The Lost Girls (29 page)

“Ooh, I better get going before the flock descends. But I'll see you in asana class,” Laura said.

“Definitely. And thanks for the pep talk,” I replied.

As I watched Laura head down the hall to the communal bathroom, I wondered if maybe she'd been dropped in my path
for a purpose. It's not as if I was already drinking the ashram Kool-Aid or anything, but our meeting just seemed like too much of a coincidence. Maybe I
had
done something right in a previous life after all?

Just then Amanda poked her head around the gauzy fabric “wall” that separated our bunks. “You okay?” she asked.

“You know what? I actually am,” I said. “I just had a temporary freak-out about a bunch of stuff. The guard was just the icing on my stress cake, but I'm feeling a lot better now.”

“Only you, Jenny B,” Amanda replied, laughing and plopping down next to me. “I'm glad to hear you're okay. But just in case, I brought you a little surprise,” she said, reaching into her pants pocket. “Ta da!” In her hand were two mini Kit Kat bars from the stash of chocolate we'd secretly purchased for Holly.

 

W
hile being forced to remain inside the walls of Shraddha had triggered my emotional free fall, in a paradoxical twist, it was the ashram that helped get me back on my feet again (and my head too, if you count the vertical posture I finally mastered). It's not as if my sorrow and panic miraculously disappeared. But surrounded by hundreds of people, all seeking stillness of mind and mental peace, I eventually started to absorb that energy.

As soon as I got out of my own head a little, I discovered that I wasn't the only one wrestling with inner demons. Many of the students were facing a personal or professional crisis of some kind. A handful admitted to borderline abuse of booze, pills, or powders. In sadder cases, a few were grieving the loss of a loved one. But no matter what their reason, most considered Shraddha an ideal place to gain clarity or seek refuge.

Although swamis in cotton robes subbed in for men in white coats, in some ways, ashram culture wasn't a far stretch from a
drug rehab or mental health center. Which, in a way, made it that much more appealing to me. A strange admission, I know, but books and films about substance abuse facilities or psychiatric hospitals—stories like
28 Days, A Million Little Pieces
,
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
, and
Girl, Interrupted
—have always fueled one of my escape fantasies. It's the one where I selfishly fall apart for once in my overachieving, always-put-together life, run far away from society and all its pressures, and just chill out and heal with the other patients. A product of my hyperactive imagination? Of course. But since arriving at the ashram, I had begun to wonder if maybe this trip around the world wasn't my own subconscious version of therapy.

As the week at Shraddha passed, something interesting happened: I actually began to let go. Let go of my regrets about the past. Let go of all the fears about my future. Let go of trying to figure out exactly who I was or who I was supposed to be. Maybe it was the constant surge of endorphins or the absence of liver-corrupting substances in my bloodstream or the mandatory hours of silence, but as the days floated by, a calmer and happier version of me pushed its way to the surface.

It was a slow and subtle evolution. But as my legs wobbled up into their very first half-locust pose, I felt an exhilarating sense of control over my body. On another occasion, I was sitting cross-legged on the lakeside yoga platform, eyes closed and hands in the chin mudra pose, and I could suddenly quiet my mind for ten whole minutes. But the most valuable and meaningful ability I gained at the ashram was to send a prayer out to the universe each day that Brian would find happiness and romance in his life.

When Rick had professed the same desire for me right after he broke things off, I'd been too devastated to comprehend the magnitude of what that meant. But as the wounds healed and we reconnected as friends, I realized how blessed I was to have
had someone in my life who loved me enough to let me go. And I could only hope that, someday, Brian would understand that too. Because I did love him with all my heart and knew we both needed to take our own time to heal and move forward. That's what I was going to do for myself and what I'd always wish for Brian. Because we both deserved love in our lives—wherever and whenever we would find it again.

INDIA/SHRADDHA ASHRAM
NOVEMBER

I
t was still dark as I fell into step with the two hundred other students trudging down the path to the open-air prayer hall for morning satsung. With everyone wearing the mandatory teacher-training uniform—yellow T-shirts to symbolize learning and white pants to indicate purity—we formed into a homogeneous yogi mass.

The humid tropical air clung to my skin like a sari. Greenery was everywhere: palm leaves reached to the sky like fingers, and tufts of grass tickled our feet over our flip-flops. We climbed the steps, silently slipping out of our shoes at the top, and ambled through one of the dozen or so arches leading into the prayer hall.

The scent of lemon oil assaulted my nose as I fell into a cross-legged position on the stone floor. We slathered on this natural mosquito repellent religiously, but it didn't seem to deter the bloodsuckers in the least, especially when we were stuck in a shoulder stand or other posture where we couldn't easily swat them. The head swami wore his trademark orange wrap skirt and a T-shirt that covered his protruding stomach. He sat in the lotus position on a stage decorated with pictures of Shraddha's
founding gurus. The framed photos were draped with garlands of orange flowers, and a smattering of burning candles provided the only points of light. Staring at the swami expectantly through the early-morning darkness, I listened as he began a guided meditation that sounded almost familiar after seven days inside the ashram.

“Close your eyes…Inhaaale deeply, exhaaale completely…Concentrate on either your third eye—the area in between your eyebrows—or your heart center…Watch your thoughts as if you were an outside observer…Let them pass by as your mind starts to quiet…Now try repeating a mantra with each exhalation to give your mind a place to rest…If you don't have a mantra, use the universal mantra, Om.” A deep stillness washed through the prayer hall.

Even after a week of enforced discipline, trying to “quiet my mind” as the swami had instructed was leaving me more frantic than peaceful. In fact, I felt physically ill. It took only five minutes of sitting cross-legged for sweat to trickle between my shoulder blades, my right foot to fall asleep, and pain to crawl up my spine. With nothing to distract me, my restless mind went into overdrive.

Dad would probably have my head examined if he knew I volunteered to sit on the floor every day for an entire month and listen to a man wearing a skirt.

Just breathe in, breathe out…

Maybe I'm being selfish spending money to meditate instead of immediately helping Esther.

I WILL quiet my mind. My mind is now quiet….

Being here kind of feels like boot camp. But I bet even at boot camp they feed you first thing.

Oh Lord, Holly. Shut up!

I wonder what we're having for breakfast. If the food is so healthy, why is the swami so fat?

My internal chatter was just that—pointless noise. And I seemed to have lost the volume control. I hadn't expected an ashram to be a spiritual happy hour, but I'd imagined it to be a sacred space where I could kick off a daily meditation and yoga routine. Besides a crazed morning subway commute, a lunch inhaled at my desk, and squeezing in a gym class, I didn't have many meaningful rituals in New York City, let alone one to connect me to something greater than myself. But my romantic expectations of ashram life did not exactly match reality—it felt more like I was at battle with myself. Rather than evolving, I felt I was regressing.

I'd first fallen into yoga when I was training for the New York City marathon a few years back. I'd read that yoga's deep stretches would help soothe my sore muscles and speed recovery after long runs. For me, yoga was more about stretching and lengthening muscles than the spiritual stuff that went along with it. Well, at least at first.

Eventually, though, I fell in love with the relaxation period at the end of each class. After an hour spent twisting my limbs into impossible-looking positions, balancing on one leg, and expanding my lungs with deep belly breathing, finally being able to sprawl out on a mat left my muscles buzzing and my mind blissfully silent. I wanted to be able to invoke that silence at will. I wanted to find a solid center in an ever-changing world, a place of peace I would know how to return to when sadness or fear threatened to knock me off balance.

I'd known that the ashram experience would involve entire days where the only things I'd have to do would be to sit in silence, listen to lectures on how to connect with the divine, and practice headstands—which didn't seem so tough after sharing my bed with cockroaches in Kenya. Though I'd understood that it'd be no trip to the spa, I'd thought it'd be invigorating—like plunging into an icy cold pool and then wrapping myself in a
warm towel. The big shock, however, was just how much my body and mind were rebelling. I wasn't just uncomfortable, I was miserable. So after a week, instead of beginning each day in peaceful silence, I sat waiting impatiently for the moment meditation would end and the swami would interrupt my internal ramblings by chanting in Sanskrit to Ganesh, the elephant-headed god believed to help remove obstacles on our spiritual path.
“Jaya Ganesha, Jaya Ganesha, Jaya Ganesha Pahimam…”

Even then, my knees ached from sitting cross-legged, and attempting to sing in a language I could hardly pronounce—let alone understand—got old fast. Self-conscious, I'd pretend to participate by silently moving my lips.

I wasn't the only one having a tough time. I noticed that many of the other students had circles under their eyes that matched my own, and they couldn't seem to keep from squirming during meditation either. Sitting on the other side of me was Chloe, a Pilates instructor and badass dancer from Brooklyn with baby blue eyes and endlessly long legs. She'd walked right up to me the very first day while I was sitting on a stone ledge outside the prayer hall during teatime. “I heard you were from Williamsburg, too,” she said, plopping down next to me. I know I should have been focusing on life at the ashram, but in a land so unfamiliar, it was comforting to reminisce about running in McCarren Park or hearing bands at Union Pool. Then the bell rang to signal the five-minute grace period between lectures, and we were engulfed in a sea of students not wanting to be marked late.

“Do you kinda feel like we're in a cult?” Chloe had whispered. “Seriously, think about it: They're making us sleep-deprived and hungry so we'll break down. And they keep us so busy so we don't have much time to talk to each other.” I
had
worried I'd landed myself in some kind of Indian cult with the militant schedule and guard stationed at the gate. Chloe's admission kept me from thinking I was all alone.

Now I glanced over to see Chloe drawing a block calendar in her notebook. A few years younger than me, she looked girlish with her lanky body, choppy brown hair, and freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose. I watched as she carefully placed an
X
over each day we'd passed inside the ashram. “How many days do we have left?” I whispered.

“Twenty-one,” she said dejectedly. Another student turned around to give us a stern look, signaling us to start chanting or keep quiet. I could have sworn his eyes were a devilish red, but I attributed it to an overactive imagination—or sleep deprivation.

Straightening my back, I tried to focus instead on the spiritual talk that had just begun. According to Swami, the biggest obstacle on students' spiritual path is a preconceived notion of what yoga
should
be. “Yoga is more than just physical postures—it's about attaining unity of body, mind, and spirit through self-discipline,” he told us. We could master self-discipline by practicing the “five points of yoga”: proper exercise (the physical yoga postures, such as the tree pose); proper breathing (aka pranayama—controlling your breath helps you better control your mind); proper relaxation (such as lying in savasana, or the corpse pose, at the end of class); proper diet (unprocessed vegetarian food); and positive thinking and meditation. Okay, the message sounded easy enough to digest: ditch my expectations, and rein in my appetites. Learn to control my body in order to learn to control my mind. I knew what I had to do, so why did actually doing it seem like such a challenge?

At long last satsung ended, and we were given a “snack”—a small cup of tea and five grapes or a spoonful of banana chips—before a two-hour yoga class. My stomach rumbled in protest as we practiced downward dogs. I fell asleep during final relaxation, dreaming of eggs and bacon.

Another bell startled me awake, finally signaling that it was
time to head to the open-air dining room for breakfast, five hours after we'd first woken up. I was walking with Chloe and Marta, a Polish woman my own age who looked like a china doll with her wide-set blue eyes and high cheekbones.

“Hey, Hoooolly!
Om shanti!
” I turned, hearing the unmistakable giggles of Jen and Amanda. A wave of relief washed over me.

“Hi, guys,” I said, waving good-bye to my new friends Chloe and Marta, and heading to the stone ledge where my old friends sat waiting for me. “You skipped morning meditation again. Sinners!”

“We totally slept in. We're just lowly yogi vacationers, so it's not like anyone is taking our attendance,” Amanda said happily. She was referring to the fact that teacher trainees were assigned a number and required to check in.

I grabbed their hands, pulling them down the hill toward the dining hall. “Come on, I'm starving!” A sign posted demanded diners “Eat in silence,” but first a few hundred people chanted out the same two words, “Hare” and “Krishna,” at the top of their lungs. We began both of our two daily meals with that chant, also known as the “Great Mantra,” as an act of devotion and to help purify our hearts and minds before we nourished our bodies.

We found three empty spots on a bamboo mat running the length of the dining hall's stone floor. Each spot was set with a plate laid in front of it. Just as we sat, the group chanted “Om” and fell silent, as if someone had unplugged an enormous sound system. The only sound was tin clanking on tin as a yogi on kitchen duty heaped our metal plates with rice.

“What's the first thing you're going to eat when you're out of the ashram?” I whispered to Jen, sounding to myself like a convict about to get out on bail. It was the girls' last day of their weeklong yogi vacation. Though it was, of course, my choice to
stay at the ashram, I was a little envious that tomorrow they'd be drinking beers on the beach.

“Silence, pleeeease! Pleeeease eeeat in si-lence!” bellowed the kitchen master, a guy named Vera, wearing wide-legged pants with a silver beard and the soulful eyes of some kind of Indian sage.

Glancing at Jen from the corner of my eye, I didn't think it was my imagination that she looked a bit more, well, calm. Her skin glowed a little brighter, and her mouth had softened somehow. The teacher-training program left us zero free time, so I hadn't been able to find out what had happened after Brian e-mailed her. Had she written him back? Was she okay with everything?

The girl talk would have to wait. Another guy ladled thin lentil stew over my plate and tossed me two chapatis. Before trying it, I'd thought the simple vegetarian food might be bland, but it was actually delicious. Every morsel was unprocessed, and it'd been so long since I'd eaten only foods without additives that I'd forgotten what “fresh” tasted like. After only a week at the ashram, I felt lighter. And Jen wasn't the only one whose skin glowed: I'd noticed my own complexion was clearer and brighter. Eliminating meat, preservatives, and caffeine made me look as if a lightbulb had been turned on beneath my skin.

Then I caught the eye of a woman with straggly blond hair sitting across from me and quickly looked down. Her eyes were puffy, oozy, a deep shade of crimson. Just looking at them made my own eyes burn. Figuring it must be a bad case of pinkeye, I gathered my dishes and went to rinse them at the outdoor sink, extra-careful to scrub my hands.

“I have to report for my karma yoga now. I guess I'll see you both at your last supper tonight,” I said reluctantly to Jen and Amanda before heading to the dorms to fulfill my “selfless service.” My teacher-training manual said, “Service purifies the
mind and makes us realize the Oneness of all.” Every yogi was given a duty to help keep us humble, remind us to spend time daily giving back, and carry us closer to God. I thought back to what I'd learned in Sunday school, and remembered a verse in the Bible that said: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” Some people were assigned to serve food, some to rake leaves, and some to take attendance.

My selfless service was cleaning toilets. I'd thought my days of scrubbing toilets other than my own had ended in college, after I'd finished a job as a housekeeper in the dorms. But here I was, a decade later and on the other side of the world, back down on my knees brushing a porcelain bowl. Only this time, I was giving thanks that there was actually a bowl to scrub—it was better than having to wash the cement floor surrounding a hole in the ground buzzing with horseflies like the kind I'd used in Kenya. And I was grateful for something I'd never thought to be thankful for before, running water, so I could fill my bucket in the sink rather than having to walk all the way to the river. I'm not sure if toilet cleaning was purifying for my mind (or any other part of me, for that matter), but it proved that, though complaining about getting stuck with a task worthy of
Dirty Jobs
might have been easy to do, it wouldn't make the task go any faster.

After an hour of selfless service came a lecture on the Bhagavad Gita, followed by a rare hour of free time (to do our homework), an hour-and-a-half lecture on the philosophy of yoga, another two-hour yoga class, dinner, and another satsung (meditation-chanting-lecture) before lights-out at 10:20 p.m.