reflections

Several months ago, I had an uplifting and exciting conversation with two of my yoga colleagues. All of us had found our way to master yoga teachers whose teachings are more and more about meditation and emphasizing greater purpose beyond the asana practice. One of my colleagues is a student of Rod Stryker, and at the time, she was deep in her studies, working with a yet-unpublished manuscript of Rod Stryker’s new book, The Four Desires. What she had to say about his teachings really resonated with me, so I picked up a copy of The Four Desires as soon as it came out.

The Four Desires, as Rod Stryker outlines, are dharma (life’s purpose), kama (pleasure), artha (resources), and moksha (spirituality). At different times in our life, one desire my dominate over the others, and ultimately, we are striving for the contentment found by living out our life’s purpose. The book is all about uncovering the heart’s desires and how to achieve sankalpa (short term goals) that will lead you to fulfill your Dharma Code (your life’s purpose).

What I loved about this book is that it offered explicit exercises for self-study as well as complimentary guided meditation practices. I strongly recommend getting the CD that goes with the book, because it’s necessary to do the meditations as directed to get the full benefit of the exercises, and besides, the meditations are really lovely and will be useful even after going through the whole book.

Some of the exercises came easily, and felt good to do. Some were difficult and I encountered resistance. I’m really curious about the experience other yogis had with this book, so I’m going to go ahead and share the results of my work. If you consider that a spoiler, I guess you can come back and read this next part later! Also, I think it’s interesting to talk about what actually goes on in meditation, because otherwise it can be such a solitary practice. Something is happening in there though! I wish people would talk about that part more. Maybe I just don’t know the right people.

Anyway, here are some highlights of my discoveries:

Recently, I met up with a couple yoga friends of mine, and I was both surprised and excited by the fact that we had all, independently, become students of three different master teachers. What do these teachers have in common? All of them are teaching that yoga is something much bigger than the asana practice.

Here's Rod Stryker:

Not unlike what my teacher, Erich Schiffman is saying, a lot less delicately when he says, “Yoga is an investigation into WTF is going on!”

At the end of our time together last week, Paul Grilley was saying that, if you are looking at the yoga postures as something to achieve, you are missing the point. He said that sooner or later, every pose you practice will be limited by your bones. You won't be able to advance any more. You need to be prepared for that time, and ask yourself … Why are you practicing yoga?

Of course, physically, it is good to move your body to the fullest range of motion on a regular basis. Asana feels good to do. It's fun. It will make your body healthier, stronger, more balanced, more flexible … all that good stuff they tell you about yoga. Asana is wonderful tool to become connected to your inner wisdom, and it's a wonderful tool for building community in a classroom, but it is not the only way, and it is not the end-all-be-all of yoga.

I feel really fortunate that as a relatively young yogini, and as a relatively baby teacher, I have come to this realization. And from what Paul implied at the workshop, there are plenty of yoga superstars that are still grasping with that one, and are bitter, ugly people who happen to be able to do amazing things with their body.

I have come to love my meditation practice. I love sitting and listening to what God has to say to me. I love taking the time to honor that I, as tiny as I may be, am divinely inspired. I love looking out on my students, my dance sisters, my family, people passing by and seeing that they are divinely inspired, too.

I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this at the moment, but I wanted to share that I think this is a very exciting time in my own personal practice and my teaching, and I think it's an exciting time for yogis worldwide, as people are waking up to the possibility that there is more outside of us and inside of us practically leaping to create positive change in the world.

Namaste, people! The goodness in me sees the goodness in you!

When I tell people that I'm a yoga instructor, sometimes the response I get is, "Oh, wow! Yoga! I could never do that! I'm so inflexible."

Usually my response is, "That's OK! Yoga is where we learn to be flexible ... among other things." And then sometimes I go on some rambling monologue about the myriad of benefits of yoga.

Anyway, I'm here to tell you that being naturally flexible is not all it's cracked up to be! Sometimes I wish I were strong and stiff instead of flexible.

For those of us blessed with natural flexibility in the joints, it can be easy to replicate the look of a posture without doing any work. For example, take Dandasana/Staff Pose. If you just look at the shape, you might find it fairly easy to sit with your legs in front of you, in the shape of an L. But this posture can become a lot of work! Engage your feet, pulling the arches toward you, pull your kneecaps toward you, tone your belly and keep lifting your chest with your own strength. Oh yeah, and keep breathing! This is where the yoga is happening, finding all the nuances of the posture. Also, keeping your muscles working is essential to protecting your joints.

I would go so far as to say that yoga is even more beneficial for flexible people! My hypermobility has caused me injuries ever since I was young. When I was in high school, I suffered for a long time with a knee injury, and was constantly twisting my ankles if I stumbled even a little bit. Western approaches like orthotic inserts for my shoes and physical therapy did solve some of my problems. However, I have recently noticed that in spite of being a yoga teacher, I don't always move mindfully when I'm off the mat! I have thrown out my SI joint probably by getting out of bed some sloppy way, and I know that I often sit into a chair in a way that is not so awesome for my knees. I can't always count on my joints to maintain this natural (or unnatural!) flexibility. Muscles must be worked long and strong both to allow joints to work the way they're supposed to, at the maximum range of motion and with the maximum amount of support. This is how we train our bodies to serve us safely for many years. Some us (waves hand) have to work harder on the strong, and some of us have to work harder at the long.