The yoga classes were held in the attic of the Harvest. The showroom of the Harvest was dusty, so you might expect the attic to be a nightmare, but local yoga teacher and longtime Hoboken resident (she lived uptown with the artists and yogis near the YMCA) Yolanthe Smit had co-opted this space and made it lovely. She cleaned it assiduously. She draped beautiful Indian scarves and tapestries, she burned incense (only before class so it would scent the room but not interfere with our yogic breathing exercises), she changed the lighting, and she created an altar. She even played CDs of bamboo flutes and birds chirping as we practiced. It was a sanctuary.
I attended Yolanthe’s classes three times a week. Her classes were called Kripalu (meaning “compassion”) yoga, named for Swami Kripalu, the guru of Amrit Desai, who founded the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Massachusetts.
Amrit was called at that time Gurudev, meaning “beloved guru,” and he was ever present in the class — on a poster demonstrating the yoga postures and on the altar at the front of the room.
I loved everything about the class. I loved the smell of the sati incense. I loved the music and the altar and the pictures of Gurudev. I loved that the class began and ended with chanting “om,” and that we shared with the group about our day. I loved that we were led to ignite and follow our own body’s guidance and wisdom as we practiced. I loved that we were invited to “sound” and emote. To sound basically means to moan, either from the blissful pain of the stretch or from the release of tension or emotion that a posture might trigger.
I even loved my walk to class — I felt like an insider, a member of a secret society as I marched straight through the store, past the tofu pies and organic black bean corn chips, and headed for the back stairs. I’d nod to Guy, keeper of the stairs, as he polished his counter or mindfully flipped a Sunshine burger. I felt like part of something, or even part of a revolution, attending secret insurgent meetings in the attic of the Harvest. In a way I was an insurgent, at least in the minds of my parents and my Georgetown business school friends.
Yolanthe’s class captured my spirit in a way no other class had. I loved Oskar’s Sivananda yoga class at Georgetown. I loved Janice’s Iyengar yoga class at the gym in Jersey City. But Kripalu yoga gave me permission to be me. It invited the whole me to show up, and really, I’d say that was the first time that the whole me had been invited anywhere.
A typical class in the attic of the Harvest started with all of us sitting cross-legged in a circle and the following introduction, called a “centering,” by Yolanthe:
“Close your eyes and tune in to your body. (pause) Notice your buttocks on the ground. (pause) Notice your clothes resting on your body. (pause) Feel your belly rise and fall with each breath. (longer pause) Notice when your mind wanders away to think about lunch, work, or your to-do list, and bring it back to this room — to feeling your body, your belly rising and falling with each breath. (long pause) For today, for the next hour and fifteen minutes, give yourself permission to be fully here in this class with nothing else to do and nowhere else to be — nothing else to accomplish but paying attention to your body and hearing its messages, for the next hour and fifteen minutes. (long pause) Ahohhhmmmm. Ahohhhmmmm. Ahohhhmmmm.”
Sometimes I’d hear the whole intro. Mostly my mind wandered off, uncontrollably reviewing my morning or planning my afternoon, and I’d hear Yolanthe’s voice faintly in the background. But I loved the idea and the intention.
Occasionally, I actually succeeded in giving myself permission to be only there. Sometimes I could set aside planning and problem solving until after class. No one had ever asked me to do this before. And no one had ever asked me to listen to what my body was telling me.
At first I tackled this project with the same diligence and anxiety I had used throughout school. I was obsessed. “I’m listening to my body… I’m listening to my body…Oh, I think I feel the stirrings of a pee! Better go.” I’d get up, tiptoe around everyone in their frog postures, and head to the bathroom to pee. Three drops.
Later, I’d realize, “Oh, wait a minute, I think I might be cold! Better put on my sweater.”
I wanted an A in this assignment. Plus, I was asking my body, for the first time, what it wanted, and like a six-year-old who’s allowed to chew gum for the first time, my body wanted a mouthful.
And my body and I, as new acquaintances, needed some time to get to know each other. I had not had this type of consciousness before. In fact, I’d say that this lack of body consciousness had contributed to my colitis. If I was stiff, I didn’t think to stretch. If I was stressed, I didn’t think to take a few deep breaths. I just ignored all that. And if my head hurt from studying or if my stomach hurt during a debate tournament, I didn’t think to take a break; I just popped some Tylenol or downed some Pepto and kept going.
I became quite fond of Yogi Amrit Desai as he sat blissfully framed on the altar and in his poster demonstrating janu-shirshasana (head-to-knee forward bend). He had created Kripalu yoga, and to me he represented this new sanctuary I had found.
Interestingly, I believe that fate protected me from meeting famous yogis back in those days. I was a sadhak, a seeker, and I was young, idealistic, and impressionable. Fate kept me from meeting any big-name charismatic spiritual teachers. I’d attend a retreat or visit a center and miss the guru or a visiting swami by a day. I think this worked to my advantage. I wonder if I would have given away everything and joined up full tilt with the first guru I met.
Yolanthe, however was a perfect and safe emissary of Amrit’s teachings. She did not seek to be revered. She just lived as she saw fit, and that included teaching yoga. Yolanthe was very authentic. She was also opinionated, and she was very strong, a bulldog in many ways. In fact, whereas many members of the extended Kripalu community from around the world would go to Kripalu to assist programs as a way to visit the ashram for free, Yolanthe had been banned from assisting at Kripalu. Don’t get me wrong — she had a huge heart and was a terrific friend. It was the program directors who had banned her. I doubt a guest in a program ever had a problem with her, but if she disagreed with how a director led a program, while other assistants would keep quiet, Yolanthe would speak up. And that was actually against the rules. Directors are under a lot of pressure, and assistants are not supposed to criticize. Honestly, I think that was a lame rule, one endemic of certain problems with authenticity at Kripalu in those days, but anyway, that is why Yolanthe was banned from assisting. She was like Seinfeld’s Kramer, banned from the fruit stand for bringing back a subpar peach.
She and I became buddies — not teacher and disciple, just friends. We’d discuss enlightenment over lunch, attend esoteric talks, and ride the ferry across the Hudson River to Rollerblade in New York City’s World Financial Center. I had felt misplaced in the 1980s and 1990s, as if I had been cheated and placed in the wrong decade. But Yolanthe brought me back. She spoke freely of yoga, spirit, God, business, art, food, orgasms, and masturbation, as though these were all perfectly normal parts of the human experience.
Then, one day in October 1994, after I had been taking her classes at the Harvest religiously for five months, Yolanthe came in and laid out the news. “Amrit Desai,” she said, “has been asked to leave Kripalu. He is accused of abusing his power and having affairs with several disciples.”
I was pretty crushed. Though I had never met him, Amrit had become my de facto guru. I had even been planning to live at the ashram for a monthlong Kripalu yoga teacher training.
How could I follow a guru who had hurt so many people? If Amrit Desai had mastered yoga’s postures and practices yet still committed these transgressions, what could yoga offer me? And especially Amrit Desai’s yoga? Would his flawed fingerprint taint the very tenets of Kripalu yoga?
I decided to stop practicing yoga entirely.