Saying Thank You - A Love Letter To My Teachers

 

Nataraja, Bristol, NY, July 2011 

Yes...That. I am that. That I am.

My Two Teachers
I have many teachers, but the two who are really the great teachers of my life are the ones who, when I first heard them speak, seemed to be voicing the contents of my brain. If you have had this experience, you know exactly what I am talking about. You are surprised, and think – wait – how did you…? but I…  and then – yes and yes again. Then the surprise gives way to a magnetic compulsion that makes you want to scrunch your chair or yoga blanket or whatever you happen to be perched on …right…up…close.

It makes you want to travel around the world to study with them and precipitates dramatic shifts in how you order your time and with whom you wish to spend it. Your initial amazement and delight pool into a profound sense of gratitude for this glimpse into the mysterious synchronicity of things. Resonance and Recognition. This is what happened when I met my teachers John Friend and Douglas Brooks.

To Backtrack for a Moment – Paris and Proust
I keep thinking about the first time I read Proust. I was studying in Paris and as I tackled the dense text, I suddenly realized that I was being moved by the quality of the language and by the beauty of the prose. For the first time reading in French – instead of translating in my head, instead of it being about comprehension – I had moved into a place of profound aesthetic appreciation. That was something.

The writing seemed strangely familiar. As I read, it felt as if someone had transcribed the phrases and ideas lining the inside of my brain. I was seeing myself reflected in his words – not just things I had thought about, but patterns of thought – an underlying structure that said – That is me! The differences between myself and a neurotic French writer born in 1871, who closeted himself in a silent cork-lined room so that he could write all 3000-some pages of his book were evident. Yet, the startling sense of recognition triggered a sensation of deep connectivity to the world around me, which is actually what he was writing about. And this experience is what I’m now talking about.

Post-practice with John Friend - Anusara Grand Circle-Wanderlust, VT, June 2011

On Recognition and Moving through Things
Many years later, I was going through a challenging period in my life – I had lost 3 people I cared about in 3 months in unrelated violent deaths. I was toughing it out, trying to be there for other people while I just barely kept it together myself. I felt as if I was held in place by lots of little overlapping pieces of psychic tape and messes of determined glue – a shifting collection of pieces.

I had been studying with John Friend for about 5 years, and had already had the above-mentioned recognition experience with him. He was in town teaching a series of workshops in Soho. Usually when I studied with John, I was like an excited puppy  – exponentially more bouncy and chatty than I normally am. This time I was in a place where I just wanted to find some peace – to stop grinding my teeth for a few hours and feel happy again. We put down our mats and gathered toward the front of the room.

As John began to speak, something in the tone of his voice shifted something for me, and my carefully taped together self began to come unstuck. I spent most of the morning crying and sweating in the bathroom, finally managing to fit in about 30 sniffling minutes of practice. He came over to me immediately at the break and I recall spilling some incoherent mess about what I was dealing with, as he took it in and held that space for me.

Exhausted, I went back to my apartment, showered, scrubbed everything off of myself, and when I returned for the afternoon session, I was on the other side of it – clear, clean, and actually slightly happy for the first time in months. The tone of recognition and acceptance within his voice had triggered a profound alchemical shift within me. He had invited me more deeply into a particular part of myself so that I could process what I needed to move through.

Great teachers speak to you from where you are. They don’t try to yank or push or pull you into where they want you to be. They remind you to move into the fullness of your experience, to embrace whatever rasa, or flavor of experience, you are in so that you can best figure out how to align with your current reality.

With Douglas Brooks - Swamimalai Subrahmanya Temple, Dec 2010, photo-Diane Stone

On Reflection and Thatness
I was in upstate New York studying with Douglas this past week. Near the beginning of a meditation practice that Douglas was guiding, there was a moment near the beginning when one thanks one’s teachers. He let us know that this was what he was doing and that we were welcome to do the same.

Look way back – he suggested – go to 2^nd grade. I decided to really go for it, and it was amazing how many people I genuinely wanted to thank. I tried to pare it down to my parents, my high school English and Art teachers, my college Art History professor, several of my Anusara mentors, and Douglas and John. But then I thought about all of my teachers’ teachers, and that kept multiplying as well – lines and lines of them extending in every direction. It was endless.

I met Douglas when he was invited by Amy Ippoliti to kick off our Anusara® Teacher Training in January 2002. I have extremely vivid memories of being floored at every single thing he said. It was brilliant. And totally new. And yet utterly familiar. To conclude one evening, we were asked to give one word or phrase summarizing our experience. People said, inspired – intrigued – exhausted – perplexed – blown away, and more.  The one thing that I could truly say, was Yes…THAT. I am that. That I am.

You know in a minute flat when someone is going to be a great teacher in your life. You can learn from many, but the great ones – that is always clear. And there it was again and again, and here it still is again and again: the vimarsha shakti, which can be loosely defined as the energy of you being reflected back to you. Being around my teachers makes me a better person because of this endless mirroring and self-reflection, this sense of recognition, the inescapable resonance, the sweet invitation to that.

Jet-lagged but happy - with Douglas - Tirukalakundram Vedhagirishwar Hill Temple, Dec 2010

Saying Thank You
I was away traveling for much of this summer – Vermont-India-Paris–Boston-upstate NY, and had intended to write something like this for Gurupurnima, the traditional time of year to honor one’s teachers, so this is slightly late. But I honestly think about my teachers every day, which somehow blended with the nostalgia or longing that kicks in for me at the end of summer and the fading august light, so I felt compelled to write this belated thank-you note.

So here it goes  – thank you to Mom and Dad for being the most ridiculously fabulous parents anyone could wish for, to my sister Jen for being a model of integrity, thank you to my academic teachers who believed in my creativity and my skills – thank you to my yoga mentors and inspirations – Sianna Sherman, Elena Brower Amy Ippoliti, Lois Nesbitt, Vishali Varga, Ellen Saltonstall, and Sue Elkind. You have all given me so much.

And thank you John. Thank you Douglas. I thank you all for offering me myself.

With John - Anusara Grand Circle, VT June 2011

Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. ~ Marcel Proust

Which is Your Favorite God? Travels with Jesus, Shiva, Mary, and Ganesh

Mary and Ganesha on the Dashboard (photo Harrison Williams)

 

Shopping on West Car Street, Chidambaram 
I was walking with Bharathi and Vishali on West Car Street. We had just gone sari-shopping and Vish had paused to look at the bangles at one of the shaded market stands lining the west gate entrance to the temple. The sweet smell of guavas oozing with juice in the midday sun permeated the air around us. We had nowhere to be for a few hours, and this rare moment of lingering felt slow and satisfying. The hair on top of my head felt shockingly hot to the touch as I adjusted the jasmine in my braid, drawing a few damp strands off of my forehead and back into some attempt at order.

As we looked through our purchases from the sari store, talking about color, fabric and style, Bharathi suddenly asked me, – Susanna, which is your favorite God? Standing yards from the entryway into one of the world’s greatest Shiva temples, which I had just traveled across the world to visit for the third time, there was no question - Shiva Nataraja, I said. She paused and looked at me. I wondered what she was thinking.

But Jesus? - she asked – He is yours. Don’t you love Jesus? Surprised, I said –Yes, Jesus is great – I love Jesus. This was so inexplicably funny to me that I started laughing. Then I clarified – I love Shiva AND I love Jesus. They’re both good. And you? Bharathi said – Me? I love Shiva – and she touched her heart. I said – Oh, yes, Shiva… and touched my heart as well. Then she laughed too. The three of us purchased some bangles, bobbypins, and sari clips, then hailed an auto-rickshaw to return to the Hotel Saradharam for lunch.

Walking through the Marketplace, Chidambaram

Driving from Chidambaram to Swamimalai
We climbed into one of the two white vans outside of the hotel, and I eased myself into the cool air-conditioned seat just behind the driver. As everyone settled in around me, I looked at the dashboard, which was evenly ornamented with two little deities: on the right, a shiny gold-colored Ganesha sat cross-legged, and to his left stood the Virgin Mary, gracefully draped in blue robes.

I loved seeing this juxtaposition just a few days after my conversation with Bharathi. I pointed to the dashboard – You like Mary and Ganapati! - I said to our driver – Me too! He said – Yes, yes – Mary and Ganapati! Very good! Then, because we had exhausted his English and my Tamil, which doesn’t go beyond Hello, Thank you, and ordering food, we smiled at each other as he began backing the van out into the street for our ride to the Subrahmanya temple in Swamimalai.

I remembered how, when I was here in December, every roadside restaurant seemed to have a crèche, or manger scene, with lots of rainbow-colored tinsel, Merry X-mas banners made of shiny cardboard letters, and sometimes strings of blinking lights. Somewhere in the vicinity there would be a Ganesh or a Subrahmanya, Ganesha’s warrior brother, who is particularly popular in Tamil Nadu. There didn’t seem to be any conflict or contradiction in the two different belief systems being simultaneously acknowledged and celebrated, and there didn’t seem to be any attempt to separate them. On the contrary; the Christian figurines were mixed right in with the Hindu ones. Everyone was invited to the party.

Subrahmanya wall paintings, Swamimalai

Contemplating the Temple
It’s a funny thing to fall in love with a set of traditions that aren’t yours by birth or by culture. I find myself constantly asking myself why the Hindu Tantrism that I’ve spent the last decade studying with my teachers John Friend and Dr. Douglas Brooks resonates so powerfully for me and makes so much sense to me, offering such beauty and richness that I cannot imagine extricating it from my everyday thinking and way of being in the world.

Unlike the Catholic churches in which I grew up, the Shiva Nataraja temple in Chidambaram is not geared toward one particular group of Hindus with a specific set of codified beliefs. Imagine a Jesus church designed to accommodate every conceivable sect of Christianity, as well as anyone else who happens to think that Jesus is cool. This is the surprisingly inclusive paradigm that we step into when we come to this temple.

I love the fact that I am not forced to choose here – that it is as ok for me to be as inclusive as I am selective. Because I am an outsider, there is a curiosity about why I am here, but never a critique from any of the people with whom we interact. Part of this may be an effect of language differences, but it honestly seems to be a non-issue. The Dikshitar priests never ask us what we think or believe, even inviting us into their home. The other visitors to the temple are friendly and openly approving of our presence here, the women patting us on the shoulder and saying Super-good! when we wear saris. It seems to be accepted that if we are here, Shiva means something to us. Our showing up is explanation enough.

East Gate Entrance, Chidambaram Temple-morning

What we talk about when we talk about Nataraja
In class, I tell my students that the names of the gods are names for different aspects of our selves. When we talk about Nataraja, we are talking about an amalgamation of concepts that comprises our identity. When we look at Nataraja, we are looking into one of those endless reflecting mirrors in which we catch glimpses and slivers of glimpses of our limitless selves. The complex cosmology of Nataraja reminds us that we are dazzlingly diverse. We are additive rather than reductive, like a cubist painting that reveals infinite perspectives from a single vantage point. We are multiplicity itself.

Gopuram detail, Chidambaram Temple-morning

Sweat Pray Write

Nataraja, Shivakamasundari and Subramanya Rathas, Chidambaram, July 2011     photo-Jagannath Babu

I am sitting in the 100º heat of the lobby of the Hotel Saradharam typing. No AC but Wi-Fi, so I try to perch on the edge of the inappropriately plush cushions of the couch beneath two whirling fans that busily attempt to dry out my contact lenses. I’ve soaked through layers of my sari and my computer rests on my thighs like a portable oven. There are a couple of tiny ineffectual mosquitoes flirting with my neck and arms – so sluggish in their movements that I easily swat them away before they manage to settle. I’m fantasizing about what it will feel like to peel off the layers of my sari to take yet another cold shower, about consuming a cool lime soda and a dosa. Yet, I’m determined to write.

I have come to Chidambaram in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu with my teacher, Dr. Douglas Brooks, and some friends for the annual Ani Festival, which marks the seasonal transition. This is one of the only times that the temple’s presiding deity, Nataraja, is removed from the Cit Saba, the heart of the temple, and brought through the streets in the most spectacular way imaginable: towering and elaborately carved carts hosting Nataraja and several other deities are draped with thousands of flowers strung into garlands, while surrounding the carts are burning ghee-torches, music, fireworks, and innumerable pilgrims. Hundreds of us pull the carts’ giant ropes to move them through the streets around the temple complex. We have come to honor our friend Kirubakaran, one of the temple’s Dikshitar priests. Kirubakaran was chosen to lead the festival this year – a once in a lifetime opportunity for him, for his family, and for us.

Selvaganesan, Greg, Susanna, Kirubakaran, Pushpa, Vishali, Harrison, Vasu, and the kids at the temple entrance, photo-Jagannath Babu

Take a profound religious ceremony, cross it with the ultimate street fair, add the 4^th of July, and you’ll have a sense of what it is like.  The way in which I’ve described this 10-day opulent visual extravaganza to my friends is “Fellini on acid” because I don’t know how else to evoke the wild sensation of it all. The truth is that it is deeply sweet and ecstatically beautiful. It makes you want to bow down. And you do so again and again.

Inside the Temple-Kirubakaran after the Homa, July 2011, photo-Doug Neal

So it is in this context that I find myself wondering about the urge to write, to record. I’ve actually written less this trip than I have in any of my previous trips to India. I wanted to just be in the experience instead of continually engaging in the meta-cognitive process of thinking about what I’m doing while I’m doing it, evaluating what I’m seeing and experiencing, processing what I’m receiving through my senses so that instead of just sweating, I am thinking about writing about sweating, and then revisiting my wording and revising it in my head until I think, “Yes – that is perfectly evoking this moment of sweating.”

A few years ago, my parents decided to stop taking photos when they traveled for this very reason. They didn’t want their trip to be a step removed from the actual experience by having every view mediated through the camera lens. I understood and admired this decision, yet I can’t seem to utterly commit to it. I am proud of myself when I put down the camera for a couple of days and let my friends document the experience. But I happen to be a profoundly visual person, who learns and recalls through my own process of documentation. My art history notes from college were outrageous – outline form with thumbnail sketches. I retained amazing amounts of information.

Ideally I would be able to do the trip twice – once just sinking into the tough lushness of it all, into the realm of the heightened sensory experience that South India has to offer – and then a second time with my camera, my notebooks, my pens, my computer and its satisfying clicks and taps. This is my fantasy. But, of course, it is the fleeting quality of the experience that makes it so precious, that intensifies it and makes me yearn for what has already occurred yesterday or an hour ago, even as I sit here typing these thoughts. The visceral feeling of the experience slips away, leaving an evocative residue captured by my words, my images, my overflowing notations on my life.

Ani Festival, Chidambaram, July 2011, photo-Jagannath Babu

Meditating With Your Eyes Open

Looking down at the stones beneath my feet, early morning, Chidambaram courtyard

Exchanging Glances in Southern India

In the late morning the stones of the temple courtyard burn the soles of your feet, so you walk very quickly scanning for the light-colored ones while headed for the shade of the main complex.  You say hello to Ganesha at the temple threshold, and then move more deeply into its center, passing by the priests engaged in business and ritual, weaving through streams of other visitors headed for different shrines in the seemingly infinite corners of the temple, which is essentially a walled village the size of multiple football fields.

Swamimalai

When you arrive at the heart of the temple, you find Nataraja, intricately adorned in vibrant silks, jewels, and garlanded with flowers. Endless patterns of ritual revolve around him involving fire, liquid, smoke, and substance, immersing you in a complex synesthetic experience.

The dusty grooves of the temple stones capture occasional puddles of coconut water, milk, sandal, and ghee that cool your toes as you step through them.  The bats swoop and chatter through the air accompanied by the temple music’s drums, bells, and horns. Smoke from the ghee lamps and the homa drifts through pillars and columns. Your forehead is host to sweet-smelling smears of ash that mingle with the scent of jasmine from your hair. And you listen or join in with the murmurs of mantras that swell like tiny whispering waves. You are permeated in every sensory manner and you release into it. The temple is a body, pulsing with life. When you are in it, you become an element of its chemistry.

Jasmine outside the temple

Most people who visit Chidambaram come to see Nataraja. This is his temple, the site of the Ananda Tandava, his Dance of Bliss. Shiva presides over the temple in the form of Nataraja, the dancer, the artist, who, with every movement, dances everything that exists into being and non-being. If you love Nataraja, this is the center of the universe. If you love Nataraja, you have come to see him and to be seen by him. The word for this is darshan, which my teacher Douglas Brooks explains as “the exchange of glances.” By entering, you have offered yourself to the temple, and then the temple offers itself back. As you inhabit the temple, the temple takes up residence within you.

A Nataraja murti

If you want to meditate, you can choose to close your eyes and go inside your own body, heart and mind. Or you can do the very same thing with your eyes open, drawing the outside in as an entirely different way of moving into the very same places. Through this invitation, this conversation, the body of the temple becomes your body. You gaze upon the deity and the deity shows you yourself. You exchange glances with Nataraja, This is why you are here.

 Morning in the Chidambaram Temple courtyard, South Gate

 There are times when you want to be within the quiet of your own inner vision. This is when you close your eyes. There are other times when you want to invite in all of the wild delirious diversity of the world, and this is when you open them.  This receptivity enables you to converse more deeply with your surroundings and consequently, within yourself. Everything outside of you calls upon something within you. You begin to recognize that you are in a state of constant conversation with the world.

Om Namah Shivaya

Vishali walks through the Chidambaram Temple Courtyard

Swollen With Light

John Friend-Anusara Grand Circle, Wanderlust, photo by Elena Brower

Notes from the Anusara Grand Circle - Wanderlust

Swollen with light ~ John Friend
I have just lowered down from another backbend and am staring up at the taut curves of an enormous white tent. My teacher, John Friend, has been talking about the burgeoning quality of the light at this time of year, the Summer Solstice. One little fragment of his talk still resonates: the idea of being “swollen with light.”  For some reason, this particular phrase delights me. There are a few pregnant women practicing and I imagine them light-filled, their bellies glowing like fireflies.

Pulsation
If you want to learn about the universe, get very quiet. Watch your breath as it moves through your body, initiating your inhale like you are pouring a glass of water. Fill the pelvis – the waist – the ribcage – the shoulders. Everything expands. Now pour out your exhale top to bottom.  What you just felt in your body is what happens in every aspect of nature, whether we choose to pay attention to it or not. The Sanskrit word for pulsation is Spanda. The passage of your breath. The pulse of your heart. The rise and fall of a day. The trajectory of a life.  The structure of a yoga class from the beginning invocation to savasana. Expand to contract. Contract to expand. Spanda.

Intentionality
Intention is an interesting thing in that it can be difficult to discern productive determination from needless grasping. Think about not trying to be like X, but rather, to be X. In this way, as John Friend said this morning, you ”put your will in the flow of the bigger will…then all we’re doing is lining up.” If you align so deeply with your desire, you become it. If you see your desire as a part of you, as opposed to something outside of you, the longing and the longed for become a unified dynamic: two parts of a whole, the question and its answer.

photo by Elena Brower

Dwelling in the wonder of not knowing ~ Hareesh Wallis
All good answers give birth to further questions, like sparks cascading from a firework. If we see an answer as a directional indicator rather than as an end, our worlds become vast skies lit up with the sparks and patterns of our sensibilities. We create our own personal constellations of questions, our own configurations of limitless light. “We dwell,” as Hareesh Wallis said, “in the wonder of not knowing.”

Raising the resonance ~ Elena Brower
Sometimes when I teach a class I feel it so acutely within my body that it seems as if I have actually moved through the entire physical practice. Sometimes when I assist a class I have the same experience. I opted to assist my friend Elena Brower today instead of practicing. The verbal instructions, the manual assists, and the physical practice formed a triangle of communication in which what was said, heard, and enacted upon “raised the resonance” of the experience. As Elena spoke of living ever-more fully within our individual choices and lives, I felt the words permeate my skin, soften my tired muscles, and open into a dense honeyed internal place. We finished in meditation, word, body, and intention melded into a gently glowing intensity.

photo by Elena Brower

We see all places as places of pilgrimage ~ Bill Mahony
Sometimes we journey to find a sense of ourselves. The strangeness of a different context can illuminate our particular qualities and habits. We leave home to come more profoundly home, which is why we’re all here. Bill Mahoney spoke about seeing every place in our lives as a place of pilgrimage. In this context, a place can be an event, a relationship, our connection to the world, or our sense of self. If we treat these “places” as sacred, our world becomes one in which every observation and interaction becomes rich with meaning and worthy of reverence. Our world becomes more substantial, our lives become a moving prayer.

Eversomuch More-So

Sianna Sherman and Douglas Brooks - Paris, May 2011

Yoga is virtuosity in becoming yourself
~ Douglas Brooks

There was a story I loved when I was little called Ever So Much More So. The story, written by Robert McCloskey, revolves around a stranger who comes to town selling shakers full of a mysterious product invisible to the eye and without smell or taste.  Everything sprinkled with it seems to become more essentially itself. The name of the product is Eversomuch More-So.  The people of the town shake it over everything, and are amazed to find that their water gets wetter, a squeaky spring becomes squeakier, and people’s individual characteristics such as a stutter or a tendency toward pomposity become more pronounced. Everything touched by Eversomuch More-So becomes its heightened self.

Two curious boys finally open the product’s container, which appears to be empty. Of course the stranger is long-gone, and the townspeople wonder if they have been swindled, but one older man pours it over the earth, and celebrates as the grass becomes greener, the birds sing more clearly, and the world becomes more profoundly itself in every way. So is it suggestion or is it real? The story ends ambiguously, leaving us wondering: how does something become eversomuch more itself?

I spent last week in the company of two of my favorite people –Douglas Brooks and Sianna Sherman – both of whom have distinct and powerful voices. I was assisting Sianna with her Paris Anusara teacher training, which included people from 17 different countries. The range of cultures, languages, and life experiences was impressive. I listened and gave feedback as everyone brought their particular sensibilities to the conversation, refining the structure and the poetry of their teaching.

Speaking to the group one night, Douglas stated: Yoga is virtuosity in becoming yourself. For yoga teachers in the process of honing their skills, this was particularly meaningful – essential, actually. If you parrot another teacher or take on a persona, your lack of authenticity will be evident.

But virtuosity in becoming yourself is about far more than teaching asana. This is about how you want to be in the world.  This is about gazing inside to recognize that you are the sum of your own individual particularities, and that no one else can speak from your experience, your voice.

Live fully in your strengths and vulnerabilities to sing the song of you. When your song comes from this place, it moves people. You have become eversomuch more-you. Your virtuosity becomes an opening, inviting others to sing their songs.

If you want fluency and depth in your life, you must cultivate a state in which you are always becoming more profoundly yourself. If you want to inspire people – to move people – to offer people a taste of their deepest selves, you have to step into your own virtuosity. Like attracts like. This is the yoga.


How can you invite your green to become greener, your water to become wetter?
How can you inspire your voice to arise from that fertile place of your identity?
How can you cultivate your virtuosity in becoming Eversomuch More-You?

The Beauty of Movement II

Still is still moving to me... ~ Willie Nelson

Definition: Wanderlust

a strong longing for or impulse toward wandering (Merriam-webster.com)
a strong, innate desire to rove or travel about (Dictionary.com)

About 15 years ago I spontaneously visited a friend in Colombia.

It was a particularly wet and miserable February in New York, and I was itching to be anywhere else. I called my friend Luis, and in a week was on a plane to Bogota.

We drove from the city two or three hours to some of the small towns surrounding it. Luis navigated rapidly along winding highways through the mountains, the damp high-altitude fog lifting to reveal trickling waterfalls along the sides of the mountains and explosively green foliage everywhere. Beyond the green in the lower altitudes, the mountains shone orangey-pink in the sun. We stopped by the side of the road, grabbed chunks of the mountain and crumbled it into a terracotta dust that stained our fingers.

At the time, many of the highways on which we drove were guerrilla-controlled, so speed was of the essence, as the guerrillas’ good humor in letting through the supply trucks and travelers’ cars vanished with the day’s diminishing light.

It was imperative that we arrive at our destination before the sun set. We drove through jungle, coffee country, arid towns famous for their clay work, and stayed in small colonial villages where the white walls around the central squares overflowed with bougainvillea, music and cooking smells. The diverse richness of it all was exhilarating. There was also a subtle but persistent edge of uneasiness lurking around the perimeter of daily life that, to my perception, compelled people toward a profound appreciation of the fleeting sweetness of the moment.  We decided that while I was there we should eat like crazy and dance every night. And so we did.

At the apex of our non-stop motion, I had a conversation with one of Luis’ friends who said that he did not leave Colombia much because he didn’t enjoy traveling—that he began to lose his sense of self when he was removed from his everyday surroundings.

This was a stark contrast to what Luis and I were experiencing. Inspired by our constant movement—walking, driving, dancing and eating, I expressed to him how passionately I love traveling; how I find calmness within the incessant movement. The strangeness of new places and experiences makes me acutely aware of my own habits and assumptions, which I find liberating. Movement offers me perspective. Perspective creates self-reflection. Self-reflection cultivates insight and empathy and so on.

Once you get a hit of the stillness held by movement and of movement‘s suspended stillness, no matter where you are, you carry the awareness of it with you. Multiple frames of a movie give us one flickering image. Stare at a still image for long enough and it seems to shift before your eyes. This is the pulsation of nature. In Anusara’s Tantric tradition we call the stillness Shiva and the movement Shakti. Stillness defines motion and motion stillness. We can’t conceptualize one without the other. The beauty is both in the difference and in the merging. We hold them in a continual play. I move. I stop. I pause. I wander.

For the first time this year, I decided to go to Wanderlust. It seemed ridiculous that I have not yet gone, given my love for travel and, of course, yoga. There are yoga teachers who wander all over the globe and there are others who stay put at their home studio. Both roles are valuable and I find myself somewhere in between. My travels make me a better teacher, but I also love the day-to-day relationships I have with my students. What seduced me about this particular Wanderlust is that it is on the East Coast, and is hosting the Anusara Grand Circle, which is the ultimate annual gathering for anyone who practices Anusara Yoga. So I get my fix of stillness—resting in the heart of my community—through my embrace of motion—picking up from my surroundings and leaping into a new experience.

From Wanderlust, I leave for India. From India, I fly to Paris. From Paris, back home to New York. I embrace the mirror that travel provides, holding up infinite reflections of my own identity. I bring back experiences, insights and new perspectives for my students. In August, I will rest, my stillness holding its whirling wandering history like a passionate pulse.