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Finding My Balance: A Memoir with Yoga - Softcover

Hemingway, Mariel

 
9780743264327: Finding My Balance: A Memoir with Yoga
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0743264320 ISBN 13: 9780743264327
Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

Stardom, thanks to Woody Allen and his film Manhattan, came at an early age...but so did the problems of a broken and dysfunctional family. Yet in a life so out of kilter, Mariel Hemingway summoned the strength and inner resolve that enabled her to find -- and to keep -- her balance.
In Finding My Balance, actress Mariel Hemingway uses the lessons and practices of yoga as a starting point for her own personal reflections and larger-than-life family story. The result is a searingly honest memoir that is as deeply moving as it is helpfully prescriptive.
Mariel turned to yoga and its meditative practice in an effort to maintain her center when her life threatened to spin out of control. Having experienced family tragedy, sudden stardom, and the continuing challenges of a full and demanding life, Mariel learned through practice how to find her balance in emotionally disorienting situations. Throughout the book, Mariel uses her yoga training as a starting point for each chapter, carefully describing a particular position, then letting her mind wander into thoughts of the past and of her tumultuous life.
As each chapter begins with instruction, so does the book end with exercises organized in a sequence that can be followed by anyone who wants to practice them. As a special bonus for this edition, Mariel has added a section that describes the basics of her own "In Balance Philosophy," calming words of advice for people in search of their own emotional center.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mariel Hemingway is an actress, director, author, and mental health advocate. She has appeared frequently in films and on television, worked as a film director, and founded the online community The Return of the Queen. She lives in Southern California.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One: Mountain Pose, or Tadasana

I want to begin this story about my life by simply standing still. Standing on our own two feet with stability and awareness is hugely important in all our lives, and it seems easy enough. I stand here, supposedly straight and stable, balanced and awake. But am I really? I rock my weight back and forth on my feet, trying to find my true center. The funny thing is that I am sure that what's center for me today was imbalance yesterday, or will be tomorrow. But forget that. I make a commitment to nothing except my willingness to be present on my own feet, inside my body, today -- right now.

The premise of Mountain pose, like all standing yoga postures, is to stimulate the body and the mind. I tense my thigh muscles and release them, and after that release I seek a comfortable holding position that feels invigorating without tension. Concentrating on the sensation, I try to bring all the muscles in my body into this pleasant state, while standing in this apparently simple posture. I find that it is not at all a simple thing to do. There are complexities to my body even while I am standing still. Am I making a line of my crown, ears, and ankles? Are my sides extended evenly, with the same length, depth, and intensity? I pull my spine up out of my waist, feeling lightness in the intention of a straight body. My neck is long and an extension of my long spine. I spread my toes to find my solid ground. Ah yes! That reminds me of the importance of my feet. Solid contact with the earth is the root of this posture.

As I reflect on Mountain pose and understand the implications of its name, I can begin to understand my great need for stability and groundedness. Something about stability is so appealing to me in a world where I find it very difficult to feel solid on my feet, or even to feel that I'm inside my body! I think this goes way back for me. Probably, like a lot of people, my sense of instability came from a childhood where too many things were turned upside down. Caring for a sick mother in a ravaged family, I became the parent at a time when I needed reassurance and mothering.

My childhood home in Ketchum was across Idaho's Big Wood River and a few miles upstream from the cabin where my grandfather Ernest had lived. He killed himself with a shotgun just four months before I was born -- the fourth suicide in his immediate family. Was it a genetic predisposition to depression and alcoholism, or an unhealthy family environment that produced disastrous emotional habits? Whatever the cause, it's the kind of family album that gets you thinking. Continued tragedies in succeeding generations of our family have left me coping with a full slate of problems and fears every day in my life. Finding my own answers has come to seem like a matter of survival. That struggle has shaped me. It is the story I want to tell.

My heartbreakingly lovely mother, Byra Louise Whittlesey, or Puck, as she was called, had been married once before she met my father, to a handsome aviator who flew off into World War II right after the wedding and never returned. She was left with an unfading fantasy of perfect romance. In contrast, her relationship with my dad quickly became all too real, and dreams of romance faded. That made our house a loveless and unhappy one. My parents met in Sun Valley soon after the end of the war. Mom was working as an administrator for United Airlines, a mourning widow who was too tall to be a stewardess. At the Sun Valley Lodge she ran into a handsome young bellhop named Jack Hemingway. He quickly fell head over heels for the striking, dark-haired guest with the chiseled bone structure and gorgeous legs. She wasn't an easy catch, though. Her heart was broken, and even had she been willing to share it, there were lots of other suitors. Dad pursued her for four years before she broke down, deciding that a life of travel and adventure with him was better than a life in mourning. It might not have been the best basis for a marriage; I think my mother was never in love with Dad, and he never felt loved by her.

Mom never really consented to her marriage -- that reality came out in scores of little ways in our family. Though she was good at domestic affairs, she resented everything she had to do around the house. I can recall her in her old clothes, powering through the chores with a bucket of cleaning products and rags. The vacuum hummed. But if I walked into the house after she mopped the floor, she would scream, "Take off your damn shoes," or simply whack my arm and growl. This was not cleaning with a smile.

Mother was a great cook, but she seemed to cook only to prove how unappreciated she was. Every day, she would plan an exotic meal for dinner, like Cuban-style picadillo or Italian food with handmade pasta. She was an artist, but all during the beautiful process she would be cursing about how her goddamn husband would pour salt all over the food without even tasting, or go off to eat cheese and crackers after dinner was over. She always cooked, and she was always pissed off at my dad about food. Meals at our house were a time for feeling uncomfortable, and we went off separately afterward to nurse our poor digestion. Today, with my own family, I always try to add more love than talent to my cooking, believing that the loving atmosphere at the table is the most important ingredient.

In 1970, when I was eight, our family suffered its first big shock. Dad, the tennis player and outdoorsman, had a severe heart attack in his forties. No doubt, his abuse of cigarettes and alcohol exacted a toll on him, but I've always thought that his heart gave out because it was broken. He couldn't handle constant rejection by the woman he loved. In any case, he landed in the Sun Valley Hospital for a month, heavily dosed with drugs. The drugs seemed to work on him like some kind of evil truth serum, and he became hostile toward Mom, telling her how neglected he felt. He recklessly plunged into a blatant affair with one of the nurses. Mom was suddenly vulnerable and emotional at home. She tried to hide her embarrassment, but that is nearly impossible in a small town, especially when you have a bevy of interested daughters. Everybody seemed to know everything about our little domestic scandal.

Dad came home from the hospital with doctor's marching orders for the lot of us. He was to avoid stress at all costs, so we were warned to be on our best behavior, or we would threaten his health. No more smoking, which meant Mom had to quit, too. And his diet was to be low-fat from now on, a change that replaced butter on our table with the despised margarine. Yuck! Mom rebelled quietly, but resolutely. When Dad was napping in the afternoon and my sisters were off at school, she would disappear into the closet-sized laundry room to "secretly" smoke. Once, I remember rounding the corner looking for her, baby doll in my arms, only to meet her emerging from the bathroom followed by billowing clouds of smoke. She had a matter-of-fact look on being caught, and responded to my wide-eyed disapproval with a simple "What?!" It was clear she wanted no answer when she slapped my bottom and pushed me into the kitchen. There was to be no talk about the foggy bathroom, ever. "The hell with him," she would say under her breath.

Dad quickly got over his affair, but the damage to their marriage mounted daily. We were always tense. Dinners got so bad that we gave up the kitchen altogether and took to eating my mother's gourmet cooking in front of To Tell the Truth or Jeopardy! Life spiraled into a dull hell. The center of my family life at home was the older of my two sisters, Muffet. She was eleven years older than I, and made me feel more loved and cared for than anyone else did. When she was home, she would pick me up from school and drive twisting down the road like a...

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Verlag
Simon & Schuster
Erscheinungsdatum
2004
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0743264320
ISBN 13 
9780743264327
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
256
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande