Archives for 2016

Do you think that yoga can change society? Can it help those who are marginalized or disadvantaged in their society, particularly women?

This question was posed to me in a recent Skype interview with a woman who is working on her Ph.D thesis on Women and Yoga at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. My response to this, and to many questions regarding the effects of yoga practice, is that it depends on the motives and sincerity of the practitioner. For yoga to be transformational the student must be willing to settle for less.

To have negative traits is not to be flawed, but to be complete. – Deepak Chopra

This quote reminds us that expressing our authenticity means to embrace all of our ambiguity as human beings.  How many times have we pledged to be kind, stay calm, or get up early and do our practice and then lashed out, stressed out or slept in the very next day?  Being authentic, not perfect, is a quality of self acceptance, of being comfortable in our own skin and often, needing to find the humor when we fall short of self imposed rules and regulations.  Authentic joy fills the space of our inner witness when we are neither attached to our perceived good qualities or repelled by the “bad” ones.   This is often followed by a big belly laugh of recognition of our wholeness.