Teaching Sanskrit Of The Hands
When Lila Lolling was immersed in her Yoga teacher training program in the Sivananda Yoga tradition, she was aware of the interpreters who were translating the course material into French, Spanish and Mandarin, among other languages. Yet she noted a striking omission: There wasn’t an interpreter for the deaf.
As many of us hold an intention in our practice to dedicate our time on the mat to something or someone outside of ourselves, for the benefit of all beings or for a specific person or other sentient (or nonsentient entity), Lila recollects that throughout her training, “I always held the deaf community in my head.” That intention took root and later, during a meditation session, she felt inspired to initiate a teacher training course for people who want to teach Yoga to the deaf community.
Lila Lolling is fully endowed with the gift of hearing and speech. But she has had a lifelong calling and affinity for the deaf community throughout her life. She read work by and about Helen Keller beginning at the age of eight, and cites Keller as an important influence and inspiration. Lila loved sign language, and attended college with the goal of becoming an interpreter for the healing impaired, a profession she pursued for more than two years. At the time of her teacher training, she wasn’t working as an interpreter, but the love of sign language was still an integral part of her and she would sign when she could. “It’s like breathing for me.”
Lila Lolling
She saw the combination of Yoga teaching and sign language as a way to unite two of her passions, as well as to be of service to the deaf community. Upon completing her teacher training course, she began her pursuit of her passion as many do these days – with a Google search. At the time, she only found one woman from Germany, and it turned out to be a dead lead. She discovered that people who can’t interpret using their sense of sound just didn’t have the same access to the Yoga teachings as people who could hear.
This void is now becoming filled as a result of the ongoing nonprofit work of the Deaf Yoga Foundation (founded in 2007). The organization is 100% volunteer-based, with five staff members (including founder Lolling) and a goal to provide education for the deaf community and full access to the teachings and practice of Yoga.
The basis of the visual vocabulary utilized to teach Yoga to those who cannot hear spoken language is partially based on languages such as American Sign Language (ASL), commonly used within the deaf communities. An important point that Lolling makes about ASL is that, like many human tongues, it is not necessarily universal. There are regional signs: People using ASL in New York, Dallas or London may use different signs for the same word. An additional challenge is that many of the Sanskrit words that frequently appear amongst the Yoga community simply do not exist in ASL or any other sign language, words such as atman, asana, guru or Advaita Vedanta.
Just as any language is constantly evolving, thanks to the work of Lolling and other dedicated volunteers; a vocabulary for signing Yoga is being developed. Lolling refers to it as Sanskrit for the hands.
One of the sources for this vocabulary is the sacred language of the hands that already exists – that of the use of mudra (hand and body gestures) in Yoga and in the sacred storytelling dance of Bharat Natayam. In the repertoire of the dance, there are already mudras for words and concepts like Krishna, Lakshmi, a lotus flower opening, a peacock, wind and rain, a man riding a chariot and even the sacred syllable Om. There is even some congruency without the work of the Foundation; for example, Lolling points out that the ASL sign for lotus is the same as the mudra used in Bharat Natyam.
This reinforces this consensus among the deaf community to keep the language of Yoga sacred; and to develop something that, like Sanskrit, doesn’t change from region to region. In addition to borrowing gestures from classical dance or other mudra-based traditions, the people synthesizing this vocabulary are working closely with the deaf community and with ASL-fluent children of ASL-exclusive adults to create what Lolling calls a beautiful blend.
An added benefit to the use of this visual mantric language is to allow the devotional and ecstatic practice of kirtan to become more accessible to the deaf and hearing impaired. Through the movements, people can explore the emotional and transcendent states expressed through the chant. Lolling regularly interprets for kirtan events. To fully appreciate it, it’s something that a person just has to come and see. Literally.
While the simultaneous use of mantra and mudra and asana has deepened and expanded Lolling’s own Yoga practice, she can’t stop talking about the benefits of Yoga for people who can’t hear. One thing that makes accessing the practice easier for people who are deaf (once they’re able to get the visual instruction) is the fact that they’re not distracted by audio input or noise. For people who can hear, noise is often one of the most distracting interruptions to practice. Without the interruptions of sound, the practice of praytahara, the withdrawal of the senses, is that much closer to being realized.
Whether it is for this reason, or because there is a different emphasis in a non-hearing person’s body on their internal experience, Lolling finds that there is a heightened ability to feel the energetic aspects of Yoga in many of the deaf people she teaches.“I remember the first time I taught shoulderstand to a deaf woman. She came out of the pose and reported that she felt warmth, pressure and the blood rushing to her throat. She pointed to her thyroid, and described the colors she saw.” Often, Lolling says, when she starts teaching about the chakras, the body’s energy centers, her deaf students had already had the experience
of knowing they were there.
We can know something exists; we just have to know how to name it, describe it and teach it. This is the work of Lila Lolling, the Deaf Yoga Foundation and dedicated instructors devoted to the Sanskrit of the hands.
Lila Lolling can be found at: yogawithlila.com or: deafyoga.org.
Lila will be in Los Angeles at the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center in Marina del Rey February 19 – 21. Friday, February 19, Free Introduction: 7:00 – 9:00 P.M.; Saturday, February 20, All-day Intensive: 9:30 A.M. – 5:00 P.M.; Saturday, February 20, Satsang: 5:00 – 6:30 P.M.; Sunday, February 21, Asana Class and Lecture: 1:00 – 5:00 P.M. For more information, visit:sivananda.org/la. To register or for questions, email Lila at: lilalolling@gmail.com.
She will be teaching a DeafYoga Training Course for Yoga teachers and ASL interpreters to learn techniques and vocabulary for teaching Yoga to the hearing impaired March 20 – 27 at the Sivananda Yoga Retreat, Paradise Island Bahamas. For more information, visit: sivananda.org/nassau
By Felicia M. Tomasko, RN
