“Personal Message from Teacher to Student”
How did I come to here, you ask? The practice of Yoga has been for me a personal odyssey. Through my years of serious practice, and through over 40 years of teaching various movement modalities, Yoga practice has become a metaphor for all the elements of my life -- physical, emotional, spiritual, and the inevitable blending of all those things. To say that participation in the practice of Yoga is good for health is a gross understatement. We must consider the fact that there are lots of good exercise systems out there, some of them producing bigger muscles faster, quicker aerobic results, and closer-to-instant weight loss, these concepts being the American dream called Health and Fitness. So why would one embark on the path of spending seemingly unending minutes in challenging postures in a regular class, focusing on breathing in and out? Why would one expend the energy and mental diligence to learn to connect the brain to deep muscles in the pelvic floor, when it's easier to do 400 stomach crunches and be done with it? Why sit quietly to focus prana (internal life force, or energy), or even (heaven forbid!) rest? Why connect the brain to the body to the spirit at all?!
Those who want instantaneous results or who dabble at this and that, are the very people who drop into assorted classes and quickly drop back out, missing the very essence of what they might need in their over-stressed, preoccupied, anxiety-riddled lives. "It makes me crazy," said one Type A. "Why in heaven's name would I ever, EVER want to move that slowly or focus that hard?" Perhaps a glance in the medicine cabinet would hold a clue.
But learning to slow one's internal pace to counterbalance a frenetic lifestyle is only one benefit of Yoga practice. Learning to balance old neuromuscular patterns that have left the body off-balance and weak in places is only one benefit. Learning to quiet the “chitta vrttis” (mind chatter) is only one benefit. Never mind lowered blood pressure, greater stamina, improved joint flexibility, and an almost miraculous recovery of ability to focus mentally. There is something beyond all that. It is an intangible, indefinable something that ... how shall I say it? Perhaps the best way is to call it a changed perspective. If Yoga is a practice of transformation, it leaves no part of the whole human being untouched.
My life view, my perspective of the events that come to me unbidden, has changed dramatically. From a woman who had to MAKE things happen, I have become a woman who gracefully (well, at least sometimes) allows life to flow through me and monitors the reaction that before would have immobilized me. Just thirty minutes of deeply focused practice feels like a small instant in my life, and leaves me both full and hungry for more.
Yoga practice does have decided physical benefits, of course. But the emotional, spiritual and mental part of it all it continues to be a long, slow process that has settled into my very bone marrow and has become a daily part of me. It's the changed perspective that holds me true to this path. Without that old focus and discipline, I would be just another shooting star long since blipped out in its lightning-fast descent to earth. Now, rooted and grounded on the earth through habitual, focused practice, it is only my spirit that soars to the heavens, while the body that Nature gave me continues to work smoothly from posture to posture right here on earth ... yes, in "real life", too.
