My Yoga Story…So Far
Recently I have had the spontaneous desire to begin a blog. As I venture further and further down the path of yoga I have been feeling a constant call to discuss and share some of the beautiful things I have been learning. However, to do this from a sincere and honest place, I thought it might be best to begin this blog with an introductory post to contextualize my experiences. So here we go….
Hello! Hayley here!
(And Dani of course)
My introduction to yoga was like a slow burn that eventually erupted into a magnificent, all consuming, fire. I was first introduced to yoga at university. I joined a yoga club because I thought it would be a good way to get some exercise and manage academic stress and anxiety. Little did I know I was being introduced to a way of life that is deeply rooted in spirituality. The perspective that I gained through yoga would eventually change how I viewed the world and my place within it.
Ok, being honest here… The yoga I was introduced to at university lacked many aspects of the spiritual tradition of yoga, and basically focused solely on fancy asana postures that promised to either help you lose weight or increase flexibility. Initially, I was drawn to these classes because I was somewhat flexible and I thought that this made me “good” at yoga. As I began taking classes regularly I eventually stumbled across the practice of Yin Yoga and instantly fell in love. In a Yin class you hold postures for longer periods of time so that the mind becomes calm and the entire class becomes a moving meditation. This practice lit up my soul. I left these classes feeling more like myself than I had in…months, years, or EVER! There was definitely something special about this practice… I just didn’t quite understand it yet.
When I finished university I moved back home. Leaving the city and moving back to the countryside made finding regular yoga classes difficult. This was until a very serendipitous event occurred. One morning, as I sat at my desk, a woman walked through the door to drop off some paperwork regarding yoga classes she would be teaching on the grounds of the museum at which I worked. Somehow at a time when I had been searching for yoga in my area, yoga had found me! I began practicing with this teacher and was impressed by her ability to make the physical practice of yoga accessible to all. Yes, it is true - everyone can practice yoga.
Now for the suffering.
As with any good story of spiritual development the theme of intense suffering seems to be ever present. Up until this point in my life I had experienced, what I would consider to be, normal levels of human suffering. That was until the day my mother was killed in a motor vehicle accident. My mum and I had an exceptionally good relationship. We were best friends and spent much of our time together. I don’t think anyone would be surprised to hear that her loss impacted me deeply. But more interestingly, this experience opened my eyes to a part of myself that I had never been aware of before. As I sat in the hospital, listening to the doctor tell us that there was nothing they could do, I found something inside me that was unchanging and it lay deep beneath the intensity of the grief that was surfacing.
Over the next few weeks, as I connected with this sense of unchanging-ness, the voice in my head told me things such as “Wow! I must be way stronger than I thought!” or “Man, I have great mental health.” This doesn’t mean that I wasn’t suffering - trust me I was - but I had found something in me that I couldn’t explain and somehow it was bringing me peace.
It was as if my mind, and in some ways my sense of self, couldn’t deal with the pain and the gravity of the situation so it simply turned off. I know that this sounds like a typical response to trauma, but what I experienced was the discovery of some sort of peace that lay deep in my being, and it was unbothered by the circumstances of my outer experiences. My whole world was literally crumbling around me as the security and safety I had previously enjoyed were brought into question. Yet, there was a part of me that was unbothered by the situation. Something deep down knew it could not be impacted by the catastrophe that it was currently experiencing exteriorly.
I didn’t come to this realization right away. A whole year went by and I didn’t even think about this weird experience. And until today, I haven’t talked about it much at all. During the first year after my mother’s death I stopped practicing yoga, in the formal sense, as I delt with settling the estate. But eventually I started to miss it. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic it was hard to get back into attending regular physical yoga classes, so instead something called me to start meditating. I downloaded all the popular apps, including HeadSpace and Calm, and was determined to start a consistent meditation practice. So I did, and from day one my life began to change in so many magnificent ways. I was almost immediately more calm and open minded. So much so that the people closest to me started to notice and make comments about it. As the meditation techniques I was practicing helped me to calm my mind, and come to the realization that I am not my thoughts, I felt as though some space had been cleared up in my life.
One night I was overwhelmed by an unmistakable inclination to start studying…again. At this point I had completed two university degrees and had absolutely no desire to begin another. No, this calling to study was different. I felt a deep need to study meditation and yoga through direct experience, as well as intellectually. So after a few weeks of research and many inner battles with my ego, which ungraciously kept telling me that I wasn’t good enough, I took the plunge and registered for an online 200-hour yoga teacher training with Anuttara Ashram.
I could probably write a whole book about how much this teacher training changed my life. It didn’t just teach me how to guide meditation and asana classes, but the introduction to yoga philosophy rooted in a lineage of traditional tantra completely shook my world. For the first time I learned about what yoga truly is. All of the forms of “yoga” I had practiced previous to this training could be considered watered down versions of an ancient tradition that has been unceremoniously molded to fit into western society. This is not to say that I am against all of the ways in which yoga is taught in the modern world today. Actually, I think that the physical practice of yoga can act as a gateway that leads practitioners to the realization of their true nature. And I believe that this is why so many people are drawn to yoga-asana classes.
As I studied the traditional philosophies of yoga, for the first time in my life, I encountered a spiritual practice that spoke to my whole being.
The spiritual practice of yoga encourages you to seek and become one with the thing inside of you which is unchanging and ever at peace. This practice does not discriminate based on religion, ethnicity, gender, ability or class. It leads us to discover the thing which connects us all to each other, and to the entire world around us. And, when taught in the context of non-dual tantra, It doesn’t split our world into the divine and the undivine.
The short version of this story is that this training introduced me to spirituality. Something which had been nonexistent in my life.
I know speaking about things such as spirituality can seem a little “out there” for some. But I have come to believe that spirituality is something that many of us have been lacking for far too long. Disillusioned by organized religion, and rightly so, many people have ditched spirituality altogether and unknowingly thrown the baby out with the bath water - so to say.
Discovering this unchanging, peaceful, completely natural thing which exists within me, within all of us, changed my entire outlook on life and explained why I had been so drawn towards Yin Yoga and Meditation. Our natural state of being is resting as what is often referred to as awareness or consciousness. This state exists within each one of us. We just have to practice observing the mind long enough to quiet its constant chatter in order to catch a glimpse of it. So many of us are stuck in the thought patterns of the mind and our conditioned behavioral & social responses to external stimuli. Introducing spirituality in my life allowed me to begin to escape this never ending cycle of being consumed by my mind and the thoughts in my head. This isn’t to say that I no longer get swept away by thoughts and emotions, but I feel as though I can now approach them in a more gentle way, which allows me to live a more peaceful and loving life.
My teacher training has been like a dive board which has allowed me to dive deeply into many different teachings, philosophies, spiritual traditions, and alternative ways of living. These include Buddhism, Mindfulness, Advaita Vedanta, Tantra, Taoism, Christianity, Minimalism and many other topics which I hope to explore through the lens of yoga in this blog. I was also introduced to many different teachers and spiritual guides including Guruji Rajkumar Baswar, Ram Dass, Mooji Baba, Rupert Spira, Eckhart Tolle, Ramana Maharshi, Thich Nhat Hanh and countless others.
There are many things that I want to learn more about and seek to understand both experientially and intellectually. By writing this blog I hope to make some sense out of all of the wonderful things I have been learning, and share some of the insights in which I find value. In no way do I claim to know everything, or even a lot, about these topics. However, I do know that I am being called to learn more and I have a deep rooted inclination to share the things that are currently adding value to my life.
If you have found any part of this introductory blog post interesting and want to learn more, I hope you’ll follow along.
Lots of Love.
