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By jamie, October 11, 2011 7:46 pm

Claire Dederer is clever. After suffering chronic back pain, she took up yoga, and spent years at one studio or another, trying to improve her practice and her life at the same time. Now she has written a memoir using yoga poses to frame significant events in her life. For example, she describes a photo of her mother “flying” in crow pose with her father looking on in the background when she introduces the fact that her mother left her dad soon after that photo was taking.

She deftly weaves her story back and forth between childhood and adulthood. Both have their moments, and this is not one you should read in public if you are a closet crier. She mentions her long-term habit of keeping a journal, and her efforts certainly paid off here – she is able to capture the feeling of growing up at a very specific time in U.S. history (early 1970s, complete with hippies and challenging “traditional” models of family and gendered behavior).

The title of the book sounds mildly self-deprecating, and the book is too. She starts off portraying herself as somewhat of a “poseur” – trying to keep up with all the other liberal uber-moms in Seattle, with their attachment parenting (I think she actually drew the line before going full stop with that), baby-led weaning (which for her ended abruptly when the baby got too big and injured her mama’s back), and co-op preschool (so she could be as hands-on as possible). She compares herself to other moms, wears the uniform (evidently Danskin clogs are very important), and berates herself for not being better. We learn that she is a former “hipster” and I, who have never been a hipster, half expect her to start talking about dressing her kid in ironic t-shirts and introducing her to a world of music snobbery.

Then she starts providing more details about her life, and everything changes. Her kids both come home from the hospital by way of the NICU – one with her own oxygen tank, and Claire Dederer becomes a wounded mother employing a painful combination of rigid conformity and magical thinking to keep her babies from disappearing. And then we hear about her own tricky childhood – her mother moves in with a younger man but remains married to her father. The kids shuffle back and forth between parents (sometimes this involves a boat) and are constantly told that nothing is amiss in this family. It no longer seems surprising that this woman exerts and obscene amount of energy maintaining a particular sort of persona, one that appears strong and steady – she must have felt a lot of pressure as a kid trying to find her place in her broken (but not broken?) family which also included a shifting network of her mother’s friends.

She analyzes to what extent we are products of the choices our parents make but, as she moves from yoga class to yoga class she shares with us how she found her own identity. Her kids were hard-won, as was becoming a person she could be comfortable being. Her honesty is sometimes uncomfortable – far from being a poseur, she lets us in on her private insecurities, the types of things we ruminators get stuck on but would be loathe to share aloud.

Yoga, even in a room full of people, is really a very quiet, personal thing. Claire Dederer invites us to listen in on her thoughts as she twists and folds on the mat – sometimes cheating a bit – and manages to make the narrative almost worthy of reading out loud. By the end, and I am sure I am not the only one, I am tempted to look up a yoga studio and show up immediately with mat in hand.

Scroll down for other posts about Poser:

Review
Part 1: Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, by Claire Dederer
Part 2: Lonely Books
Part 3: Imperfect People are Just My Type
Part 4: Smashed Cupcakes and Date Night
Part 5: Running Away From Home
Part 6: Yoga Teachers, Feminism, and Big Words

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By jamie, October 7, 2011 6:59 pm

This week Little Mama really wanted cupcakes, but I was too busy to make her some. When we went to the grocery store (hungry, always a mistake – I might be able to skip grocery shopping next week!), I agreed to buy a six-pack of decorated cupcakes from the bakery – she was thrilled. “Two per customer,” I said, and “only one per day.” She and I enjoyed our two, but GB isn’t a fan of daily sweets, so on Day Three he still had one left. Sweet as could be, Little Mama asked him for the cupcake, and of course he gave it to her. She sat at her tiny table and chair, excited with her bonus dessert. Until she looked up and saw her daddy having ice cream. Then all heck broke loose, “I didn’t want a cupcake! I wanted ice cream!” Then she did something I found astonishing. She smashed the cupcake and then stomped into the kitchen to throw it away. Are you kidding me? Little Mama throwing away perfectly good cake?

Claire Dederer compares living with a three-year-old to having a terrible breakup – “Irrational tirades and operatic flights of rage are tempered with appeasing manipulation.” It’s a fun ride though, no? I read Chapters 15-19.

She mentions date night with her husband in this section (evidently her husband is going through something, possibly depression, during this point in the book, and she isn’t being much help to him): “Date night, like any kind of enforced fun, bore little resemblance to actual fun.” Sad. The other night I looked across the pile of stuff on the couch separating me from my husband (magazines, papers, books, remote controls, kid jewelry, washed and empty Dora yogurt containers, Wonder Woman costume…embarrassing) and thought maybe we should start doing a date night of some sort. So much for that. (We’ll think of something. I guess cleaning up the sofa wouldn’t hurt.)

Their daughter is getting ready to start kindergarten, and they check out every school in the Seattle area to find the perfect fit for their perfect little Lucy. I felt a tiny stab of jealousy because we are very limited in our kindergarten choices – the nearest actual “big city” is over an hour away, and it’s pretty slim pickings in our immediate area. [EDIT: I do not mean that we have terrible kindergartens here, just that we don't have lots of choices - Montessori, Tools of the Mind, dual immersion, Waldorf, etc., that they have in larger cities. I think I would be tempted to look into private schools if we had tons of private school options.] Lucy and her parents settle on a co op kindergarten, which vaguely reminded me of Sudbury Valley School, where there is no structured curriculum. I also reminded myself that I have always said my kids will attend public school, and GB agrees with me, which brings me to another point she mentions in this section – having a gifted child is a great excuse to send your kid to private school even if you have always considered such a thing a politically incorrect thing to do. She talks about how the children of all of her friends somehow managed to place between the 98th and 99th percentile on the kindergarten placement test – gifted children, every one. Oh well. Maybe it’s for the best that our choices are limited.

Oh. About yoga. Claire Dederer becomes a vinyasa enthusiast – I haven’t done “vinyasa” yoga, but I have done ashtanga – a lot – and vinyasa sounds pretty similar, where you do part of a sun salutation between each pose (that’s where the somersault comes in once in awhile). I felt really uncomfortable reading this part, and I think that’s because it reminded me of myself – I want my yoga to be really hard, so hard that takes every last ounce of my ability to accomplish it. And because I have always gravitated toward the more difficult types of yoga (Bikram and ashtanga/power yoga), it does bad things to my self esteem when the “easier,” more gentle kinds of yoga are too hard for me.

But I also remembered the first time I ever did ashtanga with a teacher – he did NOT go through the entire sequence with us. He skipped the postures that were too hard, and eased us in over the first several weeks. And I didn’t feel bad, even though I knew from my home practice (I used a book
– that was before you could just Google a DVD) that he was not showing us every pose. I don’t know, something might be shifting me in – I think I’m finally getting ready to try. I hope I am.

Scroll down for other posts about Poser:

Review
Part 1: Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, by Claire Dederer
Part 2: Lonely Books
Part 3: Imperfect People are Just My Type
Part 4: Smashed Cupcakes and Date Night
Part 5: Running Away From Home
Part 6: Yoga Teachers, Feminism, and Big Words

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By jamie, October 6, 2011 3:36 am

I kind of have a girl crush on Claire Dederer now, when just the other day I was thinking we wouldn’t be friends in real life. A couple of chapters can do that to you. Now that I know more about her childhood and her many insecurities, I think she’s pretty terrific. I won’t go into details, but if you like memoirs about imperfect people (and I mean that with the utmost respect), this might be the book for you.

I am pretty impressed with her willingness to jump into yoga philosophy and am especially relieved that she feels conflicted about it: I don’t want to be inauthentic or pretentious either, and I certainly do not want to disrespect someone else’s religion. I hear and read some Christians referring to yoga as “satanic,” which is ridiculous and incorrect, of course; at the opposite end of the spectrum, I hear people dismissing chakras and such as a whole lot of New Age mumbo jumbo – I do not want to be either of those people. In my yoga history, I have participated in chanting that sounds an awful lot like a prayer. I have sat in the same room with photos of Krishna and Genesh, done my yoga and tried my best not to be disrespectful of an ancient religion that is not mine.

She talks about another book, one I was not familiar with, which gives more details about yoga, The Hatha Yoga Pradipika – this must be where my illustrated yoga book got the information about how to eat.* I didn’t tell you about this yesterday, but my book says that yogis should also do routine cleansings beyond the type achieved with a neti pot. In one, you take a very long length of cotton cloth and swallow one end. You keep swallowing until there is only one end of cloth sticking out of your mouth. If I remember correctly, it’s supposed to help you clean out mucous, but don’t quote me on this. Claire Dederer briefly mentions the procedure in this part of the book – I read through chapter 14 – but she doesn’t admit to trying it out. I have not at any time in my life been THAT dedicated a yogini – particularly given my history with choking, I don’t think type of thing is for me. If any of you have tried it though, please share. (Really, PLEASE share.)

So Claire Dederer doesn’t give tips on how to break into the book reviewing business, but she does mention her process for reading for review. It reminded me just a little of my own (all five of them – hah! – and thank you, friends for reading them because I wrote the heck out of them, that’s for sure).

She and I did not have similar childhoods – hers wasn’t boring (neither was mine), but was a little bit sad because her grownups made some odd choices. One thing we had in common was that we both loved to read. Her description of Little Women took me back to my own love of that book – I identified with Jo too, and I used to read her dialogue out loud or at least under my breath.

By this point in the book she has two kids, and both spent extended time in the NICU when they were born. I was so bothered by the story of her son that I immediately wanted to share it with someone. I grabbed my daughter and gave her squeezes (“Mommy! I’m reading!” – though she did hug me back.) Then I quietly handed the book to GB and told him what to read. He winced too, and then I felt a little bad about subjecting him to that sad story (their little son lives, but their experience was enough for them to decide not to have any more babies).

*I love the convenience of Amazon and how I can find a book in two seconds flat. (Sorry Borders, Waldenbooks, Crown Books and other wonderful old stomping grounds, and RIP). I didn’t order the yoga book. Yet. Too many choices for a quick-click book purchase. (This is not a commercial. I have links on this blog, but mostly I just use Amazon all the time. I haven’t gotten any checks from them yet because my readership is pretty small. Thanks to every one of you though – you really do mean the world to me).

Scroll down for other posts about Poser:

Review
Part 1: Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, by Claire Dederer
Part 2: Lonely Books
Part 3: Imperfect People are Just My Type
Part 4: Smashed Cupcakes and Date Night
Part 5: Running Away From Home
Part 6: Yoga Teachers, Feminism, and Big Words

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By jamie, October 3, 2011 8:34 pm

Do you have any books on your shelves that have not been read? (I certainly do.) Do you have any that you purchased because you though they needed to be in your library even though you, if being honest, have not actually considered reading them? Funny (actually I should probably be embarrassed) I have The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and The Bhagavad Gita (I actually have that one in a boxed set with some other related titles) – I am not sure I have every actually opened those books, but there they are in my religion/philosophy section. All those years of yoga – I thought I should have the books.

Score some points for Claire Dederer – she read the books, then others, and really tried to understand the philosophy behind the activity. The closest I have some to this was a wonderful illustrated book my mom got me ages ago which had details about the chakras, poses, breathing, and mediation, explained how yogis should eat (no meat or anything spicy, and regular fasting is important), and was the first place I learned about neti pots. (Sometimes I still page through that book – the photographs are wonderful.)

I read through chapter 8. She talks about how her little girl was born by C-section and spent time first in the NICU and then had to use oxygen tank at home for awhile. It was sad to read – unfortunately I got to this part while standing in front of my classroom where I was proctoring their first exam. I swallowed back tears, started sniffling a lot (of course I had no tissue and no way to leave the room to get some), and agonized for this family even though I knew things eventually turned out well for the baby. No wonder she was so determined to be a perfect rule-following mother – now I feel like bad about what I said in my first post about this book, about her “following the super-parenting responsibilities dictated by other hipster moms in her Seattle neighborhood” – she was more likely just hanging on for dear life to any rule or strategy that could erase the terrifying feelings of almost losing a child.

So let’s make a deal, alright everyone? Let’s read our lonely books. This blog was originally started after I started feeling guilty about too many unread books. Which book are you going to start with? Maybe I can read it too, if I have a copy shelved somewhere.

Scroll down for other posts about Poser:

Review
Part 1: Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, by Claire Dederer
Part 2: Lonely Books
Part 3: Imperfect People are Just My Type
Part 4: Smashed Cupcakes and Date Night
Part 5: Running Away From Home
Part 6: Yoga Teachers, Feminism, and Big Words

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By jamie, September 16, 2011 8:41 pm

I have done yoga off and on since I was a little kid. I love the way it makes me feel – powerful, balanced and flexible (and completely spent if it’s Bikram or ashtanga). I haven’t set foot into a studio since I found out I was pregnant with my daughter (she is now three years old). I tried a “Biggest Loser” beginner DVD a few months ago and cried and wobbled my way through the 20 minutes – so much for powerful, balanced and flexible.

This book has been on my reading list since before it was released. I started reading it (I am through Chapter 4) and then suddenly picked up two more classes to teach, so I had to put it down and focus on course prep. I can identify with someone who wants to feel a little bit calmer in life. Also, reading her story makes me miss yoga so much.

The author, Claire Dederer, is a book reviewer by trade (maybe she’ll give some tips on how to land THAT job – it’s doubtful, I know). She injured her back after her daughter was born, and decided to take up yoga to fix herself. This is a memoir, with yoga used as a way to tie the story together (it’s genius, really) – for example, she introduces her mother’s unusual history by first describing a photo of her mom in crow pose, eventually using her own difficulties with crow to examine some major differences between herself and her mother.

I have already read enough to know that Claire and I would probably not be friends in real life. She is a “hipster” type, following the super-parenting responsibilities dictated by other hipster moms in her Seattle neighborhood. That means baby wearing (GB did that, but I rarely did), baby-led weaning (she was unsuccessful at this – the kid was too big and her back couldn’t take it), co-op preschool (which sounded ridiculous), etc. She dutifully wears her “mommy uniform” (Dansko clogs are really important – aren’t those shoes for nurses?) and anxiously compares herself to her cooler friends. No wonder she needed yoga – all of this impression management must have been terribly exhausting. Not that I’m criticizing her – sometimes I look in the mirror and think I need to hurry up and get my act together (or at least lose the “baby weight,” most of which I gained after my child was born) before my daughter notices how hopelessly uncool I am.

One thing Dederer explains I can wholeheartedly agree with – it is definitely possible to “cheat” in yoga. You can hold every muscle just right, practice perfect pranayama (yoga breathing – it’s tricky), and clear your mind so you can go deeper into the pose. Or, you can just stick those legs up in the air so you look like a yoga champion and hope you don’t pass out from holding your breath. It all depends on your motivation at that minute. One caveat, which she also hints at – cheating can lead to injuries, so I don’t recommend it. I know this from personal experience – one day I looked in the mirror during my Bikram class and decided that this time I was going to look perfect in bow pose. I looked up and pushed up (well, jerked up is more accurate) and I felt something shift in my back in a very uncomfortable way – it took a month to recover from that unnecessary yoga injury!

Her bow is lovely. Mine wasn't. Image from http://www.bikramyogaaz.com/news/apr2009news.html

Scroll down for other posts about Poser:

Review
Part 1: Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, by Claire Dederer
Part 2: Lonely Books
Part 3: Imperfect People are Just My Type
Part 4: Smashed Cupcakes and Date Night
Part 5: Running Away From Home
Part 6: Yoga Teachers, Feminism, and Big Words