Finding Openheartedness

May 4

This past weekend I completed a three day workshop with two visiting Senior Iyengar teachers, Mary Obendorfer & Eddy Marks. It was incredible and has me brimming with gratitude for the caliber of Yoga I’ve been exposed to in my life, and the support of the sangha I’ve found in my home studio, Teton Yoga Shala. But the experience also has me thinking about fear and the two ways it works:

It keeps us from repeating past traumas, but it also can keep us from having enough openheartedness to experience good things in life.

If I had allowed fear to work in both of these ways, I would not have attended the workshop. I know Yoga seems like a pure and blissful practice (and most of the time, it is!)– but I’ve actually had quite the ride trying to find myself as a Yogi over the last decade, and have met many practices and figures that tried to break me down and lead me astray. As a person with scoliosis and chronic pain, I don’t always “fit in” to the Americanized system of Yoga that often values athleticism over all else. I’ve felt outcast in group classes and like I didn’t belong. I’ve had egotistical teachers decide to make me their project, decide they would be the ones to “fix me”. I’ve been made a spectacle, used in demonstrations to show what a spine/body shouldn’t look like. And I’ve just plain gotten hurt a lot of times– physically yes, but also mentally and emotionally. Once after a particularly painful experience I wrote a song in one sitting entitled “Came For Heaven, Gave Me Hell”.

But one of my favorite things I was ever given in Yoga is the advice to be skeptical, but not suspicious.

Being skeptical means if something has not yet been in your experience, you give it a try before you make any conclusions. Being suspicious means you firm up the definitive way you’re going to think about something, even before you’ve experienced it. So taking that guidance to deciding whether or not to attend this workshop– yes I have done many trainings and worked with many teachers, but had I worked with these exact ones? Had I done a workshop in exactly this environment with my trusted sangha all around me? Had I entered into a workshop at exactly this point in my life where I had more experience, conviction, and self respect than ever before? No I hadn’t. So that awareness plus the steadfast faith of two close friends (never underestimate this!) was enough to get me to sign up. And I am so very glad that I did. Because in addition to it being an incredible learning experience for me and offering me a lot of new tools for managing my own pain–

It was also such shining proof that openheartedness matters and is the only place where magic gets to reside.

I am finding relief in the afterglow of this experience, like all that Yoga trauma from the past doesn’t matter anymore. Like I am in control of my experience from here on out. And also like my scoliosis is my personal gold. It is the way I can understand and help those with chronic pain in a way that others can’t– because I have lived it myself intimately. Yoga has never come easily to me, but I’ve gotten to this place nonetheless through devotion and will. I practice like my (quality of) life depends on it, and that’s the same intention I bring to my classes and students. As closing words, in the days surrounding the workshop I kept pulling the same oracle card over and over again, from a deck I have that is themed to the ocean. The card was called The Abyss and said–

After this experience, you will be more resilient than ever before. Courageous compassion is a gift that comes with our own inner alchemy; through feeling into the depths of our greatest challenges, and seeing them as catalysts for the most beautiful gems of self-love that we can hold. This is where your power accumulates and expands - not in the easy moments, nor through coasting life in shallow waters. Every so often, we are meant to go deep, to find ourselves in the abyss.