Namaskar July 2010
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had a job, she had respect, she was a new person now.<br />
I spent the rest of the week in a daze of information I didn’t know<br />
how to process, and I handled it like they do. I put it away, there<br />
was nothing to do about the images I now had in my head: I could<br />
not afford to let my own confusion and weakness show to these<br />
young people who trusted me to lead them somewhere safe. I<br />
made it through the week and on my day off I laid out my yoga<br />
mat at home, and stretched and cried.<br />
A few of the little yogi trees sprouting up around Phnom Penh<br />
like the trees outside my window,<br />
these girls will grow their leaves<br />
back and over a lifetime, they will<br />
grow new branches and fill the sky<br />
While I was on the mat, the chainsaws across the street started up<br />
again; they had been silent all week. They had pruned all the lesser<br />
trees back to their trunks and that morning they started on the<br />
biggest one that would send helicopter pods flying in through my<br />
window, scratched loose by playful squirrels. I had been telling<br />
myself they would not be cutting that one; surely the beauty of that<br />
particular tree was too much even for them to miss; surely someone<br />
would take note at some point of the value of life in this city of<br />
poverty, barbed wire, rust and wretchedness. The bandana-faced<br />
men went up in machines and spent the greater part of the day<br />
sawing off branches thicker than my body and letting them crash to<br />
the earth. There were no birds anymore, the sky looked naked and<br />
raw, and every time they put their saws into wood I heard the<br />
screech and groan that is the negation of life, the destruction of<br />
innocence that comes not from hatred but from blindness. Every<br />
branch they cut was to my ringing ears the sound of boys in this<br />
country raping my girls, unable to see life in the bodies they push<br />
down, unable to see the beauty in their faces. Humanity without<br />
sensitivity to beauty, beings without the ability to cherish life, are<br />
machines; cold, growling, insensible power tools that let colour and<br />
life crash to the ground.<br />
My girlfriend came over to my house that day and sat with me. I<br />
told her what I heard outside my window, behind the curtains I<br />
pulled across in futile attempt to stop the growing exposure of<br />
empty sky. She held my hand and I cried. She didn’t say anything to<br />
try and make me feel better, because there is no feeling better when<br />
you see human beings erasing life from this planet, draining it out<br />
of nature and from other human beings. She held my hand and<br />
she sat with me and she shared with me her love.<br />
And that is all I can do for my girls, too; I cannot cleanse their<br />
minds and bodies of the knowledge they have incurred by being<br />
born girls into a poor society, nor can I expect that from yoga. I can<br />
hold their hands, though, and share with them my love and my art;<br />
and I can believe that like the trees outside my window, these girls<br />
will grow their leaves back and over time, a long time, a lifetime,<br />
they will grow new branches and they will fill the sky.<br />
Isabelle is the founder of NataRaj Yoga,<br />
Cambodia’s first yoga studio, and her students<br />
have gone on to form Krama Yoga, a Cambodian<br />
yoga therapy NGO. Isabelle specialises in trauma<br />
therapy yoga for children and young women who<br />
have grown up in abusive environments of<br />
generational poverty and war trauma<br />
www.yogacambodia.com and<br />
www.transitionsglobal.org<br />
16<br />
POSTSCRIPT<br />
Three months ago, Rattana’s family had their land stolen by their<br />
village chief and they had no recourse to the law; again, her family<br />
faced dire consequences, homelessness with five dependent children.<br />
For a second time in her life, Rattana reached out to the people<br />
around her and took out a loan to help her family, and at 20 years<br />
old she bought a piece of land for them to live on. And this time,<br />
to pay off her debt, she teaches children the value of life, how to<br />
breathe and move and stand proud, and by example, she shows<br />
them that the innate tendency of life is live.