The Yoga of Jungle Gyms and Irish Playwrights

Once upon a time, I was an actor who went to study acting and Irish playwrights in Dublin. (This is a true story.) There are some grand, grandiose, larger-than-life (dare I say over the top?) characters in Irish dramatic literature, full of pathos and angst and all those wonderful moments of feeling all the feelings that actors such as I was love to sink their teeth into. And then there’s Beckett.

During the month-long stay at the acting school I attended in Dublin, one week was devoted to examining the works of Samuel Beckett, best known in this country for his plays Waiting for Godot and Endgame. I was assigned to work on a smidge of a play, barely a page long, called Come and Go. It features three characters with monosyllabic names, almost exclusively monosyllabic lines, and no distinguishing characteristics from one to the next. There is little to no discernible plot and a great deal of very specific direction from the playwright about how the little play should look and sound. (If you’re interested, the text of Come and Go can be found here: http://www.samuel-beckett.net/comego.htm. It will take you less than three minutes to read. Those uninterested in the text and I will wait for you here…)

So there I was, intense and passionate young collegiate actor, wanting to feel all the feelings, and instead I had to play Flo in Come and Go. I resisted that little scene assignment so very strongly, my whole artistic sensibility crying out within me, “But it’s so STIFILING!! I have to be so precise and it’s so BORING!!” The teacher clearly heard my whiney, resistant artistic sensibility, because one afternoon in rehearsal, he told us about acting Beckett. He explained how in Beckett’s plays, you are expected to stick to certain parameters that the author has given you, but that those parameters are like a jungle gym. The old fashioned metal ones that they don’t allow in school playgrounds anymore. Those barebones structures may not have looked like much, but their stability, their defined structure, their precision allowed for us, as children, to create whole worlds within them. No, that jungle gym didn’t look like a castle, or a pirate ship, or a space shuttle like we see on today’s playgrounds, but they provided a framework that, once accepted, allowed us to explore freely within them, and the possibilities were limitless! “Beckett,” the teacher told us, “gives you a jungle gym.”

Ever since then, I have loved Beckett.

That is also why I love Iyengar yoga. BKS Iyengar brings that precision to the practice of yoga that Samuel Beckett brings to a play. Though to some (and I’ll admit, I’ve been there too), the detailed attention given to the framework of each asana can sometimes feel “so STIFILING!!”, in reality the razor-sharp precision in the instructions and the quality of attention is building a jungle gym for us as yoga practitioners. Once we have the structure built (you wouldn’t want a jungle gym that didn’t have all the bolts tightened, would you?), we can really begin to explore the inner landscape of our bodies’ subtleties, our minds, even our emotions, within the shape of the pose. And, like with those old jungle gyms and those monosyllabic scenes in Beckett—once you delve deep enough, the possibilities are endless!

Each week one of the teachers at the Yoga Space shares her thoughts and experiences in this blog.  Kirsten Brooks is a Teacher-in-Training at the Yoga Space.  The Yoga Space is a studio just east of Dexter serving Dexter, Saline, Chelsea, Manchester and Ann Arbor.  We have been helping people with their flexibility, strength, focus and stress management for over 14 years. We offer a free class the last Friday of each month from 6-7 pm. The next free class Friday, January 31. 180 Little Lake Dr #1 Ann Arbor, MI, 48103.www.yogaspaceannarbor.com   734-622-9600