1. The art of learning

"The art of teaching is tolerance. Humbleness is the art of learning.” –B.K.S. Iyengar

In Los Angeles, Jen held an extremely uncomfortable position. Her left leg was bent, her right leg extended in a deep lunge. Her left arm twisted under her, reaching down and across her back where it hooked tentatively into her right hand like a grasping, sweaty meat hook.

"Try to slow your heart rate," said the voice from across the room, steady and trustworthy like a TV news weather reporter. “Don’t look at the floor. Look at the wall.”

Jen's eyes stared straight ahead at the wall, which, when she faced this direction, happened to be about three feet from her face. Sweat dripped from the braided tips of her hair down to the floor. The wall was glistening wet with condensation.

"Remember," said the calm, even voice. “One benefit of yoga is to suppress your impulse to panic under stress."

The voice grew silent. All Jen could hear was the heavy rasping sound of loud breaths through the nose, growing louder, faster, and more urgent as the minutes passed.

A man somewhere behind Jen released a loud groan of pleasure that started as a grunt, built to a kind of high-pitched yawn, and then ended with a throaty gurgle. It was a funny sound that reminded Jen of something she’d heard on a nature show, like a walrus mating or something. Jen found it incredibly funny but in a way that pissed her off. She didn’t laugh, nor did anyone else. After all, she was about to die at any second. In the sweat-saturated air, with her arms twisted tightly around her ribcage, she could barely draw enough air to fill her lungs. This wasn’t funny; this was an emergency. She shot silent death threats at the man.

"We're going to hold this pose for a long time," the calm voice said. "And your muscles are going to get tired. And your mind is going to send you signals that say 'danger!' And you're going to feel like if you must hold this pose one minute longer, you will surely die."

How long had it been? Five minutes? Ten? Just as the teacher predicted, Jen suddenly felt a frightening wave of danger chemicals escaping from her lymph nodes. They were gaining in numbers, joining forces, mobilizing a trigger-happy hunting party in her circulatory system. She tried to hold them off, but they were too powerful; she couldn’t stand up to them much longer. Her legs began to shake violently, and she breathed as deep and long as she could to steady them.

"Your challenge is to work past that panic. If you can hold this pose for three minutes, you can confront any obstacle you face in life. Think about your breath and try to work past the fatigue in your body."

Three minutes? It hadn’t even been three minutes yet? Jen’s legs buckled indignantly and for a moment she was sure she was falling. She was about to fall face-down onto her mat, which would provide minimal cushioning against the wooden floor below. She would break her nose for sure. The only solution would be to release her clasped hands, lower them to the floor, and break her fall; she decided, however, that this would be too embarrassing and would make her look weak. Instead, with a little squirm, she shifted her weight back a bit until she regained her balance.

Getting bored and annoyed now, she shifted her shoulder back and forth, and stared at a spot on the floor near her foot. She checked out her dark burgundy pedicure. She had just gotten it done yesterday, but it was already chipped on her big toe. Like everything in her life--damaged, she thought, sniffing indignantly to herself. She began to list the damaged items in her head: my marriage. I mean my ex-marriage. She couldn’t think of any other damaged items; everything else in her life was going okay. She started crying silently. Her arms and legs were aching furiously. She had never felt more miserable in her life.

"Jennifer," the voice interrupted her thoughts. "Don't look behind you."

Jen looked up. She had forgotten the instructor would know her name, even though this sort of recognition happened to her every day. This teacher was a substitute, and Jen had never met her before. Becky usually taught this class, but she was attending a Groundbreakers self-actualization workshop. She didn’t want any of her yoga teacher friends to know about it. She had told Jen that if anyone asked, she was at a transcendental meditation retreat in Pasadena.

"Look across or forward, never back," the voice said.

Jen moved her head upward to a straight position. Condensed moisture dripped down the wall like slimy tears. She stared hard at the wall and breathed.

After class, Jen walked from the yoga studio to the small market across the street to buy an expensive bottle of sparkling water. She knew from experience that her favorite brand was kept, not with the other waters, but in a separate Italian specialty section, in between bags of fancy-looking dried pasta and some little anise cookies.

As she waited in line with her glass bottle, her eyes strayed from the impulse items—Dutch and German chocolates and licorice candies—to the magazine rack, which had a photo of her soon-to-be ex-husband on the cover. He looked happy, smiling, wearing a stylish suit. She knew the picture was from several years ago because he had given that suit to charity last Christmas. Printed above his picture in large, white letters it said, “His new flame.” And below that, in smaller letters, was written the question, “Is it love?”

At the bottom of the magazine cover was a tiny photograph of Jen. Her head was lowered, her arm was across her face, and she was wearing a sweat suit and her Dodgers baseball cap. She was pretty sure the picture had been taken outside her gynecologist’s office three weeks ago. “Jen—devastated,” it said below the photo.

Jen was furious. She felt betrayed. After all, now that she thought about it, this store never had a magazine rack before. That was the precise reason she had started coming here. How was she supposed to go about her shopping like a normal person when she knew she might be confronted—ambushed, sabotaged—with intimate and incorrect details of her personal life at any moment?

Jen looked back at the magazine cover, wondering despite herself who this theoretical “flame” was. That must be inside of the magazine. She wanted to pick it up and flip through it, but the man in line behind her was already staring at her in recognition and she didn’t want to look any more pathetic. She would have to make Becky buy the magazine later. And then make Becky read it and tell her what it said.

She took her anger out on the cashier, glaring at her and refusing to answer any questions verbally. Asked if she needed a bag, Jen huffed, rolled her eyes, and grabbed the bottle out of the young girl’s hands. She stormed out of the store, almost knocking over a slow old lady as she tried unsuccessfully to pass her on the right.

Becky returned home around seven that evening, looking exhausted and carrying a large canvas school bag. Jen was sitting in the high-ceilinged front living room, waiting for her.

“Who is Bradley dating?” Jen demanded.

Becky sighed heavily and heaved the bag off her shoulder and onto the floor, where it landed with a disconcertingly loud thump, as though it were filled with books, but Jen knew it must be filled with thick packets of handouts. With her trim, muscular body draped in a long tunic over leggings and sandals, Becky looked like a yoga teacher even in the most un-yogic of situations, like all the times Jen had seen her snorting lines of coke at a party or doing Jen’s taxes with a printing calculator.

“Where did you hear that?” Becky asked her.

Jen told her about the magazine. “Well of course I couldn’t look in it, and I couldn’t buy it,” Jen said. “I thought you might have read something about it.”

“You know I don’t read that stuff anymore,” said Becky, her calm yoga-teacher voice taking on a slight edge.

In addition to being a yoga teacher and Jen’s personal assistant, Becky was also an aspiring actress. She ran off to auditions in between her classes every week, but she hadn’t had any real luck, just a few commercials and bit parts on instructional yoga DVDs. Reading about the personal lives of famous actors made her jealous in a compulsive sort of way. She used to collect piles of celebrity magazines, often containing insulting stories about Jen and her ex, and read them secretly in her bedroom. Becky’s Groundbreakers self-actualization coach had recommended she purge herself of this habit. Now whenever she got the urge to fixate on celebrities, Becky wrote self-affirming mantras in her notebook instead. Jen had found the notebook Becky’s bedroom a few weeks ago while she was looking for a pair of jeans. She opened it to a page that read, “I do not need to be famous to be an important and worthwhile person,” written fifteen times over in Becky’s neat, round handwriting. Under the lines were a number of vaguely Sanskrit-looking symbols that Jen did not recognize.

Jen told Becky about the magazine. “He must be seeing somebody,” Jen said. “I need you to go buy the magazine and find out who it is.”

Becky, who had not left the entranceway since she had gotten home, turned on her heels and left again. She shut the door calmly but slammed it a little bit at the end, after it had already closed.

“Thanks,” Jen yelled after her.

Forty-five minutes later (there were no stores near Jen’s house), Becky had finally returned with the magazine and was sitting across from Jen on the stylish eggplant-colored couches in the front living room. Jen watched anxiously as Becky flipped first forward and then backward through the magazine, looking for the article. Finally she stopped, opened the magazine wider, and stared silently at it for a moment.

“Who is it?” Jen asked impatiently.

“Wait, I’m making sure,” Becky said. “It doesn’t say it right away, just hints at it. But there’s a picture…” Becky’s voice trailed off as she read to herself. “Okay, here’s where they say it.”

Becky read the sentence aloud. It reported that Jen’s ex-husband Bradley had been seen at an exclusive Hollywood party vigorously making out with…and out of Becky’s mouth spilled the name of a very famous, very young actress, five years younger than Jen and fifteen years younger than her ex.

“Ew!” Jen squealed like a teenager. She felt disgusted. She knew Bradley would start dating quickly, and had been bracing for it, but had hoped he would pick someone older, more serious, and a little less famous.

Becky closed the magazine decisively and slipped it into her bag full of self-actualization handouts. Jen wondered if Becky would read the rest of it later in her bedroom.

“Well,” said Becky, “you know now, if it’s even true. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Hopefully this will help you move on.”

“I’m not going to move on,” Jen said, furiously. “I’m going to get even with him.” The thought, and the angry strength of her own voice as she articulated it, made Jen feel a tiny bit better.

“Oh, you’re not,” Becky said disapprovingly. “There’s nothing you can do to get even with him.” Becky paused for a moment, and Jen could see her eyeing her bag of handouts. “Jen, I know you don’t want me to talk to you about this Groundbreakers stuff, but there’s a lesson in here that I think could really help you.”

“I’m going to sleep with one of his friends,” Jen said.

“No,” said Becky. “That’s not what you really want to do.” Becky had been learning a lot about differentiating one’s own true desires from what her course called “mind-havoc.” She had spoken to Jen about this several times, and Jen had caught hints of it sneaking into her yoga lessons as well. “Acting out in a self-destructive way is only going to make you feel worse.”

“Okay, it might,” Jen admitted. “But I’m going to do it anyway so you might as well help me.”

Jen knew Becky was a sucker for this kind of reasoning, because it was the truth, and Becky, for all her new-age training, was ultimately an extreme pragmatist.

Chapter 2:
http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2008/03/2-few-have-strength-of-reason-to.html