Yoga Bitch:
One Woman's Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicim, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment
By Suzanne Morrison
Yoga Bitch book trailer...didn't even know they made these.
I stumbled upon this book by accident at the Calgary Library while searching for Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong. Would you believe that Yoga Bitch was right beside it? My plan was to read Karen Armstrong's book and then if I had time to look through this one and see if it was worth reading. With a title like Yoga Bitch I was thinking it was going to be an old, bitter yogi writing her memoirs and bitching about how yoga is a scam. I was struggling with Karen Armstrong's book....don't get me wrong, it had a lot of potential but it is very dry. So I thought I would take a break from the Twelve Steps and try out Yoga Bitch. Well, I loved it right away!
It is a personal memoir of Suzanne's time in Bali at a Yoga Teacher Training. It chronicles her hilarious adventures of drinking the Yoga Kool-Aid and following her god-like yoga teacher whom she idolizes to an amazing topical island. She is a recovering catholic that seems to be constantly wanting to be a spiritual person but when she gets close she shuts herself in like a terrified hermit crab. Her idol, Indra, takes Suzanne under her wing, calls her by the cute nickname of 'my pet' which make all the other trainees jealous with envy. Indra gives her strange advise of leaving her boyfriend and drinking her own urine.
A lot of the book is about the relationships Suzanne has with her teachers Indra and Lou, her roommate Jessica, a mysterious, romantic man called the Sailor who is off limits because she is in a relationship, and of course the boyfriend. The main part of the story is about her teachers and how she looks up to them. Puts them up on a pedestal and worships them without knowing much about them at all. Such a hard lesson to be learned from allowing someone to have so much control over you only to have your perfect picture of them to be torn to little bits.
I love watching Suzanne's journey through the Yoga experience. The honeymoon at the beginning when a student is so excited to try everything. Sattvic diet, constant reading of the sacred texts, constant practice of the asanas and a blind faith. Then trying to integrate all of this in a normal life when you are not on a retreat and having everything provided for you. How your family and boyfriends react to your strict lifestyle of a devoted yoga student. The guilt of not practicing, of eating a vanilla milkshake or wanting to buy a Prada handbag.
Everything in this book I love! I highly recommend picking it up!
A lot of the book is about the relationships Suzanne has with her teachers Indra and Lou, her roommate Jessica, a mysterious, romantic man called the Sailor who is off limits because she is in a relationship, and of course the boyfriend. The main part of the story is about her teachers and how she looks up to them. Puts them up on a pedestal and worships them without knowing much about them at all. Such a hard lesson to be learned from allowing someone to have so much control over you only to have your perfect picture of them to be torn to little bits.
I love watching Suzanne's journey through the Yoga experience. The honeymoon at the beginning when a student is so excited to try everything. Sattvic diet, constant reading of the sacred texts, constant practice of the asanas and a blind faith. Then trying to integrate all of this in a normal life when you are not on a retreat and having everything provided for you. How your family and boyfriends react to your strict lifestyle of a devoted yoga student. The guilt of not practicing, of eating a vanilla milkshake or wanting to buy a Prada handbag.
Everything in this book I love! I highly recommend picking it up!
Now back to reading Karen Armstrong's book.
