A Cuban’s day hangs in a constant state of flux. Will the
bus arrive? If it does, will it stop in the same place it did yesterday?
Abel gets out of his rocking chair and assumes the position of a baseball
catcher with a mitt. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, looking
furtively in both directions. “This is me, waiting for the bus,” he laughs.
Any number of things can go wrong in a given day. Perhaps
there are no tomatoes in the city, or the bank has closed unexpectedly, or the
line to pay a bill is well over two hours long, a bill for which the average
salary does not cover, making forays into the black market a daily
necessity.
Yoga doesn’t purport to solve the problems; rather, it
provides a lens through which to see differently and deepen our capacity to be
present with what does appear. The wrinkles in a day become a landscape to
traverse, reflective somehow of our own inner struggles. Doing yoga with Cubans
is a lesson in how to survive, how to connect with each other, and how to find
joy despite unreliable outer circumstances. And all of this is possible because
of a particular brand of humor that becomes the warp and weft of the culture,
binding people to each other and carrying them beyond the crisis of the moment.
***
What can we learn from people isolated by politics and
circumstance for so long? What have they developed inside their already
existing culture of Cubanismo that
helps them not only survive but thrive in an ever-changing, unpredictable
world? What works when outer things do not function? What inner resources do
they draw upon in order to flush acceptance, love and joy to the surface? These
are lessons available to learn in Cuba
from Cubans.
Eligio and I walk down a busy street in Centro Havana. It is
Valentine’s Day, and the entire nation, it seems, has stopped short to
celebrate. We have just come from wishing his son, and the shoe maker, and the
lady next door a happy Dia de Valentin.
We have hugged and kissed them and shouted and reveled in the street.
Valentine’s Day, they tell me when I look confused, is about loving life. “If
you can’t love life, you can’t love someone else.” This, by far, is my favorite
Valentine’s Day to date. To top it off, we have hot chocolate at a café because
everyone else does.
And because everyone is shopping for each other on this day,
we decide to buy tea cups, and this is when the day collapses and we need to
find a way to repair it. Tea cups are $1.75 in Cuban convertible pesos which is
about the equivalent in U.S. dollars. Eligio, like most professors, doctors,
lawyers, waitresses, taxi drivers, and teachers, earns $20 a month. He is
outraged at the price even though I have offered to pay for the cups; it was my
idea to begin with. His were cracked and leaking. The rate at which most Cubans
consume coffee combined with the sheer number of people who casually drop by
his apartment to talk each day and drink coffee, made the purchase logical. His
grumbling is heard by all the customers and by the cashier, who rolls her eyes
in agreement and packs up the cups in a makeshift box she creates by taping
bits of cardboard together. “Do you have a bag?” he asks. She burrows around
for quite some time before producing one. This seems a small victory for him as
bags are hard to come by and he will use it later at the vegetable market.
We leave, deflated a bit from our Valentine’s high, though
outside on the street, horns are still honking and people are still hugging. As
we cross onto the sidewalk, an enormous bus, a medieval caterpillar, creeps up
behind us, one wheel lifting the heavy beast onto the edge of the sidewalk.
Instinctively, we move over, thinking it an accident, but the bus drifts into
our space, the back wheel now fully rolling where our feet should be. “No, no, no, no, no, no!” cries Eligio,
edging out of the way. I can’t help but laugh. There is so much to complain
about. Yet, I propose – and he listens – that we try to create a different
reality by not complaining.
“If we put a different energy out there, do you think we might experience something else?” I ask. But maybe these laws of attraction don’t work in Cuba and like does not produce like, and no matter how much positive energy we put into the world, a bus will still climb onto the sidewalk and push us to our edge.
Eligio pauses and considers my query. He knows I’m talking
yoga and he wants to agree.
“Okay, we choose our lens and change our experience.” he says. I nod. We keep walking, our sliver of sidewalk eclipsed almost completely by the still-moving vehicle. Just as Eligio passes the door of the bus, the bus stops, sighs loudly, and the door opens, hitting him squarely on the shoulder. “NO, no, no, no, no!” he yells, his mountain of “no’s” a peaking, troughing wave of frustration. He looks at me and there is a held moment between us and I have no idea where it will take us.
“Okay, we choose our lens and change our experience.” he says. I nod. We keep walking, our sliver of sidewalk eclipsed almost completely by the still-moving vehicle. Just as Eligio passes the door of the bus, the bus stops, sighs loudly, and the door opens, hitting him squarely on the shoulder. “NO, no, no, no, no!” he yells, his mountain of “no’s” a peaking, troughing wave of frustration. He looks at me and there is a held moment between us and I have no idea where it will take us.
All at once, we burst out laughing.
“You know that’s because you complained,” I say when I catch
my breath. He’s nodding, laughing, smiling, crying, and for the rest of the
day, el dia de Valentin, he does not
complain. There are moments we are both tempted for sure, but each time we
think of the bus, we dissolve into fits of laughter, our Cuba
now one of our own creation, and all I know is that we feel better laughing.
Eligio speaks of his idea of experience. “These are vivencias, Sarah. Lived moments. There
is no such thing as experience.”
Eligio explains that the word experience
locks you into a samskaric etching of sensation, feeling, and response, and often
a fear that things will be relived in exactly the same way. Vivencia is a more freeing concept. It
connotes the possibility of newness. Each lived moment is just that, a moment.
One can never really live that time again exactly the way it was; so, by definition,
each moment carries the potential for a completely novel understanding.
My mind wraps around this concept. How liberating it would
be to simply not expect things to be the same as they’ve been in the past, even
if they look like they’re heading in the same direction. Is this concept
uniquely Cuban or does it come from Eligio’s thirty years of yoga practice, a
place he’s arrived out of the necessity to believe in the possibility of
change? And then there is the bus, and his loud, forceful lament in the face
of inequity: No, this can’t be, again!
Without the constant bombardment of information from
television, cell phones, and computers, there is space and time to arrive in
each moment. There is no lack of connection nor a sense of loss for not having
access to devices; rather, devices become words, gestures, shared
circumstances, and, of course, coffee.
***
Maria is a microbiologist. She spends long hours gazing
through a microscope lens. She is young. She is healthy. But for two years, she
struggled with neck and back pain. Now, as we talk outside of Eduardo’s class
as she waits for her boyfriend to finish his practice, she tells me yoga saved
her life, emotionally and physically. “I even believe now that there is a
spiritual part to it but I can’t explain what that means yet.” She says it has
been a year now and she is pain free. Before practicing yoga, she did not
understand how to hold herself. “I go to work and I feel fine. I sit
differently. I am always aware of my posture and I’m stronger now, too. I think
everyone should try yoga, no matter what field they are in.”
Abel Duran, too, has also been bitten by the yoga bug. He hopes to
become a teacher some day. I first meet Abel on the MHAI yoga retreat, a
collaboration between Canadian yoga instructor, Natalie O’Connell, organizer,
Christine Dahdouh, her Cuban partner, Alex and Cuban yoga instructor, Eduardo
Pimentel. A group of Eduardo’s students have arrived at the beach in Tarara to
share in a yoga experience directed by Natalie and Eduardo. Abel is glowing.
His infectious smile makes everyone giggle. Though he humbly claims he has
tight muscles and is just a beginner, the next moment he spontaneously slides
through the sand in bare feet into rajakapotasana,
his front leg extended and his back foot cradled in the crook of his elbow. I
rush to take a photo before the sea dissolves his pose, dousing him with
tongues of water. Before long, he is on his back again, lifting Maykel into the
air, his feet on her sacrum, as she arcs backwards and catches her ankles with
her hands, forming a perfect circle. Then, he is running down the beach with
Yariley on his back, spinning her around until they both collapse in laughter.
Some of these yogis have never met before, but I don’t find that out until later.
For now, they all seem like very old friends.
When he slows down to rest, I ask him how he became involved
with yoga. “I got into yoga because my girlfriend at the time was really into
it. I mean she was vegetarian and got up at five
a.m. to meditate and do pranayama. Her whole life revolved around
yoga. But I wasn’t ready for her. No, not at all,” he laughs. “She was zipping
past me on the highway and I was just chugging along. But I will always
appreciate that she opened that door for me.”
Abel works as a free-lance gardener. His job requires him to
do a lot of physical labor. Yoga has helped him stay flexible and strong, but
beyond its physical benefits, yoga has given Abel a sense of seva, service in the world. “I used to
be really self-absorbed. It’s embarrassing to think of. I went to school for
history and I thought I knew everything,” he smiles wryly, remembering a past
he has trouble relating to now. “I do yoga every day, and I’ve even got my new
girlfriend into it! I’ve passed along the gift I received.” He grows quiet,
gazing across the sea, and I wonder where he places himself on this lineage of
self-study. “There is so much need for yoga here in Cuba.
Every couple of months, we collect clothing and toys and art supplies from our
friends and we go to a remote village in Pinar del Rio.
I love teaching the children yoga poses!” he laughs conspiratorially, “ but I
don’t tell them they are doing yoga. I tell them it’s a game. “ He pauses. “It
is, isn’t it, though? Making our bodies into different shapes.”
Later, I invite him and his girlfriend, Claudia, over to
Eligio’s house for tea. He wants to show me a DVD
he has made of photos and videos of the village in Pinar del Rio.
“Show this to Christine,” he tells me. “She has extra art supplies she's giving us, and I want
her to know where they are going.”
I ask him more about his service work. Half way through the
conversation, I inquire how they get to the village. He casually mentions that
they take a bus for four hours and then hike into the wilderness for another
four hours, carrying the items in with backpacks. I stare in awe of this man
and his thin, bright girlfriend who smiles at me with what I take to be shyness;
but as it turns out, she has a lot to say, she just uses few words, as if
content with simply being. Abel, on the other hand, fills the space with
multiple stories, which he constructs like tightly-knit buildings in a busy
city, each overlapping and relying on one another for support. He does not
focus on the arduous journey into the village; rather, he delights in telling
me about the waterfalls and the hot springs
along the way.
Once they arrive in the village, he tells me, they stay with
families in small wooden and cement houses with dirt floors. The entire family
sleeps in the same room, Abel and Claudia included, and they stay up well past midnight playing dominoes and teaching the
children new concepts with the toys they’ve brought. “We take in things like
plastic dinosaurs and different kinds of animals and we makes games with the
children, asking them what they know about these creatures and how they
survived. Everything is about learning something new because they are so
isolated.”
Abel and Claudia have a dream. They want to buy land in
Pinar del Rio and build a sustainable community. Already,
they’ve installed a composting toilet in their tiny apartment in Havana
and they’ve planted a vegetable garden on the patio. They show me photographs
of their apartment. “Where is the bed?” I ask them. Abel points to the mat on
the floor. “We sleep there. It’s easy. We just roll up the mat in the morning.
We could buy a bed but we’re saving for other things, like our trips to the
village and constructing our sustainable apartment. We figure, if we can do it
here, we can show others how to do the same.”
Back to their dream. Abel and Claudia want to invite people from
all different faiths and beliefs to come to the community and learn how to live
with the land. He knows the people he’s met in the village have this knowledge.
He also wants to create a space for yoga and meditation retreats. “It’s all
about sharing what we all know and learning from each other,” he says. And
they’ve got the village on their side.
“But how will you get the money to do this?” I ask the
question that baffles me in this place where people don’t have enough for the
bare necessities let alone to fuel a dream like this.
“We’re saving every month. We live with my family as we’re
renovating the apartment. And we save a little bit here and there.” I still do
not understand completely how he accomplishes saving money, myself, a school
teacher who had difficulty saving enough for this trip to Cuba,
even as I live with my parents, too, right now. I decide it will be an inquiry for
another day. I would rather know more about Abel’s yoga and how it nourishes his
dream.
***
In Eduardo's class, we work on Warrior
III
for twenty minutes. It is not my favorite pose, but over time, because that is
what we have in Cuba,
I begin to explore it in a new way. I never paid such close attention to the
pose, secretly hoping it would be a brief stop in the sequence, but we are here
in Cuba and
riding out the difficult spots is part of the recipe; so, somehow, Eduardo
picks me out of the entire class of breathing, sweating, balancing warriors to
demonstrate the complexity of the pose. I am now certain he gravitates towards
my resistance, trying to smooth over the rough edges of my distaste.
“Now, Sarah, lift a little more here,” he points to my inner
thigh, “and soften,” he takes two
fingers and touches between my shoulder blades which miraculously release and
spread apart on his gentle command. Energy I had no idea I was holding floods
my body, making me feel warmer in the already warm room. “Ah, that’s it. Look,” he says to the students in the
room. “You see that?” They nod. “Now, stretch, Sarah, but not with such effort
– stretch with ease. Don’t try so hard.”
I had tried so hard to get into this very room – the months
of saving money, the hours preparing documents, the days researching how to come,
who to meet, what to write, the almost-missed flight…And Eduardo was giving me
permission to release now, to sit back on the shore and be lapped by the ocean
of my own consciousness, by what I had asked of the Universe: Help me get to Cuba and practice yoga with
her people.
I never thought ease was possible in this previously
abhorred posture, but I was flying, I was holding my own weight, and it wasn’t
so heavy after all.
“Okay. Other side.” That is when I realize I have two sides
to my body, and all my resistance comes flooding back. These are vivencias, I hear Eligio say in my mind, lived moments. I am determined to make
this side a new lived moment. Even in February’s respite from humidity, we are
sweating. We propel our arms towards one another. I sense the metaphor heavy in
the air: these Cubans and this American balancing on one foot, reaching towards
each other as we struggle to stay grounded, one foot on land, the other in the
sky – floating, diving, expanding into the space between us through effort, but
mostly through deep surrender and a modicum of faith.
“Thank you. Thank you,” I say to Eduardo after class. He
hugs me. With his arm still around my shoulder, he draws me in close and kisses
the top of my head. “You like our Caribbean style yoga?”
he says. “It’s different, no?” I nod. I am well aware of the shuffling around
me as one class leaves and is replaced by a new group, the youngest of whom
appears to be about six years old. I want to linger and ask questions and take
photos but another day will have to claim those activities. In the end, I will
never take photos of Eduardo’s students full of beauty and grace and smiles and
struggles. It doesn’t seem right to document this deeply personal act of union
with a photograph. Instead, I will return on a quiet day when Eduardo has more
time and I will sit in the breezy studio with Eduardo and talk for two hours
while his white cat, Siva, weaves in and out of our conversation. In the end, I
will take a photo only of the empty studio with the props neatly arranged in
the cabinet, the blankets folded and ready for use, the blocks and belts and
the chairs: “Your gift to us, Sarah!” Eduardo points at the chairs I had
donated.
“No, yours,” I think, remembering how he poured my body over the chair for a supported savasana. “Your gift to us, Eduardo.”
I take a photo of Eduardo with Siva. They carry the same
squinty-eyed expression of delight and contentment. In the end, I lie down on
the dusty tiled floor where I lay earlier in savasana. Through the arched and intricately grated window, I see a
lime tree abundant with fruit and leafing out a vibrant green against an
intently blue sky. A bird lands and issues a few notes before hopping into the
studio through the bars. I think: No
separation, only union – the outer world of Cuba
coming in because it must, and there is no attempt to keep it out.
