2018 FIFA World Cup Indigenous Life Sexuality Features
SBS
sbs.com.au
25 JAN 2018 - 10:17AM
Learning yoga on Youtube helped this woman cope with life in a warzone Tw eet
1
Recom m end 121
Living amidst hostility and instability in Kabul, Danielle Moylan centred herself with "There are limited opportunities to keep fit," says Danielle Moylan. (Andrew Quilty) Ashtanga yoga. By Cat Woods 25 Jan 2018 - 10:16 AM UPDATED 25 Jan 2018 - 10:17 AM Tw eet
Recom m end 121
Living in hot, dusty Kabul, Australian NGO w orker and journalist, Danielle Moylan had committed to daily yoga practice w ith the aid of YouTube videos. Her solo practice w as a form of stress release and and therapy in a land w here suicide bombings and insurgency attacks are frequent occurrences. “Practising solely off YouTube in Afghanistan can be frustrating,” Moylan recalls, “as there are a lot of pow er cuts and an incredibly slow internet so it often ended up not w orking or being disrupted 20 minutes in. But I also follow Mysore style Ashtanga, w hich is a set sequence that I’d memorised.” Moylan’s life in the hub of w arzones had begun w hen she w as posted to Iran as a diplomat w ith the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2012. As w ith all DFAT postings, the tw o year posting ended w ith a requirement to return and w ork in Canberra. She had met and married Danish journalist Sune Rasmussen in Iran, and feeling her w ork in the region w as unfinished, Moylan chose to take on an advocacy management role w ith major NGO, the Norw egian Refugee Council (NRC) in Afghanistan in 2014. There w ould often be times w here I’d have to ask the class to freeze in position because an armed guard on patrol had to w alk through the room. Nine months after moving, she qualified as a yoga teacher w hile on a brief holiday to Thailand. On return to the fraught and fractious Kabul, she began teaching classes in addition to her role w ith the NRC. Her 90 minute yoga classes attracted foreign UN and NGO w orkers. Some w ere seeking stress release, some w anted the challenging physical training, but mostly, the benefit of being in a communal space drew them in. “Living in a place w here there is the threat of attack, and even just living and w orking in the same, small confined space w ith your co-w orkers is obviously stressful and there are limited opportunities to keep fit,” Moylan recalls. She had begun her human rights w ork in Kabul at around the time that international combat troops w ere preparing to w ithdraw . Lingering hostility from the ugly campaign betw een Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah had left foreign NGOs and the Afghan civilians fearful of further instability and the ongoing threat of Taliban insurgent attacks. “A lot of foreign UN and NGO w orkers live in heavily fortified compounds and, for security reasons, are not necessarily allow ed to go out. Sometimes, if a suicide attack had occurred or a foreigner had been kidnapped that day, most foreigners w ould be in lockdow n. It’s understandable from the security manager’s point of view , but it’s probably the time they could most benefit from being in a yoga class.” Mass phone surveillance, as w ell as the killings of several foreign journalists - including New York Times reporter Noor Ahmad Noori, Sw edish journalist Nils Horner and photojournalist Anja Niedringhaus - had raised the very real prospect of imprisonment, kidnapping or death amongst foreign w orkers. Know ing that time w as precious and that for many students, one class a w eek might be the sole exercise and communal activity