Yoga in Skirts, by Anastasia!

Here's Anastasia's first in-country blog post, and it is about a great group of women, doing some yoga while sitting on chairs!

Yoga In Skirts

First lesson of Yoga In Skirts: do not actually do yoga in a skirt, neither a long skirt nor a short skirt. Second lesson: smile.

Yesterday our friend Nahed invited me to come to a class she taught, which she called Yoga in Skirts. I know very, very little Arabic and really had no idea what to expect of this class other than that it was all women, and Nahed was teaching it. What I found was something really quite amazing.

A group of about eight women come together every Monday morning for about an hour and do yoga seated in chairs. They do this in chairs because they are elderly and not so flexible as your stereotypical yogi. But they have an underlying sense of resilience and perseverance that was really quite inspiring. These women did not do everything correctly and often confused their lefts and rights. These women cannot always straighten out their legs or stretch their arms up as high as Nahed, yet the love and attachment they show her is hard to find elsewhere.

My experience was quite entertaining. I had to laugh at myself, as I was the only one actually wearing a skirt (and trying really hard not to let my underwear peak out in warrior one).  I was also entertained by how much conversing was going on during the yoga class. These older women did not feel intimidated by Nahed being “the teacher” and openly asked questions or corrected one another with body positioning. To me, it seemed like none of this detracted from the class but instead imbedded it with a sense of genuine community.

I also learned a whole lot of Arabic. Ok, not a LOT but quite a large amount of words by my standards. Part of me wishes I could stay in an Arabic speaking country for a good long chunk of time so that I could learn how to speak it properly but I am proud to say that during the class I could distinguish where one word ended and another began. My favorite word I picked up on yesterday was ‘slowly’, phonetically pronounced “shweeshwee”. The language barrier was not a big deal though, I just smiled and told them what I was doing here in Bethlehem (Nahed translated) and they smiled back and said, “Thank you”.

Last thing I would like to comment on is this: many people think of Israel and Palestine to be an area of Jews versus Muslims. I find this perception to be very misrepresentative. (I will not even comment on the “versus” aspect.) This class was filled with Christian women and took place at the Lutheran Wellness Center. There is more in this holy shmoly land than just two conflicting people. There are men and women and children who live here who do not seek conflict, who do not want conflict but instead work on building communities. And as much as I felt so different from these women- in terms of age, ethnicity, culture and citizenship- it was amazing to be surrounded by ladies who’s goal was the same as mine: to build community. Rock on.