My entire journey to yoga seems improbable and also inevitable……Karmic

Part I: KARMA

I was born and raised across the world from yoga in a comfortable suburb of St. Louis, Missouri in the embrace of family and synagogue.  I studied, swam, danced, and taught Sunday school content in my safe bubble where all questions had answers.

My mind was blasted open at 16 when, at summer religious study camp where we were immersed in Bible, prayer, history, and philosophy I had a full-blown religious crisis…… I couldn’t find a G-d I could believe in.  No one had acceptable answers for me, and I began to think that most of the counselors, teachers, and rabbis around me might be faking it.  This was not the result my parents expected from the summers of study and training they lavished on me.   I felt confused and guilty, and I kept silent.

My father was not faking it.  Every night of his life after walking the dog he went to his bookshelf, wrapped himself in his evening prayers rocking and bowing, and then went up to bed.  Night after night, for years I observed his total absorption.  He had found his spiritual home.  Could I find mine?

I returned to high school and then university on a permanent and intense quest for TRUTH.  Aside from provocative arguments and questions to teachers and rabbis I stayed outwardly obedient and in the fold, but I was in turmoil inside.

Then at Washington University I walked into a lecture hall for a comparative religions class and found Dr. Houston Smith sitting on the desk in full Lotus pose with his eyes closed……another blast to my mind. In 1957 I had never heard the words yogi or yoga, but I was magnetized.  He was touching something inside.  Three hundred of us filed in and got quiet or giggly, sat and waited.  I knew I needed to learn more about this.  I gobbled up the course and began my discovery of Eastern spiritual paths.

When Dr. Smith gave his Religions of Man course on TV, the first college-level TV course in St. Louis, it was a cause célèbre.  My mother enrolled and watched with me.  She was enchanted.  We never spoke of “real” things, but her response to Smith’s examination of other religions was a silent support of my quest.  She would be curious about other paths in the safety of her living room, but she would not disown me for my more active explorations.

I met Don, we married, he created family tension by refusing to join his family business, he accepted an appointment to the U.S. Foreign Service, AND we were assigned to Sri Lanka and then to India.

Friends have said the whole chain of events was Karmic.  True.  And there was more.

I was thirsty to drink in all of India.  I read, asked anyone who would talk to me zillions of questions, and visited temples and holy places.  I loved the beautiful mosques with their arching architecture and calls to prayer and should have felt at home in those monotheistic houses of prayer, but I was drawn to the intricate, chaotic Hindu temples.

Bharatanatyam, the South Indian classical dance, fascinated me, and the wife of one of Don’s Indian colleagues had a friend who was a well-known dancer who agreed to teach me at her home studio.  I practiced hard, ate badly, lost weight (was already thin when I got to India), and was generally looking un-well when my teacher’s father summoned me to tea one day after my lesson.  He told me he had been observing my hard work and noticed my poor health and had arranged for me to see his guru for healing!

Sri T. Krishnamacharya, 1963, Madras (now Chennai), India © Don Mathes

I was surprised, but everything about India was surprising, and I found myself the next week standing before the man who would deliver years-long continuous blasts to my mind and change my life forever……Sri T. Krishnamacharya, the father of modern yoga.  He was a renowned scholar and a yogi, the architect of the Vinyasa sequence done today by millions of practitioners around the world, the teacher of B.K.S. Iyengar and Pathabi Jois, but I knew none of that then.

Karma, for sure.  The whole unlikely progression leading me to him still amazes me.  Every little piece was essential.  What if I had studied dance with someone else?  What if we had been assigned somewhere else?  What if I had not met Don?  What if I had not been open to something radical???  It makes me dizzy.  It also makes me know that there are open doors around us all the time.  We just have to notice and go through them.

So, there I stood with Krishnamacharya walking around me poking, grunting, and finally pronouncing, “Body once strong, now weak”.  I thought he would prescribe a diet and some herbs since he was a legendary Ayurvedic healer.  He looked at me and announced, “SIRSASANA”.  Frozen, I just stared at him, and he shook his head and almost laughed realizing he had a totally ignorant Western female in front of him.

Libbie in Sirsasana (Headstand) with Krishnamacharya, 1963, Madras (now Chennai), India. © Don Mathes

We began with headstand and other asanas that first day, and we continued twice a week with private one-hour lessons of asana and pranayama.  I had seen no books on yoga (Were there any then in English?), so each asana and pranayama was new and wondrous.  He did give me diet instructions:  No meat, dahl (lentils) and curd (yogurt) every day.  I obeyed, did my practice every day, got strong, gained some weight, and became a grateful dévotée.  The first TRUTHs started to dawn.  Asana makes one strong and steady.  Pranayama takes one inside.  I knew what Houston Smith was experiencing sitting on that desk in Lotus pose.  Inner turmoil was subsiding; inner doors were opening.

The whole enterprise was clandestine.  U.S. diplomats were forbidden to “go native” or engage in any Indian esoterica.  But Don supported me, and we kept it our secret, a risk for him.  I learned years later that Krishnamacharya was himself a rebel, going against tradition, teaching women, and even Westerners, of which I am honored to be an early example.

Libbie in Bheksana (Frog) with Krishnamacharya, 1963, Madras (now Chennai), India. © Don Mathes

PART II:  PRACTICE

Looking at the India years from a distance I see that Krishnamacharya took me along the path of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali to introduce me to the techniques of yoga.  Of course, I had not read Patanjali then, nor did I even know about him.  I was familiar with the Bhagavad Gita, “Song of G-d”, the earliest yoga text, 5th cen. BCE.  This glorious poem is the most widely known religious text in the world and describes the 4 paths of a yogic life:  Selfless Action (Karma) from one’s essence, Devotion (Bhakti), Knowledge (Jnana), and Meditation (Raja).

While waiting for my classes I would see various Indian men coming to study with Krishnamacharya.  I knew they were studying texts, and I could hear some of the forceful Pranayamas he taught them.  It was clear that there was much more to all this than I imagined.   My own Pranayama practice had drawn me further inward, and I was getting curious about this “more”.  Indian friends talked about a personal un-born and un-dying Atman, the universal Purusha that connects all, and Prana, the vital energetic expression of that connection.  They explained the myriad g-ds as expressions of Ultimate Reality, and they knew that the Karma (actions) of this life would determine the next life and that the karmic seeds of actions would ripen sooner or later.  I was drawn in.

One day after my practice I was still sitting while he walked around me chanting softly, and I asked, “Guruji, when will you teach me meditation?”  An outrageous request, and he showed his wrath at my arrogance……”You foreigners!  You want everything NOW.  We study and practice all our lives…”  Then he stopped abruptly, gently touched my head and said softly and very slowly, “You × Do × Your × Pranayama × Every × Day; Meditation × Will × Come”.  I was shaking, but I knew I had received a gift.  I still experience that moment.  It was his most profound teaching.  We do not “do” meditation.  Meditation is there.  We practice and create the conditions to realize it.  He had been leading me to this all along.

Libbie in Purvottanasana (Upward Plank), 1963, Madras (now Chennai), India. © Don Mathes

After five years we left India.  Yoga was a permanent part of me, but I was a solo practitioner.  Living in three additional countries, outwardly I was busy raising kids, doing the US diplomatic thing, teaching English, and writing features for an English language newspaper.

It wasn’t until 1980, almost twenty years after I met Krishnamacharya, that Don was transferred back to Washington, D.C., and I entered the Western yoga world of classes, study groups (I finally studied the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali !), and various teachers.  This began a rich time for me, but I realized how fortunate I had been to have received a personal introduction to yoga with time and space for it to enter me and inform me without a lot of talk and other people’s ideas.  Now I was ready and eager to hear those ideas and to engage with fellow students and seekers.

I owe so much to John Schumacher, Senior Iyengar teacher, my main American teacher, who taught me Asana and Pranayama with Mr. Iyengar’s detail and rigor.   John is one of the pure keepers and transmitters of Iyengar’s teachings.  He also is the embodiment of the art of teaching in groups.  I was a regular student in his classes for 20 years, and for 10 of those years I apprenticed to him and assisted in his classes.   John sits often on my shoulder observing, questioning, and even occasionally approving of my teaching.

Libbie in Dhanurasana (Bow) variation, 1963, Madras (now Chennai), India. © Don Mathes

Mr. Iyengar is a continuing presence, not just vividly through John over the years, but when I was able to study with him and through his many writings and videos.  I first met Iyengar in 2005 during his final visit to the US on the occasion of the publication of his magnum opus, Light on Life.   Along with 800 of his teachers, I studied with him for a heady week in Estes Park, Colorado.   Don and I then followed him to Washington, DC where John hosted him, and I was able to have a private conversation with him.  John introduced me as an early American student of Krishnamacharya, and Iyengar asked what he had taught me.   After hearing, he said I should continue to teach what I had been taught.  His honoring my loyalty to my root guru made me feel welcome in the Iyengar family without the need to dilute that loyalty with another certification.  A gift.

Much of the yoga world thinks of Iyengar as an alignment taskmaster…… and he certainly was!  The old joke was that his initials, B.K.S. stood for Beat, Kick, and Shout.  But he was deeply spiritual.  He always said that yoga was the path of INVOLUTION, emphasizing that Asana and Pranayama are the path inward to the Soul, the Atman, the Essential Nature.  He taught that Asana creates health and strength for the body to endure the energetic force of Pranayama and that Pranayama opens the way to Meditation and eventual awakening to our True Nature, Samadhi…… Pure Krishnamacharya; Pure Patanjali.

I have also been most fortunate to have studied Asana and Pranayama in retreat settings with Geeta Iyengar, Patricia Walden and Manouso Manos, and I have studied text with Edwin Bryant.  There have been unforgettable Ah-Ha moments with each of these inspirational teachers.

Class by class, practice by practice, Truths reveal themselves.

Libbie in Supta Padmasana (Supine Lotus), 1963, Madras (now Chennai), India. © Don Mathes

PART III:  FULL CIRCLE and FORWARD

In 1997 we came to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and my son, Joshua, introduced me to the Buddhist sangha led by Tim Olmsted.  In this sangha of practitioners and seekers I entered a period of regular study and meditation practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

Tim had studied for years in Nepal with his guru, the renowned Dzogchen master, Tulku Urgen Rinpoche.  Amazingly, this strong connection enabled Tim to have three of his guru’s sons, all masters, all Rinpoches, come and teach us in Steamboat.  What riches they brought us!  I soaked up the debate, the hair-splitting detail, the beautiful texts and the chanting.  It all resonated with my early training.

Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, the oldest son, taught us in Nepal and twice in Steamboat. Tsoknyi Rinpoche, the root guru of our sangha, pointed out the Nature of Mind during intense retreats of study and practice in Steamboat and in Crestone. Mingyur Rinpoche, the youngest son, now widely known as a master teacher of meditation, teaches in retreat settings and online through his Joy of Living program. He has developed a special relationship with our sangha as Tim directs and teaches Joy of Living around the US and internationally.

Many extraordinary masters have come to teach us!  Two western teachers are of central importance to our sangha’s studies:

Acharya Pema Chodron, the director of Gampo Abby in Nova Scotia, has brought Buddhist teachings directly into daily life.  With heart and wisdom, she shows us our “shenpa” (attachment) and how we get hooked into destructive emotions. Andrew Holecek has dazzled our sangha with retreats on Bardo and Dream Yoga. Pema’s and Andrew’s books and those of the masters named above are essentials in a Buddhist student’s library.

All the retreats with the above teachers have been in addition to years of weekly study and practice with Tim, wrestling with concepts of Emptiness, Compassion, The Three Jewels,  Non-Self, Non-Duality, Karma, Kleshas (destructive emotions), Samsara/Nirvana, Impermanence, and Buddha-Nature.   It’s no wonder that I felt my mind (happily) exploding much of the time.

With this period of practice and study guided by living masters, I came Karmic-ly full circle.  My guru, Krishnamacharya, had spent seven years in Tibet practicing and studying lost yoga practices and text with his guru, the living master, Sri Rama Mohana Brahmachari, who instructed him to take this wisdom back to India and teach.  I found myself at home in the tradition that had informed his teaching.  As the years pass I grow full of wonder and gratitude and ever greater Devotion for my guru, the living master, the Yogacharya who brought me to the path of yoga.

So, what is the result, the goal, of all this yoga?

What emerges from all this Asana, Pranayama, study, and Meditation practice?

Finally, I think, we develop a deepening confidence in the wisdom we can now begin to call our own.

We note a shift in our identity away from our impermanent physical bodies.  We loosen attachment to the idea of a separate individual self.  We identify more with our essential nature.

If all beings have this unborn, un-dying, luminous Buddha Nature, we are all the same!  We are connected in a non-dual Whole.   My favorite visual of this is “Indra’s Net”…… a great net stretching infinitely with a jewel at every knot in the net.  Each jewel is luminous and reflects the luminosity of every other jewel in the net.  Any tear in the net affects the entire net.  Contemplating this connectivity and interdependence, I silently chant the yoga mantra,“SoHum”

(“I am That”) on my inhalations and exhalations.

Aside from chanting and acknowledging connectivity, how do we live with this wisdom?  The Buddhist answer is the Bodhisattva ideal……the yogi who vows to become enlightened in order to act for the benefit of all beings in every thought, word, and deed.

This is NOT altruism.

This is NOT one superior being helping a lesser being.

This is the Compassionate “I” relating to “I”, equal to equal: “So Hum”.

This is the understanding that if one part of the Whole is suffering or injured, then the Whole itself is damaged.

An “Ah-Ha” moment:  Once one sees this it becomes clear why the most important of the yoga Yamas (universal principles) is Ahimsa (non-harming).

Ahimsa is not a law handed down from above; it is the natural result of the reality of interconnectedness.  The Golden Rule of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud which I studied as a teenager is not “given” from above;  Compassion is the only possible response to the truth of sameness and connectivity that one discovers within.

I come full circle, back to the most fundamental truth.   But the truth is no longer imposed from outside.  It is experienced and discovered within.

My whole yoga journey feels to me like a series of great breaths ……Inhaling the Prana, the Practice, the Study, the growing understanding;  Exhaling the desire to act mindfully, with an enlightened heart, in every thought, word and deed to be of benefit to all beings.

We vow, we act, we fail, we vow again, we act again, and with Patience, Generosity, Discipline, Joyful Effort, Intelligence and some Wisdom we endeavor to bring peace and healing to the world one small act, one day, one yogini, one yogi at a time.

…..

My Basic Yoga Bookshelf

I Offer This Short List of My Favorites from Many Decades and Among Many Treasures in My Collection

(With apologies for leaving out any of your favorites!)

TEXTS:

THE BHAGAVAD GITA, translated by Ekanath Easwaran with an excellent introduction to this oldest of yoga texts, 5th cen. BCE.  The GITA has been translated into English dozens of times.  Start with this, and then find your own favorites.

THE YOGA-SUTRA of PATANJALI, Georg Feuerstein’s translation and commentary on this 2000-year-old landmark text on Classical Yoga.  This is my favorite short, entry-level version – clear and informative.  Start here, and then explore others that are psychological, scientific, modern, etc.

THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI, Edwin Bryant’s hefty translation and encyclopedic reference book with selections from the major commentaries over the centuries and a wealth of historical information.

ESSENCE OF THE HEART SUTRA, the Dalai Lama’s marvelous teaching on this beloved 2000-year-old Mahayana text (“Form is Emptiness;  Emptiness is Form…”) chanted daily by millions of Buddhists.

TRAINING THE MIND AND CULTIVATING LOVING-KINDNESS, by Chogyam Trungpa.  This small handbook teaching The 59 Slogans of ATISHA, the 10th cen. master, contains the entire Buddhist path and practice of Compassion.

NO TIME TO LOSE, Pema Chodron’s commentary on THE WAY OF THE BODHISATTVA, the beautiful 8th cen. text by Shantideva, brings this ancient wisdom out of the poetry and into modern, daily life.

PRACTICE:

THE COMPLETE BOOK OF VINYASA YOGA, Krishnamacharya’s Asana, Pranayama and Bandha, a beautiful and authoritative presentation with elaborate photos by S. Ramaswami, Krishnamacharya’s longtime student.

LIGHT ON YOGA, by B.K.S. Iyengar.  This is the essential asana reference book with detailed guidance for practicing the poses and hundreds of photos of the master.

LIGHT ON PRANAYAMA, by B.K.S. Iyengar.  This step-by-step instruction manual accompanies practitioners in the life-long journey from the never-ever stage to advanced pranayama practice.

MISCELLANEOUS:

BE HERE NOW, by Ram Dass (Dr. Richard Alpert).  This 1971 breakthrough book brought a generation of seeking Americans to Yoga and Eastern Spirituality.

CUTTING THROUGH SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM, by Chogyam Trungpa. This is a collection of the talks C.T. Rinpoche gave in Boulder, Colorado in 1970 and 1971 to create the basis for his years of teaching in the US.

CAREFREE DIGNITY:  Discussions on Training in the Nature of Mind, by Tsoknyi Rinpoche.

LIGHT ON LIFE:  The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, by B.K.S. Iyengar.

THE JOY OF LIVING:  Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness, by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Eric Swanson.

DREAM YOGA:  The Tibetan Path of Awakening Through Lucid Dreaming, by Andrew Holecek.

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(Cover Photograph: Krishnamacharya and Libbie in Padmasana (Lotus) for Pranayama (Breath practice),  1964 Madras (now Chennai), India. © Don Mathes)