What happens when a coffee-drinking, cigarette-smoking, steak-eating twenty-five-year-old atheist decides it is time to get in touch with her spiritual side? Not what you’d expect…
When Suzanne Morrison decides to travel to Bali for a two-month yoga retreat, she wants nothing more than to be transformed from a twenty-five-year-old with a crippling fear of death into her enchanting yoga teacher, Indra—a woman who seems to have found it all: love, self, and God.
But things don’t go quite as expected. Once in Bali, she finds that her beloved yoga teacher and all of her yogamates wake up every morning to drink a large, steaming mug…of their own urine. Sugar is a mortal sin. Spirits inhabit kitchen appliances. And the more she tries to find her higher self, the more she faces her cynical, egomaniacal, cigarette-, wine-, and chocolate-craving lower self.
Yoga Bitch chronicles Suzanne’s hilarious adventures and misadventures as an aspiring yogi who might be just a bit too skeptical to drink the Kool-Aid. But along the way she discovers that no spiritual effort is wasted; even if her yoga retreat doesn’t turn her into the gorgeously calm, wise believer she hopes it will, it does plant seeds that continue to blossom in surprising ways over the next decade of her life.
suzannemorrison.blogspot.com
Yoga Bitch: One Woman’s Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicism, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment
Pinned on June 5, 2013 at 7:55 am by Javier Cooper
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Journey more important than the destination. SPOILER I admit that I am not entirely sure what I was expecting out of this book. Maybe I expected too much, who knows. The cover was intriguing, and the first few pages – promising. I will say that I did enjoy the book; it’s light, funny, and surprisingly well written for this subject matter. It made me laugh out loud on many moments, and for this reason alone, I heartily recommend it…However, I’m not sure that there was a lot of introspection on the author’s part. It seems to me that she had a minor life crisis, and needed to get out. That’s fine, we’ve all been there. Yet to me she merely replaced one obsession (the boyfriend) with another – yoga, only to replace it all with another boyfriend. Most of the time, I feel she was winging the whole experience, rather than truthfully transcending. I DO recognize the possibility that in the end Yoga does absolutely nothing for the spirit, and that the author is still in process of discovering herself. I just didn’t see the growth in her. I don’t think she really tried to “conquer skepticism, cynicism, and cigarettes…” I think she just quit in favor of being who she is, faults and all – and that is totally fine.Accepting yourself, faults and all is a total win — so why the 3 stars?Mainly because it ended with a somewhat cliche conclusion – get a man. Even her friend got one in the end. The book reminds me of “Eat, Pray, Love”, a lot of soul searching and traveling to absolutely awesome destinations, only to discover the answer was in love. Relationships are GREAT, people – but IT IS very cliche when it comes to a story’s ending. It’s very…Sex in the City – smart, talented women who don’t feel complete until prince charming comes along with all the answers.It’s been there done that. Nevertheless, the journey is truly better than the destination. It was a great read. I liked it for its sincerity, its unapologetic look at the world and religion, and perhaps even a truthful opinion that yoga ain’t all it’s cut out to be.I just wish it had a better more original ending, that’s all.
Perfect!!! Sweet and sincere yet sarcastic and funny I loved this book! I loved it enough to compare it to Eat Love Pray, which was lifeline for me after going through my own divorce and trying to rediscover my own spirituality. I think many readers will identify with this book; people who are attracted to yoga are often on similar journeys.Yoga Bitch is a wonderful travel-spiritual quest story. Suzanne Morrison is funny, intelligent and very self-aware. She describes her quest in a very sincere and earnest manner, yet she is no fool. She’s smart enough to see hypocrisy when it’s in front of her. Her commentary is absolutely hysterical–I laughed out loud multiple times.What I particularly enjoyed is that she’s very self-aware. In contrast to Eat Love Pray, she doesn’t overly romanticize Bali. She see poverty, sexism, and hypocrisy for what it is and she’s not afraid to cry “bull—-”. In addition while she was struggling along her personal journey, she was self-aware enough to basically say: “Poor me, right??? Here I am in gorgeous Bali on a yoga retreat for 2 months and I’m unhappy. Boo hoo.” I loved Eat Love Pray, but I think Elizabeth Gilbert got too wrapped up in her own story sometimes.All in all, this story was extremely engaging. I find that I want to know more about Suzanne’s story. I want to know if she finds “happily ever after”? Is she still in love? Does she ever resolve her spiritual questions? This book definitely goes on my “read once a read” shelf and I anxiously await a second novel!
Utterly Readable I grew up in the same town as Suzanne Morrison; went to the same high school, and even the same church I think, so it was really interesting for me reading her memoir. I too am an actor and writer, and I’ve recently found my way back to a yoga practice, so I identified with many aspects of her journey. Yoga Bitch read sort of like a self-help manual for me. Suzanne’s journey, and the lessons she has learned acted kind of like signposts for me. “Watch out for this one, Catherine, this one could be big for you.”I breezed through this book-it was fun to read. More importantly though, it’s an example of someone looking back at her experiences with wit and humility, fearlessly searching for the lesson. We live in a world lacking in self-awareness. I don’t think that most people have the courage to look at their path and ask if they’re on the right one. No one wants to question their integrity or motives or whether they acted like the best version of themselves. Suzanne does that with courage. It’s inspiring.