சிதைந்து போன வாழ்க்கையை யோகா மூலம் மீண்டும் உயிர்ப்பித்தவர்

எம்மெட் ஷ்மெலிக் பெரும் குடிகாரராகவும் சிதைந்த வாழ்க்கையை கொண்டவராகவும் இருந்து, யோகாவை கற்க ஆரம்பித்து மீண்டும் தன் வாழ்க்கையை உயிர்ப்பித்தது மட்டுமின்றி, ஏராளமானவர்களுக்கு யோகா மூலம் புத்துயிரும் அளித்து வருகிறார்.

Massage therapist, yoga teacher found a way to rebuild his life
By Amy Bertrand
POST-DISPATCH HEALTH AND FITNESS EDITOR
05/28/2007

Emmet Schmelig, 62, a former alcoholic and drug addict, used yoga to help get his life back.
(Dawn Majors/P-D)

One day on vacation in Chicago last year, Emmet Schmelig and his girlfriend, Katie McGrath, heard about a yoga practice in Millennium Park on Saturday mornings.

Being yoga enthusiasts, they packed up their yoga mats and headed to the park. But that day the yoga in the park was canceled.

"But we'd brought our mats, so we just set up and started doing yoga right there in the park," he says. Others, some of whom had looked for the canceled class, joined them.

"I bet we had 20 or so people join us," he recalls. "They thought we were holding the class." Advertisement

That's not exactly a hard mistake to make. Even at 62 with a rush of white hair, Schmelig is the picture of perfect health.

But it wasn't always that way.

About 15 years ago he hit rock bottom, and he knew it. After abusing alcohol and drugs for 20 years, he found help in one obvious place (a support group) and one not-so-obvious place (a yoga class).

"I was spiraling down deeper and deeper into a pit," he says, "and I knew I needed to crawl out of it."

In the beginning

Schmelig married at age 19 and had four children shortly thereafter.

"I did what I could to make a living, but it was tough," he says.

He turned to drugs and alcohol.

By 1991, his life was a mess. He was divorced, and his grown children "didn't want anything to do with me."

"I was unemployed, unemployable," he says. "I knew I had to make a change."

His car was repossessed, and he had to move in with his parents.

He tried self-help books; he tried moving and changing jobs.

"I was always reinventing myself," he says. "I thought that if I could make a fresh start, I could change, but I always kept going back."

He found a support group of people in recovery and quit drinking and using drugs with their help.

"But once all the alcohol and drugs were gone, I was bouncing off the wall," Schmelig says. "I was jittery all the time, in the physical and emotional sense."

For 20 years, he had used drugs and alcohol to handle his anxiety; now, laid bare, he needed something to control it.

In 1992, a friend suggested yoga.

Schmelig thought at first that he couldn't do yoga because he wasn't flexible enough.

"I thought, 'I can't even touch my toes. How am I going to do yoga?'

"But that's not true at all," he says. "Ninety percent of us are not that flexible. I think that's a big misconception with men and women regarding yoga. But you can develop it and improve it over time with yoga."

After that first class, his conception of yoga changed.

"It was a lot harder, more physical and used more core strength than I thought it would," he says. "But I had this unexpected surprise of feeling really calm and connected to my body."

Return to yoga

After learning to control his anxiety by practicing yoga for several years, Schmelig got away from it a bit.

"I was wrapped up in my work," he says, but he was still running and lifting weights to stay healthy. And he would occasionally catch a class.

After spending a few years working in construction, sales and even as a shop teacher in Mascoutah, he started to think about what it was he really wanted to do.

"My grandfather was actually a massage therapist," he says. "I remember seeing on his wall his diploma from The National College of Massage and Physio-therapy of Chicago, May 12, 1937."

Schmelig remembers his parents sending him to his grandfather every time he got hurt as a child.

"If I fell out of a tree, they'd say, 'Go see your grandfather.' I loved what he did. I wanted to know what bones did what, what connected where. It was something I always thought I wanted to do, but when I got married at 19, I put it on the back burner."

But in 2004, at the age of 60, he decided to fulfill his dream.

He went to school, got certified and then rented space in Yoga Source on Big Bend Boulevard. He was friends with the owner and became interested again in taking yoga classes. She suggested he try teaching.

"I was always interested in physical fitness," Schmelig says. "But I thought, 'I'm almost 60 — I'm too old.' And it was bad enough I was trying to build a massage practice, but I kept hearing this voice inside say, 'What's the difference? Why not try it?'"

So he took classes and became a Yoga Alliance certified yoga teacher. He started to teach at the South County YMCA.

"It was big hit, a big success," he says. "And I realized that I really love to teach yoga."

He went on to become a certified personal trainer, too.

"They all complement each other," he says.

At one point he was teaching 13 classes all over the area, from UMSL to the Lodge at Des Peres to various YMCAs to the Center for Mind Body & Spirit.

The future

Schmelig still goes two to three times a week to the support group he joined 15 years ago, and he's been sober for 15 years now.

"Yoga is wonderful for me," he says. "It's what I need. It's great. It's not just the physical aspect — it's also the emotional. It's a way to live a better life."

He says he's become a student of yoga and is really drawn to the concept that yoga was created as a way to deal with stress and anger and to improve energy. One of his favorite quotes is by Dr. H. Ralph Schumacher Jr.: "Yoga is about the art of living at the highest level in attunement with the larger life-reality. The emphasis in yoga is on personal verification rather than belief. The practice is a way to inner joy and outer harmony."

"Yoga is not about religion," Schmelig says. "It's about dealing with life, day in and day out.

"I used to think that everything that took place between my ears was worth listening to; now I know to ignore those things that have no good purpose."

He says he's enthusiastic about his work for the first time in a long time.

"Every morning I wake up looking forward to work."

He's now teaching just seven classes a week, at the Lodge, the Center for Mind, Body & Spirit and Yoga Source.

He does some sort of yoga practice on his own every day. He likes vinyasa, or flowing yoga, best because of the way it moves. When he teaches, he doesn't do the workouts.

"It's a difference between demonstrating yoga and teaching it. I teach it hands-on, assisting."

He also spends about 10 minutes in an inversion (an upside-down pose) every day. And he takes classes at Yoga Source two or three times a week.

"It's important to connect the mind and body," he says. "It's about bringing them together."



abertrand@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8284