Dear YogaDownloaders,
As the great Pattabhi Jois has said: take practice and all is coming. Remember that asana, or the physical yoga of postures and transitions, is a vehicle for the transformation of consciousness, and upon or during transformation it may one day fall away. As the body ages (and it is aging, whether you begin yoga at 10 or 100), Yoga may deepen its way into your actions, your words and even your thoughts. Yet, there is no predetermined timeline for this evolution, and pretending that it is here before it is can only lead to disappointment, frustration and wasting precious life time. As long as asana gives you joy, keep practicing. As soon as it feels like a chore or a rote pattern, change it up - either with other approaches to asana or something else entirely. As long as you continue to inquire into the essential nature of the self - of reality itself - beyond all ideas and concepts, yoga will continue to deepen through you. Godspeed!
In your words, what is yoga?
Yoga is contact with the true nature of experience, of reality, of the self - all being one and the same - and a yogin is one who thus makes contact. To understand/know/be yoga is to experience directly that who you really are can never be limited to those labels or aspects that were given or gained and can change or pass: your name, your identity, your physical form, or even the mind. Rather, you are in fact this entire experience in this eternal now - and everything, and everyone in it. This may sound esoteric or academic to the uninitiated, but it is as plain and obvious as the screen on which these words appear - if you look beyond the words you see that the screen is the source and the only reality of the words. Just so, your (and my, and everyone's) true nature being the consciousness/experience/experiencing that is aware of witnessing itself in and as all of existence becomes obvious through the dedicated practice of Yoga - with the unavoidable and irreversible effect of immeasurable love and compassion for everyone and everything... which means to all that you are!
What are some other passions that give you purpose and benefit your well-being?
Permaculture! Which is the philosophy and technology that arises naturally from a realization of yoga, of the truth of our interdependence, that we are all in this together in a much more profound way than we can ever imagine. Permaculture challenges us to think of everything as interdependent systems within one great interdependent system, and to apply our precious human intelligence in creative ways to benefit everyone and everything involved in every system - starting with the soil and the entire biosphere and extending to our relationships, our communities, our very minds.
Permaculture offers us guidelines to develop and apply methods of generating sustainable abundance and even luxury with increasing efficiency and decreasing effort - all by observing and imitating the equilibria of nature itself. If you haven't heard of it or don't know much about it - go down a search engine hole! It can change your life forever.
What is one of your wildest dreams?
My wildest dream - wild in the literal sense! - is hopefully about to become a reality, so send good wishes my way! I have been dreaming of buying a huge plot of land to reforest and cocreate a regenerative community permaculture project and wildlife sanctuary - hopefully here on my adopted home island of Tenerife, Canary Islands... and I just found the perfect place - so perhaps by the time you read this we have already started! When travel is possible again, come work, study and practice with me!
PRACTICE ONE OF SHY'S MINDFUL AND INFORMATIVE YOGA CLASSES, HERE!