Ask Parvati 34: The Journey to YEM - Part 4: The Healing Begins

THE HEALING BEGINS

 

(Continued from India: Meeting My Guru (The Doors Blow Open))

During my year in India, I ignorantly approached my desire for spiritual awakening with the fervour of an ambitious young architect. As a consequence, I blew open my psychic field and was challenged to find the balanced link (or yoga) between spirit and matter.

 

Nine months of intense burning fevers and long periods of spiritual bliss fuelled by intensive sadhana (spiritual practice) awoke subtle energies and connected me to "otherness". A neophyte along the path, I thought spirit and matter were separate. I wanted to meet God. And to me, God was "out there". I had been inadvertently telling my body that I no longer needed it, so off I went, higher and higher until a near death experience forced me back.

 

The fever that I had when I landed on Indian soil grew into an array of physical challenges. That, coupled with the intensity of my spiritual practices, culminated in an experience that changed everything. While traveling in the desert in Rajasthan, I collapsed and was brought by an inn-keeper on the back of his motorcycle to a hospital due to high fevers. A bed-ridden patient there, I had the classic NDE (near-death experience), traveled down the tunnel of light that led "to the other side". At the end of the tunnel of light, I was greeted by a group of beings, welcoming me to travel over. I remember vividly what happened next. As I went to merge with them, a voice I can only describe as the voice from the root of my soul said: “I want to live!”

 

Within every ounce of my being, a total redirection occurred. At that moment I very quickly found myself falling down that tube of light, landing into my body and waking up in a hospital bed unsure how I had gotten there. I had no idea whether I was at the hospital for a day, a week or a month. Meeting my guru Amma opened the doors to who I was. This NDE blew the doors wide open to the multiplicity of otherness. Now I see it was all Her anyway.

 

As I have shared in the past, I was a child sensitive to "otherness", skills I suppressed through high school and university. Well, our puny willpower is no match for the force of nature or the evolution of the soul. My natural gifts were now roaring with a vengeance. What followed was a period of extreme bliss and fierce psychic skills housed in a weakened body. Though my spiritual self had never been stronger, I needed to learn to befriend and heal the neglected body. Standing tall at 5'9", I was then barely 105 pounds. I had lost nearly 20 pounds over the year.

 

My year in India ended after I had an intense dream and gut sense that something was wrong at home. Following my instincts, I began the long journey towards my flight back. It took me almost a week to travel from the middle of the Rajasthani desert in northwest India to the southeastern city of Madras, where I would catch the plane back to Toronto. On Canadian soil at the Toronto airport, I was greeted by my father who looked pleased to see me, but also worried. He told me that my grandpa, his father, was in intensive care and was asking for me. My paternal grandfather died a day or so after I visited him in the hospital.

 

Suddenly back in the West, I felt like I had been catapulted from the Middle Ages right into the heart of the twenty-first century, in the space of a few hours on a trans-global flight. I understood that it was now my time to open to my healing. My mind had become quiet though the all-embracing year of intensive meditation practice. My yoga practice was deep, resounding in my cells. I was listening to nature and operating at a rhythm that was different from what I saw in the highways, concrete structures and speeding lights in the West. I needed to integrate the East I had found and loved with the West I was born into. Everything flowed in perfection while I was in India, so surely that same flow, or "golden thread" as I called it, existed in Toronto, or wherever I would be.

 

Stationed temporarily in my parents' home, I got rid of everything I could and slept on the floor. I meditated for hours every day and thought only to be a dedicated spiritual practitioner, create art and sing. These habits still form the foundation of my character and daily practices today.

 

At that time, my psychic senses were so alive that I could not take a bus or sit beside someone as I felt completely overwhelmed. I would know what happened to them when they were six or what would happen at 86. An Ayurvedic doctor said I was like a hi-fi stereo on volume ten. I had sensory overload and my dials were up too high. The psychic doors had blown open. I needed to learn how to turn down the volume and master the lock on the doors.

 

INSIDE OUTSIDE IN

 

The next years were just as full of amazing people, places and teachings as my time in India. The weak health in my body asked me to move my attention inward in a way I had not yet done. I had touched the expansiveness of the cosmos. It was now time to find that same expansion within, rooted in my being. The universe is immense outside, just as much as it is immense within. In fact, I found that the notion of outside and inside were illusions that did not need to confine me. The more rooted in my being I became, the more useful and practical the psychic skills were. Like anything in nature, the more grounded I was, the more broadly sky-bound I could be.

 

It was at this time that I opened a small yoga studio in Montreal and worked as an assistant minister at the United Church of Canada. I found that my awakening had very practical use. My call was to serve. This life clearly was a gift. I had been given a second chance to live. All I needed to do was love.

 

With subtle insight, I found that I could teach yoga and know where people's energies were blocked or stuck. People could call me from the other side of the world and I would know what was ailing them. I learned to walk down the street or take a bus and find a place (or asana) of balance within the whole flow. Life was becoming Yoga.

 

Over the years, my studies deepened and my practice flourished. I studied Chi Kung, Ayurveda, Thai Massage, Shamanic Soul Journeying, Sound Healing, Astrology and Nature Co-Creation. I offered these skills in treating people. My musical career also flourished with much greater meaning. I went deeper and deeper into various forms of yoga such as intensive work within the Iyengar method and completing another teacher training program with Esther Myers of the Vanda Scaravelli lineage. Healing, yoga, meditation, music, life… it all started to flow as part of one greater whole that I understood as Yoga.

 

These years were the formative years for YEM. Just as I listened intensely "out there" to find God, I listened intensely within to find the Divine and be guided. YEM flowered naturally, effortlessly.

 

Out of this vast array of experiences, I grew to see that all things are interconnected in ways our limited mind and senses cannot comprehend. We are not the body, but we temporarily inhabit it and are responsible for its well being. Like a temple for our spiritual practice, the body houses the spirit and also reflects it. It is a temporal housing of the infinite spirit we are. Just like Siva and Shakti, or Yin and Yang, the body and spirit are married, sharing the most exquisite balance.

 

(Continued tomorrow with My Practice Today)

 

Ask Parvati 34: The Journey to YEM - Part 3: India: Meeting My Guru (The Door Blows Open)

INDIA: MEETING MY GURU (THE DOOR BLOWS OPEN)

(Continued from Steps Towards Yoga)

THE CALL

I was only 23, fresh off the plane from Canada. It was my first time in India. Though I felt like I was right side up for the first time in my life, I had no idea what was in store for me. They say the guru appears when the student is ready. I suppose I was ready.

 

A guru is not just a teacher. A guru-disciple bond is a profound relationship, as deep or deeper than marriage. It holds an intimacy within its embrace that speaks to the furthest corners of the soul and carries one through an inner landscape we never knew existed. The body of the guru is not bound by the finite, but extends through time and through all things. At least, so it has been for me.

 

Going to India was a true calling. I told my parents, much to their chagrin, that I was not doing my master in architecture and to not expect me back for five years. I would call when I could. (I now realize how painfully scary that must have been for them!) I was going to the other side of the world fuelled by the deep desire to meet my guru.

 

I knew there was someone "out there" to guide my yoga practice, to help me fulfill my spiritual potential. We have doctors to help heal our physical bodies. We have schools and universities to teach us the ways of the world. The guru is a realized being who has traveled along and completed the spiritual journey. Knowing the pitfalls along the path and understanding the mysteries of the universe, he or she can guide our way home. I did not know what that relationship would look like, but I knew how it would feel.

 

INDIA

 

I flew into Madras greeted by a family member of an architecture classmate. I had never met the middle-aged man before. But since it was in the middle of the night in a strange land, I was very glad he was there to greet me. I arrived in India with a fever, what I attribute to a sort of cabin fever, hardly able to stand the confines of the 18 hour flight. When I felt the energy of the land as I stepped onto the ground, I knew I had come to a place I would call home.

 

India is a land of extremes. It either spits you out or embraces you and never lets you go. It is not a place of niceties. You either love it or hate it.  Within any given moment as you walk through a city of village street, you can see the most exquisite sight you have ever seen and the most horrific scene; you can smell the intoxicating fragrance of fresh cut jasmine flowers right beside piles of debris and fresh excrement. It is raw, in your face and real like no other place I have been. In the West, we tend to hide our shadows under layers of prettiness. In India, the beautiful, the sinister, the painful, the rapturous were all hanging out in plain sight for anyone to see.

 

I celebrated my 23rd birthday at a New Years's party (yes, I am a Dec 31st baby) on a roof top watching young India boys show me how they could moonwalk, Michael Jackson style. It was just a couple days after I had arrived, and I was still feverish. It all felt surreal.

 

A day or so later, I boarded a sweaty, smelly bus for another heroic 18 hour ride to Trivandrum, still further south, where I would then pile into a jeep with at least twelve other people and arrive at my final destination. At the Sivananda ashram just outside of the village Neyyar Dam, Kerela, I would attended my first yoga teacher training program and discover a classical approach to Yoga. I adored the whole program and the experience of daily immersion in the practice and study of Yoga.

 

After the month-long program, I remained in India for nearly a year while I traveled from temple town to ashram, often with sadhus (wandering aesthetics) or other fellow seekers. I spent six months in the South of India, then six in the North, staying in villages and cities and all the spaces in between. With just a small backpack carrying all I needed, and often sleeping outdoors on rooftops under an open sky, I had profound experiences outside the well traveled tourist paths. I learned from Brahmin priests, went to religious festivals, lived with impoverished villagers and lavish city folk; and I met my guru, Amma. My life is marked by BA (before Amma) and AA (after Amma) (rather than a BC and AD). This year changed my life completely.

 

AMMA

 

When I was at the Sivananda ashram, I met two young teenagers, a brother and a sister, who simply glowed. They emanated a light that was notable. I asked them what they were doing to exude such radiance. They knew exactly what I was seeing and simply said, "It is our guru." All I knew was I wanted some of THAT! It was intoxicating. By Grace, they told me that their guru's ashram was very close by.

 

As soon as the teacher training program was complete, I went to Amritapuri and met Amma, also known as the Hugging Saint of Kerala, South India. I now know that what I experienced for the next two months were precious jewels, experiences few had. Today, Amma's presence draws crowds that fill football stadiums as She tours the world. But when I first met Her in 1993, I was just one of a handful of people milling about Her. I did not know how lucky I was. I look back on those times with deep fondness.

 

 

Etched in me forever is the presence in the temple where Her devotees chanted bhajans. The modest, cathedral-like space echoed with a sublime sound that set every cell on fire. The hall walls seemed to dissolve into the ephemeral. They were no longer made of white tile, but liquid light. The atmosphere pulsated with a dewy luminosity that saturated the tropical air. If there were a heaven, I was in it. This was Brindavan.

 

Amma gives blessings, or darshan, in the form of a hug. Hugging, considered audacious for her humble South India upbringing and taboo for an Indian woman of her caste, is a gesture of motherly love. Today, thousands of people gather to receive Amma's darshan all over the world. Then, perhaps 30 or so people would gather about her at any given time. I sat for hours with Amma, immersed in a spiritual presence that seeped into my hungry soul.

 

It is hard to describe a darshan as each one is unique and perfect on so many levels, going to places where the mind cannot explain. I could only recreate the experience with the shortcoming of words, which would never do the experience justice. What I can say of my first darshan is everything stopped and I started to cry, and it did not stop. I cried for days. It just would not stop. I was neither sobbing nor whimpering. The tears were not tears of joy, nor of sorrow. I just cried, and cried more as some form of deep inner release. It was like a dam had broken inside of me and my soul started to flow again along the current of the Divine River of life.

 

For the next weeks, I followed Amma and Her renunciate monks and nuns on rickety buses on bumpy dirt roads through South India as She inaugurated temples and performed pujas (worship) in various spiritual settings. I meditated all I could and immersed myself in Her.

 

THE BOND BEYOND

 

Despite the immensity of the experience, after a couple of months, some itchy part of my brain began to stir. I figured I needed to move on and see other things in India. After all, I came to meet my guru. Surely, in India, there were many such saints. I needed to make sure this Amma was "the" one. I left Amritapuri and went from ashram to ashram, temple town to temple town. Though I met phenomenal people and had life changing experiences, nothing compared to the immensity I felt in Amma's embrace.

 

I would take me nearly ten years to fully accept Amma as my guru. Though there was always a "before and after Amma" since the moment I met Her, I was clearly not yet truly ready to fully say "Yes!" Amma continued to make Her presence known to me through the people I would meet over those years or by a broad array of coincidences that made me realize She was keeping her eye on me. I realize now that part of me needed to erode and soften so that I could receive the Grace of Her presence in my life. My ego wanted to do it on my own.

 

When Amma first came to Toronto, I told my partner that I wanted to go see Her. I told him, that I wanted to go see an Indian woman that I stayed with when I was in India. That was how much the denial of Her presence was for me. It was not until I saw Her immensity through his eyes, that I realized what had gifted my life. After that point, both my partner and I have fully accepted Amma as our guru.

 

The magical year in India blew my soul's doors open. I met Amma. That was everything. I also read books that painted a fuller picture of yoga and the spiritual path, such as Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, the Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. I studied classical yogic texts such as the Hatha Yoga Pradhibika, the Mahabharata, the Yoga Sutras and texts by Iyengar and Sivananda, to name a few.

 

I was only 23, but I felt like I had lived more than most people twice my age. This year changed everything. Though I was immersed for over eight hours a day in yoga, study and meditation, no external action I had taken was the source of any change. It was Amma all along. I realize now that She had called me to India. She had brought those books, people, places and teachers into my life. It is only by the guru's Grace that I am at all. It is only by God's Grace that I have the capacity to evolve, love, think, act, speak, breathe or walk. This year in India created the foundation for my understanding and aspiration to live my whole life dedicated to God, to spiritual truth in service to the magnificence of love. This year showed me that Yoga is everything, everywhere, always.

 

(Continued tomorrow with "The Healing Begins")

Ask Parvati 34: The Journey to YEM - Part 2: Steps Towards Yoga

STEPS TOWARDS YOGA

(continued from Early Beginnings)

 

At 16 years of age, I took my first yoga class when I was enrolled as a student at McGill University. It was taught, little did I know at the time, by a Sivananda-trained yoga teacher. (I would love to thank him today for helping to spark my path). I adored the class. It felt both physically charged and spiritually inspired. I distinctly remember how the world seemed richer, fully and brighter after the class. I attended it religiously. Each week, the class felt like a homecoming. I would experience a feeling inside of me awaken, something I felt I had always known and also knew I was missing. Without understanding the fullness of what was happening, I sensed something deep within me growing through this weekly practice.

 

Yoga became a love affair. My practice has continued from the day of my first class on. However, I only stayed at McGill for a year. I did not feel personally fulfilled in the Arts and Art History program I was studying, so I chose to switch to Architecture at Waterloo University. At Waterloo, I continued my yoga classes with an Iyengar teacher, and went deeper into understanding postural alignment.

 

Yoga and meditation kept me sane in architecture school. The architecture program was very demanding. It exacerbated my type A personality I have learned to soften and release through my yoga practices. Classmates noticed I was doing something to manage my stress, so I started to guide a few peers through yoga postures and breathing to help us cope with our demanding schedule and tight deadlines. I guess you could say that was my first experience teaching, though I resisted any such title.

 

After university, I worked at a reputed Montreal architecture firm. I was paid well, had a budding young career and was respected, but I felt an inner restlessness. A voice within would not quell. Externally, it seemed that the “right” thing to do was to do my masters in architecture. But that did not feel right at a gut level. I could not put it into words. All I knew was that the light I was cultivating doing yoga seemed to grow dimmer when I thought about a masters degree.

 

What did feel right, was that I was supposed to do something other than work as an architect. The problem was, I did not know what. Music continued through my life as a passionate, creative connection. I had rebelled against the choice I was asked to make between piano and voice when I first applied to musical performance at university, so it continued as a unresolved hobby.

 

I was unhappy. I needed change. Instinctively, I knew that I needed to make room in life so that the "something else" could emerge. So I decided to courageously give my boss my two-week notice and see what would happen. During the process of that two weeks, colleagues repeatedly asked me where I was going. I would continue to say, I don't know. Until one day, my boss asked me that very same question, to which the answer automatically spilled from my lips:  “I am going to India.” The words rolled off my tongue before I knew what I had said. As the words hung in the air in the pregnant pause that followed, I fully absorbed them. I knew it was right. I was going to India to pursue my love of the spiritual path.

 

When I had first arrived back in Montreal after university to work in the architecture firm, I had sought out a yoga school. At the Sivananda Yoga Center on St-Laurent, I became heavily involved with my yoga practice. Swami Sivananda was one of the greatest Yoga masters of the 20th century. He is the inspiration behind the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres worldwide. I learned that his teachings are summarized in these six words: Serve, Love, Give, Purify, Meditate, Realize. At the Sivananda Center, I took mantra and meditation classes, advanced asana practices and went deeper into my own personal study. When I heard there was a teacher training program offered in India in a few months, I knew I was meant to be there.

 

Going to India was a true calling. I went with the deep desire to find my guru. I knew there was someone "out there" to guide my practice, a realized being who knew the pitfalls along the spiritual path. I saw the light in the photos of Swami Sivananda's eyes and knew I wanted that same light in a living teacher to look straight into my soul. I did not know what that relationship would look like, but I knew how it would feel.

 

I flew into Madras and had my 23rd birthday in Tamil Nadu, South India. A couple days later, I continued South to attended my first teacher training program at the Sivananda Ashram in Kerala. There I was introduced to a classical approach to Yoga. I adored the whole program and the experience of daily immersion in the practice and study of Yoga. The teacher training program lasted a month, but my time in India lasted a year.

 

SIVANANDA'S TEACHINGS

 

The Sivananda Centers teach a traditional, easy to learn method that aims to naturally achieve the goal of yoga by creating a healthy body/mind that supports spiritual evolution. The goal of yoga is understood as the union of the mind, body and spirit with the Divine.

 

The teachings of Swami Sivananda and his primary disciple Swami Vishnudevananda summarize the vast field of yogic philosophy into five main points:

1. Proper exercise (asana): through the correct practice of yoga poses, one develops a strong, healthy body.

2. Proper breathing (pranayama): the cultivation of deep, conscious breathing aids in stress reduction and wards off diseases.

3. Proper relaxation: by learning to let go, we help keep ourselves in balance, avoiding going into overload, worry and exhaustion.

4. Proper diet: simple, vegetarian foods that are easy to digest aid the body/mind to maintain healthy balance. Healthy eating also helps the environment and all beings.

5. Positive thinking (meditation and Vedanta): the true key to achieving piece of mind come through a devoted meditation practice and clear understanding of the processes of the mind and ego.

 

The Sivananda Centers also offer a beautiful, clear and accessible overview of the various yogic paths. The four paths of Yoga all lead to the same place, union with the Divine. They simply speak more to the varying human temperaments and approaches to life.

 

1. Karma Yoga, the Yoga of Action, teaches us to act without attachment to the fruits of our actions. We learn to let go of expectations, which are driven by our ego, and serve what is.

2. Bhakti Yoga, the Yoga of Devotion, inspires people through prayer, worship and chanting to see God unconditionally in all beings.

3. Raja Yoga, the Royal Path or the Science of the Mind, is for those who enjoy study, understanding and thinking. By cultivating mental strength, we learn to master the life force energy known as Prana. This path is fuelled by a strong meditation practice.

4. Jnana Yoga, the Yoga Of Knowledge, is considered the path for those with strong intellectual tendencies and insight. Using Vedanta, non-duality, as a vehicle, one inquires into the nature of the Self to realize the oneness with all that is.

 

SIVANANDA AND YEM

 

I am forever grateful for the experiences I have had through the Sivananda Centers. I was taught though my studies there about the bigness of Yoga, the breadth of it's history and the practical implications it has as a real-life, day-to-day practice, even in today's busy world. Yoga is immense and also so simple. It comes alive when we practice, when we go within and face ourselves, when we get on the mat and do our exercises and when we bring that expanded spaciousness out into the world and chose to live awakened lives.

 

One of my favourite sayings by Swami Sivananda is "An ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory". The saying helps us remember that enlightened action, living awake in the world is where our true practice exists. We can stay "knowledgeable" in our heads, but if it does not translate into loving and serving more fully, then it really does not mean much at all as a yogi. Yoga in this way is a practical life science. It helps us live all aspects of life more fully. Yoga is the art of living.

 

Because of the broad foundation I received from my Sivananda practice, study and training, I have been able to open to a big vision of Yoga and its many layers and meanings. I brought these riches into the practice of YEM and into my current show and musical compositions.

 

(Continued tomorrow with India: Meeting My Guru (The Door Blows Open))