Yoga: A Lifeline for the Drowning

Yoga reforms not just the body but also the mind and spirit. These reforms, based on yoga's notion of universal connectedness, help us live in today's turbulent world.

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“You will have learned how to do yoga when you become willing to be guided from within.” Erich Schiffman, Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness

Encountering yoga, the self meets Self in a martial art of the soul. The yogi may be shattered, changed, or enlightened; they may forget everything they thought they knew, or lose what they thought they had, but in that encounter, they will learn to trust the inner winds turning the worm of change.

The core of a new identity is built by postures of expansion and contraction, which become the spiritual principles of gratitude and faith. Out of this, yogis sing songs with each breath, posture, and each principle, and opened to discover for what and to whom they may serve.

Rebuilding their sacred dwelling, their house of being, yogis learn to rest in the stillness of a healing moment in surrender. Surrender leads the yogi to find a new courage leading them inward and downward – directions eschewed by a manic society bent on doing – and in this move, encounter untapped emotions often protected by a frost line within. It’s a risky threshold for all yogis, bridged by courage – an attribute built through yogic discipline.

When a yogis’ practice leads to change, they will be set apart, not as better than others but as vessels for carrying yoga’s heritage, as mentors and teachers working on the most important subject first: themselves.

In the yoga curriculum, change is expected and becomes evident when judgments are muted by compassion and love. Yogis learn on the journey to:

Draw from a spiritual imprint, one built step by step from the East.
Die to self in shavasana, representing the death of limited beliefs.
Assign worry to the trash bin and relinquish what can’t be changed.
Dwell in the room of ho’ oponopono.

Ho’ oponopono, Hawaiian language for “please forgive me,” communicates a deep knowledge in a sacred weaving of interconnection to and with all. Ho’ oponopono is a room to befriend, for it empowers direct action of karma, the reality that what we do comes back to the place where every action starts.

To actualize ho’ oponopono in life is a move to intentional gratitude, an attitude that lights the way to a lifeline of transformation and grace. This grace is the yogi’s lifeline for self - and everyone else - in a drowning world.