Italian Journey

At an unusual language school, a writer learns to speak from the heart.

By Diana Reynolds Roome

Spreading out my new travel yoga mat in the dim, tiny space between my bed and an oversize wardrobe, I tried to stand in Vrksasana (Tree Pose). The heat in this small town in the heart of Italy was already around a hundred degrees, and from the pizzeria below my apartment came shouts, followed by a series of crashing sounds. I wobbled and fell over. Craving light and air, I pushed open the shutters a crack, but any farther and I knew my clumsy attempts would be fully visible to the diners at the roof restaurant directly outside my window.

At this point, all I really wanted was Savasana—or, as the Italians would have it, siesta. I'd spent the morning in an intensive language course, combining grammar and vocabulary with exercises designed to delve into the deeper motivations behind what we say. The goals were inspiring—to overcome ingrained perceptions, release negative thought patterns, increase tolerance, and speak from a more authentic place, using yoga breathing and visualizations. But after a few days, I was feeling the strain.

I'd arrived in Todi, an ancient Umbrian hill town, by a circuitous route that started with a yoga retreat in California's Santa Cruz Mountains. There, during a visualization exercise, we were invited to encounter our future selves. This wasn't easy for me. My mother's recent death after years of suffering made me fearful of looking too closely into my own future.

Lying flat on the floor, gazing at the redwood trees outside, I had to fight against images of disability, old age, and loneliness. And then, without rhyme or reason, I found myself mentally transported to a terra-cotta-colored cottage on a gentle hillside in Umbria. My future self opened the door for me. She led me around, showing me her writing room, the garden, and a yoga mat, all in sunlit, earthy colors. She was the centered, vital, productive person I hoped to be—and she spoke Italian, which I'd intended to learn since I was 19.

A few months later I was on my way to La Lingua La Vita, a language school that is experimenting with a whole new way to learn. After three art-filled days in Florence, I left the world of tourism and traveled south in a bright red two-carriage train. Built in pre-Etruscan times, Todi stands on a grand hill, its high walls still bearing their Etruscan, Roman, and medieval history like honorable scars.

Classes were held in an old seminary perched at the top, behind a 12th-century cathedral with a carved arched doorway and a delicate pink stone façade overlooking the main piazza. Students in the main part of the language school were learning practical conversational Italian, such as: Quanto costa un biglietto ferroviario di prima classe da Milano a Roma? ("How much is a first-class train ticket from Milan to Rome?") Useful stuff, to be sure. But my course, called Beyond Language, was teaching me to speak about things that never appear in the standard phrasebooks—facing fears and healing old traumas—and to observe how the words I choose affect my attitude.

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