The Courageous Step
Over the years hearing stories of why people practice yoga can be inspiring, courageous, disappointing, shocking, thought provoking, illuminating and downright funny. I’ve heard stories of how yoga makes one have a ‘yoga butt’, or they just like buying the clothes and being part of the new fad, something hip. Stories of how it’s helped with rage, grief, abuse, depression. Helped with sobriety, disease, and my favorite one, it has helped them find a friend as they were lonely in their life wandering, and that friend was themselves.
Yoga can have this spiritual theme to it, it seems that most arrive on their mat without it, but somewhere along the line it creeps in.
Because yoga is not religious, but it is spiritual. Yoga has this way of connecting us to the God of our own understanding – whatever that might be. It allows us to tap into the source of our strength and courage and look inside and find that a vast sea of love is there. Is this love, God, source, our truest self, Mother Nature?
This looking inward can surprise and shake us to the core as there is much to sort through. When I first found yoga I felt like I was dancing back into my own heart. A part of myself that was there all this time, waiting to reopen. I still struggle with finding the words to describe what yoga and meditation has brought me personally. I feel as the years pass in my practice - asana (poses) - are becoming less and less, as it is an ever changing evolution and more is revealing itself as my practice is growing deeper - this part to me is the scariest I've ever ventured into of recent. So many questions!
My teacher Seane Corn once said, “Never put down any form of yoga, as you never know why one has come to the mat.” As I grow older I feel this applies with most forms of faith as well. Our culture seems to differ, as many want to state which form, faith or religion is better and why, and yoga seems to be no different.
The call to spirit is an individual journey and not one for debate. A courageous step to the unknown of self – the discovery. No matter how one decides to practice - be it yoga, singing, playing music, painting, going to church, travelling the globe, helping the poor, donating their money to some charity etc., spirit of source is there.
Who is to say that anyone is wrong?
Starting with one step – is all it takes – perhaps we stay in that one step for years and years until we have the courage to take the next step. No one is to say. We must have faith in our own step though, and to stay as long as needed. Some will join you, some you may have to walk away from and some will encourage you and even light a torch along the way.
“We could never learn to be brave if there were only joy in the world..”
- Helen Keller
