by Nick Duerden
I had laughed at my mother too, and only agreed to some Alexander Technique after my NHS physio, a professional, corroborated it as a good idea. ‘Ideally you’d have done this years ago,’ he added, ‘and if you had, you wouldn’t be here now. But it can’t hurt. Go.’
My mother found me a practitioner not far from where I was living at the time, in the bedsit-laden backstreets of Shepherd’s Bush. She was an older woman in her 60s, who worked out of her soft furnished living room in Holland Park. She opened her front door dressed for comfort in loose grey and black cotton, a magnificent mane of grey hair flowing past her shoulders and down towards her coccyx. She wore open-toed sandals, in March, and this was all I needed to reinforce every prejudice I had.
She beckoned me into the front room, where three other people, in their 20s and 30s, were sitting. They looked up expectantly at me and nodded hello. I sat, and noticed a very particular smell in the room. It emanated from the floor, where four dogs lay, each fast asleep, two on their backs, their four paws pointing to the ceiling, genitals proudly displayed.
I remember little of the hour I spent in the lady’s company, and I could hardly have guessed that, 20 years later, I would be spending many more countless hours taking similar instruction from people who knew better than I did on matters of health. I do recall that she spoke at length about the importance of posture, and how many of us today carried ourselves poorly, and so no wonder we were all in so much pain. Whatever did we expect? She got each of us, in turn, to walk in a straight line before her, and then to sit on one of her dining chairs, for assessment.
‘You,’ she said to me, somewhat coldly, ‘are a lost cause. Where do I start?’
I was out of all alignment, apparently. I carried myself too much on one side. I stooped. The speed of my gait aside, I walked like an old man.
She scolded each of us in turn with a schoolmarmish exactitude. The dogs didn’t stir. I elected not to go back for a second session.
My mother was disappointed, but not surprised. She then suggested I go and see a holistic masseur, a friend of hers from Tai Chi, who might also be able to help. Because she knew I’d say no, she had already paid for my first session, and we both observed strict rules about wasting money. He lived in a small flat in Pimlico, and was expecting me one Wednesday evening at six.
The door opened to reveal a youngish man, perhaps a decade older than me, in jeans and a waistcoat, hair tied back in a ponytail. Everything about him was gradual: his movements, his gestures, his smile, the length it took him to open his mouth and finally offer me not just a curious smile, but an actual ‘hello’. Because I wanted to see only the negative in him, I became immediately suspicious. This kind of inner calm, this quiet radiance, I decided in my 23-year-old wisdom, could only come from someone whose soul had been spuriously saved by a religious organisation.
His shelves were booklined with spiritual titles. There was an acoustic guitar in a corner of the room. It was a small room, and became, at one point, a kitchen. He asked me to disrobe, then to lie down on the massage table he had positioned by the curtained window. A candle was burning. He asked if I would like camomile tea.
When he came back bearing two mugs, I was wearing only boxer shorts and my T-shirt.
‘Should I lie down?’ I asked.
‘When you undress, yes.’
Reluctantly, for it was cold and I was shy, I removed my T-shirt.
He pointed to my briefs. ‘And those?’
I wanted the look I gave him to be challenging, even combative. But all I felt was a helpless timidity. ‘Is that really necessary?’ I asked.
He smiled. ‘You have a problem being naked?’ The question was rhetorical. ‘This is interesting. Perhaps we should talk about this first.’
Like the Alexander Technique woman, this was two long decades ago, and I cannot claim to remember precisely how I remonstrated with my mother afterwards, but I do know that I did remonstrate, forcefully. She kept her recommendations to herself after that. Over the ensuing years, my mother herself was open to all sorts of alternative paths. She never remarried after my father left her, and carried with her a lingering depression that reignited whenever she saw a romantic film, or read a book by Anne Tyler, or spent more than a week in the company of her parents. She was forever seeking a kind of peace that proved stubbornly elusive. Still a strict vegetarian, she frequently dabbled with veganism, but didn’t eat very much of anything at all. Secretly, she was anorexic, and had been bulimic too. Even before the cancer, she was skin and bone. She renounced traditional medicine in favour of self-reflection and St John’s Wort, which meant no longer reaching for the Nurofen when she had another of her headaches. The headaches proved resistant to St John’s Wort, and so she suffered in silence when I wanted her not to suffer at all. She delved deeper into the world of Tai Chi and the people she found there. I loved her very much, and always felt protective of her. The inner peace she craved was nothing I on my own was ever going to help her locate.
There developed a clique within her Tai Chi group. Instinctively, she tried to resist it, wary perhaps. There was something insidious about it, the inner circle treating the outer with deadpan mocking, these interlopers, city workers mostly, who felt they were attaining true spiritual calm simply by attending an hour a week, then heading off to the pub. The authentic disciples gave all the hours they could, irrespective of licensing hours; they made sacrifices. The course leader singled my mother out. He said that she had potential. She was increasingly invited to stay back after those from the outer circle had left. She started to practise every day, at home in the morning before work, and at the centre in the evening after work. Having grown tired of her secretarial job, she quit, insistent that she could live frugally, and she devoted all her time to the practice of this most graceful, and meditative, martial art. She became strong, with solid stomach muscles and arms like steel. She seemed almost happy, and I was happy for her.
The inner circle became her soulmates. Some of them lived together in a latter-day commune, but the house was in ill repair in a part of East London still years away from regeneration. They encouraged my mother to sell her tiny studio flat, the proceeds from which could be put towards a much larger place in an undeveloped part of Hackney. They could all live together, and practise Tai Chi every day.
My mother was a very trusting, giving woman, the most generous person I have ever met, and she hated that she sometimes felt suspicious of the inner circle, and of how they may have been taking advantage of her. She voiced her worries to me, and of course I played to type, pouring scorn on them. I told her to tread carefully, to follow only her heart.
A few years later, when she was dying of cancer in hospital, the inner circle chose not to visit. She accepted their reasons implicitly, that hospitals and hospices had negative energy. At her funeral, only a couple of them turned up. They gave me a lift to the Tube station afterwards. On the way, I said that I hoped my mother would have liked the service I had spent so many nights agonising over. One of the inner circle gripped my arm tightly. ‘Oh, she did. She liked it very much.’
Really? I asked. How did she know?
A kindly, benevolent tone to her voice: ‘She told me.’
Yoga nidra, says Wikipedia, is a ‘sleep-like state which yogis report to experience during their meditations. Yoga nidra, lucid sleeping, is among the deepest possible states of relaxation while still maintaining full consciousness.’ It is an ancient Indian tradition, linked with spirituality, and is believed to purify the unconscious mind.
Distinct from yoga itself, then, which is more the adoption of specific bodily postures, it sounds pleasingly narcotic. There are plenty of yoga nidra meditations on offer on Spotify, and choosing between them is easier than I would have anticipated. Though one guided meditation is much like the next, its success for the individual rests entirely in the detail: what is said, and the manner in which it is delivered. If either are skewed, then the whole thing tumbles like Jenga blocks, an
d I can no longer concentrate on silencing my mind because my mind is too busy poking fun at their spoken inanities, or else correcting grammatical mistakes. The pedant in me rarely lies dormant.
‘Take in a deep breath in,’ one tells me. This infuriates me: why two ins? It’s either, ‘Take a deep breath in’ or ‘Take in a deep breath’. ‘Take in a deep breath in’ annoys me the way Paul McCartney annoys me when he sings about ‘this ever-changin’ world in which we live in’ throughout ‘Live and Let Die’, thereby rendering the whole thing null and void.
‘Imagine yourself as a single drop of water floating in a warm sea,’ goes another one, American, and I imagine a Californian woman with unbound hair, a translucent dress and weight issues. ‘You are one of billions of drops that make up a vast ocean. You are just one drop, but one of many drops, all of them just like you. You float on the surface of the ocean, glistening in the sunlight. You float in the mid ranges of the sea, affected by currents and tides. You float in the depths, the deepest reaches of the ocean, where it is still, and dark.’ There is a pause of 20, maybe 25 seconds. I think she has gone, before suddenly she comes back. ‘Become aware of the one who witnesses the one who floats in the ocean,’ she continues. ‘Become aware of the awareness that you are not just the one who is aware, but also the witness of the one who is aware. Turn your awareness on your own awareness.’
Several of the American-voiced meditations I come across reference money issues. ‘A lack of finances; bad credit’, as one puts it. I never come across money issues in those given by Brits or Indians, and the Indians are clearly the masters here. It is the Indian accent I am most drawn to. I love the melodic rhythm of their voices, the lulling properties of their vowels . . .
Over many long minutes of meditation, I find I have all the time in the world to mull over things like the lulling properties of vowels.
The first time I do yoga nidra, a couple of months after the diagnosis, I wait until nightfall, convinced the darkness will help me prepare for a more easily accessed meditative state. The practitioner I find, Anandmurti Gurumaa, has the most wonderfully calming voice I have ever heard. It is soft as expensive toilet paper, three-ply, while behind her what may or may not be a sitar seems to experience an elongated bowel movement. She tells me, in her clipped English, to lie down on my back with my palms turned upwards and to adjust everything, my body, my clothes, until I am completely comfortable. She suggests that during yoga nidra, which she, with her greater experience in such matters, refers to as ‘yog nidra’, no ‘a’, there should be no physical movement. I should be completely still.
The moment she says this, my body is assailed with phantom but entirely real itches: my nose, my forehead, my ears, first the left, then the right. My belly button, my balls, the arches of my feet.
It gets ridiculous, and so I get up, click Anandmurti back to the start of the practice, scratch everywhere one more time, and begin again. ‘Lie down on your back with your palms turned upwards,’ she says again in her soft chocolate voice. ‘Make a resolution to yourself now that “I will not sleep, I will remain awake throughout the practice”. And be very sincere. Just listen to my voice.’ The v in her voice coming out as a languid w.
She tells me that I must not intellectualise or analyse her instructions, something I will be accused of doing many times by many other people in the months and years to come. ‘Be very attentive. And if thoughts come to disturb you from time to time, don’t worry. Relax; bring about feeling of relaxation in whole body. Be still. Develop your awareness of the body from the top of the head to the tips of the toes, and mentally repeat the mantra: ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.’
As with so many things we experience for the first time, I consider all this improbably fantastic, a revelation. Just a few minutes in, and Anandmurti is blowing my mind. I am in a mental bubble bath.
She suggests I make my resolve. It has to be simple. I am to say to myself a short, positive statement, ‘whatever you wish for yourself: good health, spiritual life, self-realisation. Samadhi.’ I have no idea what samadhi might be, but later find out it refers to a higher level of concentrated meditation. I say my resolve – ‘I have overcome fatigue; I am returning to health’ – three times, and goosebumps chase themselves up my spine and tingle tightly across my scalp. It is the most exquisite sensation.
She now tells me to concentrate on different parts of my body, the right hand, the little finger, the forefinger, the third, the ring, the thumb. ‘Be aware.’ Then the palm of the hand, the lower arm, the elbow, the upper arm, the shoulder, the armpit, the right waist, the right hip, the right thigh, the kneecap, calf muscle, ankle, heel, the sole of the right foot, the top of the right foot, the big toe of the right foot, and then, one by one, each of its siblings.
‘Don’t try to concentrate,’ she says, which confuses me because I have been concentrating on each of these parts of my body, and likely frowning as I do so. ‘Just be aware.’
Then she switches to the left-hand side of the body, the hand, the fingers, the arm, above the waist, below. She flits from one body part to the next, busily but calmly, methodically, while the sitar continues to wail in low-level intestinal pain in the background. I feel heavy, pleasingly so. Occasionally an itch does come, but I override the impulse to scratch.
Anandmurti moves up to the head now, the forehead, both sides of the head, the right eyebrow, the left, the space between the eyebrows. Helplessly, my thoughts drift to Liam Gallagher in the video for Oasis’s ‘Whatever’, and how he doesn’t have any space between his eyebrows. Anandmurti moves on, and I quickly refocus. The nose, the tip of the nose, the upper lip, the lower lip, the chin, the throat, the right chest, the left chest, the middle of the chest, the navel. The whole of the right leg, the whole of the left, both legs together. The whole of the right arm, the whole of the left arm, both arms together. The back, the buttocks, the spine, the shoulder blades. The whole of the front, the abdomen, the chest.
‘Now total body together. Full body. Now, once again, we will rotate our consciousness. Right toe, left toe . . .’
My mind alights on each part of my anatomy as she draws attention to it. I am even heavier now, sleepy. ‘Don’t sleep; remain attentive. No movement at all, the body remain still.’ And mine really does. I am flushed with pride. Look! I want to cry out to the empty house. Look at what I’m doing!
She says that my body is lying on the floor, and that I am floating above myself, looking down, seeing it from head to toe. This feels empowering, somehow. Almost exciting. I have never done anything like it.
She wants me to concentrate on my breathing. Not to force it, merely to observe, to maintain my awareness. Complete awareness. But I cannot now not force it. The moment you become aware of your breath is the moment you helplessly begin to control it. But it doesn’t break the spell, and the breathing is stronger now, coming from deeper down. I can feel the rise of my ribcage, my stomach inflating and deflating like a balloon. Complete bliss now. It is all distinctly otherworldly, and a little weird, but good weird. Her voice remains utterly hypnotic.
She wants me to count my breaths from 27 down to one: 27 navel rising, 26 navel falling, 25 navel rising, 24 navel falling. And so on. I find this unexpectedly difficult, being required abruptly to perform a task where moments before I was merely being led. I recognise irritation, and want to speed up my breaths if only because the very act of counting backwards is spoiling the deep plateau of peace I had so recently been in the midst of.
A moment later, she is talking again. There are no numbers in my head. I search in vain but find none. Had I fallen asleep? My mouth is dry. The sitar is distant, but still there, its one long note stretching doggedly towards infinity. My head is woolly: 27 navel rising, 26 navel falling, 25 navel rising, 24 navel falling.
There is just the sitar now. Where has Anandmurti gone? Will she speak again, or does the sitar never end? Shall I sit up, stop?
‘. . . Now stop your count, and shift your attention to your chest.’
She’s back, telling me to be aware, that my chest is rising with each breath, and that I should be, and remain, aware. And then she starts to count.
The counting again. I am bored of the counting, and don’t want to do it any more. I do the counting: 27 chest rising, 26 chest falling, 25 chest rising, 24 chest falling.
‘Say the words and numbers mentally to yourself,’ she says. ‘Be aware.’
I am aware. I think I am aware. I get all the way down to one, then start over. My ribcage feels the effort of it. I see, in my mind’s eye, the bones lifting and separating, my diaphragm a slow-motion trampoline.
‘Stop your counting,’ she says, and I feel irritable again. I had been on 8 chest rising, 7 chest falling. There were only six to go. This sensation of uncompletedness does not sit easily with me.
Now there is a visualisation exercise. She will name things, and for each I should develop a vision of them on, she encourages, ‘all levels’: feeling, awareness, emotion and imagination. If I am unable to do this, she adds, ‘no hassle’.
She begins. Over the next few minutes, she moves through burning candles, endless desert, torrential rain. Snowcapped mountains, sunrise and sunset. Birds flying across the sunset, a canvas of white clouds. Blue sky. A Buddhist smiling. She tells me that I am walking on green grass, that tall trees are shading me, that I am approaching a temple. A dim light glows from the temple. I reach it, and place my right foot on the step, and then the left, and enter a courtyard.
I want to know what is in the courtyard.