The tuk-tuk driver bounced along broken streets illuminated by equally broken streetlights and a not-so-broken full moon. The contrast was unique to the place I'd found myself. The beauty of this sacred land remains hidden underneath layers of symbolism and the stark juxtaposition of wealth and poverty in all its different expressions. Just like the peculiar glow of that full moon which bathed the scene with muted illumination, and the struggling lampposts that cast their dim light on the poorly maintained streets ahead.
It seemed that whoever maintained the streets was also responsible for the maintenance of the tuk-tuk I was riding in as it ricketed along. Which is to say that there probably wasn't a maintenance man. Most of India seemed to be like that - just a continuation of buildings and new stuff constructed to take the place of less effective stuff.
The bus driver of the bus I had just departed from told me we had reached our destination. Rishikesh - a city thousands of years old, nestled at the base of the Himalayas in Northern India. It seemed like my journey here was the extension of a dream; I had canceled my return ticket and severed the cord that attached me to my home back in Arizona, months ago.
A call from within my Heart was beckoning to be heard, asking me to find out what Yoga really meant. For myself. Not for anyone else. This is just the story of a Yogi.
Two different people asked me yesterday how long I’ve been practicing yoga. I answered them directly - July 2014. I also found myself breaking down the actual amount of yoga that had been practiced. I feel that it’s important for myself to understand actual lengths of time in this context - how much of ourselves did we invest into an activity? There’s a (big) difference between a ten year practitioner who goes to the studio a few times a week and someone is alone on their mat every morning for six months.
I started with an unlimited month package through Groupon and went every day for those thirty days. When the month ended, I signed up for unlimited autopay and was in the studio everyday, often twice a day, for another year. Many changes happened very quickly. Physically, much transformation was taking place, and I was only starting to recognize the subtler benefits of this practice after about six months. After one year I had been to the studio over 400+ times.
After a year of practicing in the studio under the quality guidance of the master teachers at @innervisionyoga , I went on my first yoga retreat, fully immersing myself in the practice. From July-August 2015, almost one whole month, I spent 3+ hours a day practicing and 5-6 studying. I was very sincere. Having just quit my corporate job in May 2015 and not knowing what my next step was, my confusion fueled my desire to go inward and find peace.
I returned from the retreat with the best possible gift that could be received - a daily Sadhana. I had learned how to establish my own Yoga. This remains to be the most valuable thing I’ve been blessed with. Every morning I thank the teachers and the teachings for guiding me to the places that I’ve been, both inside and outside, and for this devotion that I can’t necessarily claim. It simply pours into me as I open myself to it.
After my first immersion, I had the free time, so I effectively became a full-time yoga student and practitioner. In September 2015, I was asked to start teaching by a good friend of mine, and thus was exposed to my first invitation to share these practices publicly. I remember that my morning practice was about 45 minutes long - 20 minutes of asana, 15 minutes of pranayama, and 10 of meditation. I was still going to the studio everyday, and felt like there was plenty to learn.
At the start, I felt very incompetent in my teaching; mainly, because I was repeating a lot of what I had been exposed to. It felt like I was serving up partially cooked food, and not necessarily things I had fully digested and sat with. This was a great experience for me, to sense the discomfort that arises when we feel inauthentic. I continued to dive into my own practice with urgency, because I wasn't going to try leading people to places I had never been.
These feelings of inadequacy as a teacher continued over those initial months of my teaching career.
In January 2016 things really picked up steam for my own home practice, when I was introduced to Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga by a great teacher in the Chandler region. Now I was spending 5+ hours a day on the mat at home, instead of one. That was the birth of my now twice daily home practice. It seemed like my morning Sadhana wiped the slate clean from yesterday and all the crap that had dislodged itself and floated its way to the surface was able to clear. The afternoon one started to dig into much older karmic impressions that were still stored somewhere within me, dating back to my early development years, and I was able to take a hard look at much older and deeply embedded memories that still held me under their influential spell.
Yet still there was this ever increasing sense of discomfort when I would show up to teach, like I wasn't really offering something that was pure and unconditioned. It seemed like I had an agenda to fill, and that I wanted people to 'get' my teachings. I am coming to understand that the teaching becomes alive through us and is simply a lived experience that can be shared with others. Its not really something that can be learned, per se, but rather it is the un-learning of the things that separate us from each other. This un-learning is a process through which we remove all the conditions that have prevented love from pouring into our lives. As a hardcore Ashtangi, this was a hard thing for me to get - I was still trying to perform. And because I was practicing this way, I was trying to get my students to practice this way. The tension I still felt in my body was being projected onto the people taking my classes.
By April 2016 I had picked up a few other teaching gigs, and yet I remained uncomfortable by the thought of teaching yoga. I really just wanted to be a student, and teaching gave me the opportunity to be one full-time. With all these feelings plaguing me, I was asked to return to Costa Rica a second time, and teach at the retreat center for the yoga students there. Oh the irony! I was tasked with creating 10 hours of anatomy and physiology curriculum for the YTT students during their three week teacher training immersion.
With bags packed, I left to teach at my first international yoga gig. I had been practicing daily for less than two years and teaching for less than one. Thinking of my own immersive experience, studying yoga full-time in the jungle of Costa Rica, it felt like I barely deserved the opportunity. I wanted more than anything to provide something of worth to these students who were in a deeply impressionable space.
My first time was a shipwreck. I spent many hours developing a great power point. I had hand outs and thousands of words of written content and planned speeches and activities and.... an excess of head stuff, and not enough heart stuff. You know what I mean? I failed to connect on the deeper levels, here. It was quite symbolic of how I'd been feeling in all of my teaching and practicing up until that point. It became very apparent to me the importance of a practice that is truly authentic. It was clear that even teaching a subject like anatomy & physiology, which is quite Western and heady by nature, must be brought home into the heart through the proper digestion and assimilation of the material. The greatest teachers all possess this - to share from the deeper places of the heart, where the soul speaks. No matter the message, it has been embodied and authenticated in the system. Whether we are receiving it as a student or delivering it as a teacher, it is a clear. We know it. We feel it.
I returned from this trip rejuvenated in a way that was humbling. I was inspired. I was pleased and deeply grateful to have the opportunity to return again the following month (now May 2016), and lecture on the anatomy & physiology for yoga teachers a second time.
On my third trip to Costa Rica and my second shot at teaching internationally, I had opened myself more to the truly divine teaching that arrives when we are fully present to the energy in the room. It seemed like I was finally experiencing this connection to a greater energy whilst teaching, that it was flowing into me to the degree that I made myself available to it. This certainly was connected to the way my own practice was changing; I was less after an achievement, and was more involved in the process. I was making myself available to love NOW, and not a conditioned sort of love that could only be received once I had completed some ego driven pursuit. Even though I was still practicing Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga for hours a day, and very little pranayama and meditation compared to the sheer volume of asana that was happening, I felt like I was starting to get somewhere that was more.... real.
After finishing up and feeling pretty good about the gig, I began to backpack the Caribbean coast of the country. I planned to return and resume my budding yoga teaching career at home. Yet something stirred within me. It pulled me from a far deeper place and was whispering faintly. The last time I experienced this call, I was guided to quit my job and leave my career behind as a mortgage consultant, so it wasn't a first. But damn, it was terrifying.
Being free from the conditions of home, a space opened up and allowed this bigger thing to speak and be heard. And I listened.
I canceled my return ticket. I e-mailed the studio owners at home and told them to give away my teaching jobs. I had no plan, no idea where I was supposed to go. I had my Sadhana, and each morning and every afternoon I worked my practices, but other than that - nothing. From a material standpoint I even had very little: two pairs of travel pants plus a long sleeve shirt that I always wore on airplanes (to keep warm), three eBay-purchased shorts, a pair of dilapidated Birkenstocks, and four tanktops. Remember, I had packed for only a week at an all-inclusive retreat center. My backpack was very light, yet the call in my heart was very heavy.
Since the details of my first long adventure abroad can be found elsewhere, I'll spare them here. Basically, from May 2016 until July 2016, I backpacked through Central America, Costa Rica and Panama specifically, and taught donation yoga at the hostels where I stayed. My teaching transformed into something completely different than what it had been back home. It was quite difficult for me to have an agenda when it was entirely free, and people were asking me to guide them. What was I trying to prove? I was just there, fully present to share my own love for this sacred art, with openness and humility. Things were starting to make a little more sense.
Mid-way through July 2016, the Universe rolled out a red carpet for me to go to India, where I was guided to stay for one month at an ashram in Rishikesh. Here I was first exposed to long periods of silent seated meditation, having a sit in the meditation hall from 5-6 am and again from 6-7 pm. We were also practicing Hatha yoga asana & pranayama for 90 minutes, twice a day, led by the residential teachers of the ashram. Although there were three in rotation, Gaurav and Vimal were the two notable teachers here as both of these individuals were clearly devoted yogis. Gaurav had a Master's degree in Yoga Science and had been practicing daily for over two decades, and Vimal had a Master's degree in (I think?) Sanskrit.
*Side note here - there is a blog post titled 'Chaintanya' about the yogi living under the mango tree. I snuck down from my room, ditching the morning meditation and yoga at my ashram to practice with this man for several mornings until I got too sick to make the walk.
The rest of my day was spent studying spiritual texts. It seemed like the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras, and other various Vedic scriptures were starting to speak to me in ways that couldn't have been intellectualized. I was starting to feel their aliveness, their vibrancy.
I wish I could say that the combination of theory and practice and long hours of silent seated meditation in India brought me to states of spiritual ecstasy and bliss, but my experience was quite the opposite. I was going what felt like severe withdrawal symptoms from life. I had never really missed anything before, in fact I would reflect and say I never really felt much of anything before, until now. It was like I was waking up to feel everything, including the dark, and not just the light I was after. I remember opening myself over and over again to these experiences, ranging from absolute despair and depression to unbounded joy for no reason.
I'll also mention that during my stay in India I was sick most of the time, having diarrhea pretty much the whole time I was there. This left me emaciated and weak during my practices, yet I persevered, eating nothing but fruit and yogurt for many days in a row. Bananas work to give you a regular bowel movement a small percentage of the time. It was a profound lesson in surrender to life that I am certain I wouldn't have arrived at had circumstances been any different. In this way, I had engineered my own breaking point, so by the time I left India it nearly felt like I had completed a prison sentence. Now what?
I was now traveling from India to England where I was guided to study and teach at a yoga school known as the Yoga Sanctuary in Southampton, UK. Ironically, the place I taught in Costa Rica was also called the Sanctuary. Coincidence...?
Steve was the owner and sole teacher at this Southampaton yoga shala. I met the shaven-headed British guy on the very first day I had arrived to my ashram and knew immediately that he was the reason I had traveled around the world to go to India. The additional details that can be told here make this seem all-too-far-fetched, so I'll just withhold them and allow an imaginative mind to create the fairy tale. After only spending probably a total of one hour together with him, I told Steve that I couldn't shake the feeling that I was supposed to be his student. Over the span of perhaps one minute, we established that I was to return to England and teach/study at his Yoga Sanctuary. I knew that I trusted him the first moment I saw his radiant face, and now he was reflecting that trust into me, seeing as he had been the primary teacher at this yoga school for over ten years. I say all that time - yoga just means union. This was Yoga.
I passed through London on my way to Southampton, where I spent three weeks waiting for the upcoming yoga semester to be launched at Steve's place in September 2016. It was here in this world city that I exposed to several other styles and lineages of yoga. I practiced and studied Shadow Yoga at a place called Islington Yoga under the guidance of Karen, a truly masterful yogi who'd spent years under this particular lineage. I also signed up for a month of unlimited yoga at a studio called TriYoga, where I practiced under many different teachers while I was there. Styles such as Scaravelli, Iyengar, Feldenkrais method, and others.
When I arrived there in Southampton, it was clear to me that there were common elements amongst all styles and brands of yoga, and that the most potent were delivered by teachers who had dedicated themselves to understand the nuances and intricacies of the practice. If we hop from 'style' to 'style' and avoid the inner work required to dig deep, we never really scratch further than the surface and remain largely distracted and merely entertained by the novelties. The real stuff happens when we are devoted to a particular way for long enough for true discoveries to be made.
My time in Southampton remains to this day, the most intensive period of research and practice I've been through. The biggest take aways from Steve came in the form of a few very simple messages. "Trust the energy." and "Just get on with it." I recall having a conversation with him about all the different yoga that is out there. He looked at me with those radiant eyes and powerful presence, smiling cheekily.
To summarize my learnings: it is the same thing that has happened in religion. All different organizations argue that their way is best. How are we ever to know? Yoga just means union. Steve would say "the real yogis are the ones who get on with it!"
There are only a few source Hatha yoga texts, and there is very little instruction in them for a reason. Those who are willing to participate in their own research will uncover the deeper truths that are hidden in plain sight in these books. It seems we have created all these different ways of yoga because that is our nature as humans - we love to innovate. But yoga is very simple, at its core. There are a fixed amount of ways we can move the spine - fact. We can only breathe in and breathe out - also fact. There are things we can do with this knowledge that does not need to be over complicated, yet we must do them enthusiastically and with faith, and the magic will happen.
Steve was big on simplicity, and artistically wove together theory and practice so that one was left with minimal thinking yet a lot of room to discover for themselves the real meaning of things.
From September 2016 until December 2016, I practiced maybe 10 hours daily. I was awake and on my mat from 4 am until about 7 am, again from 9-11 am, again from noon-2 pm, and at a class under Steve's guidance sometime in the evening (if I wasn't teaching one), and then again from about 9-10 pm. I ate once a day, around 3 pm. Due to the sheer capacity of practice hours, my consciousness entered into a very.. interesting... state.
At first, I was studying yogic related literature, even picking up the Bible and finding the threads of Truth there. Eventually, I stopped reading and writing altogether and just invested my entire focus towards being present. I started to actually become comfortable sitting on my ass for hours with my legs crossed, and as my seat grew more comfortable, so did my experiences of meditation. The meditations evolved to a point where I started to go.... "oh, so THIS is what meditation is."
Sleep no longer felt like something that I was unconscious for. I recall laying down in the corner of my little yoga room, closing my eyes for some time, drifting into an astral realm of dreams, until I felt the call to open my eyes again and drift back onto the worldly plane. I had visitations of divine beings - powerful messages embedded in the imagery and symbolism of the dreamscape. Very little of my conditioned awareness was present and when the parts of me that were clearly 'Grant' arose, they were in stark contrast to this presence of infinity that I felt connected to pretty much all the time.
By November of 2016, I had no idea how much longer my pilgrimage was divinely scheduled to continue, and I was utterly content with whatever seemed to be happening. I remember reading in the Bible and other scriptural texts how these spiritual masters went on retreat, alone, and fasted until they received visions from God. This must have plugged its way into one of the last remaining fertile plots in my impressionable consciousness, because I recall having this thought that I would go on a retreat over Christmas and New Years at some hermitage in the country side. I wasn't going to tell anyone, but again I felt that inner pull. It was terrifying, but I felt like it had to be done. It would be perfect. After all, who I was doing this for? What, exactly, was I after? Despite the intensity of my searching, I still had no real answers, which meant that there was no way I could return home. Not yet.
Near the end of November, I had an experience. It remains impossible for me to convey into words what happened on this Monday, years ago, but let's just say that it contained the all answers to every question that I didn't know I had. It was during a meditation, and I recall the feeling that my body was becoming lighter and lighter as my breath grew shallower and shallower. Eventually, the breath receded entirely and I remained (somewhere?) suspended between the in breath and the out breath. For how long, I know not, but the eternity of this moment will stick with me forever. It permeates my entire being. It is the infinity behind every breath that I receive.
Being born again is the closest way to describe the return that I made into my body after this incredibly mystical and ineffable experience. If yoga just means union, then I think this was it.
I knew it was time to return home.
So in December of 2016, after seven months of a very earnest and very sincere quest for Yoga, it seemed like I had finally completed the journey that I had unknowingly yet trustfully embarked upon. I got a one way ticket back to Chandler, AZ and gladly circumvented the last strategic loop my ego had created, which was to do that solo retreat and fast until God spoke to me. I think it was sheer willingness here that was the key ingredient for this ultimate and conclusive experience to occur.
Now that all the details for this leg of my path have been hashed out for the community to read, I feel further completion in many respects.
To wrap this post up, it has been almost three years of a daily home practice. I find it ironic yet convenient that this timeline nearly mirrors my path as a teacher. We can only lead people to places that we’ve been. I've documented the entire thing mostly for my own sake (because I truly enjoy writing), but also for any other willing aspirant who is sincerely seeking.
I’m grateful to reflect in this post on my love for this occupation and accept the responsibility of it. I am so thankful for every student and teacher who I've crossed paths with, and strive to honor the impact you've made in my life by committing myself to daily Sadhana. It is through this devotion which allows me to connect to that same place of love from which we all really after. I have felt it time and time again, and I know the only way I can truly connect to you, is through connecting to my Self. With sincerity, devotion, and commitment to the practice, I honor you. I honor the teachings. I honor All. Namaste.