My First Yoga Experience - Part I of II by CPY Blog writing team

HOW DOES WRITING IN PRIVATE BECOME PUBLIC?   

Peek behind the scenes with our blog writing team.  Each month we gather together keenly interested in the crossroads of yoga and Christ and how that intersection supports our faith walk -- as people, as teachers as congregants.  We take turns leading.  After we pray and move and breathe - to help us settle into synchronicity with the Holy One - we receive a writing prompt to explore on our own.  After about 20 minutes, we share (optional).  Some writing is too raw and stays private; some we share with each other.  Then, in time, some get shaped back and forth between the writer and a few kind peer editors.  A tiny portion becomes public as a blog post. 

Writing takes effort, creativity, research, and reflection.   As one writer told me recently,  "I forgot how much time and work this is to write a really good, clear piece!  I am sick of looking at it and editing, here, you have a go." 

Our gatherings together are precious, and we look forward to them for our own growth,  healthy sharing with each other and maybe even the creation of a public post for you, our readers.  Enjoy this sampling that came right out of one of our meetings.  We split up the 7 essays so look for Part II as well.

MY FIRST YOGA EXPERIENCE - PART I OF II

Connie Moker Wernikowski  CPY Secretary & Teacher

As a dancer I had dibbled and dabbled with yoga to warm up or work on flexibility, but no first class stands out in my memory except for one.  At the time I was dealing with constant low back pain. I was tired and stressed due to a difficult work situation. I attended a “yoga for dancers” class being taught by a dancer, an amazing performer, who was visiting from Vancouver.  

His teaching style was unique (possible because we were all dancers). We stood at the top of our mats. He simply said, “let’s begin” and led us through standing flow after flow with lots of repetition, no pauses, and very little explanation.  He did not name any poses but only briefly told us where to move our bodies.  We simply watched him and followed. 

I remember that somewhere in the middle of that class I recognized that I was having a deeply spiritual experience. I felt that the air around me was thick with the Holy Spirit.  I felt my heart rise and fall in prayer through every ascent and descent of my body.  I was filled with gratitude for my life, my body and my Christian faith. After about an hour, he led us to seated and we began some slow stretches. He told us he was on his way to India to live in an ashram that also served as an orphanage.  In his words he would be “peeling a lot of potatoes”.  He asked for donations, and I wrote a check. 

Thomas Ryan CPY Inspirational Founder & Teacher

My first assignment after ordination in 1975 was to the Ohio State University Newman Center in Columbus. One of the on-campus sessions offered for students was yoga. Hmmm, I thought, I’ve heard about yoga, and would like to have a personal experience of it to see what it’s like. So I signed up for the sessions and began to engage with the practice.  

And the more I did so, the more I saw that the goal of yoga is to center us, to ground us, to make us present, all here, now. It was, in short, leading me to a direct, intuitive experience of the Divine Presence at the center of my being. It freed my mind from anxieties and problems and rendered it available to the Holy Spirit within.

Given the seamless unity of the human person and God’s incarnational embrace of our totality, I realized that my spiritual life could not help but be affected by exercises in which body and soul are in possession of each other and work together.                           

I wanted to deepen my appreciation of this and enrolled in a yoga teacher-training program at Kripalu in western Massachusetts, after which I began offering a weekly class at the OSU Newman Center, calling it Prayer of Heart and Body, which eventually became the title of a book published by Paulist Press. And not long after, I shared in the DVD Yoga Prayer what had evolved as my practice: composing prayerful posture sequences to the music of song prayers. And even now, 47 years later, it remains for me a regular spiritual practice.

Barbara Carlin

“In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities;

 in the expert’s mind there are few.”  

- Shunryu Suzuki

Pondering my first impressions and experience with yoga, I realize I approached my practice with a strong desire to learn something new – not as an expert, but as a beginner. In my soul I was seeking that curious excitement that comes with discovery and newness; a kind of letting go to see what was possible. Like my art, I had been taught to always approach the creative process as a beginner, because it is in that space that magic happens. 

It was in a library that I was first introduced to yoga by reading about it. Spending time perusing books on yoga, I found a book entitled Beginners Book of Yoga by Adams L. Beck, 1937.  I was intrigued. Even though I was  an anxious and overly stressed college student, I was a seeker. Learning about yoga made me  excited to slow down, to sit in silence and escape all the noise. 

 As a beginner, I had a strong desire to let go of a driving force to perform and achieve. I needed something that would feed my soul and my body. I was exhausted and felt very disconnected from myself, others and God. I resented feeling like a slave to performance and craved some nurturing relief. I thought surely there had to be a way to create balance in my life. I wanted a means to soak up the love of God and to feel that love in my body.

“My child, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings,

Let them not escape from your sight; keep them close to your heart. 

For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh” 

– Proverbs 4:20-22

At that time, one thing that already nurtured and fed my soul was the Bible. The words I read were a soothing balm to my soul. I asked myself  “How might I make the experience of my ever growing love and faith in Christ, whose Spirit dwells within me, be central in my new yoga practice?”  “How might I listen to God’s Words and keep them close to my heart while practicing yoga?” I wanted my yoga practice to not only speak to God’s presence outside myself, but within. The realization we are created in the image of God became even more profound.

“The Lord God  formed man from the dust of the earth. 

He blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul”.

 – Genesis 2:7

Through yoga I began to  experience my faith  in my body and through the Breath.  God breathed new life into me, like He did Adam. When God created the world, he spoke everything into being. However, when God created man, He did not speak Adam into being, He was intimately involved. Getting down into the clay, He carefully formed Adam with His own hands.Then putting His lips onto Adam’s, He breathed life into him.

In my “with God” yoga practice, I imagined God’s breath keeping the same rhythm with me as He did with Adam. God breathed peace, comfort, love and stillness into my body.  Today, as then, God invites me in my yoga practice  to come into “beingness” with Him–as a beginner, always a beginner. I feel centered, grounded, balanced, content, soft, still, whole hearted, ready to receive and ready to give. I feel more confident, not in circumstances, material things or my accomplishments but in Christ, the solid rock on which I stand.  

Image by @neonbrand via Unsplash.