MIND YOGA OWN BUSINESS!
When my journey into yoga began five or six years ago, a distinct shift occurred in my awareness. Minding my own business meant starting from within. Only then was I able to make a difference on the outside. This is one of the benefits of mediation, or mindfulness.
After those early practices, I'd come home and everything around me seemed to come to life. Often, like a wondrous child, I'd stop dead in my tracks, transfixed at the starry sky. Or my husband and I would find an injured animal and, in the delicate, painstaking process of helping it back to its own wild journey, I, too, would become wounded and, alternately, healed. Running from pain is not an option. If animals don't, neither should I.
For me, yogic transformation means that whatever first manifests in the heart and mind later (and sometimes immediately) manifests in the body. Unfortunately, too many yoga students are impatient for a quick fix. Many don't stick around past the first beginners class or two to realize the more holistic, inside/outside, results. Sometimes, they are very afraid of what they might find within. A sense of duty? Connection to all of life? Compassion? These are the same people that have conversations with themselves when others attempt to communicate with them.
Based on such inside/outside manifestation, awareness invariably extends out to ALL living, sentient beings. Perhaps it's a psychic evolution. If so, I believe that all other living creatures got there first.
Along these lines, every step of my journey, every "aha!" moment -- without exception -- has involved some encounter with an injured, imperiled or exploited/abused animal, bird or other creature.
My yoga biz is named "Delicious Breath." The moniker came to me after numerous experiences on the mat, where I'd experience surges of, well, delicious breath. Greater understanding yielded this insight: Deeper, more diaphragmatic breathing increases nitric oxide levels.
In their book, "You: Staying Young," Drs. Roizen and Oz claim, "Meditation functionally serves to physiologically cut the vagus [nerve], so it disrupts the feedback loop of bronchial constriction, allowing you to breathe easier." Roizen and Oz add, "Taking deep breaths helps your lungs go from 97 percent saturation of oxygen to 100 percent . . . and that little 3 percent can sometimes make a difference in how you feel."
When feeling this way, there is an uncanny sense of not needing anything else on the outside. (Did you know that there is a small sect of "Breatharians" who claim to live on virtually nothing but breath?) Hence, the ability to practice the yoga tenet "non-stealing," but another great yoga principle, "ahimsa," which translates to non-injury, or nonviolence. In practicing ahimsa, we become more mindful of all other living creatures. Literally, breath -- which is the spiritual life force coursing through our bodies -- translates to higher consciousness and better living. In this state, we see that, though the world may be our legacy, we have no business acting entitled to it, especially when it comes to the resources, rights and freedoms to which all other living creatures ARE entitled. Is there really any question about this anymore? If we are at the top of the food chain, we are conversely -- and most pathetically -- at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to rights of entitlement on this planet.
The awareness and mindfulness afforded by practicing yoga brought me to a most unexpected, yet delightful conundrum.
Recently, my involvement in the Ohio chapter of the League of Humane Voters (LOHV/Ohio) has taken on some unexpected twists and turns. Broadview Heights and Parma are considering ordinances for killing deer (officially in Broadview Heights, city council votes on a bow hunting ordinance February 16 and, at least unofficially, in Parma, where the mayor purportedly is pushing the issue), I happen to teach yoga to Broadview Heights residents, which has put me smack dab in the middle of what appears to be a quandary but is, in fact, the opportunity to practice ahimsa on a whole new level.
What do we do when presented with disquieting conflicts? Do we force ourselves on the situation? Try to control it? Simply step aside and allow others to be wrong, hurtful, destructive and even lethal towards those we love? Hardly. No one said the "yoga way" means being passive or a doormat. It means first seeing something wrong, and then finding novel, exemplary, spiritually sound ways to be used as an instrument of love and ahimsa. Yeah, I often lose my cool. Then I go back to the mat, where our 15-pound cat Sylvester always seems to climb on me and disrupt whatever asana (yoga pose) he finds me. What a kick!
Incidentally, note that virtually every yoga asana takes its name from an animal, such as "down dog," or "eagle" or "angry cat." Lately, I've been feeling a lot more like the last of these, especially in regards to mean-spirited people who want to kill the deer. That's okay; I'm practicing ahimsa with myself.
As T.S. Eliot wrote, "The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." What will you do to learn yoga for the first time, or to realize yourself again? What will you do to practice ahimsa?
--Lucy McKernan, RYT (Registered Yoga Teacher)/Yoga Alliance
League of Humane Voters/Ohio (lohv.org/ohio)
Seven Hills