By Kareen Zebroff

Mama, nearly 89, is going under the knife. For "quality of life", the empathetic admitting nurse says. "That’s what this hip-operation is all about - it’s not about walking, anymore".

Although there is risk, her children agree. Mama has been crying out in agony with every move in or out of her wheelchair, and each time it rolls over a crack in the pavement. In between these cruel jabs she dozes, but when we softly call her name, she comes to with a smile and says, "I’ve been in another world - drifting in and out". Momentarily, I envy her being able to do that so easily.

Mama introduced me to yoga 37 years ago, for its calming, meditative aspects during her menopause and my new-mother blues. In a tough life filled with extraordinary courage, energy, discipline and hard work, it is one of her proudest achievements. But, with the end so clearly in sight, she worries now about having been too strict with her children. I tell her that we’ve long since forgiven her and remind her over and over again of her great generosity of heart. Mama always sighs in relief then. She suffers from dementia, but she still comes out with witty repartee at unexpected moments.

"I’m going to give God a piece of my mind, when I get to see Him", she says with rare passion about some perceived injustice or other, "because sometimes He just doesn’t show much common-sense!" We laugh out loud together at her presumption, but also with the sure knowledge of her being forgiven for it. "Laughter is jogging for the intestines", Mama quotes me. "It’s where most of our serotonin lives". Now, how on earth did she remember that when even my name has become a mystery to her?

She started the practice of yoga at age 52, and it slowly began to soften my hitherto fierce Mama eventually giving her the tolerance and insight she previously lacked. Mama had been labeled difficult most of her life, as had so many European and British women of a generation that lived with the fore and aftermath of two World Wars. What would be quite an understandable depression nowadays was anathema to these obdurate, remarkable women and was considered by them a mental illness. To survive the danger, deprivation, furore, and destruction, as they had had to do, called for coping strategies that later on were not always pleasant for those around them in peaceful times. Yet, she became a sweetie.

It was the practice of yoga asanas, followed by meditation that gave both Mama and me the then unusual permission, time, and valid excuse to tune out from the external world, and tune in to a place where the source of all our dis-ease lay, inside. Not to go there and snap off offending branches of our unacceptable selves, nor to dig up the roots of our own evil, but to be accepting of and gentle with our own humanity. St. Augustine said, "This is the very perfection of a man; to find out his own imperfections". To Mama, often driven and hyper, it gave urgently needed rest and relaxation and the altered-state contentment and non-judgment that came with it. To me, young, isolated and over-extended in a small northern community, yoga appealed for its very common-sensical aspects and its eminently practical intelligence. As a busy mother of three young children, I required for my survival the workability and multi-tasking of yoga’s tenets; the sheer joy of smiling myself into a delightful stretch through breath, all the while not only working without obvious effort on my unhappy mind, but also yoking my soul with seeming ease to the light of universal spirit - that was true bliss. My time. And such a relief, a life-saver, in every sense of the word.

By far the most important gift yoga gave me, was balance. It helped me gain control and feel in sync with my self. It gave me hope again, in my microcosmic topsy-turvy world where a badly-needed washing machine had to wait till the car was paid off in three years. Pranayama (breath-control) literally gave me breathing-space from the smothering duties and overwhelming expectations of others, and connected me with the macrocosm where my true life resides. Strengthened by my yoga practice and the esoteric reading to which it led, I became empowered to take care of myself, my family and my community.

Dr. Hans Selye, the Father of Stress, says that for an inherently selfish organism to survive from birth, it is impossible to love one’s neighbour as oneself. The very attempt to do so increases one’s stress levels greatly. What we can do for our neighbour, he stipulates, is to be of service to him, instead. Reading the yoga masters helped me come to the realization, that my first responsibility was to love, appreciate and accept myself. For, if we enable others to encircle us like parasitic super-crescent vines on our all-supportive tree-trunk we not only allow our own eventual demise, but also that of the many vines that need our strength.

Nourishment, the gurus say, must of necessity include soul-food for the spirit as well as for the body - that cosmic love we access when we meditate. Not only do we need to be nurtured and validated in our lives, but we also need to nurture and love. That is our very raison d’etre. It explains, for example, the seemingly over-done amount of care and affection some people shower on their pets. When we do not realize this need to give to others and only nurture ourselves, we whither inside without knowing why.

The daily food of the yogi is so simple, basic and moderate, that it becomes profound. Man is not a body containing a mind, but a mind operating through a body. This mind is in every one of our cells. Wholiness of body, mind and spirit come from the integration of many essential elements: good diet, nutrition and water; exercise and hygiene; work and vocation; rest and relaxation; communication and self-awareness; play and humour; family and friends; a supportive environment; community and service; thankfulness and prayer; and, the acceptance of, and attunement to, spirit. In other words, balance and proportion in all things.

Following a comprehensive nutrition regime for adequate intake of all the food-groups is just common-sense for living in this stressful and exhausting information age. What we often forget, however, is to feed the mind with all the metaphorical "protein, fatty acids, good oils, vitamins, minerals, clean water and pure air," that it needs just as much as the body does. We humans require infinitely more solid food-for-thought than the empty, junk-food ingredients of mindless mass entertainment.

We are not what we eat. We are what we assimilate, whether that be from the digestive tract to the cell, or from in-spiring (into the spirit) information to the mind. No, we are, as the Buddha said many centuries ago, "what we think." Alas, these days we are also what we observe, and hear subliminally and repetitively in the brain-washing, groove-in-the-brain-making thousands of messages from TV, movies, and advertising — most of them dealing with violence, corruption, banality and the temptation to ‘sin’ in various shareholder-enriching ways. What kind of people does that make us in the end? Would one put such horrible ‘food’ into one’s body, never mind one’s spirit?

My own wise Mama’s ‘diet’ consisted of continuing to eat all her life in the moderate, whole-grain way of war-time when people were much healthier than they are now, and of the study of esoteric literature. As a result, she has long ago come to believe in reincarnation and has not been afraid of death since. Nearly every week now, as she slowly regresses further back into child-hood, she asks me why God won’t let her die. As she cannot remember anyone else pre-deceased who loved her, I just remind her to look out for her beloved, long-departed chow Pasha when the time comes and let him lead her to God. Instantly relieved, she looks at me with a brilliant smile then -- vulnerable and trusting. "God is not a person, is He?", she asks. "No," I say and kiss my fourth child tenderly on the temple. "He is love and light, remember? Just follow the light, little Mama."

Kareen Zebroff’s classic best-seller "The ABC of Yoga" is available under the Foulsham title of "A Gentle Introduction to Yoga."




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