4 minute read
Blue Collar Yoga – Molly Gallagher
from Yoga Samachar FW2017
by IYNAUS
BY MOLLY GALLAGHER
Yoga came to me from a New Yorker who disliked my small Iowa town from the get go. She was beautiful, exotic, glamorous, opinionated, and more or less perfect. And she could do things with her body none of us had ever seen. She taught us how to do those things.
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My exposure to Iyengar Yoga came through her experience. She told stories of going to India, of studying at the Institute in San Francisco. We, her students, were entranced. But as a beginning practitioner, I thought that only the lucky ones were able to afford
Illustration: Curtis Settino
the cost of trips halfway around the world, as well as all the conferences, workshops, conventions, trainings, and regular weekly classes. Then I began to feel like one of the lucky ones when I committed to a weekly class. I just made it a priority. I knew that putting money toward learning this practice was an important part of the discipline.
But it was certainly not something I could outright afford. I had three young kids at the time, and my spouse was on staff at the college in our town. I stayed home with the kids. I would have to find a way to make a little extra money to put toward the cost of classes. But more than anything, that was what I wanted. Putting hard earned money toward something extra was something I’d never really seen my parents do while I was growing up. It seemed extravagant, and a little irresponsible.
My father was a carpenter. When I was five years old and my big brothers were in elementary school, my dad’s first of many complications with diabetes landed him completely blind in one eye, which meant he couldn’t do carpentry work anymore. He stayed home and took care of me instead. My mom went to work as a cashier at Target. I mention this because it was my parents’ blue collar lifestyle, having never gone to college themselves, that has had a significant impact on how I view my own work and lifestyle. My parents worked hard. They showed up. They had no built-in sick days and no vacation. If they didn’t work, they wouldn’t get paid.
My very first experience teaching yoga was in a rural town of about 300. The people there had sought a yoga teacher, so of course I wanted to do it. I received a phone call from one of the students before class, asking if her 89-year-old neighbor could come. A brand new teacher, I expressed that I didn’t yet feel qualified to teach her because I had very few props and no wall space. A few days later, on the first night of class, that 89-yearold woman showed up anyway. She wasn’t going to let me tell her she couldn’t do yoga!
That same night a woman in jeans showed up. A married couple who took the night off from farming showed up, brought their own yoga mats, and proceeded to blow them up— they were actually their inflatable camping pads! I fell in love with these people. They had grit. Somehow I felt like I could relate. I wanted to bring this practice to them right there in the middle of America.
Sometimes I think of myself as a carpenter. Being in a marriage, raising three children, having a yoga practice, I’m building something from the ground up— and it takes time. And practice. And patience. I work at it. I make mistakes. But I am dedicated and hopeful of the outcome.
A carpenter doesn’t wake up and say, “I don’t really feel like building this house today.” She wakes up and starts working. I call it blue collar yoga. It’s a lifestyle. I choose not to be halfhearted with my practice. I work. I show up every day, like my parents taught me. I know and believe that these things— yoga and family— take a lifetime to build. Which is why I’ll spend my years as a yoga instructor, and a parent to my children, building a solid foundation. Something that’ll last. Blue collar yoga is an act of simplicity. Paring down the stuff that is not essential, and focusing on only a few things that really matter.
Once I asked a yoga teacher I admire about her yoga practice and raising kids on a modest income. She stated simply— in her cool British accent— that her yoga practice and her kids were the two biggest joys in her life, and that without either one of them she wouldn’t have learned how to love. She never mentioned anything about money.
As I wrote out that first check to my yoga teacher back in the beginning, I knew that if I spent $88 for two months of yoga, I wouldn’t miss a single class, that I would be diligently invested. Eight years, hundreds of classes taken and taught, and two assessments later, I’m still with it. I’m committed. But now, it’s not just me who’s committed to the practice, teaching the classes, and to the community— my own students come to my studio where they also invest their time and money into something we’ve built together.
