11. Chapter 7: Mom, Yoga is my Dharma

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Transcript

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Chapter 7. Mom, yoga is my Dharma. After completing my Bachelor of Arts and before carrying on with the concurrent education degree by completing the final year of my Bachelor of Education, at age 22, I had saved up all my money to travel to Baja, California, Mexico, for a month and become a yoga teacher. My parents didn't want me to go. They were disappointed that I would miss my undergraduate graduation to go on my yoga teacher training. I skipped my undergraduate degree ceremony and I regretted it for the rest of my life, my mom told me. Don't you think skipping your undergrad graduation is something you're going to later regret too? Without question, I said, Mom, my dharma in life is to be a yoga teacher. My mom asked, What does dharma mean? My understanding of Dharma was that it was my life purpose. Dharma was what I was meant to do. It was what I was put on this planet for. I felt aware of my purpose finally. And every day that I was not showing up for my dharma, I felt in conflict with it. Despite my parents' disappointment that I'd be missing my undergraduate graduation for a yoga teacher training, I went to Mexico. I spent a long time researching training locations and ended up choosing this particular yoga school because a favorite yoga teacher of mine had studied there. When I landed in San Jose del Cabo Airport, my flight had been delayed and my luggage was lost. I was fighting back tears as I approached the counter and tried to discuss this with the woman at the desk. I was traveling to an isolated oceanside property in the desert, which was a few hours away from the airport. What would I do without my luggage? How would I get my luggage back? But I stopped myself. I knew the fifth yama of yoga was Apri Graha, non-hoarding, being able to let go. I remember saying in my head, I need to be calm because everyone will think I'm not a serious student of yoga. If I show up at teacher training and I'm upset about this, I need to be calm. I wouldn't cry or complain or tell anyone my luggage was lost. On the inside, I was panicking. I was obsessed with this idea that real students of yoga were a certain way. And in order to demonstrate this, I needed to embody the yamas perfectly. What I realized now is that by obsessing over how good I was at practicing the philosophy of yoga, I was judging myself. I had taken all the ways in which I had judged myself and others previously and not erased these judgments, but simply applied them to myself and my perceived inability to embody yoga philosophy. Years later, I've learned that you don't need to be perfect at embodying the yamas of the Yoga Sutras. There is no yoga police dropping in to check to see if you're doing them perfectly or not. The Yoga Sutras are a framework or guidance for the way in which we move through life. Succeeding at the yamas are not important. What's important is looking at your life through the lens of the Yoga Sutras and simply trying. The whole point of the yamas and other elements of yoga philosophy is to help you cultivate inner peace. By the time I'd waited for my lost luggage and made it out of the airport and into the shuttle bus, it was much later than I was meant to arrive in Mexico. We drove through the desert beside giant green spiky cactuses taller than the car. I'd never been in the desert before. We eventually pulled through a tiny gate onto the beach. I could smell the salt water and feel the breeze off the sea. The teacher welcoming me told me that everyone had already eaten dinner and headed up for the first group meeting. The orange sun was setting. I put my small carry-on luggage into my tent on the beach and I walked up the steps to the yoga shala, Sanskrit for home, which was on stilts. It overlooked the palm trees, mountains, white sand, blue skies, and the sunset. With a smile on her face, my yoga teacher Emily, a woman with long gray hair down to her hips, who looked like she was in her 50s or 60s, said, Welcome. You made it just in time. We're about to meditate. My heart started to race. While everyone around me calmly closed their eyes, stacked their vertebra one at a time, sat serenely on their meditation cushions. I had one eye open, looking around the shala in panic, thinking, does everyone else know how to do this but me? I don't belong here. I'm not good enough to be here. I spent the entire 30 minutes as everyone meditated around me, panicking. I went back to my tent on the beach and I sobbed. I felt so inferior. What I realized now in retrospect is that I wasn't able to meditate because I was worrying about not being able to meditate. There's no right or wrong way to meditate. Much like how to practice yoga philosophy, the only way to practice meditation wrong is if you're sitting there judging yourself for being terrible at meditation the whole time. I've learned from various teachers of yoga philosophy as I've gotten deeper into my studies that these thought spirals, which all human beings experience, are referred to in yoga philosophy as our vritti. Yoga Sutra 1.2 is yoga's chitta vritti nirodaha, which translates to yoga is bringing to complete cessation the functional modifications of the chitta. Karambalkar. Our vritti help to shape our sanskaras. The sanskara are impressions on the brain that eventually affect our vasana or our larger personality traits, which in turn can impact our entire experience of the world. These sanskaras create kleshas or causes of human suffering. The goal of our yoga and meditation practice is to shine a light on all of these habits of the human mind. Once we become aware of these tendencies of the mind that run on autopilot within us, we can consciously begin to change the pattern. The second day, in the same yoga shala, the 22 of us sat in a circle. Every day for the month, we'd practice satya circles or truth circles. We were asked to stand up and introduce ourselves one at a time. As the people before me took their turns, I could barely hear the words because I was panicking about what I would say when the time came. When it was my turn, I rushed to stand, quickly blurting out, Hi, I'm Alex, and I'm happy to be here. I quickly sat down as soon as I stood up, praying it would be over. But it wasn't over. Emily gently said to me in front of everyone, stand up, take a deep breath, and then do it all over again. She smiled and watched. After I did, she said, There, much better. I remembered that moment for the rest of my life. Whenever I'm overwhelmed, I just need to take a deep breath and start again. One of the fundamental practices in yoga is pranayama or breathwork. Many modern yoga studios in the Western world gloss over this essential element of our practice. Most people think that they know how to naturally breathe, but we've actually lost this ability through nervous system dysregulation, the prevalence of stress, and restricted breathing patterns. Natural breathing includes breathing through the nose if it's possible, allowing the belly to swell with the in-breath, feeling the ribs and torso expand, and allowing the breath to be effortless. Yoga sutras 2.49 to 2.53 explain the practice of pranayama. According to Sutra 2.53, once you have mastered your pranayama practice, your mind can become steady and you are able to choose focus, concentrate on your priorities, experience fewer distractions, neutralize any distractions that do arise, and obtain a calmer, more focused mind. This moment in which I learned from my teacher Emily to take a deep breath was the embodiment of this philosophy. The first two of the klass or causes of human suffering are avidya and asmita. The simplest way to explain avidya is that we have forgotten who we are. It's a lack of spiritual practice. We are no longer connecting to why we're here, our purpose, or a higher power. This absence of spiritual practice directly causes the second klasia, asmita, which is the ego. The ego can move us in two ways. We can have a big ego or a small ego. When our ego is too big, we think we're too powerful. When our ego is too small, we play ourselves too small. And I was playing myself too small here. I'd forgotten my spiritual practice. And because of that, I'd lost sight of my purpose and the gifts that I had to offer the world. By the end of this first 200-hour yoga teacher training, I remembered who I was. The daily practice of yoga had transformed me. We were all asked to co-teach a five-minute segment of a yoga class to the whole group. I was no longer terrified of using my voice in front of a group of adults. I was excited. I confidently stepped up to teach a short segment of a crescent lunge to Warrior 3 transition. The cues came out of my mouth effortlessly and seamlessly. No nerves, no anxiety, no fear. Another teacher leading the yoga teacher training, when giving me feedback, said, You've clearly taught yoga before, right? Never, I told her. Really? She asked me. You seem so confident and sure of yourself. This is what you were born to do. I was so proud of myself in that moment. Earlier in the year, I told my mom that yoga was my dharma. Now my teacher said it too, confirming what I already believed about myself. These two moments for me, from the first to the last day of the yoga teacher training, are like data points on a map, showing me who I became over the course of that month. This transformation was thanks to the asana, pranayama, and meditation practices and the yoga philosophy I studied, which helped me open my heart, among many other practices like physical exercise, reduction of sugar and caffeine, a healthier diet, and time spent grounding in nature. All of these practices changed who I was on a profound level. Once I witnessed the power of this transformation in myself, I knew that this was what I wanted to do professionally, to help hold space for this transformation in others. I have learned through my yoga philosophy classes with my teacher and Vita in Mumbai about the stages that make up our preparation towards deep concentration for samadhi. In Yoga Sutra 1.17, Patanjali explains that our journey towards samadhi or consciousness will pass through four stages of Samprajnata. Later in the sutras, Patanjali introduces the three stages of samadhi. In sutra 1.46, Sabhija Samadhi, Sutra 1.51, Nirvija Samadhi, and finally Sutra 4.29, Dharma Mega Samadhi. I have often heard sutra 1.17 referred to as the four stages of lower samadhi and sutras 1.46, 1.51, and 4.29 referred to as the three stages of higher samadhi. However, Anvita corrected me that these are the four stages of samprajnata, preparation towards concentration, followed by the three stages of samadhi or consciousness. The first phase of samprajnata is referred to as vitarka or thought and reasoning. In my experience, that stage occurs when we approach yoga philosophy through books, quotes, and exposure to our teachers. This initial exploration of yoga might occur in the early days of our studies of yoga, when we attend lectures, read books, and participate in classes. For me, this phase took place when I first discovered yoga at university and read Rolf Gates' book, Meditations from the Mat. The second phase of Samprajnata is called Nirvachara. This is the emotional response, or the moment when the teachings begin to touch our hearts. I remember this moment for me. It happened when I was attending a kirtan or bhakti yoga chanting session on my yoga teacher training in Mexico. Being hugged and embraced by my classmates, I was in tears. This was what it felt like when the teachings were stepping out of the text and into my heart. The third phase of Samprajnata is called ananda or causeless bliss. Our happiness is always there, but in the modern world, we've lost it. We have to come home to this contentment, first through knowledge and second through the emotional response to this knowledge. When we come home to this internal contentment, it's called ananda. And finally, the fourth phase of Samprajnata is as mita. If this pure bliss becomes continuous, then our knowledge travels to the deepest part of our consciousness. It is in this moment when we begin to live yoga. When I got back from Mexico, I went back for my final year of school. I had graduated from the Bachelor of Arts portion of my concurrent education degree in June, but I still had one more year left to complete before I was a certified teacher. This was the Bachelor of Education focus year. So after returning from Mexico, I had to go back to school for eight more months. I'd spent the bulk of this year in my Bachelor of Education courses and on practicum, long-term placements for two months at a time in classrooms, where I'd be teaching children the majority of the time. But I already felt more confident and assured that teaching yoga was the right path for me. The Bachelor of Education was just something I had to do along the way. My boss at the yoga studio, Jess, could see that I had evolved over the summer since I'd been away. She immediately added me to the schedule and gave me a hot power yoga class to teach. It felt so good to know she believed in me. After the first class went well, I was soon teaching five, six classes a week. Every time a class opened up on the schedule, it felt like Jess offered it to me. I began to see how the moment I stepped into my Dharma, things just began to fall into place. I was keen to get the experience, so sometimes I taught more like 10 or 12 classes in a week, subbing in for other teachers at the studio. I naturally stepped into teaching all kinds of asana classes, not just what I was trained for. Halfway into the year, I told my parents, I'm just gonna stay here in Canada at this yoga studio and teach yoga. This delighted them. Just kidding. This was not what they wanted for me. They wanted me to get a real job. One that was stable and secure, one that would provide me benefits and financial security. I also felt societal pressure from my classmates, the rest of my family, and the world around me to step into the job that I had studied towards. It felt like rather than follow my heart, I should follow my logic and become a professional educator. If you had a look at my university transcript, you wouldn't believe I was the same girl from high school. High school Alex had straight A's and finished every course she started. University Alex's transcript included a full column of all the times that she changed majors, as well as a column with failed courses, near fails, and dropped courses. This was mostly due to my mental health and drinking problems. I ended up in primary junior education working with children aged 4 to 12, not because I chose it, but because it was the only age group I was qualified to teach. I wanted to teach high school English or social sciences, but being a gender studies major meant I didn't have the university credits to do so. I heard that teaching secondary education was something I could later qualify for, which ended up being easier said than done. So I settled on working with the little ones. Over the five years in concurrent education, I didn't like what I saw. Teachers were passionate about working with children and loved education, but unfortunately, the problems went beyond that. There didn't seem to be a lot of respect for teachers from anyone. The parents, the system, the students. Teachers were overworked and underpaid. They were highly stressed and unhappy. There was no calm in the career. The classroom in general didn't seem like a conducive space for me and my mental well-being. On top of this, there weren't any teaching jobs in Canada at the time I graduated. Teachers had to be on the substitute teacher list for years before getting a permanent job and a classroom. Too many provinces were graduating teachers faster than demand. And five or ten years on the substitute teacher list didn't feel worth it to me to fight for a career I'd never really wanted anyway. The effort just didn't seem worth the results. I knew I'd later end up unhappy, just like many of the teachers I'd met along the way. On the flip side, I found solace and peace teaching yoga classes in the yoga studio. My yoga students respected me and wanted to be there. Planning for my yoga classes was a joy and not a chore. I always left the classes feeling calmer, grounded, and at peace, but I was paid per yoga class and the money felt inconsistent and unpredictable. Working for a yoga studio full-time meant that my salary was out of my control and in the control of the yoga studio owner. There was no contract signed in advance about hours, pay, or class allocations. The classes I was scheduled for would sometimes suddenly change, which years later, as a yoga community founder myself, I understood. When managing a team of people, I was constantly trying to manage the cash flow with memberships and classes so that we break even as a community. But back then, as an employee in this circumstance, the unpredictability felt unstable. I began to see how financially stressful being a yoga teacher could be in a different way from being a school teacher. Even though the work of teaching in a school didn't appeal to me, the financial security did. I began to wonder if my parents were right.