As soon as I got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), I started practicing yoga…with people who did not have MS. Yoga is not a competitive sport, and I am not a competitive person, so I’ve never wasted any energy comparing my abilities to anyone else’s. It didn’t matter if mine was the wobbliest “Tree” pose in the yoga studio. Trees can wobble, in the right wind.

At no point did I feel a need to join a special class for people with multiple sclerosis. I was doing just fine, I thought, in the yoga classes at the Fitness Center, practicing with “beginners” ranging in age from early twenties to mid-seventies. But when I saw the flyer for MS Yoga in my neurologist’s examination room, I immediately decided to join that class, too. The MS Yoga class was free. I had nothing to lose. And besides, I liked the concept. Yoga has helped me, probably in more ways than I know. Wasn’t it nice that the neurologist was offering something positive that his MS patients could do for their bodies and minds? I saw my attendance as a yes vote to the whole idea.

I might have felt a bit apprehensive the morning of the first class…I’d met people with MS before, and most of them just brought me down. The only close friend I’d made with MS up to that point had had a sparkly, positive attitude…and the progressive form of the disease. She’d recently died, hopeful to the end.

The women I met at MS Yoga that morning were charming, charismatic, joyful, and curious. We started asking each other questions, and comparing notes, before Megan, our instructor, got a word in edgewise.

Did I like the class itself? Not at first. It didn’t seem remotely like any form of yoga I’d ever encountered; starting with the fact that Megan never even mentioned breath. To me, a yoga practise without breath is like a church service without prayer; every pose starts with breath, extends with breath, transitions with breath. If you don’t have breath, you don’t have life, and you sure don’t have yoga. But what our class did have, right away, was community; we were as fascinated by each other as if were all reunited siblings, separated at birth.

Our ending “Namaste” (“the light in me greets the light in you) would not be a goodbye. There was a lunch place two stories down from our ad hoc conference room/yoga studio. We all agreed to extend the party through lunch. We called out the high performers as we prepared to leave; “You can still balance on one foot as you put on a sneaker!” And as we went down the stairs, “You can walk without a banister!” We commiserated with the one who forgot her yoga mat and had to go back for it, “I forget things, too!” And the ones who had to rush off to the Ladies Room, “I have an MS bladder, too!” We peppered each other with questions over our salads and soups, universal ones, like, “Do you have any kids/grandkids?” As well as MS related ones, like, “Do you still work?” “Do you get social security?” “Where did you get that cane?”

After subsequent yoga classes, the lunches went on, and the confessions of various disabilities grew bolder; not every symptom was found to have a match. The confessions of memory loss were by far the loneliest; what was the self, without memories?

In the meantime, I grew frustrated with the classes themselves. What was yoga, without breath? When Megan finally told me her reason for withholding breath from the practice, her explanation shocked me. Apparently she’d been taught that handicapped people should not be “burdened” with such instructions. I said, “Everybody breathes.” The assumption that people with MS couldn’t handle breathing made for an insulting pedagogy. She took note. And stopped following it. Megan invited us to breathe in class, invited us to laugh. Classes got better, week by week.

One day, Megan introduced us to the Tree pose, that pose I found so challenging in my able-bodied yoga classes. In Tree, one must balance on one leg, and rest the foot of the opposite leg somewhere on the standing leg; perhaps on the ankle, the inner calf, or as high as the inner thigh. Megan proposed that we do Tree pose in a circle, while supporting our neighbors, palm to palm. This was a method we all could achieve. Instead of forming individual wobbly trees, we formed a steady grove.

As suddenly as the class was offered to us, the class was taken away. The department of Integrative Medicine gave no explanation. The UC neurologist who was involved with this program is seeking to reprise it, to this day.

On the last meeting of the MS Yoga Group, Megan closed with this poem by the Revered Sapphire Rose:

“She Let Go

She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.

She let go of the fear.  She let go of the judgments.  She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.  She let go of the committee of indecision within her.  She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons. Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.

She didn’t ask anyone for advice. She didn’t read a book on how to let go  She didn’t search the scriptures. She just let go.  She let go of all of the memories that held her back.  She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.  She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.

She didn’t promise to let go. She didn’t journal about it. She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer. She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper. She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope. She just let go.

She didn’t analyze whether she should let go. She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter. She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment. She didn’t call the prayer line. She didn’t utter one word. She just let go.

No one was around when it happened. There was no applause or congratulations. No one thanked her or praised her. No one noticed a thing. Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.

There was no effort. There was no struggle. It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad. It was what it was, and it is just that.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be. A small smile came over her face. A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and the moon shone forevermore.”

We have had to let go of the yoga class, but we have stayed in touch with each other. We are no longer individual w0bbly trees, but a steady grove.