Book Review- Yoga Bitch

Engage your bandhas and open up your chakras, Suzanne Morrison’s Yoga Bitch: One Woman's Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicism, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment is certainly not a sacred text. As the title indicates, it is an autobiographical examination of an experimental time in the author’s life.

At twenty five, Suzanne reached the proverbial fork in the road of life. Just shortly after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, she begins to address her fears: change, loss, and death.Tired of living in her childhood home in Seattle with aging parents and grandparents but unsure of her decision to move to New York with her longtime boyfriend, Suzanne drowns these troubles in cigarettes, cocktails, moody literature, ironic jokes, and yoga. With the help of her yoga instructor, Indra, Suzanne decides to take a break from these tough decisions and embark on a two month teacher training in Bali.

Suzanne narrates the curriculum of her teacher training, lingering  to analyze her own attitudes towards this new experience. While some activities are  easy  to understand (her challenges with meditation, her own body image, and endless sun salutations), others are unexpected and feel a bit unusual to both Suzanne and the reader (morning urine drinking rituals to prevent “the Bali belly”, bringing in a priest to  exorcise a phantom blender, and later a possessed mop).

Despite the obvious use of anecdotal story telling to induce  a comic effect,  Suzanne’s story is actually a good companion to the teacher training . Whether intentional or not, the narrative humanizes several of the yamas and niyamas, and presents characters that are foils for other limbs of yoga.  While Suzanne and her roommate’s struggles are firmly grounded in their challenges with the yamas, and niyamas, the yoga instructor they idolize is eventually humanized by these same tenets. In the following  paragraphs I will demonstrate how various plot elements teach  the reader as well as Suzanne about yoga philosophy and the sacred texts.

The teacher training is meant to be a secluded and purifying experience, and it attracted all types of students. Suzanne and her roommate, Jessica, though both  initially committed to this austerity, or tapas, found themselves tempted and giving in to temptation several times throughout the course of the training. At  first they are  resigned to their beans and leafy greens at all meals, which is an exceptional struggle for Suzanne. Allowed access to email to communicate with their families, Suzanne receives an email from her sister indicating “If she came back as one of those holier than thou plant eating yoga bitches, she’d strap her down and feed her steak and whiskey.” Eventually kicking the cigarette cravings with sweat in the tropical Bali climate, a night out during a town holiday provides a simple  temptation: sugar.

Jessica and Suzanne often practiced walking meditation together, and often these walks took them through the local village. Stopping by a  small restaurant to  refill their water, they casually spot a coconut milkshake on the menu. After several minutes of discussion and rationalization (Is this really a milkshake? Maybe it is more like a smoothie), they succumb to temptation and each order one. And another, and another. And a brownie sundae to top it off.  Waking early the next morning and suffering through a brutal asana practice, they vow never to resort to this temptation and even confess it  to their instructors. Incidentally, the instructors dole out punishment in the form of more walking meditation, which puts Suzanne and Jessica on the path to temptation again and again.

On a personal level, Suzanne’s greatest struggles relates to the niyama, santosha. Santosha means contentment, and this is a challenge for all Westerners. In fact, Suzanne’s motivation for going to Bali and enrolling in the teacher training is primarily because she was not content; she was unhappy with her physical self and lacked confidence in the future of her relationship. Throughout the asana portion of her studies, she constantly compares herself to the grace and skill level of her classmates, and the perfect body of  their instructor, Indra. She describes her body in negative physical terms and holds Indra as an idol, an ideal. Contentment with our physical selves is a challenge for everyone, but it can be especially hard in yoga when there’s a variety of body types to covet.

Suzanne struggles with spiritual contentment as well was physical. During an afternoon practice, she experiences something like a seizure, which  Lou, one of the instructors, is quick to characterize as a kundalini rising. Though she is initially elated, thinking perhaps she’s reached enlightenment and can be content with that one moment. Eventually this contentment fades into desperate longing. With every pose, she seeks out that feeling, only to fall short every time. Emotions tend to be even more fleeting than physical conditioning, and so Suzanne’s frustration becomes more pronounced when she cannot re-attain her kundalini rising. She expresses concern at having “peaked too early”, but eventually resigns herself to the process, to walking the path and hoping enlightenment comes her way again.

Though Suzanne never attains true contentment, how many of us can say that we truly do, for a sustained period of time? The story closes with her pursuit of other spiritual rituals; hugs from Amma and experiments with a hallucinogenic root. Though she continues to live her life knowing her faults in this niyama, her yoga teacher training experience did help her find contentment in her relationship. She was able to finally confront the nagging feeling that her current boyfriend was just a path to  the right man, and her novel ends with their wedding and life together.


So even though this novel is unconventional and often downright irreverent, it is a perfect illustration of the yoga journey. Each yogi faces these challenges every day, and  yogis can come from any background whatsoever. The vegan, organic product consuming spiritualist and the sulking, drinking, cigarette craving satirist  are of equal worth and on their own path towards the yoga lifestyle. Overall, I found this book to be a laugh inducing and thought provoking companion to my own experiences during the teacher training, helping me level set my own challenges in the voice of another.