Yes, I am the focus of all of my blogs, of course. The only thing I have to do is think my own thoughts about life is affecting me and use that to teach the yoga I believe in so much to teach others to notice their thoughts about how life is affecting them, and to shift it when necessary.
So today I read on a Facebook friend of mine's account his recent blog about his getting into Kundalini Yoga and taking Amrit to become Sikh and how he came away from it when he began studying Ashtanga Yoga in 2000.
Oddly enough this made me think about my own journey into the study of yoga, whatever style you like. So, here it goes...
In late 1999 I had a wreck, the wreck hurt my arm and I was not able to do my normal, tiny little workout where if I started to sweat I stopped because I hated to sweat. Of course, I smoked 2 packs a day and drank 5 days a week and ate mostly fried foods, that sweat would NOT smell good, duh.
Anyhow, so I for some reason remembered years before that a friend trying to get me to take yoga with him at his college thinking that I would love it, I never did, although it never left my mind. So on that day I decided, maybe I'll call around and see if there are any yoga classes that I could try, never having the thought that I may need to bear weight on my arms in this sort of "work out" as well.
I found a place that your first class was free, the Solar Yoga Center, if you're in St. Louis you may have seen it as you drive down Forest Park parkway. So I went, I didn't tell my partner whom I was living with at the time, I just went and boy, it shook me to my bones. I wasn't even able to walk properly for the the next four days. This style of yoga they taught there was very odd and involved some things called psychophysicals, much like Kundalini Yoga exercises, then a cold shower, much like a Kundalini Yoga practice, then savasana wearing white, then 12 or so postures and then you went home with no ending savasana.
Even though I couldn't walk, I recognized that something had happened to me and I was awake in my body in a way I'd never experiences or new was possible, so I went back on Saturday with partner in tow. It was $30 for a whole month back then, the teachers taught as volunteer work so didn't receive pay, so the money went toward running the building.
Anyhow, during that week I was curious about this yoga stuff, so I decided to find a magazine or something to read more about it, and I'd heard of the Golden Grocer in the CWE, which was a hippie-ish store, so I drove there and found what I was looking for in the Yoga Journal in their turnstile. It had tons of articles and stuff, including one about Madonna playing a yoga teacher in her new movie about to come out The Next Best Thing, and it went on to explain how Madonna in her own life was practicing Ashtanga Yoga and how it was transforming her.
Upon reading the word Ashtanga I knew that was something that I had to find, the word just resonated with me deep inside. So I looked in the yellow pages (yes, that's what we did back then, most things weren't on the internet so doing a google search wasn't an option LOL) and called each place listed of which there were only five, and the last one Experience Yoga! listed an Intro to Ashtanga class and a regular Ashtanga class, but you were required to come to the Intro one until the teacher cleared you to go to the other one, they were sold in 8 week sessions. So, the new session was starting in a couple weeks, I called, left a message, she called me back and we talked for an hour and then I went two weeks later, going to the Solar Yoga Center every day I could in the interim.
I went, that story is for another time, but when in about my third class I was sweating in down dog and crying and felt as if I was dying, I felt this clarity of thought and this knowledge that I was going to be in this for the rest of my life, so I bought a book. I kept going to that class, then the session ended and she cleared me to go on to the full class because for some reason it was like dropping a fish into water, I got it.
I took that and ran with it and decided to do as much research as I could, using my partners computer I searched around for Ashtanga Yoga everywhere I could, called every teacher I could and asked as many questions as they would answer, probably annoyed everyone under the sun more than they would ever admit, but I was hungry and starving for the information I was seeking. I even heard that you'd come to yoga in this lifetime only if you'd done it in a past life, and for the first time believed in reincarnation because nothing could've explained why this was the most important thing to me on the planet, suddenly, other than that adage.
So, I discovered my teacher was teaching me a different version of the practice, not the traditional, authentic version, but not far off. And this man K. Pattabhi Jois was teaching it the traditional way, and happened to be on tour, so I looked at where he was going and thought about if I'd be brave enough to go and try this thing out. This coming from the shyest person on the planet who had to get really drunk to be able to talk to people lol. I decided on Boulder and called the studio that was hosting him, which happened to be Richard Freeman's studio, his wife called me back. We hashed out the details and she gave me some options on places to stay and had me mail her a check, which I did. She then called me back a week or so later and found one of her students who would put me up in their place for free, so of course I saw it as a sign that yes, I had to do this thing and fully embrace it!
So, anyhow all these other things happened which I've blogged about before, but one thing I may never have is this. In the back of that same Yoga Journal was an add for these VHS videos of Pattabhi teaching, one primary series and one intermediate series, so I ordered them. But also across from them was this video of this most heavenly glowing angel in a turban called Gurmukh who was touting her Kundalini Yoga video, of course I had to order it too.
Over the years 2000-2008 I would practice primary series, intermediate series, even up into the third series of Ashtanga Yoga and on my days off I would do this crazy Kundalini Yoga with Gurmukh.
Eventually in 2006 I began studying Anusara yoga after a weekend with Mitchel Bleier, just to learn alignment and would still practice my Ashtanga Yoga with this alignment info but in 2008 that slowly began to slide away and I was just practicing Kundalini and Anusara, coming only to KUndalini Yoga sometime that year. Having found a local teacher and was doing different Kriyas and having all sorts of experiences.
Then slowly I began following the Sikh path, as Yogi Bhajan taught it, not as it was practiced in India. More about the energy of why we were doing things, than the dogma of why. Slowly went to a couple solstice events and decided to go all the way and become Sikh and wear the turban and all of that and teach Kundalini Yoga mostly. (This is how I got my name, Sat Inder Singh Khalsa, Sat Inder being my first name. And even though I've left this lifestyle somewhat, going back to being called Keith didn't resonate, I had left behind much of what he was about and forged ahead into a new place within myself, so Sat Inder still resonates.)
In late 2011 a friend was bugging me to learn Ashtanga Yoga having heard I used to study and teach it, and eventually I gave in and decided to teach him by practicing with him, but only once a week because it was too hard on my body to endure anymore. The Kundalini had healed me, so I wanted it to stay my focus.
The problem being that I was having more back issues again and discovered that the Kundalini Yoga wasn't enough for my body to stay happy and healthy, the Ashtanga having healed my degenerative spine, completely, well along with a little chiropractic work. So upon taking on this practice, which had formally been my friend, I noticed that it again was waking me up to a new level of awareness in my physical body, but this time not only that, but also my energetic body. Something the Kundalini had awakened in me and I figured only it would keep that alive, the Ashtanga was affecting as well, curious.
So another friend who was taking my Kundalini classes heard I was practicing with our mutual friend, and asked if I'd want to do it another day a week with him, so he in turn could learn it as well. I gave in reluctantly, not wanting to do such a challenging practice again. (I'm inherently lazy and was glad to not to have to work so hard anymore). And so it began. Two days a week led to three, which led to four, then eventually to six!
And here I was, one morning getting up to do my Kundalini before my friend came over to practice and finding that I had no desire to do it and just waited until he got there and did our practice together, then I felt amazing, just like I had while I was only practicing the Kundalini. Craziness, could this be where I started and now I'm coming back around to it with a fuller and more complete experience of the yoga and could I be having this revelation, that yes indeed, I'd come back home.
So, here I am, last year having studied with Kino MacGregor twice, gone to the Ashtanga Yoga Confluence and seen my old teacher Nancy Gilgoff and had Eddie Stern get me back into Marichasana D again after four years! Then studying with Mark Robberds, another certified teacher whom I will be seeing in Mysore in one month.
Oh, and yes, I'm going to Mysore! Finally. I wanted to back in 2002 when I retired from my corporate job, but Guruji was traveling, so I went to see him on Maui and met Nancy there. But yes, coming full circle, indeed!
It reminds me of a T.S. Eliot quote that David Swenson mentions at the end of his Advanced A and B series videos, and I'll close with that...
"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
T.S. Eliot
