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A blast from the past
Within the vacillating waves of existence
remains a constancy
of warmth,
of security
lending a plangency to the tide.
To release the anchor now
is no longer the precarious fear,
but a release of myself
into an ocean of tranquillity.
This was one of the first poems I wrote on the 16th July 1992. I was twenty years old. It was written somewhere in the ambrosial hours of the morning. At the time I didn’t fathom its full meaning. But it came as did many of my subsequent writing from a place deep inside, through a voice that channeled some whisper of Truth.
It was published. I think my mother sent it to a newspaper who published it. It sits now at the top of a long list of poetry and prose, most of which will probably never be revealed or interesting to anyone other than my children. It is also the only poem I ever wrote that I remember by heart. I thought of it last week again. After so many years (almost twenty in fact) with a new appreciation and definitely with some new insight.
Rainbow Yoga Nation
Tolerance begins by recognising that the forms of yoga are as multicoloured, varied and unique as the many bodies that practise it and that the absolute truth is a beckoning light to all. The prism of current yoga awakening should foster a consciousness of unity and not become shackled by the “isms” of limited thinking and beliefs
Article published by Complete Yoga Magazine, South Africa
Despite being thousands of years old, yoga’s global infiltration into mass consciousness is a relatively recent phenomenon. Considered by some as a fashionable trend, yoga has hit the mainstream. Schools and centres are popping up everywhere and innovative forms of yoga are being creatively generated through an eclectic and diverse range of sources that spawn new lineages of practice. The doors are swinging wide open, offering aspirants a wider choice in practice and thinking.
This phenomenon is evidence of a global shift in consciousness necessitated by an increase in stress levels, political, economic, social and environmental discord and the consequent need to find tools to manage these challenges. Against this backdrop is the innate propensity to find greater meaning and unravel the mysteries of the spirit.
Enter yoga, the perfect panacea for these challenges and a worthy directive for the inner quest. Embedded in the teachings is the consistent yoga offering that opens the heart, nourishes the spirit and liberates one from the shackles of chitta vritti – the interminable cycle of fluctuating thought processes. This is, as Patanjali unhesitatingly proclaims, the essence of yoga – the cessation of frenetic mind activity that leads to the union implicit in the meaning of the word “yoga”. Under its expansive umbrella an array of choices to ingest this yogic elixir has become available.
I have been blessed to have exposure to many varied schools of yoga and to inspiring master teachers, stemming from assorted lineages, who have enriched my personal practice and teaching with a variety of interpretations of yogic philosophy. Each illuminate through their own extraction of sacred tools that heal, liberate and inspire. Yet this choice also invites allegiance to one form and somehow the process of identification with one or other yogic lineage can and has lead to a negation of other pathways as legitimate viaducts of truth.
My first experience of this so-called “yogic prejudice” was at a festival near the start of my yogic quest. I was deeply enthralled by the teachings espoused at the conference, inspired by the evidence of global yoga awakening. However, after the lecture ended I turned to chat to my neighbouring yogini and told her that I was practicing a certain form of yoga, to which she replied: “X – that is not yoga!”
This was the first in a string of repudiations of alternative paths of yoga that I experienced during subsequent yoga gatherings. Where was the tolerance that recognises all as one, embracing all under the pervasive omniscient wing of yogic teaching?
While commitment to a single guru or lineage is encouraged in many yogic streams, this limited thinking can be very disempowering. A spiritual awakening through yoga can evoke a profound shift in our functioning that can be utterly transformative. This fact, together with an inevitable reverence for the source who acts as the catalyst for this powerful change, can result in a tendency to deify the teacher rather than recognise our own inherent power – the guru within.
W hat yoga teaches is that we are divine expressions, splinters of creation that are interconnected and transcendent in nature. But what happens really is that the enlightened master offers the aspirant guidance toward that which is already present within and ignites or stokes an extant inner flame. Focus can easily be directed to the messenger of truth rather than the truth itself and this adherence can create a singular consciousness that is exclusionary, failing to validate variations in teachings.
One essential component expounded in all yogic traditions is the notion of tolerance. Tolerance is the inevitable offspring of ahimsa or non-violence that forms the first yama (ethical restraint) in the Ashtanga (eight limbed path) as codified by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. Judgement, bias,bigotry and prejudice have no place in a body of teachings or in as system of open awareness that forms the spine of yogic philosophy.
There is a contradiction in advocating open-mindedness and interconnectivity while simultaneously citing one path as an absolute and only truth. The absolute truth is a beckoning light to all. The various roads to that truth are ever meandering pathways of unfolding possibility, the variations of which are limitless and the interpretations of which are countless and unique.
This is the true magic of yoga: the flexibility of the mind and openness of vision that broadens our perspective to embrace all, without exception. And there is no better point of departure than in recognising all forms of yoga, all relevant schools as legitimate guideposts along our respective paths.
Despite being a unified part of one whole, we are individual bodied, unique in our history and conditioning with personal emotional and spiritual samskaras. Having a wealth of choice of practices caters to different body types, varying ages and the flows and ebbs of fluid cycles that are continually in flux. More options open more doors to answer our unique needs, all of which will evolve and shift transiently.
The roads to truth are varied – some cobbled, some paved, some clear and open; others mountainous and arduous. But the nature of the spirit is to pursue that path that will illuminate the light of the absolute truth relevant to each one of us. And our blessing today is to witness the evolving face of yoga as it infiltrates deeper, spreads wider and illuminates and transforms in all the varying shades of possibility.
Tolerance begins by recognising that the forms of yoga are as rainbowed as the many bodies that practise it and, it is our deepest privilege to contribute as yogis in whatever way we can to this prism of awakening and to a consciousness of tolerance, openness and love. Our inclinations of how to attain union with our absolute truth will shift, but the light itself will continue to illuminate that which every soul seeks – the realisation of the self in all its brightness.
Lessons Come in All Guises
Written in 2009
Just over a decade of living in Belgium has proven a challenging adjustment. As a South African, detachment from my South African identity, my home, language, culture, family and entire sense of self has been a pain staking evolution. Time and copious amounts of yoga have finally led me to the place of living in the present moment, not one foot in Johannesburg, and the other precariously balanced in a lop-sided samastihi in Antwerp. The fact of this detachment revealed itself recently in a dream. In it I witnessed with intense clarity a plane crash, (of a plane I was due to be on) with a dramatic nosedive of the flight into an African veld. After a few minutes, salt and vinegar chips began to fall from the sky. It should be mentioned that for me salt and vinegar chips represent my connection to home with every flight back from South Africa containing a good stock of them. Belgian’s can make some seriously good chocolate but chips remains the domain of Simba and I gauged through this symbolism that the crash represented the severing of my attachment, with the chips symbolizing past ties to my identity. Or so I thought.
I was recently given an opportunity (amidst a plethora of abundant opportunities) to follow a yoga workshop with a master teacher. The dates did not suit me as it coincided with my birthday, the location required a plane trip, and the choice to leave my husband and two children on this auspicious celebratory day seemed justified in the face of what I had hoped would be exceptional learning. So off I went, punctual, excited and ready for another delicious yoga immersion.
The course was simply put, catastrophic. It was, as I never believed possible a “bad” yoga experience. The workshop was like a yoga boot camp, except without the yoga. It was gruesomely physical, excruciatingly painful, and not once ounce of my body would accept the barrage of abuse I was seemingly imposing on it. And that was just the practice. The philosophy felt vacuous, words without content, intent sans authenticity. All of me screamed out, Namastgo and I left the (12 hour) workshop enraged and in pain.
I had a choice to make. Stay one more day and face the resistance: what resists, persists had been the credo for the workshop, or go home, celebrate the remains of my birthday with the family and indulge in a beautiful celebration, that involved unconditional love and with some luck, gifts. My hearts gave me a clear directive, which I followed and there I found myself, aboard an airplane, on my 37th birthday on my way home to my husband, two children and Guru, our beloved Shitzu.
When the turbulence started, my instinctive response was fear. Here I found myself mid (turbulent) air, alone, having made a clear choice of yoga over family. That it was my birthday made my impending death all the more poetic. Suddenly I looked down at my feet, where I noticed the numerous packets of salt and vinegar chips I had bought in London. My dream rushed back to me as a clear portend. The plane was facing south in what felt like a rather steep sirsasana, nose down, tail up with yelps from fellow passengers intensifying the already palpable anxiety. I looked ahead of me at the exit sign facing down, reading it as some implicit message of my own imminent exit and then it happened: the shift from being the chaos to witnessing it. There was nowhere to turn but to Source. I tried to call out God’s name in the numerous ways my lifetime’s conditioning had taught me: Ram, OM Namah Shivaya, OM Namo Narayanaya, Adonai and so on and finally settled on God. Not as in God help me but as in I am God. And I evoked this Divine, very personal mantra amidst the turmoil.
I suddenly saw with epiphanic clarity that if I am to die, it would be in complete perfection. That my husband would lose his life partner and my children left without a mother, seemingly unthinkable, was too in perfection and a part of their life’s lesson. I felt deeply that the Universe and Divine Mother would care for, protect and love them unconditionally. I knew with certainty that I was doing all that I needed to in order to realize my dharma and that even with ambitions as yet unfulfilled, all that I was at that moment was all that I needed to be. I understood that no death is untimely and to leave the cloak of this physical form now was not tragic, it just was. That the name of God that I called to evoke peace was really a personal acknowledgement of the Self which encompassed All as One.
Of course, I lived to tell the tale. And it was this extraordinarily beautiful celebration of love and life and utter absorption in the joys of maya (illusion), being in the form, being a wife, a mother, a teacher, a yogini and none of the above: identity within the illusion offering a mirrored reflection of non-identification of Self, all projected against the backdrop of hridayakasha (the spiritual heart centre.) And so I was grateful not for lessons I had ventured out to learn, but for the contrast that experience enabled as a backdrop against which Light would be made apparent. I was really grateful too to be able to hold the people, and dog I love for a little while longer.
The Boundless Mat
How I found my way to personal sadhana through yoga: Article published in Complete Yoga Magazine, South Africa
My life is dedicated to the practice of yoga. Yoga is my life’s calling. I teach, I study, I eat, sleep and dream yoga. It’s my life’s work, my grand passion and my ostensibly “healthy obsession”. Running a home with a husband, two small children and a thriving yoga school affords me the luxurious opportunity to live this dream. Yogic immersion, albeit somewhat tethered by domestic necessity, is essentially my modus operandi, a divine karmic gift I acknowledge with gratitude.
Despite having this plethora of opportunity to practise, I still struggle to maintain a consistent sadhana (practice) that ensures “x” rounds of Surya Namaskaras per day, so many rounds of Kapalabhati and a guaranteed meditative daily Samadhi. “Take one yogic capsule a day,” as Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati of Bihar School of Yoga teaches and “call God in the morning”.
Abhyasa is the discipline that Patanjali dictates and it demands a consistent practice in order to evolve along our yogic paths. Abhyasa means fostering an attitude of persistent effort to attain and maintain a state of stable tranquility. It’s a devoted path – the fruits of which are an insight into the direct experience of the eternal core of our being. So, finding and committing to a personal sadhana is the goal of the sadhaka or practitioner.
Is this a reasonable or even viable possibility for the Western yogi or yogini, especially those of us attempting to balance jobs, family or studies with a consistent and disciplined practice? To accomplish a full asana practice daily might not always be possible, so the real question then becomes how the practice of yoga can filter from the mat into everyday life? How can one creatively develop one’s own personal sadhana?
Notwithstanding the fact that asana, pranayama and a solid dose of yoga nidra is crucial to yogic evolution, sadhana can also Finding your way to a personal sadhana be found in changed perspective, in seeing one’s reality with yogic-coloured spectacles, a so-called rosy tinted drishti or l’esprit en rose. Allowing all aspects of life, including both its tribulations and joys, to become a screen for yogic projection is paramount to this shift in awareness.
Patanjali offers some tools to aid in this shifted perspective, which he describes in the Ashtanga (eight limbed path) of which asana (posture) and pranayama (control of breath) are merely two limbs. The first limb – Yama – contains the ethics, which have to do with training your actions, speech and thoughts in relation to the external world, particularly with other people. Dedication to upholding and developing these yamas is a laudable sadhana in itself and provides a perfect buffet of potential interpretation from which to choose when developing one’s own sadhana.
The first yama is non-harming (ahimsa) in thought, deed and action. Cultivating ahimsa can be a lifetime’s sadhana. Try being ahimsic after being stuck in traffic or losing a much sought after job promotion. Try ahimsa when faced with a relentless mosquito! This is where to apply your yoga practice – to the places of challenge, not just to the glorious afterglow of Savasana. Using these spaces of discomfort and difficulty becomes a platform for personal sadhana. Not only does it make the challenge surmountable but also keeps your practice alive and pervasive.
In whichever way yama talks to your personal evolutionary needs, be it the development of integrity through the principle of honesty (satya) or striving towards remembering the higher reality (bramacharya), is a personal choice that should make sense to you, the aspirant, relative to your life’s developments and needs. Some yamas are easier to manage than others. Non-violence and not stealing (asteya) might be a breeze for one yogi but a mountain for another. When Patanjali spoke of aparigraha (non-possessiveness) he surely hadn’t been to a side-walk sale or to a rooftop market. How many candles or cute little yoga outfits can a yogini possess without forgetting that yoga needs to come out of the closet, and live its truth!
Perhaps choose one yama to develop as a sadhana or simply try integrating all wherever possible. Whatever your sadhana is of less importance than a consistent and committed awareness. This awareness inspired by dedicated practice to a chosen sadhana, allows us to begin to welcome challenge as an opportunity to set our yogic GPS in action and guide our souls along the path of light. We begin to recognise in this way that the guru (the dispeller of darkness) is none other than our own inner voice intuiting from an omniscient perspective, so that our every thought and its consequent action is a consistent sadhana.
But surely Patanjali, living as he does today in the hearts and souls of his countless yogic progeny, would encourage the idea of the all pervasive, boundless yoga practice, one beyond the mat? One where the realization of Self is evidenced in thought, word and certainly action, including those during that queue, traffic jam or marital tiff.
Finding your personal sadhana in your own way becomes the mantra du jour. Ask yourself what will be useful in the pursuit of your spiritual goals and be proactive – what yogis call kriya (action) in the realisation of these goals.
B.K.S Iyengar outlines the three-fold goal which is one and the same: “Sadhana is a discipline undertaken in the pursuit of a goal. Abhyasa is repeated practice performed with observation and reflection. Kriya, or action, also implies perfect execution with study and investigation. Therefore, sadhana, abhyasa, and kriya all mean one and the same thing. A sadhaka, or practitioner, is one who skillfully applies… mind and intelligence in practice towards a spiritual goal.”
Recently in Rishikesh, on the ghat of the Mata Ganga, following one of my first Kundalini yoga classes with the amazing Gurmukh Khalsa, the following satsang gently changed my perspective forever: “You have a heart, love. You have two hands, serve.” All the rest is fluff. This turns out to be my sadhana – attempting a daily return to love and service. Listen to your inner guru and find yours.
An update on my yogic adventures in Israel – October 2011
| An update on Nicki’s yogic adventures in Israel |
| Sat Nam!
Dearest Yoga Form sangha,Three months have passed since our arrival in Israel. In such a short time it seems that so much has happened, so many shifts are continually taking place. After a few short weeks being a stone’s throw from the biggest yoga school in Tel Aviv, we moved to a suburb about half an hour away. It is beautiful here, very green, very close to the ocean. Our mornings involve dropping our children at school and taking Aidan and Guru (our Shitzu) for walks on a seemingly endless strip of beach. But besides the perfect nature here I found myself looking in vain for a yoga school that embodied all that Yoga Form does. It seemed like there was very little in the area and as I have Aidan with me, travelling to far away classes is not really viable. I can now marvel at how interestingly Universe forces me out of my comfort zones. After much research the only two practices I found in close proximity so far are hot yoga (Bikram) and Iyengar, the two practices I’m least attracted to. As luck or Divine plan has it I have found through these practices all that I know to be true of yoga; that there isn’t a yoga that I have met that I didn’t like; that there is beauty in all, possibility in all, silence to be found within, no matter what the pathway. When I cannot make it to class which is regularly, my daily practice involves finding a strip of grass off the beach, laying out one towel for me, one for Aidan and Guru and doing my spiritual work which is the sublime practice of Kundalini yoga. There is such a wealth of information, teachings and sets to do, that the beach becomes my shala, the ocean’s envelopment a virtual baptism sanctifying my practice and the connection to the Infinite made easy through Nature’s embrace. My return to Antwerp in the beginning of September for the level 1 Kundalini Yoga teacher training with Gurmukh, Gurushabd and Guru Dharam inspired my practice even more. To be able to reimmerse in the teachings, to feel the blessing of community (sangha) and to touch base with all that I know to be sacred and true of yoga was such a blessing. And then to bring it all back here and to know that my dharma is that of service however it may ultimately present itself. Such is the fruit of a spiritual practice, to connect to Purpose and to live that Purpose. The last year has brought so many changes, it is almost laughable how Universe has conspired to shake all that I believe to be my identification, to shift all that I thought to be solid about my life. First the unexpected gift of Life, then the change of location. She teaches me continually to let go of attachment, to let go of identification, to let go and let God. She teaches me to trust and to surrender. Every day it seems. In exchange for my trust, she brings so much joy to my life. So many blessings in the form of Union with my loved ones, the truest yoga I am blessed enough to enjoy. So many blessings in the ability to find my connection to my Soul through the Infinite teachings and knowledge. This is my karmic gift to enjoy and in gratitude for it I hope to live my dharma, in service, in love, with trust and in Truth. My blessings to you all dear sangha. I carry you all in my practice, hot, aligned or sandy. Love Nicki
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Up Close and Personal – An interview with Nicki Forman-Levitan – May 2011
Nicki is the Founding Yogic Goddess of Yoga Form.
This interview was done on May 11th 2011.
Where are you from?
I am from Johannesburg, from South Africa, where I was born and brought up. I later moved to Cape Town when I was
practicing law where I continued my studies. I met Dax, my husband in Cape Town and enjoyed an amazing time of living in a magical place before moving to Antwerp.
When did you start practicing yoga?
I started practicing after Tia was born almost ten years ago. I always knew yoga was something for me, without ever
having practiced it. The first lesson was literally life changing! I knew at that moment that I wanted to be a teacher, but I didn’t know what that would ultimately mean and how that was going to change my career path at that stage. I was an academic working then as a lecturer at the University of Antwerp and studying simultaneously for my Doctorate in law and linguistics. A far cry from yoga! Initially I studied with Diana Claes who was an amazing Satyananda teacher who taught from her home. She would sit at the foot of her bed and there was just enough space for two mats. We developed a close relationship and she inspired me deeply. She had lived in India in the 1960′s with Swami Satyananda, whom I was later able to meet in India in 2007. Actually all my initial teachers were Satyananda teachers. I later met Kaushal, who is also Satyananda trained having been brought up in that part of India; as well as my teacher in South Africa, Swami Kamalavidya who is also from that tradition. Later I tried more dynamic forms of yoga, which I absolutely loved too.
So you decided to become a teacher really quickly?
Basically yes, but it did take me a while because I had very small kids. The first teacher training was with David Swenson in Holland as there was very little offered in Belgium in those days and what was available wasn’t possible for me with my young family. Everything required going away and I couldn’t leave for a month as most teacher trainings required. I first chose an Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga teacher training and after that did my first 200-hour Yoga Alliance teacher training in Holland focusing on Vinyasa and Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga. That experience inspired me to travel to learn with many masters of yoga and I continued going for various trainings in Germany, Holland, France, England, South Africa and India. I had this amazing thirst and hunger for whatever I could get but I had to do it in a way that allowed me to be present with my family.
How Yoga Form came into existence …
The teaching part started with friends who were my guinea pigs. We would practice on my living room floor and then more and more people started asking for classes so I rented a space from the Oost West Centrum, in an old hall with a lot of character and started a regular class on Wednesday mornings. I then found the space in the Kruishofstraat and Kaushal started teaching too. Then Wesley came on board and it became like a mini yoga centre, which grew through word of mouth, This all happened in a rented apartment which was very cosy, but due to a very crotchety neighbour, I was forced to look for something else. I was very lucky to then find our beautiful space in Pierebeekstraat the night before leaving for my first trip to Rishikesh and from then Yoga Form grew exponentially into the current space and centre it now is.
The birth of Yoga Form was inspired by my exposure to the various forms and practices, which really became the impetus for offering different practices under one school. What I came to realize is that our bodies needs are shifting and changing at all times which means that the kind of practice we need is also always changing. You do not always want a dynamic practice nor do you always want a soft practice, nor an energetic practice. You want to be able to feel what your body needs at a particular moment and truly listen to it. I wanted to be able to offer that under one umbrella through Yoga Form, so it is really about representing the different forms and paying homage to the different teachings and respecting all as coming from the same source. I hope through Yoga Form to open up the doors for people who want to be able to choose the practices according to how they are feeling within themselves.
About Kundalini Yoga & Meditation …
I went without any expectation to Rishikesh, India in February 2009 to experience the International Yoga Festival,
which I had been yearning to do for years. My first class was a 4:00 am sadhana with Gurushabd who suggested following Gurmukh’s programme. He spoke so passionately that it really sparked my interest. A few hours later I went to Gurmukh’s class and that was pretty much it! She rocked my universe on all levels, it was so profound. I followed every Kundalini class that week and found her so open, warm and accessible. I completely connected with both of them. They mentioned they were doing a Kundalini Yoga teacher training there in November 2009. I cannot explain other than it was a magnetic thing that I knew I had to do the teacher training, but it seemed an impossibility at that stage to leave my family and go off to India for four weeks.
Somehow the universe conspired in its magical way to manifest the chance to be there. My family came with me for the beginning of the training and then I stayed for the balance. I had an incredible month in Rishikesh where I fell in love not just with India but with this technology and practice that had shifted so much for me personally. I got back from the teacher training on Sunday and on Monday I started teaching Kundalini Yoga in Antwerp.
Kundalini Yoga has such a power of its own. I have been exposed to different styles of yoga and found all of them phenomenal and I still continue to practice, seek and to learn and to have a taste for the varying dialects that yoga inspires. Yet Kundalini yoga and meditation is for me the most transformative, in the quickest and most direct route. It was profound how strong and how dynamically it shifted me out of habitual patterns of thinking and out of deeply engrained emotional conditioning. That I felt so strongly for myself but when I saw in the students how transformational it was, it inspired me to teach more and more. Being the only place to teach Kundalini Yoga in Antwerp also inspired me to invite Gurmukh and Gurushabd to come and teach a teacher training here in order to grow our community and to share and spread these transformational teachings.
What drove you to yoga?
As long as I can remember I have always had a yearning for spiritual things. Even without the practice of yoga I always had that very spiritual consciousness through my parents. When I was younger I was seeking on different levels but hadn’t yet found my path. I grew up in a very spiritually aware home and was always searching. I looked into religion but that didn’t provide the answers for me. Yoga was the first and only way where I felt that I proactively took myself to the space of being, to the space of connection. It started with the body, that awareness grew and continues to grow all the time in its meandering way through the emotions and into the spiritual realm. Yoga was the first time where I felt a tangible accessibility for spirituality. That was why it was so life transforming for me. It took me from seeking into actively living the spiritual path. Yoga inspired the sense of universality, interconnection, the continuity of life and the eternal nature of being. Whenever I had emotional challenges, from the smallest seemingly trivial thing to something serious, I would turn to the spiritual teachings. Where it really tied in for me was with Sat Nam -Truth is my Identity-which allowed me to relinquish my identification with my earthly roles and to recognize that Truth is really who I am.
How was the decision made to move to Israel with your family?
It was with our hearts and not with our heads. There is no rationality in it, we both have businesses here and a very stable, happy, thriving life, but it was just the desire to have an adventure and to allow a pocket of time to stop and enjoy our growing family. It is definitely inspired by Aidan’s birth, as I want to be as present as I possibly can for him and my other two children and it feels like the perfect time to take a sabbatical. Israel also has a special magic for me, a very strong spiritual energy that has always tantalized me. It is a two-year sabbatical, it might even be less, but the idea is two years.
How do you think yoga can contribute to society?
On the simplest level it de-stresses people, and when you’re less stressed you’re able to be better at your job, you’re able to be better in your role within your family if you have one, in your social context. It provides a way of stimulating physical health,removing energetical blockages and diminishing stress and emotional constriction and challenge. It makes people feel better about themselves, when they are healthier in mind and body, they can be more proactive participants and contributors to a healthy society.
On another level it is about consciousness, so what yoga does is although it starts on that level of giving you a greater sense of bien-être, feeling physically and emotionally better, it then leads to a new consciousness, that consciousness can be personal, about your position and place within a bigger macrocosm or it can be more global about the environment or ultimately lead to a more spiritual consciousness.
Yoga can give you tremendous direction, if you are lucky enough open enough or aware enough it may bring you to your life’s purpose and that is profound. When you know what your life’s purpose is and what and how you can contribute. That is an amazing insight that many practitioners can get. It is life changing stuff.
What would you like to contribute during your life?
I think on a very personal level my contribution comes from sharing what I have been lucky enough to learn; so to teach and share those teachings. Part of that is why I am bringing teachers here, given the way I had to run all over for teachings, is to share the teachings within our community. I also hope to make a contribution through YogAspire, through uplifting and through service. It boils down to the very essence of something Gurmukh said on the banks of the Ganges in Rishikesh. I was looking out at the Himalayas, feeling the breeze from Mata Ganga blowing, just being euphoric from this incredible practice. She closed the session with something that really touched me and it became my new motto:
“You have two hands: serve. You have a heart: love.”
That’s it, nothing really else, just to serve and to love. Everything else fits into those paradigms.
Letter to the Yoga Form sangha from Nicki in Israel – June 2011
Sat Nam!
Dearest Yoga Form sangha,
My first weeks in Israel have offered a cushioned landing: Arriving for a family celebration, in gorgeous weather, with my entire family around me has softened the edges off a transitional shift and allowed for us all to slowly acclimatize, taking in our new environment with joy, in peace and with so much love around us.
I happen to be temporarily staying a few metres walk from probably the largest yoga school here. At the first opportunity I found my way there to begin my yoga practice here trying out the different classes on offer. All the lessons are in Hebrew with very little translation and given my very limited recollection of childhood Hebrew classes very little of what was being said made its way to any comprehensible understanding.
What did strike me though despite my limited Hebrew was the fact that the word for ‘breath’ is the same root as the word for ‘soul’, and that connecting to the breath comes down simply to connecting to our spirit. So too the word for ‘becoming aware’ is the same as ‘go into your heart’, where the truth of awareness makes itself known. These simple truths expressed within the texture of the language itself, felt resonantly like home, not within the place I now choose to be in, but rather within the practice that echoes my inner truth.
Indeed I missed most of the dialogue of the classes in another language in which I am still so inept, but coming to the yoga practice brought me to such familiarity beyond the constraints of tongue. The gentle caress of my breath whispered of the universality of the language of yoga, that breath is beyond word and that word is distilled to a simple OM. In this way yoga is true union. Union of the body with the soul, union of the breath with the consciousness, unity with all spirit kind, beyond any boundary of language, conditioning or environment. Here I conjoined with the universality of the language of yoga that speaks beyond these borders and touches all without discrimination. For this I am so deeply grateful for my practice that allows the undulations and shifts of deep change to gently mould into a new awareness of the present moment. Yoga is coming home, no matter the language, no matter the place. It is me, my body, my breath, my spirit in this singular moment of now and in connection with all that is and as the sounds of the waves outside the shala draw my attention deeper within, I realize with all certainty that I Am That.
I send you my deepest love always from here, missing you all but looking forward to reuniting soon in joy and in peace in Antwerp.
Nicki
