What is (my definition of) Yoga?

This is the paper I handed in for teacher training last night.

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When I first answered this question on my teacher training application, I said that I believed that Yoga was not only a means to achieve union, but a means to achieve synthesis, or even synergy – a means to assimilate the disparate parts of oneself and one’s experience, and to sculpt them into something greater than their sum. I still believe this is true, as I believe all the definitions of Yoga to be true. However, I would describe my personal, day-to-day relationship with the practice a bit differently.

Yoga for me is, and always has been, a vehicle for self-study. Self-study, independent of Yoga, has been something I’ve always engaged in, even before I knew what self-study actually was. I suppose this is obvious – everyone engages in self-study, to varying degrees. But somehow, for me, looking back on my life, the practice of it stands out clearly as a strong aspect of my identity. It seems as if my very livelihood depended on it.

Much of this paper will explore what I believe is the path that lead me to Yoga. Without venturing into too many auto-biographical details, it should suffice to say that I experienced several traumatic events at a very young age, which perhaps forced me to evaluate myself and my reactions to a degree a less traumatized child might not have had to. I don’t presume that my suffering was any greater (or any less) than anyone else’s. I just know that the unique combination of my own life experiences led me to become who I am today – a person who happens to be intent on observing and working with all the permutations and inconsistencies in my psyche and/or my mind/body/spirit/soul.

In addition to this, as a young child, I also had very vivid and frequent "non-ordinary" experiences – hallucinations, hearing voices, dissociative states, etc. This may sound strange and perhaps alarming, but even then, I knew I had nothing to fear. I knew these states didn’t reflect any underlying psychosis; rather I knew they reflected a mysterious and unconscious source of creativity. For whatever reason, my access to those states diminished as I grew older. Nonetheless they had a lasting effect on me and always kept me open to the possibility of there being something more than what meets the eye.

Then, around the age of 8, I developed a debilitating panic disorder, which I have only been able to overcome in recent years. I had just begun swimming competitively year-round, and on top of that, my mother, my grandmother, and great-grandmother, all within the span of that year developed serious physical problems that changed the shape of their lives forever. Most notably, my grandmother became paraplegic. From that point until the day she died, 20 years later, my mother and I were very closely involved with her physical care. In hindsight, the panic attacks were likely a call for help, as well as a deep fear reaction to the apparent frailty and unpredictability of the human body.

So, as a coping mechanism, I began a "practice" of bodily awareness. I would lie awake at night, scanning my inner landscape with my "third eye", on the lookout for any possible defects. The hope was that if I scrutinized myself closely enough, the genesis of disease would reveal itself. How I would handle that revelation, I had no idea. Engaging in this practice wasn't really a choice. I was compelled by it, and obsessed with it, for the obvious aforementioned reasons, as well as some inherent inclination toward it. After all, another person in the same shoes might have distracted himself with television, music, drawing, etc.

As neurotic as this behavior was, I do believe it gave me a strong foundation for inner awareness, from which I am drawing now as a practitioner of Yoga and meditation. About 4 years ago, after a lifetime of emotional upheavals and general dissatisfaction with the state of my life, I experienced what one might call a "breakthrough". At this point, I had been meditating daily for about 6 months, and I had been amazed by the degree in which I was suddenly able to monitor the turnings of my mind. For the first time in my life, I felt like I actually had control over my reactions. I finally felt strong enough to clearly evaluate what I wanted from life, and to find the strength to do something about it. The only wrinkle was that I still experienced panic attacks. They would still arise out of the blue, in the most inopportune places – they were even beginning to arise during my meditations, even if I was in a complete state of calm. This fact especially angered me – meditation had been my safe haven, and now even that was becoming polluted with this mysterious plague. I felt very strongly that I needed to overcome it, but I just didn’t know how.

One day, while meditating, a strong feeling of panic arose. But instead of cowering in fear or trying to distract myself from it, I let it rise. And in that state of allowance, I found a glimmer of defiance. Somehow I was able to harness it, and to let it rise and become the prevailing emotion. It was as if I battled my fear with a sense of conviction, and conviction won. I was amazed by this. For the first time in my life, I was able to take the raw energy of that horrible, debilitating fear and transmute it into something different, something workable. It was synergy. Or better put, it was alchemy. In either case, I believe it was a form of Yoga.

Soon after that, I began a Vinyasa practice. Intuitively I knew that I needed to compliment my meditation practice with movement. I knew I needed to discharge my excess energy, and by then, all other forms of exercise bored me. So an asana practice was the logical choice. And of course, my idea of asana has evolved significantly from when I first began it, nearly 3 years ago.

Which brings me here – how do I define Yoga now? Now that I’ve worked through so many personal obstacles; now that I have a deeper understanding of the discipline and its traditions, how do I explain its relevance and meaning?

I don’t really know how to answer that question. Fundamentally, my definition of Yoga hasn’t changed. For me, Yoga is, and always will be, a means for self-study. At the same time, the definition has changed radically, since my idea of "self" has changed significantly since I was young and naïve and enslaved by fear and anxiety.

In other words, what does "self-study" mean, when your definition of "self" is constantly changing?

This morning on the radio I heard a quote from Soren Kierkegaard, which I thought applied here. He said, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."

To get where I am now, I had undergone a process of moving away from who I was. And now, drawing from that foundation, I’m trying to cultivate a practice of moving toward who I want to become.

Perhaps I should view it also a process of becoming who I already am. But what does that even mean? I trust I will find out, and I’m looking forward to what is revealed.