Jo Walker Yoga

You Just Don’t Have the Killer Instinct: A Conversation with a Geographer and Self-Proclaimed Nerd

Posted on March 27, 2017 Updated on March 27, 2017

As a component of her work with Carol Krucoff and Kimberly Carson, Jo sat down to talk with two of the Spears yogis. This is the first of the two interviews we’ll post here on the blog.

When you are as actively engaged in life as Dorothy, asana practice becomes a must—a maintenance program, the thing that keeps your physical body functioning so that over time you are less likely to “lose ground,” as this 80-year-old yogi says. In the interest of full disclosure, Dorothy and I are members of a local hiking club and have spent as many hours together on hiking trails across North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee as we have on the yoga mat.

In spite of these hours together, her yoga story was new to me. I learned that she has been practicing yoga for about 20 years, and her story takes us back to a time in her life when stress was taking over. She was in a very mentally demanding job that she loved, while raising a family with a type A partner whom she also loved very much. Her husband was a successful businessman whose preferred way to de-stress was to crush his opponents on the tennis court. “You just don’t have the killer instinct—you only compete with yourself,” he said to her. So began the quest of this highly functioning self-proclaimed nerd, needing to find her own way of getting out of her head and into her body.

She tried aerobics and other various forms of exercise, and all were helpful and enjoyable enough, but just not hitting the spot. One day she decided to try a class listed as “gentle yoga” at the local YWCA. She became a regular, and she soon realized that yoga asanas (poses) and pranayama (breathing) provided the energy that she required and the sense of calm and well-being that other forms of exercise for her had lacked. After those first few classes, she describes the way she felt as energized and relaxed at the same time.

Over time, Dorothy has developed a practice to suit her needs. She has always preferred to hold the poses for a good while, coining the phrase “a pause in the pose.” Her particular favorites are trikonasana (triangle) and parivrtta (revolved triangle), two stretches that she says feel really good. A regular participant in afternoon and early evening classes, she is drawn to classes where the lights are kept low, and the poses are held long enough for everyone to really “settle into the stretch and connect with the breath.”

As a practicing Quaker believing that the Spirit of God dwells in every person, Dorothy comments, “Yoga nurtures that [Quakerism].” As for the future, Dorothy’s goal is not to lose ground: she wants to maintain the level of flexibility and grace that regular practice has provided, even if it means moving to the wall for balance poses. Having a functioning body is important for Dorothy, who is active in multiple Quaker organizations and projects.

She described a recent project in Portugal that required a level of stamina she felt initially uncertain about: “I had to walk from my hotel to the various schools, and some of the walking was on cobblestone streets. I got along fine, although my knees got tired.” Her knees get extra care through modifications in class, and she says that the 2016 trip “was the seventh Global Volunteers project that I have done over the last ten years. I plan to do some more of these trips if my money and my knees hold out.” With continued modifications, along with creativity and wisdom, we’ll keep her knees strong for as long as possible.

As for breath work, she knows without a doubt that deep breathing has expanded her lung capacity. She recently made the same observation that I—along with many other yogis—have made at the doctor’s office: when asked to breathe deeply while the medical staff is listening with a stethoscope, it seems like they wait a long time for us to finish the breath cycle!

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