Yoga On the Go - Navigating the Rivers of Daily Practice
by Hanneli Francis
Certified Anusara yoga teacher
And You are a part of Me.
So when I want to listen to You,
I must simply listen to Me.
I've been traveling now for almost four months straight. Airplanes and car seats are where I have the longest quiet moments, other than when I sleep. I've stopped trying to remember the where, who and when of memory fragments, and waking up not knowing where I am no longer disturbs me in the least. Yes, I'm a yoga teacher. As such, I am supposed to be the living example of discipline and focused practice.
And yet, as Eckhart Tolle says in his book The Power of Now, the times we are living in require us to learn how to be in the Now even as life picks up speed. A daily practice - even a five minute meditation or ten minute yoga practice, can greatly help root us more firmly in the Now.
While traveling so much hasn't brought rhythm or regularity in my life, it has brought me strongly into the moment, and it is here that I've discovered my own unshakable bottom line - I will do my practice. That silhouette that you saw doing triconasana on the top level of Houston airport's parking garage? Yep, that was me. That fuzzy photo taken of a woman in dirty hiking boots and a tank top doing uttita vrikasana against a jungle tree in Mexico is me, too.
So many of us struggle with daily practice. In fact, it is the number one complaint of all the yoga students I meet - they want to have one, and they don't have one. Many report that they had one some ten years ago and they've come on this retreat in hopes of jump-starting it back up.
I think this challenge so many of us face in creating and sticking to a daily practice finds its roots in our struggle for something much greater - our struggle for our inner liberation, our struggle with the inertia that seems to be part of our human nature. This part of us - the part that wants to stay in bed in the morning and doesn't want to take the garbage out - is as much a part of our human nature as is our draw towards intimacy and simultaneous need for solitude. How do we reconcile such apparent opposites? How do we at once make a commitment to our practice, and then not suffer from endless guilt and self-deprecation when we don't follow through? And, again, at the root, how do we reconcile ourselves with our spiritual aspirations and our human needs?
Worthy questions to ponder. The Buddha called the Practice a boat with which to navigate the river of samsara (suffering). When you reach the other side of this river, you will leave the boat behind. The Practice is a tool to navigate the challenges of our world - the inner world and the outer world. One day we may reach the other side and be liberated; until that time, the Practice is the essential tool of self transformation.
The challenges that face us along the path - face us all. I look back at my own story to understand how Practice - and lack there of - has shaped my life. I started yoga by going to a weekly class. Easy, convenient, and I had someone else helping me with my own discipline. Great. Then I moved to a small town in Oregon where yoga teachers were scarce. I managed to find the only yoga book in the local book store (this was 1990) - Light on Yoga by BKS Iyengar. And then I met Peg, an acquaintance who later became my dear friend and yoga partner. Over the course of the next several years Peg and I would get together, sit on her living room floor, flipping through the pages of the book. I knew a few basics - the sun salutation - and we chose a few other postures out of the book to try out. These yoga dates with Peg became an anchor point in my busy weeks - twice or even three times a week we would meet at her house, sit and chat, and then practice 2 - 3 hours of yoga. I developed my own practice, and learned what it meant to dive deep into my own body, and follow its guidance in a natural posture progression. And I discovered something else. That as I spent slow minutes breathing on my mat, my mind began to unwind. Without the usual external distractions - even listening to a teacher can distract - I found myself sinking into a place of listening - with an inner ear.
As years passed I took classes again and my enthusiasm for yoga continued to grow, paralleling my underlying enthusiasm for self-exploration and personal growth. In 1995 I was asked to teach my first yoga class at a Breitenbush Hot Springs, a retreat center in Oregon. My decision to teach yoga came earlier, when I realized I wanted work that was more personally challenging (and rewarding) than freelance graphic design and event production. Deeper still, my heart was yearning to commit itself to its own liberation, and teaching yoga was the most significant act I could do to put myself solidly on that path.
In 1996 I moved to Breitenbush and started to teach yoga regularly. Then the next challenge reared its ugly head. Did I mention that there were challenges along this path? That once I committed to yoga and regular practice, I would meet the same old demons, even if they had new holy names? Oh yes. Now living and teaching at a retreat center sounds like the idealic thing for us spiritual growth junkies, and indeed, I was fully saturated by the atmosphere of healing, renewal and transformation. But, my transformation? As time went on and I let my career ambition drive the yoga teaching boat, I found myself teaching upwards of 10 classes a week, along with offering Thai Yoga Therapy, working on the Board of Directors and designing the Retreat center's newsletter. Guests at the retreat center loved the classes, and my success as a teacher grew. It was around the middle of the second year that I realized there was a problem: the only time I practiced yoga was when I was teaching. And, the deeper voices were beginning to clamor - I was pouring my life-force out a one-way valve, and my energy was draining.
This all pointed me to one obvious fact - that even when you follow your bliss as I have pretty much done - you can end up, as the saying goes, exactly where you are. My life looked holy, but how much space could I hold when I wasn't holding any for myself? And how long does the inner voice have to clamor before we take a moment to listen? It was time for me to take a retreat. Ten days of silence in a meditation retreat, and the voices were able to breath, speak. Something inside relaxed. And when I returned, I now knew better than to listen as much to the pull of the "other" - work, friends, family, cleaning the house. The voice that had been speaking for years of wanting to find inner liberation, was simply saying, "if you want liberation, you must follow the liberated voice." Ahh, yes.
For the last six years I've been a dedicated student, as well as teacher, of yoga. I have learned that as one who is deeply committed to offering yoga and meditation retreats of healing and renewal, I must take myself on a retreat several times a year and receive the same invaluable renewal. I met my teacher, John Friend, four years ago, and give thanks daily for the blessing of his teachings and his example. When John teaches you know his words come from his many hours, and years of personal practice, and the exponential growth of Anusara yoga attests to the depth of his understanding of the body and soul.
After so many years of practicing anywhere and everywhere, I have finally created a space in my home that is so lovely to practice in, each time I walk by it I can feel it reach out and draw me in. I have learned to value the inner reward of the practice, more than the draw of my favorite distractions - email, visiting with friends, cooking. Sometimes when I'm on the road my practice may dwindle to half an hour a day, but I return home enough to maintain continuity and experience the deep listening that accompanies longer practice sessions.
And just as importantly, I have learned how to let go, forgive, and begin again. "Excellence is a habit," said Henry David Thoreau. So, by habitually returning to the yoga mat and meditation zafu, even after periods of lapse, we strengthen our ability to navigate this river of life. While there is no true hurry - we are all eternal - at the same time there is no better time than the present to return and begin again. Given the state of our world, life itself seems to depend on our ability to awaken and respond decisively and calmly to it. Daily practice is no longer a luxury, but a necessity of 21st century life.
Hanneli Francis is a certified Anusara yoga teacher and joyful student of life. She lives in southern Oregon from where she offers life-transforming adventure retreats around the country and world. Her teaching draws on her experience as a Vision Quest guide, Thai yoga therapist and her studies of the mystic traditions of the world. You can reach her at http://www.wildpeace.com or email asha@rvi.net.