What do you do when no one is looking?
A question posed by Bhāvani Maki in her Yoga Sutra Mentorship program.
I’ve been studying with Bhavani since 2015 when my husband, Jesse, and I found ourselves on the island of Kauai, HI on honeymoon for three weeks. We weren’t planning on going to Hawaii but that trip was gifted to us and we said yes! Turns out, I never can tell what’s going to happen with anything. Thank goodness.
Jesse and I make the yatra, the pilgrimage, to Kauai every other year or so to study in-person with Bhavani. There’s nothing, and I mean nothing, quite like sitting, moving, and breathing in a room with your teacher and other practitioners on the path of yoga. It’s precious, it’s sacred, it’s important to me.
Which is why, in a little less than three weeks Jesse and I will be flying half-way around the world to Greece to visit our teacher, friend, and mentor, Bhavani Maki, and her family live, in-person to exchange stories, breath, heart-to-heart transmission and big, big sweaty, jet-laggy hugs.
Yesterday was the last last our online Yoga Sūtra Mentorship program with Bhavani for the summer. Being online doesn’t compare, in my opinion, to sitting with Bhavani in-person, but it’s what gets me through until the next time my heart can vibrate in accordance and proximity with hers.
Currently we’re working our way through chapter II of Pantanjali’s Yoga Sūtra. Bhavani writes in her book, The Yogi’s Roadmap, “The Yoga Sūtra are the threadbare teachings that weave the practices, the philosophy and the day-to-day questions of life into the fabric of one’s being.”
After unpacking sūtra II:29: yama niyama āsana prāṇāyāma pratyāhāra dhāraṇā dhyāna samādhayo ‘ṣṭav angāni, Ethical social conduct, principled personal demeanor, yogik posture, regulation of one’s energy field, withdrawal of projections, concentration, absorption and integrated consciousness, are the eight components of Yoga.
Bhavani posed these three questions to the group:
Do you have a code of ethics that you live by?
What do you do when no one is looking?
Who or what keeps you accountable?
I was intrigued. Do I have a code of ethics that I live by? What do I do when no one is looking? And who or what keeps me accountable?
In reflecting on these questions, I remember listening to an interview that Charles Eisenstein did with Lynne Twist, the author of The Soul of Money. They spoke about how we/I have to be part of the problem (and see my own contribution to the situation), before I can be part of the solution. Bam! That’s clear and hard to hear. Lynne also made the distinction at one point between having the “answer” and having a “response.” I thought that was great. I see this as something I’d like to incorporate in my personal code of conduct. Or as Stephen Jenkinson often says, “Becoming less interested in my own opinion about matters and more interested in wondering about things.”
Lynne told a story about working with women in Tamil Nadu, India and the things these women lived through and endured to survive. Charles and Lynne spoke about how when we/I negatively load another with judgement and label them or their behavior as “wrong” or “bad” or jump to the conclusion of “I never would have done that if I were them.” When in fact I really don’t know what I would have done and had I been in the other person’s shoes, I may have indeed done what they did and when I cease to let in the perspective of the other I am creating war. Yes, that’s the word Charles used. This is heavy and profound for me. I’m sitting with the idea that when I fail to imagine how it is for another I am creating conflict. I create separation and hostility by neglecting to perceive how life and living is for other human beings.
They continued saying forgiveness, especially for oneself, might be the greatest gesture one can make for humanity. I was struck by Lynne’s distinction between change and transformation. Change is moving from “bad” to “good,” or “worse” to “better” which might be an over-simplistic way of thinking and acting, where as transformation includes moving into territory we’ve never been before.
I like to imagine myself as a kind and loving persona and yet, when I consider how many times I’ve failed to really see and hear another, and how that might be the beginnings of a war, I am encouraged to think again. How might my code of conduct include slowing down enough in order to really listen to the other to the degree to which I am altered/transformed from having really heard them. When I fail to see the other’s perspective, as it is, I create harm.
Who or what keeps me accountable? And I can seek understanding in the face of/despite dis-agreement. Somewhere in the field of accountability and integrity forgiveness is present.
There’s still time to take some yoga classes with me before Jesse and I head to Greece June 20 through July 20.
See you soon!
Classes through June 18th and resuming Tuesday, August 1st, 2023.
Here’s what I’m learning and listening to lately:
NVC Life with Rachelle Lamb: Conversation with Dr. Martin Shaw and May 23, 2023.
A Conversation with Martin Shaw and Charles Eisenstein (Ep19), March 1, 2017.
A Conversation of Living in the Gift with Lynne Twist and Charles Eisenstein,July 18, 2019.
New Episode of The Yogi’s Roadmap Podcast out today! Check it out here.
Check out the Yoga Classes that start Tuesday, August 1st.
And, I’m hosting my very own Yoga Sutra Study Group in Prescott, Arizona. We meet every Sunday from 11:45-1:15, after āsana class, starting August 6th. This is where group discussion and true communion carries us into the the deeper conversations of yoga and where we explore yoga beyond the “sticky mat.” (See flyer below.)
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Really enjoyed the recap of this interview with Lynne Twist and Charles Eisenstein.
"When I cease to let in the perspective of the other I am creating war. Yes, that’s the word Charles used. This is heavy and profound for me. I’m sitting with the idea that when I fail to imagine how it is for another I am creating conflict. I create separation and hostility by neglecting to perceive how life and living is for other human beings."
I agree that this is so nourishing Shinay and also profoundly challenging as a perspective. Thank you for this issue of your newsletter.