In honor of president Obama’s visit to India, India Today published a special issue looking at Indian-American life. Here’s my small contribution…
Although it was my father who was born in India, my mother, an American of European descent, took me to my first yoga class. I was about 10, and found myself after an hour of deep breathing and deeper stretches, sprawled on the floor in savasana. We were at church. It was a weekday night, in the same room where my Sunday school lessons were held, and the teacher instructed us to close our eyes and let our bodies sink into the floor. It may have been the first time I paid attention to my body when it wasn’t calling out in the pain, hunger, or chill born of a child’s needs. I closed my eyes and did as I was told. I felt my back, legs and head in contact with the carpeted floor. And then I melted into the hard surface. It was magical – probably the closest I came to a religious experience in any house of worship. Something happened.
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