Suzaji’s Blog

May 15, 2014

To the best of my recollection, this photo was taken in the early 1970s, in Upper Ojai, at a place called High Winds. At this point in time I had spotted a flyer on the bulletin board of the Gateway Bookstore in the arcade, advertising a nine-month yoga teacher-training program at the Institute for Yoga Teacher Education in San Francisco (now the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco).

To pay for the first semester I needed $500, a fortune that seemed out of reach. I lived with my boyfriend and took care of his two children as well as my own young son—three kids under age six. I also worked part-time at a preschool and  did home health care for elderly people. And I had started teaching my first weekly yoga class at Grey Gables; I think each student paid $3. All my income went for food and for clothes from the thrift shop.

However, I had one card up my sleeve. I had started writing a weekly health column called Living Naturally for the Ojai Valley News. It was popular, and generated quite a bit of controversy when I wrote a series of columns about a possible link between nutrition and cancer. The column generated a flurry of Letters to the Editor in which the American Cancer Society and local doctors called me a quack while other readers, “health food fanatics,” wrote passionate letters defending my views. So it came to me, in a moment of desperation, that maybe one of those like-minded readers might loan me the money I needed to enroll in yoga teacher training.

With great trepidation, I had to approach the editor, Fred Volz, with my idea that I needed to get some yoga teacher training and ask if he would allow me to add a few lines at the end of my next column explaining that I needed a $500 loan. I was thrilled when he agreed. When the next issue of the paper hit the stand I eagerly opened it to see how my appeal looked in print. Much to my delight, Fred Volz had highlighted it by placing it in a box in the center of my column, where no one could possibly miss it.

Somewhere in my archives I have that issue, and I’m curious to see exactly how it was worded to sound professional–something like: “Suza wants to take some formal yoga teacher training in San Francisco and she will come back to the Ojai Valley to teach. The program costs $500 and she is looking for someone to loan her the money, to be paid back when she resumes teaching.”

Somehow I had faith that one of my loyal readers would call the editor and deliver a check on my behalf. Three long weeks went by, and each time I hand- delivered my typed weekly column (always thick with splotches of White-Out and strips of scotch tape from cutting and pasting paragraphs), I would meekly ask if anyone had responded to my ad.

When the fourth week came, just as in a storybook when the heroine has just about given up hope, I delivered my column and Fred Volz stood up from behind his big desk and handed me a slip of paper with a name and phone number; it had come in soon after my appeal appeared, but somehow I hadn’t gotten the message. I raced home on my bicycle and dialed the number. The man on the other end of the line lived in Los Angeles. He had a home here or frequently visited the valley, and he had seen my ad. After asking a few questions, he asked me where to mail the check. I hung up in happy disbelief. My ship had come in!