My Grandmother Was My First Yoga Teacher (Even Though She Never Practiced Yoga)

I’m standing on my mat during yoga class, palms pressed together in front of my heart, setting a silent intention. Eyes open, and I begin to move through Surya Namaskar (Sun Salutations), prayer vibrating through my bones. There is the flight of the feet, the lift of the sternum, the hips reaching up and back. An exhale and I’m back at the top of the mat. There are soft footsteps behind me as my teacher’s hands, moving quickly and skillfully, find my clavicle. My heart opens.

It’s a standard adjustment in yoga. It’s also one that I recognize from my days long before yoga, when my grandmother would pull my shoulders back and whisper into my ear, “Stand up straight.”

My grandmother was my first yoga teacher. She never knew the first thing about yoga, although her life’s story could place her among the great sages. She received her instruction in the yamas and niyamas by being a teenager during the Great War. The Depression, another World War, and two difficult marriages followed.

She didn’t talk about those days. After living through them, she developed a peace that transcended great pain. Her practice wasn’t on a mat or in meditation, but in raising chickens and tending gardens. Working as a welder during the war effort. Bandaging a child’s knee with the same precision as sewing a skirt’s hem. Teaching grandchildren the box step on the black and white tiles of her kitchen, our feet on top of hers. Shuffling cards, stirring pots. Chopping wood, carrying water.

My teacher, Tina, comes back to my mat as I reach toward the ground in Prasarita Padottonasana A. She rests her hand on my head and instructs, “Push into my hand.” I can feel my entire spine lengthen on her cue.

There’s no specific reason why I trust Tina. It’s a learned feeling, this trust. Much the same as what I felt rushing to my grandmother’s Detroit home with a secret or a problem. Sitting on her back stoop while she hung laundry in the yard where she buried the infant bodies of my uncles and aunts. I imagine her strength, planting rose bushes where there should have been tombstones, and returning every day to water them. I have a fantasy of buying that home, spending my old age tending her flowers.

My spine twists in Parivrtta Trikonasana. Tina instructs diligence and patience, reminding us to watch where both comfort and pain can make us lazy, sloppy. Control is a fallacy, but it’s a lie we tell ourselves to feel safe when we are not. Push too far and watch yourself fall.

This is a truth I know deep in my bones. It’s seeking to lead during the waltz. The bluff across the card table. Being promised your grandmother’s jewelry, knowing she’ll have to die for you to wear it.

We learn these lessons standing at kitchen sinks alongside their hips. We learn to lean into our vulnerability, growing into this world with a hand on our back, a finger lifting our chins. We aren’t born warriors. Someone has to first tell us where to put our feet.

In my grandmother’s final years of life, her mind became lost in the thick fog of Alzheimer’s. The stages of this manifestation were at first gradual and later dramatic. First she forgot a pot on the stove; later she forgot my face. Sometimes she would slip into violent, combative episodes, as ghosts from her past came out of dark corners to torment her.

As she argued with shadows, I saw directly how her life had not always been so loving and kind. She, too, found a practice through the hardship, steadying herself by developing a knowledge of her own true being and its innate potential, forging the beauty of her soul by being subjected to the fire.

During her final days, she slipped into a silent reverie of consciousness that I hope with my entire being was stillness and peace. She sat on the couch with a cat curled at her side, hands clasped, meditating on a spot just beyond my comprehension.

She was a quintessential yogi. And she was my yoga teacher.

The path of the yogi is one of resilience of the human spirit. The most authentic yogis aren’t necessarily wearing tight pants and doing handstands. They’re often wearing aprons tied around their waists, curlers in their hair. They’re stirring pots and tending gardens. They’re encouraging us, calling us over. “Come here, sweet girl. Stand on my feet, hold my hand just like this. Let me teach you a dance.”

We don’t have to go across the world to find the reclusive monks. We don’t need to seek out thousand-year-old lineages or renowned instructors. Often, we simply need to acknowledge our first teachers.

As I leave the shala, I leave a special prayer for my grandmother, knowing that she’s with me. She’s the one who brought me here.