Poser my life in twenty-three yoga poses
Ratings4
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings4
Average rating3.6
Ten years ago, Claire Dederer put her back out trying to feed her rapidly growing baby. Reluctantly, she joined a yoga class, and unexpectedly embarked on an eye-opening adventure. In 'Poser', Claire provides a humorous and uplifting book for anyone who has ever tried to stand on their head (while keeping their feet on the ground).
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Nice writing about, well, nice people. If that makes the book sound kind of dull, it is, but it is also interesting in the way that a quiet, stretchy yoga practice is interesting. This woman seems to have had a lot of adventures at times in her life but I like how she focuses more on the less exciting daily routines. The dull daily struggles are really the important ones, anyway. The book has actually made me think about what I am looking for from my yoga practice and in my family relationships. I will try to keep in mind her phrase, “less perfect, more real.”
“We didn't want to look good. We wanted to be good.”
Claire is a new mom, a wife, and a writer and she is so close to having a nervous breakdown that you can see her shaking hand on every page of this typewritten manuscript. She takes up yoga in the midst of her crazy life and somehow yoga saves her.
“I had a sudden thought: What if the opposite of good wasn't bad? What if the opposite of good was real?”
“I had started going to yoga because I wanted other people to admire my goodness. I came to yoga with my plate held out, asking yoga to give me the same old stuff I'd been receiving all my life, repackaged and in a groovier new form. Going to yoga was part of my goodness project. And yet what yoga seemed to be teaching me was this: Who cares? Who cares about goodness? Who even cares how it looks? There's only this: a woman in a heap on the floor....If I wanted to look at how things really were, I was going to find imperfection. What would real look like? Without good there, gussying it up, brushing its hair?”
“We left in a whirl....We carried Bruce's depression and my anxiety with us, on the roof rack, as it were. They weren't going to leave us alone. They were just part of the deal.”
“I thought I would do yoga all my life, and I thought that I would continue to improve at it, that I would penetrate its deepest mysteries and finally be able to perform a transition from scorpion directly into chaturanga. But here's the truth: The longer I do yoga, the worse I get at it. I can't tell you what a relief it is.”
