Suitcase Diaries - for Derek & Carole

©Nance Thacker '82
appeared in Yoga Center of Victoria Newsletter
around the same year
click on item to enlarge

I'm going all over the map as I write about my trip on Vancouver Island but what the hell it's my blog, eh!?

Today I had truly wonderful and amazing experiences. What particularly warmed my heart was the open house at the Iyengar Yoga Centre of Victoria. There I sat with a former teacher of mine, Carole Miller, amongst a crowd of students, yoga centre teachers and staff members listening to my yoga teacher Shirley Daventry French along with her husband Derek French - an anatomy teacher of ours during my yoga teacher training and mentorship days - talk about the benefits of yoga.

I hadn't seen Derek since '86 when I left the island. I ran into Carole at an event at the synagogue 2 years ago and I last attended Shirley's class this past Thursday morning.

In true French fashion the presentation was peppered with spontaneous humorous asides. As I listened I was reminded of interactions and creative collaborations with Derek that ended up in the Yoga Centre of Victoria Newsletter such as the yoga snakes and ladders game and the letters to the editor that went back and forth between us - I recall one I wrote in which I took offense to his term "paste-up gang".

Derek French & Shirley Daventry-French

Ann Kilbertus, Shirley & Carole Miller

During his talk Derek recalled a particular cartoon, that I thought I'd entered into my pictures the day before I left for this trip but have discovered is not in my stash. I will find it upon my return and post it later. But there was also reference to "newness" the term coined by Norma Hodge (the teacher who introduced Iyengar yoga to Shirley and Derek during that eventful stay at Yasodhara Ashram that started the whole ball rolling) for the sensation - often confused for, but which is not pain, that one can feel during asana practice.

©Nance Thacker '85
published in the Yoga Centre of Victoria around that time
click on image to enlarge

And, after the talk Carole mentioned some cartoons I'd done prompted by her experiences as a young mother trying to maintain a daily practice as a householder with a husband and twins.

So, this one's for Derek and Carole
P.S Carole's kids were responsible for the cartoon that appeared in this blog post AHIMSA & REFLECTION ON VIOLENCE