Lynne’s Blog

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.

Yogas Chitta Vrtti Nirodha

Most of you who have studied yoga for any length of time are familiar with this definition of Yoga by Patanjali. Yoga is the calming of the whirlpool of the mind.

At times the mind feels like a busy shopping district crowded with panicked last minute shoppers 3 days before Christmas. Every thought is bumping and jostling for first place in line. All the while trying to find that special something that will grab you with its need for attention, fulfillment, and gratification.

Book Three, Sutra 2 of Patanjali’s Yoga sutras states: “The continuous inward flow of consciousness is meditation” (Nischala Joy Devi translation).

When I was a child we adopted our first dog, a spirited toy poodle.   Predictably, the care, feeding and training that was promised by us kids, failed to materialize and fell onto mom.  With 5 children and little extra time on her hands, dog training became a low priority.   As a result we spent many hours frantically trying to find, catch and retrieve “Pepe” who took every opportunity to escape the home front and run free.  At the time we thought of this as people with a “bad dog” problem, but looking back, I see it was a dog with “bad owners” problem.  We were too preoccupied to give the dog the attention, discipline and love it really needed.

Awareness and understanding of yoga, or of anything that is important, grows at a unique rhythm and pace for every individual.  Trying to force a shortcut to maturity results in resistance, confusion, and separation.  This is the antithesis of yoga, since yoga is the unity of heart and soul from which trust and respect arise.

Approaching yoga as a process, more akin to falling in love than to working toward a promotion, will make the experience one of expanding freedom.   Mastering technique and striving for accomplishment give way to joy and wonder.  In gaining trust in yoga’s process there is a loss of trust in old responses that once may have “worked” to attain position or favor.  Relationship takes priority over results.  Trust is gained in the the kind response, the compassionate response to bring about deep and enduring supportive connections that are divinely human.

My mother helped to instill a love of travel in me.  She was determined to have us, “see the USA in our Chevrolet” and reach her goal to take the family to every contiguous state during my childhood.