Evolving

Today's blog was inspired by the fact that I sort of got tired of the backtracking in the yoga community, especially in the U.S., insisting that yoga is an asana (posture) based practice. It's probably not just in the U.S. but most of the noise came from the U.S.

During meditation tonight I had a vision of a beautiful white Hindu temple. I have never seen such a vision before and so scanned the internet to see if I could find an image that resembled what I saw. Of all the white Hindu temples that I was able to find, the one in Neasdon, London seems to be the closest. That's it above.

I’m not Hindu and I’m not religious. I was born into a traditional Jewish family and raised in Montreal, Canada but I have a strong attraction to Eastern Philosophies. Maybe that’s why I’m a yoga teacher. However, I didn’t always know that I was going to become a spiritual yoga teacher.

As I began teaching and getting feedback from people, I realized that my strongest connection, the one that seemed to emerge easily from an unknown source of knowledge, was not the focus on mind and body, but on spirit. I really enjoy a good physical stretch and a good mind cleanse and ego release, but there is nothing that completes me more than connecting with the Divine. So over the last few years I evolved into a full-on spiritual yoga teacher and developed my own teaching style.

It didn’t happen overnight though and it didn’t happen intentionally.  Before class began I required silence and meditation until the clock struck time to begin, and beginning on time was part of the discipline. Those who came late, unfortunately, were left out in the cold. That is one of the disciplines I instilled in my students and those who understood its benefit, arrived on time. All cell phones had to be turned off and all bags and shoes left outside the yoga room. At first a few people freaked out at the thought of being detached from the phone and leaving their worldly belongings in another room (albeit locked). But they eventually got over it and learned to trust and relax. And the class began as such, clear of clutter, and in silence. Most students arrived while I was in a deep state of Samadhi, in union with the Divine, during which time I asked to be guided and released all fears and doubt. I handed over my job to master teachers in the spiritual realm and thus began the spiritual lessons. I never planned, only surrendered and let the Universe guide me. So in effect, I became a spiritual yoga teacher not by my own doing, but by the grace of the Universe that did everything for me. I trusted that whatever came out of my mouth (in Italian no less!) was exactly what needed to be said. And very often people came up to me after class saying, “It was like you were speaking directly to me.” Thus I knew, I was connected.

The only students who didn’t remain were those who were not ready for a spiritual yoga lesson. This is how I became convinced that the only way to be transformed deeply and profoundly was by diving in and exploring the depths of spirit and spirituality within one's self. The more fearful some were of looking inside, the more I realized that it was exactly what I needed to teach. The more fear I encountered, the more I knew that those who stuck around already had some vibrational tuning to spirituality within themselves, and were ready to explore it some more. Some of those people had arrived to my yoga class for the very first time, and others arrived after having tried different classes that left them feeling unsatisfied.

I quit teaching at a holistic center this week so I can focus on my own yoga center in the countryside and have already started my personal practice in this future yoga retreat center. This is where I had the vision of the Hindu Temple. Considering it’s the first time I see such a thing in my meditations, I wondered why it happened here in my own space. Well, it became clear to me quite quickly and it's for the same reason some students cannot handle a spiritual class: A temple is a sacred space where one enters to explore their own inner sanctuary. So my vision was really about my own inner temple, the sacred space within me and the vibration within the temple of my soul... and it happened to look like this image above. One might wonder if perhaps I haven’t had some past lives in India. Well, certainly! You don’t teach yoga after one life of practice (Although yoga is starting to get a bad rap from too many people wanting to teach who might not actually be ready to teach. In this lifetime, I had been practicing for 20 years before I started teaching). But there is more to it than that.

I met a wonderful meditation teacher recently who has very similar beliefs to mine. He is also very intuitive and able to see beyond the present reality of a person. He happened to tell me that this wasn’t my first lifetime teaching spirituality. He said I had a past life in the Middle East somewhere and have ancient knowledge of sacred symbols in me. He mentioned the probability of having been a teacher of the Kabbalah. Fascinating! I thought, because I was born in Israel in this lifetime although I didn’t have much karma to resolve there and left at an early age. I’ve never felt particularly religious nor attached to my birth religion or culture so I never studied neither Judaism nor the Kabbalah (I did go to Hebrew school when I was about 8 years old and thought the teacher was ignorant. So I asked my parents if I could take figure skating lessons instead and they said yes. I was much more passionate about dancing on ice but I digress…) but I do know a little bit about the Kabbalah and yes, it’s true, I dabble in certain aspects out of curiosity without attributing it to the Kabbalah per se since I never actually studied it. In any case, I work with symbols in this lifetime as well since I am also a Reiki Master.

Sacredness is not knew in this lifetime either, I might add. Although I have not been religious, there is a sacredness to my nuclear family. My father spent years working on the construction of a synagogue, a Jewish Temple that could accommodate all the new Jewish families that were arriving in our developing neighborhood. I knew deep down that not everybody has such a job of building a sacred home, the house of God. I personally think that God is everywhere, and that the real temple is within us, but to feel this need to build a temple comes from a deep soulful place and my dad felt it. So, is it any wonder that I am creating a sacred space in my own way? A yoga studio is like a temple when it is created with sacredness in mind. First we find the sacred space within and then we create a space without where we can go to spend time with the Divine. It is not a gym. There are no mirrors in which to admire or criticise the physical body. The only mirror is the one within. It's the most difficult one to look at but once you do, you  discover why yoga means "union" and not posturing.