“If you have nothing new to say, just get the hell out,” he shouted. I stood in mountain pose, feet gripping the floor beneath me, watching the shadow of our
relationship fill the corners of our condo.
“Is this really how you want to end things?” I asked. He hurled expletives at me, then stormed furiously upstairs.
Pranayama, I thought. I have to remember my breath. Inhale, and exhale. Inhale, then exhale.
A bit more bartering and battling, and we reached our final impasse. I left.
Over the next week, I began to realize that the yogic principles and precepts I’d learned over the years—and shared regularly as a yoga teacher—actually encouraged me to stay in an unhealthy relationship much longer than its expiration date. The ideas of acceptance, compassion and forgiveness had somehow become limitless in a way that was not at all for my greatest good.
Shortly after my relationship ended, I began a mind-body program about releasing the past. My mentor, Barry Green, said something I rarely hear in the yoga community.
“It’s dangerous,” he observed, “all these teachers telling people how they should and shouldn’t be living. It takes approximately 400,000 lifetimes to attain enlightenment. Do you think these yoga teachers have it all figured out?”
Until that time, I’d regularly subscribed to one particular teacher’s uplifting messages. Since he’d been a monk for two-and-a-half decades, I believed he knew what he was talking about. After awhile, though, I began to feel worse about who I was, not better. I felt like I wasn’t meditating enough. I wasn’t vegetarian. I still wanted to have sex.
When I brought this up with Barry, he said, “Nowhere in any of the ancient texts does it say you have to be happy all the time or need to be perfect. In fact, some of those deities were sons-of-bitches. They killed people, beheaded them, had countless affairs.”
Barry studied with master teachers for decades, has a Ph.D. and, of course, his own opinion, but it’s one that didn’t make me feel worse about my human tendencies in the midst of striving to be ‘better.’
“We live in a world of duality,” he continued, “the universe created both darkness and light. Telling people that feeling bad is not okay is unrealistic, unhealthy and dangerous.”
The Early Days
When I first met my beau, it seemed a perfect blend of personalities and lifestyles—he’s an acupuncturist and I teach yoga. As weeks flowed into months, we proved opposites in everything from beliefs to behaviors.
Apologies followed back-bending arguments, counterbalanced by promises to try harder.
In the practice of our relationship, we kept swan diving into an abyss of darkness rather than light. Over and over, our hearts came halfway up in hopes things would change, only to fold forward in the protection of our egos and comfortable ways of being.
About a year into our relationship I discovered he had let his ex-girlfriend come over and sleep in his bed. When I confronted him, he defended, “She was going through a major health thing and needed someone to watch over her through the night.”
My chakras buzzed in disarray. My root sense of security began to falter at the base of my spine and my creative center crafted a multitude of scenarios he repeatedly denied.
I know the universe brings exactly what you need to grow into your greatest self, even if it’s not what you want, I reasoned with myself. This is a good opportunity for me to practice compassion and forgiveness.
Six months later, we took a trip to Taiwan. After dinner one night I walked into a shop while he waited outside. When I came back out he was smoking a cigarette.
We had battled frequently about his occasional smoking habit, so I showed my dismay. Under a sky full of rain he bellowed, “Don’t tell me what to do! You have this idea of how you think your partner should be, and just because I don’t fit that mold, you get upset. Aren’t you being judgmental? Isn’t that not very yogic either?”
I gripped my umbrella to anchor me in the moment. My muscles hugged to the bones in quiet rage. My heart knew we should no longer be together. But, I questioned, What about unconditional love? What if I am being judgmental?
Eventually the argument ended, and by the time we returned to the States, my focal point—the drishti on my ideal relationship—had blurred. The loving-kindness, the metta, between us had dissipated, but by doing nothing to change my circumstances, I tacitly accepted his behavior. Instead of leaving, I continued to make compromising adjustments in order to force the life I wanted to fit into the life that was actually happening.
In the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali, he writes of ahimsa, the idea of non-harm and non-violence. It’s so easy to tout this principle as something we do for others, but when it comes to ourselves, we readily forget.
“Before you point your finger at anyone else, first look to yourself,” I had learned. “Everyone in your life is simply a mirror to what’s going on within.” And in my quest to be a diligent yogi, I believed everything that went wrong in our relationship was always my fault. When I stood back as witness to observe the unfolding events between us, I kept closing my eyes in avoidance of a change I wasn’t yet ready to accept.
One day, as another argument was brewing, a dormant part of my awareness woke up. My spirit lunged forward into the warrior I had forgotten existed within me.
“Have you ever thought,” I asked him clearly, my throat chakra opening, “that what aggravates you so much about me could simply be a reflection of something going on within you?”
“That’s really insightful and all,” he shot back, “but I don’t care.”
As K. Pattabhi Jois, founder of ashtanga yoga said, “Yoga is 99 percent practice and 1 percent theory.” I practiced. I pushed into a plank of resilience, found courage and engaged my core.
Friends took me in until my apartment was ready. Five days later I returned to our condo to pick up a piece of furniture. The front door was wide open. His ex-girlfriend was moving in.
I thought about karma, about many things I chose not to say, and in the end decided it was the universe’s way of offering me a parting gift—to learn to always trust my intuition.
Yoga is called a “practice” for a reason. There’s never going to be a point of perfection. As much as we can rely upon it to help us find balance in our lives, the practice itself must also be balanced. While yoga genuinely saved my soul at one point in time, it also led me to more pain than was necessary in my relationship.
The falsehoods and misapplications of yoga’s tenets and teachers offered a different lesson from what I ever expected. In the end I realized the answers we seek outside of ourselves can never compare to the truth that exists within, which is truly what yoga is about.
This article is a part of the February/March 2015 issue of Whole Life Times.
1 Comment
All the drama in my life did teach me a lesson, to search for the answers to my questions from within. I went through a very difficult period in my life after my mother died, my darkest days when I felt completely abandoned. I asked for help from a number of people who I thought were friends, but they only ended up being pretenders. I was searching for comfort, but they only gave me apathy. Some looked at me with confusion, not sure how to help me while others could have cared less. I learned to recognize that I was looking for the answers in all the wrong places & I was looking for love in all the wrong places. I had abandoned myself. I allowed others to tell me how I should feel. I allowed others to decide for me what I should do. In my own internal struggle, I completely surrendered my power. I felt like a helpless child. I wanted someone to pick me up & coddle me & tell me everything will be okay. I wanted the mother I never had. I know now that I had completely disconnected from myself. I did not trust myself & I did not believe in my own judgment. It was my mother's constant criticism of me that was ringing in my ears making me feel uncertain of myself. I was lost in my mind… fear & worry devouring my sanity to shreds. Close to losing it, I finally had to pause, allow myself to be still & tune out that noise. I allowed myself to not care anymore. I desperately wanted to be heard & understood, but it seemed impossible. No one can hear me because I was in a place of unease, my energy was putting everyone at unease. I knew then that I had to step into the light to help myself & find my way again!