Our Stories

Matthew and I are moving into our 2nd year of Samadhi Yoga Teacher Training with 15 men and women studying to become Yoga Alliance certified teachers under our guidance. A sacred and big task to say the least. This past weekend we successfuly graduated 20 students who are now teachers. Another sacred and big task accomplished. We are grateful and tired.

Although I am proud of our success with Yoga Teacher Training, I am very aware of the journey or story behind the accomplishment. I consistently try to teach to my students that we are not our accomplishments but we are "our stories" and everybody is a story. As a matter of fact, our theme for this upcoming weekend of Samadhi Yoga Teacher training is "Our Stories."

I love stories. Not the kind you read in a book or see at the movies but the real stories. The life stories, the history stories, the "Oh my God, you are never going to believe what happened to me!" stories. The everyday mundane stories. The stories of my grandparents lives, the stories of my children's day, the stories of my friend's lives and the stories of my students. To me, these stories are what is "real" and what is "true." Each story is someone's experience of the events of their lives. They are not the events themselves. We all experience the same event very differently. We have seen it, heard it, and felt it in our own unique way and the story we tell has more than a bit of ourselves in it.

All of our stories are unique. They mix fact with meaning. Meaning is the root of their power. Stories allow us to see something familiar through new eyes. As yoga teachers, we get the honor and priveledge of witnessing our student's stories, both in their bodies and breath and in their personal sharings of their own lives. We become, in that moment, a guest in someone else's life. The meaning we may draw from someone's story may be different than theirs but no matter. Facts bring us knowledge but stories lead us to wisdom.

Everybody is a story. You, me, our loved ones, people we don't know and people we don't like. Most of our stories have no clear beginnings or endings. This is very differnt than the books we read or the movies we watch. No neat packages, no fairy tale endings.

Real stories take time. Sometimes lots of time. In our fast paced techno society, we have lost that kind of time. We have stopped telling our stories. We have stopped listening to each other and ourselves. Stories take pausing time, stopping time, reflecting time, wondering time. We all need that kind of pausing time. I feel it in my bones that stopping and pausing is absolutely essential for experiencing our lives. To me, the scary thing is it is possible to live your life without experiencing "pausing time."

We are so fortunate as practitioners of yoga and yoga teachers that the contemplative practice of yoga is that sort of "pausing" time. Every time we go to our mat, we have this opportunity to let go of our push, let go of our fast paced lives and cultivate our capacity to watch and listen. We have the opportunity to watch and feel and listen to our own stories unfold.

Life rushes us along and few of us are strong enough to stop on our own but yoga gives us that "stopping" tool. As yoga teachers, our classrooms create that pausing or stopping time for others. On our yoga mats, we get to create our sacred space, we get to know our own bodies and breath. We get to know our own stories. With our own bodies, we get to tell it. With the compassionate witness we continuously create, we get to listen to our stories from a necessary nonjudgmental place. We get to remember that the real world is made up of just such stories.

This practice of yoga, this daily stopping and listening and telling of our stories through our bodies and our breath helps us to understand that although we can hope to put certain events behind us and get on with our living-we will see that certain of life's issues will be with us for as long as we live. We will pass through them again and again. Each time with a new story, each time with a greater understanding until they have become indistinguishable from our blessings and our wisdom.

Stopping, paying attention, listening, cultivating compassion, breathing, being in our body-Yoga teaches us how to live. Not only does yoga teach us living but the yoga mat is a level playing field. Everyone's story matters. The wisdom in the story of the most advanced yogi or powerful person is no greater that the wisdom in the story of the beginning yogi or a person with no power in the material world. What we learn about ourselves as a beginner yoga student can teach us as much as the life of a sage.

Parents know the importance of telling children their own story over and over again so that the child will come to know who they are and where they are from. On our yoga mat,our own personal stories emerge again and again. Stories that we have stored away in our deepest places in our bodies and psyches. According to the nature of yoga, we carry many of our stories in our bodies unread until we have grown the capacity and readiness to read them. When that happens, a physical and emotional release takes place often with newly found openings in our bodies accompanied by a river of tears.

In my own life, the story of myself as a creative being became a reoccuring theme. Thinking of myself as a maker of art had seemingly lied dormant in me since childhood. But not really. Many times as an adult I would hear my inner voice say that she would like to make art. But I had pushed this call for art aside as "frivolous", "self-absorbed" and just plain "ridiculous."
Fortunately as I continuously practiced my yoga and fully relaxed in shavasana day in and day out, I would literaaly see images that begged to be painted. I kept creating these mind paintings over and over again and I would feel in my body as if I was creating the art. I would feel an artistic longing over and over and eventually I came to know that I was a creative being whom need to express this visually. The more I "paused" and "listened", the clearer my own story became.

As we practice, the more we listen and the clearer our stories become. Our true identity, who we are, why we are here, is what emerges in our story.

Our stories are not our outer achievements or what we have acquired or built over a life time. Our story is who we are and not what we have done. It is what we have faced, what we have drawn upon, what we have risked, thought, feared and discovered in the events of our lives. Our true stories are about sex and power, loss and betrayal, courage, faith, lonliness,disappointment, joy, loving and being loved. Our stories tell our uniqueness,-So Ham, So Ham, "I am that I am." Our stories connect us and weave us all together. Tat Vam Asi,-"I am that"

Jai,
Anne