Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be to create a business
and life you love.
And today is a very special day because I get to introduce you to someone who’s been
a teacher and a mentor in my life.
Colleen Saidman Yee is an internationally respected yoga teacher who has been teaching
since 1998.
Before that she was a top fashion model with Elite and Ford and also lived in Calcutta
working with Mother Teresa.
She’s the founder of Yoga Shanti in Sag Harbor and, along with her husband Rodney
Yee, other studios in West Hampton and New York City.
Colleen has been featured in Vanity Fair, Yoga Journal, New York Magazine, Oprah, Marie
Claire, and in Allure.
In her new book, Yoga for Life, we learn about how she went from a rebellious young woman
with a heroin habit to a globe-trotting fashion model to, as the New York Times calls her,
the first lady of yoga.
Colleen, thank you so much for being here.
It is my honor.
Oh, it’s my honor.
So if you guys don't know, Colleen has been my yoga teacher for almost 10 years now.
Started taking class with you back in 2006 and, I have to tell you, before I started
practicing with you and then with you and Rodney, I liked yoga but it wasn’t anything
that I felt so drawn to, and you have been such a great teacher in my life.
Like, every summer when I come out to practice with you it’s like you help bring me back
to myself, and thank you for that.
And I wanted to congratulate you.
So, Colleen, Yoga for Life.
I read this book cover to cover.
Brilliant, brilliant job.
Thank you.
It’s wonderful.
And something struck me that you said right in the beginning.
You start off the book saying, “Know you’re enough.”
And you write, “I watch women holding it together afraid that if they slow down everything
will fall apart.
I watch women being ashamed that they’re aging and feeling unworthy of love.
Women in my classes coping with addiction and body and relationship issues, mother issues,
competitive issues, and an inability to tell the truth.”
I read that and my heart simultaneously broke, because I saw myself in it, and it opened
up because it was such a sense of relief.
When I read the book I got the sense that you too are on this journey.
How have you experienced this idea of you’re enough?
Knowing you’re enough?
How does that make sense in your life now?
So interesting, Marie.
The first time I heard that phrase was actually a month into writing the book and I’m like,
“Who am I to write a book?
I didn't even graduate college, for heaven’s sakes.”
And my agent was like, “Just every day sit down and write for an hour, just any story
you can think of.”
So I’m like, “Alright.”
We were in Paris, London, Morocco, teaching around the globe.
So I was doing that and I was hitting a wall and music is my inspiration, always has been,
always... especially lyrics.
So I started listening to this Jason Isbell song and the lyric was, “Cover me up and
know you’re enough.”
And I was just like, “Yes.
Yes, we’re enough.
I’ve been running for my whole life.”
You know, covering up or running or trying to show the world something that I wasn’t
for fear that I wasn’t enough.
And it just, like you said, it broke something open in me and I thought, “You know what?
I can do this.
I have stories to tell.”
And they’re everybody’s stories.
Mine in some ways may be more dramatic or in some cases less dramatic, but to have people
know, A, they’re not alone and, B, they are enough.
And if we could break the armor at the very first line of my book it says that if one
woman would stand up and tell her story, the whole universe would break open.
It’s just like, yes.
Tear the armor, show the world who you are, and give other women confidence to do the
same thing.
Funny, I was scouring the internet one night when I was having a hard time sleeping and
watching YouTube videos and there’s this video of Fiona Apple, and I was mesmerized.
She was dancing and singing and it was really jerky.
Like, it wasn’t beautiful, it wasn’t graceful, but something in her touched me so deeply.
It was like this woman is wounded and she is not afraid to show that.
I felt like it was like this beautiful namaste, right?
From my heart to yours.
Here I am.
I’m dancing.
My dance may have a limp, but the dance with the limp is almost more beautiful than a dance
without a limp.
There’s... that’s what I get, that’s why I come back to your class and your work
again and again, because I constantly feel that okayness in my own self.
Now, you’ve been teaching for almost 20 years now?
Yoga.
When you were first getting your training at Jivamukti, you have a story in the book
about the fact that you were so into this training, yoga was such a huge breakthrough
in your own life, all the other things that you went through, and you walked in and you
said, you know, “I just wanna do this for my own personal development and my own practice.
I don't wanna teach.”
Tell us about that.
It was about two thirds of the way through the training and I just had this realization
of, “Oh, I’m not gonna do this.
I am not going to get up in front of people and teach yoga.
That’s...
I can’t.
I’m not going to and I need to let Sharon and David know that now.”
And what were the reasons?
Well, I walked into their office and it was... it was literally almost like they expected
me.
They’re sitting there and I’m going through my list of reasons why I just want to let
you know now that I have no intention of being a yoga teacher and these are the reasons.
I’m shy, I am not the one to get up in front of the classroom and speak my truth or chant,
because I am also tone deaf, so that’s just not gonna work here.
And I also have epilepsy, and you never know when a seizure is gonna come on.
And can you imagine how mortified I would be and traumatized the classroom would be?
So I told them all and they listened and they were very gracious and graceful.
And so I left and about an hour later I get a phone call.
It was Sharon.
Sharon Gannon, my...
my teacher, my mentor.
And she said, “Hello Colleen, this is Sharon.”
“Yeah, hello?”
She said, “You’re teaching my 6:15 class tonight.
It’s already sold out and I’ll be taking the class.”
Forget about it.
That’s insane.
And what did you feel in that moment?
Horrified.
Terrified.
Just sweating.
Like, just blind almost.
You know those moments when you actually can’t see, hear, think, feel?
So I... it was three and a half hours of prep and I went home and I memorized every single
word.
I still remember the sequence to this day that I taught.
I memorized every single word.
I think it’s the most nervous I have ever been.
But I got up there, I remember Sharon was in the back right corner, I remember exactly
what she was wearing, it was just so surreal.
So I taught the class and I walked outta there high as a kite.
It was just so... for some reason I don't love the word empowering, but it’s the only
word that comes to me right now is it was just so...
I was like, “If I can do this, there’s a lot more possibilities in life that could
open up.”
Because I’ve...
I’d put myself in such a shell as a fashion model for so many years and being exonerated
for my external appearance that my internal life had gotten pretty dilapidated.
So to be able to stand up there in front of 75 people including one of the women that
I respect most in the world and teach a class and walk out and feel like I did a pretty
good job for my first class, it was... and I’ve had a lot of unnatural highs in my
life and this one was just... just amazing.
Buzzing from head to toe.
So did you really believe when you walked in that room that you would never teach?
Absol...
I knew I would never...
it wasn’t even a belief, it was solid.
It was fact.
I was never gonna teach.
Isn’t that so incredible that another woman standing up, seeing something in you beyond
what you could see in yourself at that point and then now I have the benefit and thousands
and tens of thousands and millions of people have the benefit of your teaching.
That is really, really...
Thank you.
...incredible.
Yeah, she threw me off the cliff.
Yeah.
And she knew she had to do it right away or I was gonna turn and run.
Yeah.
And that for me in my life too, so many times if I’ve been thrown in the fire is when
I discover my strength and it’s those people that are willing to push me off the ledge
that do it, it’s amazing.
One of the other questions that I had was around your experience with Mother Teresa,
and it so warmed my heart that you were writing these letters to her since you were a little
girl and then 17 years later a letter came back.
Can you tell us about that?
Yeah.
I read an article in Life magazine, do you remember Life magazine?
Yes.
Way back when.
And it was pictures of Mother Teresa serving the poorest of the poor.
And I was, I’m guessing, 11 or 12 at the time and I have 5 brothers and was feeling
very overwhelmed and I was like, “Ok, this is the answer.”
Looking at her, looking at the peace and the love, and I was deep into Catholicism as a
child as well.
And so I just wrote her letters and I told her all of my problems and I said, “You
might think I’m joking because I’m young, but I really want to work with you.”
At the time I thought I was going to be a nun.
I hadn’t had sex yet, so the nunnery was still an option for me.
And I didn't hear back, I didn't really expect to hear back, and then I’d write a couple
more times, 54 A Circular Drive Calcutta, India.
And then, yeah, 17 years later an envelope came from a woman named Sister Priscilla and
it said, “You are ready to serve the poorest of the poor.”
And I’m like, “Woah.”
And it had just come at a time that I had just broken up from a 16, 17 year relationship,
so it was perfect.
And when you got there, that experience of actually doing the work, what did that teach
you?
Concisely it taught me that the only way to peace is through service.
And the nuns taught that day in and day out.
Mother Teresa has this beautiful saying, apparently it’s written in her chambers, and it says
that the fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is
love, the fruit of love is service, and the fruit of service is peace.
And it was just so beautiful.
The whole time I was there I had two dresses and I’d wash one out every night and then
wear the other one.
And, I mean, coming from the fashion world where it was all about makeup and designer
clothes and the best hair, I wasn’t ever really as happy as I was in India.
I’d shaved my head, I was wearing these really quite ugly, I still have them, they’re
hanging in my closet next to my other Herve Leger and whatever else.
But I just found out that I could be happy without all of that extra stuff.
I still love the extra stuff, don't get me wrong, but there is a place deep inside that
can be touched and it is peace and it comes through service, and that was the main lesson...
I mean, at one point when I was in India I was working at this home called Prem Dom and
it’s mainly for the mentally unstable.
And I was given the assignment to wash a man that had elephantitis of the testicles, which
is quite a chore.
And I’m watching the nuns and could tell it was a test for me, and I realized that
I was bathing God.
And whatever you want to call God, it became a privilege and an honor and I felt peace.
The next piece in the book that really got me was about this idea of impermanence.
And there’s something that you wrote that, again, was another moment, I’m reading it,
and I felt myself wanting to cry.
“What’s the use of working so hard?
Everything is transitory.
My yoga studio won’t last, my students will die, I’ll die.
Why bother waking up every morning and teach yoga?
Why bother loving when our loved ones will eventually be taken away from us?”
And you shared that you come back to the Mother Teresa quote, “What you spend years creating
someone could destroy overnight and create anyway.”
Yeah, but that’s the big yoga lesson, really.
It’s everything that we put so much stock in is transitory.
Yeah.
Right?
It’s impermanent.
And suffering comes from clinging on or pushing away the stuff that’s just changing all
around us.
So what’s the point of doing anything then, if it’s all changing?
I mean, that’s like this big question.
I struggle with that.
There’s sometimes if I’m pushing myself so hard and I’ll, you know, crash in my
bed and go, “What am I doing this for?”
And that’s why this passage moved me so much.
I think the answer to that is if you don't then you freaking sleep through this beautiful
life.
Yes.
All we have, like, all we have right now is this amazing moment between the two of us.
That’s what we have and that’s real and that’s now.
Whereas if we’re thinking about something that could happen tomorrow or something or
some remorse from something, we’re not awake, we’re not present, and then we end up, as
Mary Oliver said, “What are you gonna do with this one precious life of yours?”
Yeah.
And we do want to be awake for our life, we want to be present.
Yeah.
We don't want it to be a blur that we haven’t felt, seen, lived, touched, breathed, just
embraced and enveloped the moment whether it’s a moment of intense grief or beauty
or sadness or joy.
It’s just... it’s the real stuff.
It is the real stuff and it is important.
Every time I start to feel myself going to that clinging, thinking about Josh or my family
or planning for the days that inevitably you know will come, and I come back to this work
or come back on my mat on a class with you and it feels like I get in touch with that
peace, and that’s just so important.
There’s a Mark Twain quote that comes back to me.
I’m a worrier.
I am a big worrier.
I’m here to say I’m working on it, I’ve got the Catholic guilt thing going on and
I’m constantly what if whatever.
Yeah.
But there’s this Mark Twain quote and he says, “I am a very old man and I look back
at my life and I’ve had so many difficulties.
Most of them never happened.”
Absolutely.
It’s like we spend so much, we waste so much energy and we’re tired enough.
Right?
We don't need to waste energy there.
So the last thing I wanna go over with you, I think one of my favorite parts of being
on the mat and being in the class with you is always at the end you bring us home and
it’s the talk at the end and I feel like I walk out and the poses were great and the
asanas were great and the breathing was great, but there’s something that you always touch
in me and I feel like it’s in this book and it’s the Buddhist meditation about fear.
Would you read that for us?
Of course, of course.
Just sit.
Notice where you feel hard and sit with that.
In the middle of that hardness you’ll find anger.
Sit with that.
Go to the center of the anger and you’ll probably come to sadness.
Stay with the sadness until it turns to vulnerability.
Keep sitting with what comes up.
The deeper you dig, the more tender you become.
Raw fear can open into the wide expanse of genuineness, compassion, gratitude, and acceptance
in the present moment.
A tender heart appears naturally when you are able to stay present.
From your heart you can see the true pigment of the sky, you can see the vibrant yellow
of a sunflower and the deep blue of your daughter’s eyes.
A tender heart doesn't block out rain clouds or tears or dying sunflowers.
Allow both beauty and sadness to touch you.
This is love, not fear.
Colleen, thank you so much for being here today, it was such an honor.
Congratulations again on your book.
Thank you.
For everybody watching, Yoga for Life by Colleen Saidman Yee.
It is a fantastic, beautiful journey and I highly recommend it.
Thank you, Marie.
Now Colleen and I would love to hear from you.
If there’s one area of your life or your body that would be well served by a little
more attention or presence or love, what would that be?
Now, as always, the best discussions happen after the episode over at MarieForleo.com,
so go there and leave a comment now.
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