In her new book, How to Be Loved: A Memoir of Lifesaving Friendship, Eva Hagberg Fisher chronicles how, after five surgeries and a lifelong battle with her health, she unexpectedly found strength and healing through yoga, friendship, and physical and emotional support.
“You’re better now, right?” people sometimes asked.
I had to hedge.
“Mostly,” I said. “I’m mostly OK.”
I wanted to be totally better, to have a clean break between sick and better. But illness like mine doesn’t work like that. It’s like having a cold that lingers, and you think every day might be the last day and tomorrow will be better, and then you forget what feeling better feels like and you just hang on, and “normal” changes, and you’re not sure if you still have a cold or not, until one day you wake up and you just don’t have a cold but you don’t know what broke it or why then. And I was in the in-between, even after I got better, for over a year.
I slowly edged off of almost all of my medications. I took 14 pills a day and then I took 13. Then 12, then 11, then 12, but one was different. And I kept doing everything else, everything I could think of: desensitization, allergy testing, enzymes, iron supplements, yoga, yoga, yoga. And therapy.
I signed up for a teacher training, and I set a rule: No one could touch me. It was enforceable because of the container of our weekends together, because there were only nine trainees total, because everyone was working through their shit. I was able to ease up during those hours, and because of that easing I was able to recognize how guarded I felt the rest of the time. And then slowly I began to touch again. First just my teacher-training partner, Kristen, who was so similar to me that I felt I could trust her. And then another woman, Alice, whose brightness and raspy voice felt like a waterfall of care. I touched them and then, once I could tell my nervous system that touch wasn’t only about pain, I let them touch me.
この記事は Yoga Journal の January - February 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は Yoga Journal の January - February 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Learning to Hear the Voice of Self-Care
How to discern what really matters.
Inclusive Yoga for All
A Down syndrome diagnosis set this family on a path to make yoga accessible to everyone.
For the Joy of Practice
Doing yoga without attachment to the outcome can bring unexpected gifts.
Be Kind to Your Spine
Your vertebral column is a series of complex, interconnecting parts that support your every movement. Here's how to keep it safe.
A Skeptic of Chakra Balancing
The experience helped me make peace with things that can't be explained.
Are We Having Fun Yet?
Bring play back into your practice with three styles of yoga that can get you out of your head and bring a smile to your face.
12 Ways to Use Blocks You've Probably Never Tried Before
The beauty of blocks? They not only meet you where you are in your practice, they take you beyond where you ever thought you could go.
THE SCIENCE OF AWE
THOSE MOMENTS IN LIFE THAT STOP YOU IN YOUR TRACKS IN ASTONISHMENT? RESEARCH SAYS EXPERIENCING MORE OF THEM CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE.
What Your Doshas Say About Your Dharma
Ayurveda can explain so much more than what's out of balance.
The Future of Yoga
Yoga has been evolving for thousands of yearsfrom a mind-and-body spiritual practice to a billion-dollar "lifestyle" practice. What's next? We asked futurists, teachers, and thinkers what to expect in the next decade and beyond.