Daruma Yoga. That’s what we wanted to call the yoga studio we knew we’d be opening.

Basically if you fail 7 times, you should recover from those events and be prepared to rise
an 8th time. This is also applies if it is the world or circumstances that knock you down seven times…just remember that you have the ability to bounce back from any kind of adversity.

I love the name because it’s simple. It implies that each time you tip over you can come back to center, without penalty, just like a little daruma doll. In yoga, as in business, the falling down is as important as getting back up. I can’t tell you how stupid I felt when, in the first week of opening, I was asked to “perform” headstand in front of a chiropractor and his wife. A giant potted plant caught my fall as I flew backwards, splitting my knee on the corner of the pot. I could have broken my neck. In the first week of opening the studio. (Hidden rule there: Don’t perform. If you can’t do it proficiently, don’t try to fudge through. You have to be honest with yourself about your limitations, even as you test your edges.)

Sadly, the only other people that thought calling our studio “Daruma Yoga” was other foreigners. When we polled Japanese women, young to old, we were met with a wall of laughter as though we had just told a poop joke. “You can’t call it Daruma Yoga!” they’d laugh. “Daruma is a round, fat, ugly, old man.” No matter how many times we explained the concept, it was impossible to divorce the “concept” from the “reality.” Daruma was a fat old man and no person in their right mind would want to study yoga to get old and fat.

In the end, we thought a garden, the growth and destruction in it, was a better image to bring to people’s minds when they thought of the studio. Maybe we took the easy way, but it has worked.

Another note on adversity. I watched the preview for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly this week. Went out the next day and bought the book because the preview brought me to tears.

The novel, like the film appears to be, is a true story of a man’s journey through one of the most heart-breaking and life-affirming experiences imaginable. More proof that no matter how many times we fall, it is always possible to bounce back. It’s the “how” that’s up to us.

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Photo & kanji/definition cred.