arizona. She lives in northwest Florida with her son, where she teaches yoga and serves as a consultant on natural health and wellness. Dawn believes that health is often a reflection of a deeper sense of self, and she approaches health and wellness through the doorways of body image and self-worth. www.dawndalili.com. Author photo by Sherri Butler Photography.