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 About
Lucy Edge…
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
- Why do you think the West has become so obsessed with yoga?
What purposes does it serve?
- 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?
- What long term impact do you think the Western interest in yoga
will have on its practice in India?
- Are Indian yoga schools right to charge Western prices to Western
students? Why?
- 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?
- 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?
- 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?
- Who was your favourite guru, and why? Who did you like least?
Why?
- Do you think that Lucy was a bad yoga student? Was she too hard
on herself, or not hard enough?
- 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?
- 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?
Click
Here to read an extract of Yoga
School Drop Out
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