A Yoga Story

I remember clearly the day my good friend gently approached me back in my California days. She said she couldn’t help but notice how lately I always look stressed out whenever she saw me driving around the city. I was appalled…not because I actually WAS really stressed out, but because I had been busted.

In those days, wearing various masks was my continuous and unconscious skill to cope with a life I was estranged from in many ways, along with a number of other distractions which served to numb me from feeling too much about it all. I was sure I was wearing this mask well, and someone had seen through it…big time, as they say. I was functioning as a busy, “successful” executive , but underneath the surface always secretly afraid that I was in over my head and not much liking the water anyway. If my cover had been blown, I was in a tenuous position at best. The next thing would be my employers would see through the mask and any remaining sense of security would be pulled out from underneath me once and for all. My mind was immediately out of control in an endless cycle of imagining the worst.

That day, my good friend sweetly intimated that she had been trying this thing called “yoga.” It seemed to be helping her calm down and feel more connected to her body, she said. What a concept, I thought. I flashed on the suggestion another friend had made along the way when I was complaining about some physical issues I was experiencing: “Listen to your body; it will tell you what it needs.” Not only did I not know how to listen to my body, I didn’t even live there.

Through a series of mysterious events shortly thereafter, I met my first yoga teacher. He was a very curious and odd person to me in those days, but I was intrigued. He spoke slowly and deliberately, fixing me with his intense unmoving gaze, about what he loosely referred to as his “clarity trip,” consisting not only of daily yoga practice, but of whole foods, Chinese herbs, acupuncture, books by people with strange foreign names, and meditation. I don’t think I had never heard anyone speak about these things before. In fact, I remember when he asked me what had brought me to yoga, among other things I had said I hoped he would “put me” on a proper diet, since I had struggled for many years with being overweight and had tried and failed with many of my own diet plans. His response is still clear in my mind, and proved to be totally true – “Don’t worry about changing your diet. YOGA will change your diet.”

Hmmm. I was, admittedly, very attracted to the mystery of what all this represented. To be sure, he was the most peaceful being I had ever met. He spoke simply and without a lot of words. He moved in his body like a jaguar. And I could always hear his slow, even, long full breathing in the quietness of the yoga space, and while he kept telling me to breathe, which I was fairly sure I must have always been doing, I had definitely never stopped to notice. And, when one day following a practice we had done together he neglected to cover me with a blanket as he had always done, I registered a complaint. All he said was, “That’s attachment. Learn to notice when it shows up in your life.” And while I wondered what in the world was he talking about, I found myself drawn to find out.

Twenty years later, I couldn’t begin to list in this short story all of the changes that have been brought about through my time on the mat or, like this magazine’s name, all the “natural awakenings” that have made their way into virtually every aspect of my life as a result. I move through my life with a far clearer awareness of attachment and how it arises in me, and while it still gets me in its grip from time to time, I am far more likely to catch it before it catches me. I continue to be reminded that my greatest responsibility while living in this body is to be a conscious caretaker of the precious instrument that it truly is; to treat it with ever greater care and respect, nurturing and sustaining this fertile ground for a power Unnamed to move freely through me . And in my deepest core, understanding that I am actually the awareness that sees all of this.

So as far as I can tell from the journey thus far, there’s not really a destination with this yoga adventure, but instead an ever-evolving unfoldment of greater awareness into that mysterious field of infinite possibility of which I am part and parcel. The joy IS actually in the journey, and in each moment the journey provides me with the opportunity to take a fresh look and respond based on what serves me NOW versus reacting from those old knee-jerk, deeply ingrained patterns of who I THINK I am. These understandings continue to come through this long, blissful and often challenging ride on my two personal magic carpets, the yoga mat and meditation pillow. And with enormous gratitude to this day, I would have had no way to imagine what a ride it would be had I ignored the sensitive whisperings of my caring friend so long ago.

I’d like to finish here with the message imparted by Mukunda Stiles, in his interpretation of the original textbook of classical yoga known as the Yoga Sutras compiled by the ancient sage, Patanjali. It offers an important glimpse into the bigger picture of yoga, or union as it is often defined:

With great respect and love,
Now the blessings of
Yoga instruction are offered.
Is there any other time? … (my question)

Yoganis experiencednin that mindnwhich hasnceasednto identify itselfnwith itsnvacillating waves of perception.

When this happens,nthen the Seer is revealednresting in its own essential nature,nand one realizesnthe True
Selfn
At all other times,nthe Selfnappearsnto assume the formnof thought’s vacillationsnand the True Self
Is lost.