If you think reading about a quest for spiritual fullness sounds about as spunky as a bran muffin, the new memoir “Yoga Bitch: One Woman’s Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicism, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment,” might just change your mind. Author Suzanne Morrison recounts her reformative journey at a two-month yoga retreat in Bali with a sense of humor so wicked it would even make Bikram sweat a little.
“That’s part of why I wrote the book,” Morrison, who is also an actress, says from her home in Seattle. “The yoga memoirs when I first started writing it were so serious and earnest and self-regarding. And it just seemed very off-putting. I wanted to do something that would be different and fun.”
And yes, Morrison is aware the basic plot of “Yoga Bitch” — a dissatisfied woman going to Bali in order to find herself — is familiar to a little memoir titled “Eat, Pray, Love,” but it doesn’t get her chakras riled up.
“I started ‘Yoga Bitch’ as a show in 2003 so it was before ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’” she says. “But when people started talking about [Gilbert’s memoir], saying, ‘It’s just like your book!’ That was disconcerting. But then I read it and it was like slaying a dragon. It was just so different.”
Although Morrison’s quest to Bali wasn’t quite as life-changing as she envisioned it being, she hasn’t given up on yoga. In fact, she’s still a regular practitioner at a studio in Washington. Still, not everyone there is in the know that she’s behind a book with such a title. “One of my teachers there does know. But really, I don’t talk to them that much. I just go, do yoga and then get out.”
