This year in the realm of Yoga, I experienced a massive, massive loss. I have never felt as confident and connected to my sharing and teaching, and it feels strange to have that coupled with being let go from a company + recognizing that I needed to leave. It made me angry with the entire industry of Yoga, and it made me angry with myself for being a part of it. I put a lot of trust and weight into two teachers; meeting them had at one point felt like I had met the “real deal”. They introduced me to aspects of this practice that didn’t exist to me before, and I felt trusted and valued by them. It was disappointing, incredibly disappointing to become so devoted to and in love with a place + mission that ultimately was causing harm. That isn’t to say there wasn’t a lot of beauty and liberation work, but this work for some was happening at the expense and exclusion of others. This practice is my entire life, and I had worked to a point of comfort and ease in sharing and holding community space. I made a decision to leave that stability and status, and in many ways since then it has felt like that was a decision to walk away from this work in totality. Every opportunity feels like it could be a trap into some other pseudo paradise. Every suggestion someone kindly offers feels like a mockery of this practice and every move I make feels like a betrayal. The dichotomy of emotions I hold for this conversation are overwhelmingly abundant. I want to flee, but there is a collective responsibility to honor sacred wisdom. I want to share, but I am but an ant at the feet of Masters, and have lifetimes of learning to focus on. I want to do this practice and it’s keepers justice, and work against systems of oppression through the practice of Yoga, a practice of Liberation and Union. What happened during my time teaching this year was a sharp betrayal of my own illusions; the systems in which we were/are sharing this wisdom was not designed to liberate all beings, and so liberation remains elusive, if advertised. Liberation is not possible anywhere that in order to maintain your peace, you have to turn away from someone else’s anguish, and certainly it is not possible where the price of your enlightenment is someone else’s home, culture, and livelihood.
I feel distrustful of most Yoga spaces, most Yoga teachers, most retreat centers, brands, books, practitioners, etc. All the while, I know that isn’t fair and isn’t productive. Mostly, I am hellbent against the idea that there are any conditions that guarantee the honest practice/experience of Yoga: aka we cannot buy it, and we certainly cannot sell it. Turning inward toward collective liberation is a constant practice, and it as to be an active choice. Seeking cannot be something we do half-heartedly, and no outfit, center, teacher, credential or level of success excludes us from the necessity of Self-study, or the potential of error. There are so many moments where I am absent, where I am bitter and judgmental, where I am harmful. I look to this practice as a road map, as a way of navigating the pitfalls of my own mind through examining the diligent efforts of those before me. I call on this wisdom and its keepers to guide me in a world of suffering and illusion. Awakened within me is a sincere desire to live with God, and yet I must constantly clear away all the things that keep me from this Reality.
It has felt like this experience has both magnified and stolen my ability/desire to teach, because my experiences of potential liberation and potential harm have both widened. The higher the climb, the bigger the fall I suppose. And of course, that is such a gift of this practice and this life: the understanding of infinite potential in every direction.
I think sometimes because of the immensity this practice holds for me, it feels painful to collapse it into an hour long movement class. At the same time, I know how valuable that entry point has been for so many people, including myself. I don’t know where I would be without the finessed based asana that even created my curiosity for Yoga. I am reminding myself that there is no way to share all of this wisdom in a sitting, truly because it is infinite. That is not only okay, it is given.
Yoga is a pathway to Infinity, if you want it to be. It is a pathway to Infinity because it reveals that all roads have the potential to lead to Self. Every relationship, every action, every word, every thought has the potential to show you yourSelf, and to take you beyond the limited, material satisfaction into the realms of cosmic Bliss and understanding. Everything becomes a gift. Everything becomes so wonderfully, invitational interesting. Everything becomes that much more alive. Awareness touches all beings, and coaxes us into a beautiful dance and partnership with Reality. Everything reveals itself as a face of Infinity. Everything is You.
I will spend forever in shortcoming trying to enunciate the blessings this Wisdom has revealed to me. I am forever indebted to Yoga, to Isvara, to all of the forms of all of my teachers. This practice has opened me to unimaginable abundance, nestled under rocks and in the company of strangers, in the fullness that resides in just Being.
I recognize that the primary reservation (among others, many to do with my positionality) I have about teaching is that I cannot possibly share the totality of this practice, both because there is so much that I have experienced and so much that I do not know. However, a very wise being once told me that the greatest teachers know where the beginning is.
It feels as though I am starting again over. I had reached a beautiful “height” in the “yoga industry”, and I watched it all blow up. That has been a devastating loss and a shattering of illusion, and also one that has taken me back to the beginning. All the ideas that I had about what it meant to “be enlightened/awake” have been fiercely challenged this year, leaving so, so much room for debate and human error. [This is, of course, the most wonderful thing that could’ve happened. I needed not only to burn through those illusions, but to burn away the anger and bitterness that I have felt since. I am arriving into a different place now, a place that is just as discerning, but less critical and combative.]
One of my teachers, Swami Atmavidyananda Giri, shared with me that a Guru is not a person. It is not a person, a body, or individual ego that is the great transmuter of wisdom, but the Teacher of teachers, Isvara, acting through form. It is only through diligent and non-attached practice that one may clear away the debris of the mind that muddies the channel between individual and Cosmic Wisdom. One is bestowed the title of Guru only when they have mastered their own mind, and identified completely and un-egoically with Self.
I have been so adversed to teaching lately because I am becoming so intimately aware of how easy it is to lose ourselves in the myths of spiritual superiority. I see the muddiness of my own mind and doubt my ability/authority to share this wisdom. I don’t think the hesitations I have will ever go away, and frankly I am not convinced that they should. Doubt, in doses, bestows humility that none of us can afford to lose. It is when we grip too tightly, and carry too much pride over what we think we know that we go blind.
Above all in this life, I want to participate in the actualization of Liberation and Self Realization in “myself” and all beings, collectively Being. Everyday, the collective grief, rage, separation and suffering grows in my awareness, and at times it paralyzes me. That isn’t to say that Truth, Love, Beauty, and all else are not growing too, but the mind is powerful, and the things we have created through the individual mind have birthed unimaginable suffering in all beings. I do not know how to change the world. I do not know how to end genocides + wars, or how to save humanity from the consequences of ourselves. All that feels clear right now is that we each have the freedom and responsibility to lean into our gifts and passions in ways that uplift one another and imagine/create a different way. I have taken so much space from my gifts and passions in sharing Yoga, because I am so deeply terrified of fucking it up. I am at a place now where my ignorance and rejection of these parts of myself feels complacent and avoidant.
I truly, truly believe in the potential of honest, in-depth Self study and connectivity to radically transform the way we view ourselves and all Life. I have personally witnessed these transformations in hundreds of students and colleagues; I have witnessed them in myself. The science of Yoga is not the only path, there are many ways as taught by many peoples, but for whatever reason it is the path I have been guided to. The practice of Yoga has been my portal to God, and so it is to this practice which I can best speak to. I claim absolutely no mastery over this science. I can only attest to my dedication and passion in It’s practice and transference.
I know, sometime soon, I will start sharing Yoga again in an organized way. I will share through art, through asana, through listening, through speech, through forms and visions unknown. I have lost (or rather, discarded) the roadmap of how this “business” goes. I am not interested in building a brand for myself, or convincing anyone that I can lead them to the promise land. I have given up the idea that there are any guarantees, or that there is a way for me to do this without making a garden of mistakes. I only know that I want to practice selflessly, and use my gifts in service rather than reject them in fear. I want to do better, not out of spite for the way things are, but out of devotion to God and all Her faces.
Yoga has gifted me everything, everything, everything. My hope is that opening as a conduit to this wisdom will gift it to life around me, will reawaken what we already know, and continue to bring Us in Yoga with Isvara.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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