Interview with Judith Hanson Lasater on Yoga and Aging

Q: You've been practicing yoga since you were a young woman. As you went through peri-menopause and menopause, how did you change your personal practice to address your symptoms and adapt to your changing body?

Judith: When I began my yoga practice in 1970, I had the idea that I would pretty much be following the same practice routine forever that I had established from the beginning.

Nothing has been further from the truth. At the beginning I adapted my life to fit my practice. I started going to bed earlier so that I could awaken to practice in a quiet morning environment. I changed my diet, what I read, who I hung out with, and soon, my job, as I decided to begin teaching yoga.

But over the years, the opposite has happened. Gradually my practice has evolved to fit my life. There were adaptations with pregnancy, motherhood, and, of course, with peri-menopause and menopause.

Hopefully with aging one becomes more naturally introspective and less influenced by the external world. As I entered peri-menopause, I noticed a definite shift of my interest. It was as if a “natural” pratyahara was taking place.

I wanted to meditate longer, practice pranayama longer, and my asana practice changed as well. Soon fifty percent of my practice consisted of supported backbends and supported inversions, especially Viparita Karani (Legs Up the Wall pose), Supported Sarvangasana (Shoulderstand) on the chair and Supported Halasana (Plow pose) on the Halasana bench.

I found I needed this intense internal focus time in my life to integrate not only the physical changes that I was experiencing, but also the life changes of parenting teenagers and young adults. Additionally I was becoming the major emotional and familial support for an aging mother.

When I chatted with other women yoga teachers my age, we found we were all moving in the same direction with our practice. We began to eschew so much action in the practice and instead were increasingly nourished by cultivating the receptive consciousness of quiet poses for at least half of our practice of asana.

The most important thing I learned about this process is a lesson I still learn repeatedly. I would distill this lesson into a “mantra” of these three words: Trust yourself first. This will guide you well as you transition through life’s stages.

Originally published online here.

Eulogy for B.K.S. Iyengar

BKS Iyengar was a complex and richly textured man. While he had a difficult early life, surviving that no doubt gave him his sense of self-reliance and strength. In India he was considered an outsider in the traditional world of yoga teachers. He honored his teacher, but struck out on a new path of self-study and a new style of teaching yoga. He did the unusual thing of teaching group classes and having men and women in the same class, for example. He always treated all students, regardless of class, caste, title or gender the same way.

He had a great passion for life and yoga, which he saw as one. One day in class he gave us a very stern look and moved his incredibly bushy eyebrows up and down. He said, “God gave me these eyebrows to frighten you”. I replied cheekily, “It’s working”. He roared with laughter as did we all.

Mr. Iyengar, or “Mr. I” as we affectionately called him, was deeply human. He wanted a family and had one; he loved people and was insatiably curious about the world. He once said humbly to me and a few others gathered in a private home in 1974, “anyone can do what I have done”. 

Maybe so, Mr I.  But I am not alone in believing what he did was extraordinary. He gave us so many things: his knowledge, his warnings about not making his mistakes in our own practice, his full attention. But mostly he honored us by holding us to the highest of standards. He did not suffer fools lightly. In fact, he did not suffer fools at all. Above all else, he helped us find our best selves, and I am not sure he could have done it any better. We already miss him deeply.

Published in 2014 online by Elephant.