Wisdom from the teachers

As part of my ongoing reading on the practice of yoga, I came across a wonderful book by Donna Farhi called Bringing Yoga to Life.



The approach of this book is very refreshing. Many yoga books take the approach that there is a perfect person who should become a yoga practitioner. Or that yoga is available to those who already have a perfect practice. Moreover, very few teachers make a connection between the difficulties and imperfections of life and yoga.

However, this is where Donna Farhi's book starts. She beings by drawing out the ways in which our life, with its failures and frustrations, becomes the starting point for a yoga practice. She writes:

Yoga does not pretend to be simple, quick or easy. It is a practice that takes into account the very messy and often complex phenomenon of what we call a human being and the equally challenging task of everyday living.

In essence, Farhi says that anyone can begin a yoga practice, and there is no other place to begin than where we are now. The first chapter of the book is titled We begin here. As she says later in the chapter:

Yoga does not remove us from the reality or responsibilities of everyday life but rather places our feet firmly and resolutely in the practical ground of experience.

Time to begin.

So what's changed?

What's changed?

A lot.

A couple of years ago I began to have the feeling that I was living most of my life in my head - an intellectual existence. My job (or, should I say, vocation) involves a lot of thinking, and planning, and words. A lot of meetings, deadlines, hours at the computer, time wrestling over the right phrase or the right course of action.

Not only that, but my vocation means that I was giving about 95% of my time to other people and I often felt that my identity was disappearing. Not good. Not good at all. But I felt so called to live that life.

So what to do?

I'd looked in passing at yoga a few times before: a flick through a yoga magazine, a browse on the web, just to see what the appeal might be. And the thing which stood out most clearly was that this was a way of life which wasn't located solely in the mind - the body and the spirit had something to say, too. And this was the missing bit. To get the balance I was so badly lacking I needed all three parts of being human - mind, body and spirit - to belong and exist together. It had to be yoga.

So since then I've done a year and half of classes, plus a daily practice. And I'm reading up on yoga theory and philosophy, too. And I'm seeing changes, little by little.

What I'm striving for is summed up wonderfully by yoga master Donna Farhi in her beautiful book, Bringing Yoga to Life:

When we are in full command of our physical, mental and emotional capacities and in complete possession of our self, we begin to live fearlessly and to open to new experiences, new possibilities, and new challenges.