Entry #2 How Yoga Has Changed My Life

Yoga: Be Still, My Beating Heart!
I’ll tell you a secret. Sometimes, when I am lying very still, listening to my own breathing, feeling the rise and fall, the expansion and contraction of my respiration, hearing my heartbeat and sensing my pulse with acute awareness, I get scared. It’s as if I am too close to myself, too intimate, too conscious; it sends me almost to the verge of panic. Of course, in my normal, daily life it is unlikely I would have to worry about the intensity or strangeness of these sensations. This is not the case, fortunately or unfortunately, in the world of yoga.
I inhale. I exhale, clawing my fingers into the mat. As my breath rushes out, I push my hips toward the heavens, feeling at once strong, comfortably at home, and joyous in my familiar down-dog stance. I am “doing” yoga, but the verb “to do” does not rightly embody the absolute sense of involvement in this all-encompassing and synergistic mind-body celebration, this momentous occasion, this sensation of finding the heart, the center, the focus, of my life. How has yoga changed my life? How has it not changed me.
Yoga was something I avoided for years. When I was in my twenties, my friend Susan, so many times, invited me to yoga… but it was not something I could fit into my life. Maybe I secretly knew how huge a thing it would become. Maybe I was avoiding the thoughts or emotions it might awaken in me. Even then I was afraid of knowing the depths of myself. Years later, in Susan’s apartment, we did a yoga video together. It was the beautiful Patricia Walden, Queen of Backbends, and she seemed to patient, kind, and balanced.
Thank you Susan. Thank you Patricia. From that point on I discovered a new sense of self. My yoga blossomed like the quintessential lotus. More tapes, all kinds of classes, conversations, more classes. Inhaling, expanding, balancing. Exhaling, twisting, chanting. Yoga was a safe haven during years of struggling through the dilemmas of public education, as both a teacher and student, studying, writing, and being tested over and over again. Who am I? Am I capable? Can I make it through? In yoga, I am strong. I am supple. I can concentrate. I can endure. I can breathe and focus, stay on track, be good to myself, and even, unbelievable! –I can relax. This is how yoga has changed me. In my beating heart, I have found stillness. In my racing mind, I have found peace.
We are in savasana. I lie on my mat, quietly exhilarated, my mind and heart lifted. I am so moved that all I want is to share this sensation with others. I want everyone to have the chance to feel this enlightenment, this simultaneous sense of focus and freedom. I vow to become a yoga teacher. I vow to one day instruct and inspire those who might not have the chance to know this peace. This is my vow. And this is how yoga has changed my life.

Robin Danzak