What Does Speaking Italian Have to Do with Yoga?

This morning while I was in my yoga practice, I noticed a couple of new people in the back before class started. I could tell they were new because they reminded me of myself the first several times I came to the studio.

When I first started doing warm power yoga last summer, I felt awkward and needed to be in the back of the room so no one would watch me and I could see what the others were doing. I also found myself looking around quite a bit, trying to understand what in the heck we were supposed to be doing.

Now when I get on my mat, I literally step into my own space. The poses are intense and require 100% focus. It’s when I let my mind wander that I do the wrong pose or lose my balance or have to slow down because I’ve lost track of my breathing.

After practice was over this morning, the two ladies who I assumed were new to the studio confirmed that very fact as we were changing clothes. This was the first time for one of them and the second time for the other.

In my head I remembered a couple of phrases from a book I recently read, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. If you haven’t read this book, I highly recommend it. Gilbert has a way with words that is touching, inspirational and deep, while at the same time she can be extremely funny with her sarcastic wit and humor. Many times I’d be reading this book in bed laughing and my husband would ask, “What’s so funny?”

The part that came to mind this morning was how she had described her time in Italy while she was trying desperately to learn to speak Italian. She writes:

I work hard at Italian, but I keep hoping it will one day just be revealed to me, whole, perfect. One day I will open my mouth and be magically fluent. Then I will be a real Italian girl, instead of a total American who still can’t hear someone call across the street to his friend Marco without wanting instinctively to yell back “Polo!”

I wish that Italian would simply take up residence within me, but there are so many glitches in this language. Like, why are the Italian words for “tree” and “hotel” (albero vs. albergo) so very similar? This causes me to keep accidentally telling people that I grew up on “a Christmas hotel farm” instead of the more accurate and slightly less surreal description: “Christmas tree farm.” (p. 71)

I felt the same way about yoga when I started to get serious with my practice. I could see the other people in the room jumping into their chataranga, lifting into their Crow, and balancing steadily on one leg for either Tree pose, Warrior III or Airplane pose.

Less than 30 pages later Gilbert describes the “A-Ha” of realizing that she isn’t just trying to speak Italian – she IS speaking Italian. She is on a train to Montepulciano and explains how Italian has taken up residence within her:

“Grazie mille,” I tell him with exaggerated politeness. A thousand thanks.

He’s surprised. He didn’t realize I spoke Italian. Neither did I, actually, but we talk for about twenty minutes and I realize for the first time that I do. (p. 99)

As I left the studio this morning, I realized that somewhere along the way…it happened. I don’t speak Italian (as Gilbert refers to), but I do have a much deeper understanding of yoga. When did it take residence within me? I’m not sure, but I continue to deepen my practice, try difficult poses, sometimes I fall, but I am not afraid to “play my edge.” Learning is such an interesting, incremental process.