the habit of being

I got up at seven yesterday to attend a workshop with Uma Nanda Saraswati, daughter of Sharon Gannon and David Life, founders of the Jivamukti Yoga Center in New York. I never get up at seven. Not during the week, and especially not on Saturday. I walked to the workshop, which has held at Georgetown University, in the rain, and my broken umbrella didn’t help much, flopping up and down with each step. I arrived damp and matless, having accidentally left mine at Tranquil Space after the meditation workshop the night before. I was the first person there. I borrowed a mat from the host studio. I was happy.

Uma Saraswati is very pretty. She is tiny, with very long dark hair, immaculate eyebrows, a million earrings, clear skin, piercing eyes. You can tell she’s been practicing yoga her whole life. I was told once that you can tell if you’re progressing in your yoga practice because your voice improves. Hers is gorgeous, confident, clear. Her presence is radiant, joyful. She is easy to adore, even while lecturing in no uncertain terms that there is no way to acheive liberation while eating a non-vegetarian diet and that an asana practice performed without the right intention is not yoga.

I’ve never felt very comfortable talking, or even writing, about God or spirituality. It seems silly and pretentious to me to even try to express these things in words. While I won’t deny that I think about religion, that I’m fascinated by it, and that I was even considering majoring in Religious Studies, discussing theories in an intellectual way and talking about your own personal experience of the divine are two completely different things. I am not confident in my understanding. I worry that it is just ridiculous of me to go around with Sanskrit chants to Krishna, Rama, Govinda, and Ganesha stuck in my head. I worry that I don’t have a good enough answer when people ask me why I want to teach yoga. And I worry about the fact that while I’m not very secure talking about liberation, enlightenment, samadhi, I’ll get up at seven in the morning on a Saturday to experience being near someone who is.

I worry that it’s just like all the bad relationships I’ve been in.. that it’s the same desire to just have someone else figure it out for me and tell me what I have to do in order to be a Good Person, so I won’t have to feel so guilty anymore. When I think about the Jivamukti Yoga Center, it really is like thinking about a lover I wish I could drop all the rest of my life to run away to. I’d be so much happier if I could just go back to New York and practice at Jivamukti every day.

And then there’s If I could only come up with $5000 to do Jivamukti teacher training, then I’d really be able to teach someone something.

And the absolute worst I wish I had another Jivamukti tee-shirt, so everyone would know how serious I am about my practice.

But maybe that’s a little extreme, and, honestly, I felt so wonderful after Uma’s workshop I couldn’t have really cared less about the possibility of innate hypocracy in my having paid $60 for it. Her asana sequencing was balanced and fun, she constantly brought back in themes of kindness, compassion, devotion, finding one’s art and being truly passionate about it, unselfishness… She encouraged us to enjoy our practice, and to tackle difficult asanas with a sense of light-heartedness. She gave me a helpful assist in bird of paradise pose and actually stood on my thighs in baddha konasana, which felt wonderful. The workshop was 3 hours long, and ended with what must have been at least 15-20 minutes in savasana, which brought up all sorts of wonderful warm sensations. I remember at one point feeling so deeply still and relaxed I couldn’t remember where my left arm was. I believe she gave every person in the room a savanasa assist (head and neck massage), and there were probably 50 people there. I went up and thanked her afterwards and she gave me a big hug, and I saw her do the same with several other students.

While maybe the idea of Jivamukti seems kindof phony and a bit cultish, you really can’t deny that the teachers there really are inspirational. They’re getting yogis to really look into the spiritual roots of their discipline, telling them it’s just not enough to have a nice-looking downward-facing dog pose. They’re making it hip to know Sanskrit and to read the Yoga Sutras, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita. Even if that does kindof pervert something which should have nothing to do with “image,” it still seems better than using what was once a dignified practice to achieve the state of a nice ass. Maybe the ends justify the means, in this case. I know I’m definitely not the only person who’s ever stopped eating meat after a class with Sharon and David. I guess in the end, these people are activists. They have a cause, and they’re doing everything they can to spread their message. Our society makes it pretty impossible to reach a large audience without using the tools of the trade. You can’t sell “liberation” in America without giving it a brand name. As far as brands go, Jivamukti’s not a bad one.

lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu!