A Tale of the Soupernatural

One of my yoga teachers, a Harvard-trained MD, told us of how he once saw a swami, high in a cave in the Himalayas, take only four breaths in the space of an hour.

Another teacher of mine, could suck his abdominal muscles up into his ribcage, and then gyrate them around his torso clockwise, then counterclockwise.

In his Autobiography of a Yogi, Parmahansa Yogananda tells of meeting a saint who hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in 30 years, and was in perfect health.

Yogananda also tells of great yogis who could materialize in two places simultaneously, and others who returned from the dead to talk and give advice.

Very few yoga students in my class had any interest in breathing less or eating nothing or even being able to be in two places at the same time. A few of us wanted to learn the stomach gyration trick (including me) but all of us were suffering with varying degrees of gastro-intestinal problems during our month-long training in what we affectionately called “yoga prison.”

Dr. Jeff, the Harvard MD who taught the anatomy and physiology classes, hearing of this, challenged us all to what he called, “A Chew.” For one week we were to chew all of our food until it was a liquid in our mouth before we swallowed it. This, he claimed, would cure all our digestive ailments. “Remember,” he said, “everything must be a liquid before you swallow it. If it’s not, hork it up and chew it some more. You can even try chewing water to release its prana.”

The food at Kripalu was fresh, organic, delicious and plentiful and we were always ravenous from our 15-hour days of “all yoga, all the time.” Meals were times of great release: times to commiserate, complain, laugh, and refuel for our next bout of training. The Chew Challenge put a real damper on what was typically the happiest time of our day. Instead of chatting animatedly over lentil soup and salad, we all sat chewing our leguminous lunch in sullen silence. If one of us spoke and another was still chewing, he held up a finger to signal “wait” while he “liquefied.” I did notice some people chewing their water, but as far as I could tell there was no “horking.”

At the end of the week-long Chew Challenge people were reporting miraculous cures. No one had dematerialized or stopped breathing but the diarrhea was gone and the constipation was a thing of the past. One person had such a profound revelation about the cosmic interconnectedness of all things during a session with a bowl of minestrone, she was now going to make the act of eating her “yoga.”

It wasn’t long though, before we were back to laughing at lunch. I did notice however, that after the Chew Challenge everyone was much more mindful about eating. There were pauses before digging in. People were thinking about, and commenting on, where the food on our plates had come from. This led to more voiced delight over the sight of a cherry tomato shimmering in a pool of vinaigrette, and a shared appreciation for the spicy aroma of a butternut squash sprinkled with cinnamon.

We began to notice that small things, everyday things, things that had previously gone unnoticed, could be catapulted from the ordinary into the realm of the extraordinary simply by paying attention to them. Something as banal as a bowl of soup could become—Soupernatural.

When most people think of the supernatural they think of ghosts and paranormal experiences. But I think the supernatural is more like a constant current running under the surface of daily life and all we have to do is slow down and pay attention to it and all of life becomes supernatural.

And extraordinary.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga in Mansfield (www.yogamansfield.com) where she teaches yoga, meditation and breathing.