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Most Wednesday evenings I find myself sitting in
front of a group of people leading them through
a yoga practice session, through the postures, through
a deep relaxation practice, followed by breathing
exercises, meditation and chanting. I’ve been
teaching yoga for an average of once a week for
over six years now (and practicing for nine years),
and I’m not sure who gets more out of the
class – the students or me. There have been
so many times when riding on the subway after work
to get to the class on time I think of blowing it
off, of going home instead, of going to bed to get
rid of the headache or other stress related ailments
that are generated over the course of my eight hour
plus work day.
But when I sit before the class and instruct the
students to center the body and focus on the breath,
I end up doing so as well. As the class progresses
I find that the stresses and anxieties seem to flow
out from me and fade away. There are probably many
reasons why this happens. One is that by stretching
my own body I release the tensions that have built
up in the muscles and organs, another is that by
having the students focus on their breath I focus
on mine and calm myself down, and third that by
teaching others I get out of my own head and all
the things that were troubling me do not seem as
important any more. It is for these and many other
reasons that I stay at my yoga practice (though
that seems impossible at times given all the obligations
and activities we all fill our days with) and continue
teaching week after week.
If you talk to another yoga student or teacher
they may have had similar experiences that keep
them coming back to their practice. There is another
side to the yoga practice that may not get talked
about so often, and that is that it eventually brings
you face to face with yourself. That by releasing
and relaxing, one can begin to shed their pretensions
and assumptions about themselves and others and
begin to take an honest look at who they really
are – faults and all. And then comes the hard
part – once having faced all the faults and
fears, one has to learn how to accept them before
you can even begin to let them go. After all these
years of practice, what I found fascinating is not
that I am going through all this, but that I am
going through it knowing that I would have to go
through it. I faced this challenge once before,
and ran away screaming.
My association with yoga did not begin when I started
practicing nine years ago, but more than twenty-five
years ago when I took my first class in college.
The reason I took the class wasn’t that I
wanted to improve my health or relieve stress, but
that a female friend of mine wanted me to take it
with her and I wanted to impress her. While it is
amazing what a twenty year old male will do to impress
a woman, what was even more amazing to me at the
time was that I found that I loved practicing yoga.
It became my favorite class that semester. I couldn't
wait for Tuesday and Thursday mornings when the
class met. It was taught by an Indian man with a
background in physics, and the class was equal parts
exercise, meditation and philosophy. I couldn’t
get enough. It became more and more a part of my
life.
With a group of like minded friends, we began to
go all over New York studying at most of the yoga
and meditation centers that we came upon. For all
of us yoga was more than just a way to get a good
stretch, but became a vital part of the political-spiritual
community we seemed to be forming. Our searches
throughout the city became an exploration for any
or all signs of enlightened awareness we could find.
It was at one such outpost of enlightened awareness
that I had an experience that remains with me. We
had come upon and became active in a yoga/Zen meditation
community that was being run by a Roman Catholic
priest. One evening after a couple of hours of yoga
and meditation, I started seeing the world on a
molecular level. The boundaries that defined me
as a physical being, and that I always believed
separated and protected me from the rest of the
world, appeared to be breaking down. At first the
lines of demarcation became fuzzy and then I started
seeing the molecules that made up my physical being
mixing and interchanging with those that made up
everything and everyone around me. The experience
probably only lasted for a few seconds, but it felt
like it would go on forever. When it was over I
felt both exhilarated and saddened, exhilarated
by the experience while saddened that I might never
feel that connected to the world around me again.
It was the exhilaration that first drove me. I shared
the experience with my friends, and we saw it as
one more sign that we were on the road to not only
changing ourselves but to changing the world as
well.
There were other experiences as well, some of which
were not so pleasant. When you begin any path of
self-exploration (and isn’t that what we were
all doing at the time?), other things are going
to come up as well. Among all those things that
came up were all the doubts, confusions, insecurities
and neuroses that seemed to be lying just below
the surface. As I let down my guard and allowed
myself to be more open, all the expected and unexpected
things just below the surface began to erupt. In
the context of the community I was part of, I found
I had the strength and support I needed to handle
it.
It was at this same time that my community started
to come apart. This was all a perfectly reasonable
thing to expect to happen with a group comprised
mostly of undergraduates. As we graduated we began
to move on to jobs, to graduate school, to deeper
and more committed relationships. While we mostly
remained friends, the day-to-day contact couldn’t
be maintained, the regular meetings and yoga sessions
moved further and further apart.
While I still had many good friends and became
a part of other groups and communities, there were
none that seemed to be able to provide the support
or understanding that I needed to help me through
the level of self-exploration that I was beginning
to go through. As my spiritual-political community
came apart I was also no longer able to find the
initiative or the energy to continue with the yoga
and the spiritual practices that were such an important
part of my life. Actually I have come to understand
that it was fear that made me stop doing yoga and
the other practices. The fear that if the doubts
and confusions continued to arise, I no longer had
the support I needed to work through them.
So I stopped, left it all behind. Leaving it all
behind meant leaving everything else behind that
was part of my life at that time. The story I told
myself was that all of this exploration was a diversion
from “real” life and that it was about
time for me to grow up and take on “adult”
responsibilities.
In leaving the practices behind, I left the challenging
and exhilarating experiences behind as well. I left
behind that sense that there was a connection to
something greater, to something more. I left behind
my political activism that was also such an important
part component of my every day life. While I stayed
politically active for a number of years afterward,
I lost the context that gave it meaning, and it
eventually faded away as well. I tried other ways
to get back the connection, but they didn’t
seem to work. I found that these other ways required
that I become dependent on external things that
seemed so much more fleeting. I became resigned
that all that had gone on before, both the negative
and positive aspects, was to be relegated to a fondly
remembered and increasingly distant past. It remained
that way until a day about ten years ago.
My wife had taken up yoga the previous year and
had been encouraging me to take it up as a way to
take care of my health. I pushed it off saying that
it was behind me and was not something I saw myself
doing again. My mind began to change a few months
later after my mother had passed away and I finally
realized that I had to do something to reduce stress
and better take care of myself. After resisting
it, I finally took one class, then another until
I was taking an average of two classes a week. It
was about a year after that, when taking a class
with one of my favorite teachers, I began to recapture
and remember what it was about yoga that drew me
in so deeply the first time around. I was in deep
relaxation practice towards the end of class. As
the teacher led us through it, I found myself going
deeper and deeper until I found myself in this vast
open space filled with light.
After walking away from the class my first thought
was that I had just had a really good class and
left it at that. It took some time for me to realize
what had actually happened, that it had somehow
brought me back to a place I had been before, something
that had been building – that I was once again
opening myself, opening up to possibilities. These
lessons especially came to the forefront when a
year later due to a back injury I was unable to
do a physical practice and had to focus more on
meditation and the spiritual teachings. I rediscovered
that yoga was more then the postures we associate
with it, but was at its core about finding the “true
self” with all of its potentials and problems.
This also meant having to once again face my doubts,
confusions, insecurities and neuroses. I still had
them, maybe not the same ones from all those years
ago, but ones that needed to be dealt with and possibly
resolved.
I was faced with a choice to either run away from
them again or to confront them and find a way to
deal with them. I was lucky to once again find myself
in a community where I could find the love and support
I needed, but that couldn’t be all there was.
What was really necessary was to find the balance
and perspective within myself to handle it whether
the outside support was there or not. For the key
was not the community I was in (though that is an
amazing thing to have and which we all need), but
the practice itself. It was the yoga practice, the
very thing that helped to raise up the doubts and
confusions, that offered the way through them. The
thing was to let them rise up, pass through, and
with each exhalation let them flow out and fade
away.
This offered me not only the best way to live my
life, but also the best way to live in the world.
Not to avoid or ignore problems - - they’re
going to be there whether you notice them or not
-- but to accept them, confront them, do the best
you can, and then move on, without losing your sense
of balance and peace. It is not such an easy thing
to do, but it is the best option we have.
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