Readers Place

What We Think

Lucy Edge on her book Yoga School Dropout:

After more than a decade spent working too hard and drinking too much in the world of advertising I decided that I’d had enough of trying to find meaning in a tub of marge and headed off to India on a yoga school pilgrimage, in search of life’s deeper meaning. What I found was not quite what I had anticipated – the poolside best body contests, the Gucci’d gurus and the double dipping riots turned out to have no more depth than that tub of marge. The real gurus of India turned out to be the so called ‘ordinary’ people – the waiters, tailors, railways workers and government officials – who used their yoga practice to increase the moments of seeing clearly and choosing wisely in everyday life.

Deciding that there was a book in my experiences I hurriedly wrote up the first five chapters of Yoga School Dropout and sent it off to several agents. After two months of sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring I decided I might benefit from the advice of some experts – I signed up for an Arvon Foundation travel writing course in deepest Devon. There I met Chris Stewart and Ian Marchant, both successful authors, who persuaded me, after several hours of serious drinking, to send a redrafted draft, and a synopsis, to Ian’s agent. Four months later I signed a contract with Random House and a year after that I submitted the final manuscript.

The process of getting those 106,000 words down on paper was a rollercoaster ride – sometimes it was tremendously exhilarating – one day I wrote 6,000 words in a complete flow of consciousness, and sometimes it was a nightmare – I rewrote one of the chapters eight times. I also found the lack of money quite a challenge – in the end I was unable to face a return to advertising so I got a part time job in research, rented a very small flat in north London, traded Ariel Liqui-Tabs for Sainsbury’s low price washing powder, wore my expensive Laura Mercier lipstick only when I went out, and swapped my cashmere and silk enriched existence for Top Shop and the sales.

It was all worth it; the response to Yoga School Dropout has been amazing. The press were kind but I have been most excited about the emails that I have received, via my website, from people all over the world – people who wanted to tell me that they loved the humour and honesty of the book, and to let me know that they are now considering leaving their jobs as computer programmers/lawyers/ad execs to do what they’ve always wanted to do.

I love life as a writer and am really enjoying researching my second book – which I hope to be sharing with you sometime soon. In the meantime I hope that you enjoy Yoga School Dropout – please feel free to use the questions below as a start point for your reading group discussions and do write to me via my website – www.yogaschooldropout.com – which also has pictures of my adventures in India, recommended further reading and contact names and addresses.

Om Shanti!

Lucy’s reading group questions that you might like to debate

1. Why do you think the West has become so obsessed with yoga? What purposes does it serve?

2. Is it right that yoga should adapt and evolve to meet the needs of its modern day practitioners or should the ancient traditions be preserved completely in tact? Is it OK that for many Westerners yoga is a purely physical practice?

3. What long term impact do you think the Western interest in yoga will have on its practice in India?

4. Are Indian yoga schools right to charge Western prices to Western students? Why?

5. What do you think of the celebrity status of some of India’s leading yoga gurus? Is this their rightful position or do you find it to be the antithesis of yogic teaching?

6. The book describes lots of different approaches to yoga. Why are there so many? Is this diversity a good thing – a case of many paths but one destination – or is there just one ‘right’ way?

7. Lucy travelled all over the country in search of mystic Indians and Tantric bliss. Where would you most like to go in India, and why? Are there places she should have gone but didn’t? What might she have learnt?

8. Who was your favourite guru, and why? Who did you like least? Why?

9. Do you think that Lucy was a bad yoga student? Was she too hard on herself, or not hard enough?

10. Do you think that the quest for enlightenment requires us to retreat from real life – to disappear off up the mountain in orange robes – or can it be obtained at the kitchen sink, scrubbing potatoes or doing the washing up?

11. Have you ever given up a job to follow a dream? If not, what is holding you back? If you did, what did you get out of it? Did your experience change your life? In what ways? Why do you think sabbaticals and career breaks are so popular these days?