Doing the Detox Thing

Can a weekend with a Jewish/Polish yoga princess from New Jersey (with a potty mouth) really change your life forever? I'm detoxified and justified and ready to share what I learned.

A yoga friend and I decided what was needed to ease us through our respective life transitions was a long weekend at The Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. Located in the Berkshires of New England, Kripalu bills itself as the largest retreat center for yoga and holistic living in North America. Page (my friend) and I are both certified yoga instructors in Nashville (the critical difference being she is a teacher who actually has students, and I am a teacher who actually does not), and we were at the beginning of a new friendship. It seemed like a plan for both deepening our bond and tuning into our new realities ... we were excited about this yoga adventure!

Kripalu has a full schedule of New Age shamans and yoga celebutantes “designed to develop physical health and nurture emotional wellness and spiritual sustenance.” Page suggested we book the detox weekend with Seane Corn. I knew nothing about Seane Corn except what I could deduce from the cover of Yoga Journal: she's so pretty and has very thick hair! Lured by whatever it is Seane has, we booked ourselves into Kripalu mutually agreeing in advance that we’d define "detox" as broadly as possible, i.e. eating anything we wanted in as much quantity as we wanted and smuggling in wine and coffee on an "as needed" basis.  

Page and her husband were transitioning into the first time in their marriage when they wouldn’t have kids living with them ... a new time in their relationship which brought both opportunities and challenges. I was a recent transplant to Nashville having moved here for love ("love" in this case being a musician), but was not remotely surprised when love wilted.  The exact moment it wilted was under a mosquito net in Arusha, Tanzania, but I digress.

I didn't realize, however, that Nashville's streets are littered with lovelorn statistics like mine.  I know this now because my Green Hills bikini waxer told me so. She is highly skilled at identifying this syndrome having seen it (and many other things) splayed across her waxing table many times before. Some people are born multi-taskers, and she is one.  Between applying hot wax and causing me a new kind of pain, which made me forget my old kind of pain, she was able to 1) diagnose me; 2) refer me to a recent article detailing the sad stories of girls like me; 3) tell me a few Nashville musician jokes in an effort to add levity (Q: How do you get the drummer off your front stoop? A: Pay the pizza delivery bill. Q: What does a songwriter do when he breaks up with his girlfriend? A: Get a house and a car.); and 4) scribble the name of an excellent therapist on her card and slip it to me with my receipt for services rendered.

“Call her,” she said with a knowing stage whisper. “She’s very familiar with this phenomenon.”  It was so comforting to know I was not unusual after all, and call her I did, but that is another story.  Happily, as it turns out, detox with Seane Corn is therapeutic as well.

Don’t Judge a Yoga Star by Her Magazine Covers
When you make snap judgments about people based on cover photographs and marketing, realize that you aren’t always going to be right. In Seane Corn's case, the reality was so much more interesting than her glam cover girl persona. I was prepared for a mind-numbing sequence of chattarangas, up dogs, and down dogs and for digesting a lot of yogarrific platitudes.  Seane not only did not conform to the yoga diva stereotype, she defied it. A friend had warned us ahead of time that she was "militant."  A militant yoga teacher is an interesting concept in and of itself, but that’s not the adjective I’d choose after spending three days with her.  She did strike us as smart, passionate, and tough with a mouth like a sailor.  She is a Jewish girl from Jersey after all, and mazel tov to her for wearing her colors visibly, gang style.

Seane's approach to detox is as much about making conscious decisions about one’s outer life as it is about sequencing a series of physical twists and inversions to coerce one’s internal organs into catharsis as well.  Deciding what — or more to the point, who — to include in your life seems like a no brainer along the path to happiness.  And to paraphrase a Kate Winslett/Cameron Diaz movie: if you aren’t willing to cast yourself as the leading lady of your own life, who will you cast?  I came to the obvious self realization that if my life is a romantic comedy; the least I can do is learn to be a great editor.

As Seane guided us through our detox asana sequence things did begin to emerge. Eating tremendous amounts of tofu scramble, granola with local organic yogurt, and ginger scones before a two-hour yoga practice designed to motivate your gut to do what it is supposed to do best can be a dangerous thing. On a more spiritual level, holding difficult poses for long periods of time can make you cry. Period. Hip openers, especially for women, are intense since, according to Seane, they relate to the second chakra, which is all about sexuality and emotions. So cry we did.

Seane gave us permission to rejoice in both the physical and emotional purification and the release of toxins from our cellular selves including repressed feelings like jealousy, resentment, rage, shame, guilt, and unresolved grief. Letting go of these? Yes please. And forever would be just fine.

Now more than ever I have come to realize that life is mostly about learning from your mistakes and then getting on with things. Free advice is worth what you pay for it, but don’t ever move for a man. And if you do, be prepared to bloom where you are planted. As fate would have it Nashville is a fertile place to bloom. The soil is rich and seems to grow honest to goodness real people ... the kind who show up when you call in the middle of the night. Sometimes you serendipitously find things you didn’t know you were searching for, and sometimes the quest for love leads our hearts, finally, to a place called home.

PHOTO COURTESY OF KRIPALU CENTER FOR YOGA AND HEALTH