Marge walks over to her bed. She lies down and bends her knees, pulling her feet back to her buttocks. I unroll my purple yoga mat onto the floor; it barely fits between her dresser and her desk. We are in our fourth year of exercising together every Friday at four p.m. For the last three years we've been following Somatic Movement, a practice developed by philosopher, author, and bodywork pioneer Thomas Hanna. At ninety-one and seventy-eight years of age, respectively, our feelings for Thomas could be called, well . . .—love! The room is dim. The swamp cooler pumps cool air, lowering the room's temperature somewhere below the outdoor temperature reported at °37 Celsius or °100 Fahrenheit.
I start a CD from the program The Myth of Aging* and get ready on my mat; Marge is set and ready to begin on her bed. Somatic Movement is defined as "precisely programmed movement patterns to stimulate the brain's release of muscular tightness and pain that have resisted all other efforts and means of improvement."* We have learned to move slowly, to move gently, and to never force any movement. Wafting over our bodies, Thomas's mellifluous tones mingle his specific physical directions with enthusiastic encouragements. "Now here is something very interesting . . . ," he says, interspersing his directions with comments about how not knowing how the body works can cause our bodies to assume incorrect postures that prevent healthy body functioning. He is recording as he leads a class. We are privy to hear his corrections that are only gentle, as in, "the right knee, the right knee, no, bend the right knee—that's it" (the accomplishment spoken in a congratulatory tone). We feel the unknown student's relief as they are now able to do the movement correctly, as we at times struggle to do.
But, there has come a change in Marge's and my Friday exercise class—as we will be following our CDs separately for now. Two days ago, we said Good-bye with a fond embrace. (I was masked, as I had always been, to protect Marge.) With this April's publication of my first book, A Flower for God: A Memoir,* I have been reassigned to America, a change in my life that has been endearingly, encouragingly, and aptly explained by another close woman friend as, "A book needs a person."
My realization is, "The goodness of women's friendships continues in the heart of a woman leaving, as well as in the heart of a woman staying . . . indelibly imprinted by memory."
* http://www.somaticsed.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?specific=itemno&phrase=700_CS.
* How to Give Yourself the Maximum Benefit of Somatic Exercises, Somatics Educational
Resources, www.somaticsed.com
* Prema Jasmine Camp, A Flower for God: A Memoir, (Seattle, WA: Wilson Duke Press, 2021).