Stretching The Mind And The Body While Relieving Pain, Yoga Can Also Ease Stress

Great teachers can change your life. They can inspire through example and challenge you to do your best.

All true, but I’ve always thought that was strictly kid stuff.

I never expected to find someone who could teach this old dog new tricks. When I signed up for my first yoga class two years ago, I was desperately looking for relief from back pain. What I discovered — with the help of a truly wonderful teacher — was a different way of being in the world.

After a mishap on Rollerblades aggravated an old back injury, I had tried physical therapy and acupuncture. I visited the chiropractor and sought the relief of a massage therapist.

When the latter suggested checking out Janice Vien’s yoga class, I thought, sure, what have I got to lose?

Well, that miserable pain in my back for one thing.

Vien teaches a rather strenuous discipline developed in India by man named B.K.S. Iyengar, a form of yoga that emphasizes proper alignment and balance. In the beginning level, I dove right in, learning the basic asanas (poses) by following Vien’s instructions and mimicking her poses.

A nurse and massage therapist who had turned to yoga to relieve stress, Vien would talk us through the poses in an even, soothing tone of voice which somehow made it a little easier to stretch that extra inch.

When students would get frustrated about falling out of tree pose or wobbling in “warrior,” she would offer encouragement: “When I first started, I couldn’t even touch my toes.” Watching her effortlessly demonstrate some pretzel-like poses, that seemed hard to believe.

But if she could do it …

After the first few months, I started noticing a big difference. But it wasn’t just about the pain in my back easing. It was that some of the basic principals of the ancient art of yoga had surprisingly seeped into my life.

Sure, I was still fuming at the driver who tailgated as I drove home from yoga class. But I also started thinking: “What’s the point of getting so ticked off? It’s just spoiling this pleasant, peaceful feeling I have.”

Now, I’m not saying life was suddenly stress-free. As the aches and pains were replaced by a feeling of strength, I also found myself gaining a new level of awareness. And, as the old saying goes, being aware is the first step in making a change.

As a kid, my family was forever nagging me to stand up straight. But this new awareness of my body made good posture a real possibility.

Because Vien was trained as a nurse, our classes provided some interesting lessons in anatomy. When she said: Tuck in your lumbar spine or lift the kidney area, some of us would sigh, “Huh?”

No question was too dumb to ask, she assured us.

And no teacher should ever stop learning. That’s one reason Vien spent six weeks last winter studying with Iyengar’s daughter in India.

When she returned, Vien turned the level of intensity of her classes up a notch and her students responded like “Rocky” did when Burgess Meredith’s character Mickey put him through the paces.

Still, it was never about “no pain, no gain.”

Vien has a knack for knowing her students’ strengths and weaknesses and helping correct those.

If someone just didn’t get it when she said “drop your side waist and lengthen the spine,” she would come over and manually move a student’s body until the pose just clicked. Often, it was a subtle adjustment, maybe even less than an inch. And then she would triumphantly say: “Feel the difference?”

Even as I felt myself getting stronger, being able to hold poses longer, and eventually moving up to an advanced level, the hardest work took place between my ears.

I struggled to be patient with myself, not to be competitive in class. Not to judge myself by what I couldn’t do, but to celebrate what I could.

After a lifetime of feeling like a klutz, I was miraculously able to kick up into a full arm balance (a handstand, with your feet resting against the wall) and do headstands for five minutes at a time.

What was such a marvel about the group of mostly women that were among Vien’s hardcore regulars was that everybody did have their strengths and their favorite poses.

Others loved it when we did back bends and elbow balance, which is like standing on your hands, but instead using your forearms to hold yourself up. I groaned.

If I groaned too loudly, though, Vien might laugh and say: “Let’s do one more for Leslie.”

Sadly, though, there won’t be those kind of challenges for very much longer. Vien and her family are moving back to their native New Hampshire.

My fellow students and I keep been asking each other, what are we going to do without her?

Still, Vien has given us another great gift as a teacher: the belief that we are all perfectly capable of nuturing the love of yoga and all the good that it brings to our lives. It’s a seed that she helped us cultivate.