Namaskar July 2010

had a job, she had respect, she was a new person now.
I spent the rest of the week in a daze of information I didn’t know
how to process, and I handled it like they do. I put it away, there
was nothing to do about the images I now had in my head: I could
not afford to let my own confusion and weakness show to these
young people who trusted me to lead them somewhere safe. I
made it through the week and on my day off I laid out my yoga
mat at home, and stretched and cried.
A few of the little yogi trees sprouting up around Phnom Penh
like the trees outside my window,
these girls will grow their leaves
back and over a lifetime, they will
grow new branches and fill the sky
While I was on the mat, the chainsaws across the street started up
again; they had been silent all week. They had pruned all the lesser
trees back to their trunks and that morning they started on the
biggest one that would send helicopter pods flying in through my
window, scratched loose by playful squirrels. I had been telling
myself they would not be cutting that one; surely the beauty of that
particular tree was too much even for them to miss; surely someone
would take note at some point of the value of life in this city of
poverty, barbed wire, rust and wretchedness. The bandana-faced
men went up in machines and spent the greater part of the day
sawing off branches thicker than my body and letting them crash to
the earth. There were no birds anymore, the sky looked naked and
raw, and every time they put their saws into wood I heard the
screech and groan that is the negation of life, the destruction of
innocence that comes not from hatred but from blindness. Every
branch they cut was to my ringing ears the sound of boys in this
country raping my girls, unable to see life in the bodies they push
down, unable to see the beauty in their faces. Humanity without
sensitivity to beauty, beings without the ability to cherish life, are
machines; cold, growling, insensible power tools that let colour and
life crash to the ground.
My girlfriend came over to my house that day and sat with me. I
told her what I heard outside my window, behind the curtains I
pulled across in futile attempt to stop the growing exposure of
empty sky. She held my hand and I cried. She didn’t say anything to
try and make me feel better, because there is no feeling better when
you see human beings erasing life from this planet, draining it out
of nature and from other human beings. She held my hand and
she sat with me and she shared with me her love.
And that is all I can do for my girls, too; I cannot cleanse their
minds and bodies of the knowledge they have incurred by being
born girls into a poor society, nor can I expect that from yoga. I can
hold their hands, though, and share with them my love and my art;
and I can believe that like the trees outside my window, these girls
will grow their leaves back and over time, a long time, a lifetime,
they will grow new branches and they will fill the sky.
Isabelle is the founder of NataRaj Yoga,
Cambodia’s first yoga studio, and her students
have gone on to form Krama Yoga, a Cambodian
yoga therapy NGO. Isabelle specialises in trauma
therapy yoga for children and young women who
have grown up in abusive environments of
generational poverty and war trauma
www.yogacambodia.com and
www.transitionsglobal.org
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POSTSCRIPT
Three months ago, Rattana’s family had their land stolen by their
village chief and they had no recourse to the law; again, her family
faced dire consequences, homelessness with five dependent children.
For a second time in her life, Rattana reached out to the people
around her and took out a loan to help her family, and at 20 years
old she bought a piece of land for them to live on. And this time,
to pay off her debt, she teaches children the value of life, how to
breathe and move and stand proud, and by example, she shows
them that the innate tendency of life is live.