My Yoga Journey.

Part II

My yoga journey began like this.

Yoga found me in the most serendipitous way through a person that was brought into my life just for that purpose. We have lost touch, but she did her job. She was the Divine conduit that helped yoga find me.

I was introduced to the art and science of yoga via a desperate attempt to gain healing and recovery from my addictions. After “doing” yoga for awhile, I began to realize that I had been having these incredable energizing experiences. I felt my body and I began to feel! It was different from working out or any other exercise program. It was like I was awakening something that had been lying dormant inside for a very long time. Week after week as Nikki made the linkage between the five energy bodies and how our bodies make this natural attempt to find re-alignment-- to find balance.

Too often a quest for balance is acted out subconsciously in our behavior: drinking too much, eating too much or too little. As my yogi Nikki says: our issues live in our tissues, creating a disconnection and dis-ease aka disease of every form and fashion. So I returned to my yoga class each week not even really knowing why. But my body recognized truth…my truth… even before my mind could comprehend it. My body had by-passed all my fancy book learning.

Then not very far into my yoga journey, I was privileged to participate in a "Yoga for Recovery" weekend, facilitated by Nikki Myers and Nate Rush. As we moved through the information and an asana practice….it happened….right there…on my mat…I experience the presence of God…a deeply moving spiritual experience. It was just a simple "knowing" that in spite of all of my failings, faults and wounds, I am loved. I know I am supppose to already know that...I grew up singing "yes Jesus loves me." But those words are easier to believe when you're a kid.

It was an epiphany moment. Although it was a loving encounter it was still disconcerting. I felt confused. I am having this wonderful spiritual experience on a yoga mat and not in my church! It was like being married to one person but having this amazing kiss from another. A kiss that makes you weak at the knees and makes your toes curl, even with your shoes on!

As an ordained minister, I felt all the angst of a woman having an affair. Feeling as if my loyalties were divided. So as any person in love with two people, I went a little nuts. I threw myself into church stuff and I decided I would “do” yoga, but I would "do" yoga so that I could be the person that would “translate” yoga for Christians because “they” really needed this stuff and “they” just cannot get with all the eastern philosophy. I was operating as if Yoga needed me to make it more palateable for the Christian audience. Until again, on my mat, everything came together for me. Miraculously something shifted.

Yoga found me.

Yoga found me broken, confused, but open and willing to heal, just like the love of the Divine found me broken, confused, but open and willing to heal.

During that recovery weekend Nikki’s presentation included this statement:

“In any moment we can choose to turn to God. We can empty ourselves and receive Her. There is no distance to travel, no technique to master. Enlightenment is available in each moment when we choose it. It requires only saying yes to the present moment. There is nothing to do. There is no knowledge, no special learning required. No amount of doing will take us there. We need only courage to take the leap into the unknown. For it is in the unknown that we meet God.”

-Rishi Prabhakar

I pondered. What if Yoga, my lover, is just another persona of my first love…the love of the Divine? Why was my logical mind trying to keep the two separated as if one didn’t know about the other? So I surrendered into yoga and stopped translating even in my head and just let it be the proof positive that the loving Creator sends to me every good and perfect gift. I took the leap into the unknown world of yoga and I met God for the first time, again!

More to come. To be continued...