The How, Why and Heart of Yoga

What we do matters less than why we do it and how we do it. This is the message rising from the swirl of ideas lighting through me after the Northwest Yoga Conference March 7-9 in Lynnwood, Wash. If a pose lacks heart, gets heavy or makes you grumpy instead of vibrant, then ask yourself why you are practicing it, said Kathryn Budig, whose inversion trainings are coaxing yogis worldwide to spin things upside down (limbs and frowns). Asking why is part of intention setting, and you can often direct intention through your hands, said Eoin Finn, the self-labeled Blissologist who strives to surf ocean waves, his yoga mat and his life with the grace of a Pelican. “Your hands are a cue about your state of mind,” Finn said. So are your eyes, said Theresa Elliot, who blends yoga flow and dance in her Seattle studio. When your eyes are deep, soft and dark, Elliot shared, you know you’ve tapped your parasympathic nervous system. If you want more peace and calm in your life, then you need to build skill at being super chill: “How you move matters,” she repeated as a mantra.

“Why” requests intention, and that’s how I began the weekend, with a pause before movement to join a discussion of the Bhagavad Gita led by Arundhati Baitmangalkar (“Call me ‘Aru,’ like arugula,” said the articulate and immediately loveable yoga and Bollywood dance teacher who recently moved from her native India to Seattle with her Microsoft-employed husband.) In his epic pause, the Gita’s protagonist, Arjuna, asks, Why go into battle? His divine driver Krishna, a charioteer in the story, recommends that the young warrior buck up to his dharma and drop the drama. Doing and being cannot be separated, Krishna advises, and when you know yourself with naked honesty you cannot help but move forward to fulfill your place in the world. When you think, speak and act from a place inside that knows its divine role (dharma), you free yourself from apologies and applause. You stop agonizing about how you might mess up and step into your life with strength and clarity. The analysis felt relevant and ended with Aru leading us call-and-response, Kirtan-style through eight verses of the Gita: Her lovely voice and accent were a treat for the ears.

I stepped into practice that afternoon ready to groove it up with Finn, whom I studied with on Vancouver Island, B.C., to earn my teaching certification. His “Life Surfing” session included sage advice such as “Yoga is the art of getting out of your own way…and becoming a conduit for the wise guide inside.” With an eclectic stream of rock music as a backdrop, the flow class had us “getting tubed” on our mats-turned-imaginary-surfboards and “sliding out” when our mats magically landed at a skate park. Finn’s infectious energy showed that he’s definitely onto something with his bliss mission:  “I want to be a conduit for love…and for love to be my anchor, sail and compass.”

Stoked from my journey toward fun with Finn, I finished the first day of the conference with Budig, whose family I had known at the University of Kansas in the 1980s and ‘90s, when her father, Gene Budig, was KU chancellor and Kathryn was a child. After the super-charged, sold-out session of flipping upside-down, aptly named “Altimeter Check,” I complimented Budig’s ability to stay grounded in humility and humor despite her well-known celebrity (and multiple advertising gigs) as a hand-stand queen. “You know my family,” she laughed. “They wouldn’t let me get away with arrogance.” Indeed, Budig’s homespun style of teaching creates a comfort level for anyone interested. She uses terminology like “Jackie Chan Arms!” and “Grill a Panini between your legs!” to help students firm up for flipping booty-side-up and then offers safe choices and kudos for effort at any level. “It took me a full year to finally kick up into a full handstand--at the wall,” encouraged this woman who can now pretty much balance her whole body on her baby finger. Achieving any specific pose wasn’t the point. “It’s about focus and discipline.”

Bhagavad Gita-style pause: My biggest issue with strong inversions has always been that I just don’t care that much if I can do them. Budig’s class led me toward a potential “why bother.” A handstand in the middle of the room just might give me a tool and metaphor for practicing something with discipline (from the Yoga Sutras, abhyasa) while remaining non-attached to the outcome (vairagya), two terms we’ve recently been exploring in my own classes. Perhaps it’s time to buck up, drop the drama and excuses, and start driving some intention into my hands…tands. Hmmm. We’ll see about that.

A call to action on a grander scale came through loud and clear the following day at the conference’s keynote address by  Molly Lannon Kenny, founder and director of Seattle’s Samarya Center for Humankind. “Do not mistake the technique for the goal,” Kenny pleaded to a roomful of yogis who generally love to geek out about such pressing problems as proper shoulder placement in chatarunga. “So, what is the goal?” Kenny asked, then answered. “Love.” She summarized times in history that consciousness had shifted on a grand scale in the United States and declared that right now, with stirrings of economic and political turmoil, is a great time for another grand shift. “Arise. Awake. Stop not until the goal is reached,” she quoted the Upanishads.

Clarifying how to buoy intention over technique spawned interesting debate during some of the sessions. At an “Art of Assisting” class led by Seattle local Lisa Black, participants had wide-ranging views about when it’s proper for teachers to step into students’ personal spaces and physically adjust their postures. Known for working the room and touching nearly everyone during her large flow classes at Shakti Vinyasa Yoga studios, Black defended her position that healthy touch is valuable and should be offered unless a student explicitly asks not to be touched.  I offered that in my own experience an unsolicited adjustment has pulled me out of my personal yoga experience and made me feel like my pose wasn’t “correct” to the teacher’s eye. Class participants later in the weekend thanked me for my comment, and I was reminded that we are all students and all teachers and no experience is complete without everyone participating in their own unique and full capacity.

The contemplation of one’s place in the cosmos is as old as fire, said Debbie Murphy, who directed a Saturday afternoon session about blending ancient philosophy with modern yoga practice. Murphy pointed out that when humans discovered fire they had a unique reason to sit in circles, face one another, and converse about the stuff of life: earth, water, fire, air and the elusive “ether.” The five elements were a theme for the weekend’s conference, and Murphy, an Idaho teacher and studio founder, mixed them throughout her unique lecture and practice that called us back and forth between our current experience and the philosophical underpinnings of yoga. She pointed out that being a person on the planet hasn’t changed so very much in 4,000 years and quoted from the Upanishads: “May the human race unite in one fearless friendship.”

The conference’s venue at the Lynnwood Convention Center facilitated new friendships as faces became familiar and “hellos” evolved into hugs as we passed in the airy foyer between sessions. There was a table to share business information and plenty of vendors selling cool yoga stuff like mat bags, clothing, jewelry, yoga props and groovy shoes. I bought a pair of hand-sewn pants with birds and flowers painted up and down the sides and enjoyed greeting other new hand-painted pants wearers with soul-sisterly solidarity.

My new pants made a showing at the Trance Dance Saturday evening. Although attendance was small (about a dozen participants), the offering was big on heart, and I was delighted to share the experience with Eoin Finn and the conference organizer, Melissa Hagedorn, an indefatigable “why not? Let’s make it happen!” organizer who lives and travels in an RV with her husband, Chris, an outdoor  “adventure leader.”  Leading us in Trance Dance was Kiara Boch, a yoga teacher in Portland, who has trained with Trance Dance creator Shiva Rea. She began the evening with chanting and an “experiment” in lingering hugs (“Make eye contact!”) to pull us outside ourselves. The loosely guided experience then led us from rolling about like Madonna to twirling, lunging and gyrating toward a sweaty denouement  before dropping into a sweet savasana. Tired from two long days of yoga, I was pleased to leave feeling better than before.

Springing forward for Daylight Savings was a bit brutal with an 8 a.m. session on Sunday, but I arrived  properly caffeinated for “Vinyasa as Dance,” having no idea what to expect. To my delight, the three-hour session concluded with an IPad “Show-vasana” (my joke!) of our group dancing together to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” Choreographed and taught by Seattle teacher Theresa Elliot, the routine blended classical yoga postures with playful transitions set to the beat of the music. The class started slow and easy, with some range of motion exercises on the floor, and built toward postures with rhythm and steps until it felt like sleight of hand that our explorations had become a dance routine. I joked—and got a few laughs—that we should pop into another workshop and do a flash mob! A dancer since childhood, I was delighted to participate in our little performance and inspired to blend my yoga and dance more creatively. Elliot leads regular classes in vinyasa “dance” at her studio, Taj Yoga, in North Seattle.

Intrigued by Elliot’s creativity and love of movement, I decided to stick around for her seminar “Vinyasa as Meditation: Accessing the Parasympathetic Nervous System.” She guided us through her unique adaptation of a sun salutation that was infused with rocking movements that stimulate the body’s relaxation response through the vestibular system. “The reason I do yoga is to take a vacation from myself,” she explained, noting that her knowledge of the nervous system has helped her understand how to practice in a quiet, peaceful way even when the movement is strong. She showed one of her more unique practices with a performance of “Sargasso Sea.” Standing on a heavy round disc and strapped into ski boots, with a long gown and drapes to disguise the hardware, she mesmerized with her arcing, flowing and undulating. When she finished, I felt as though I’d been sitting in deep mediation. To ensure we left the seminar totally chillaxed, she placed us on hands and knees and head to head to stimulate the parasympathetic pressure point on the fontanel.  Our eyes were deep and dark after the “head push,” a good trick for helping students into relaxation at the end of class, Elliot noted.

Finn’s “Blissology Big Chill” finished my conference. The class included a reprise of his life surfing flow sequences and a long section of floor stretches and twists. “Yoga just makes me feel so freaking awesome!” he shared after edging us all into howling like wolves. Finn’s deep regard for nature is a common theme, and he shared with emotional detail a story about a whale trapped in crab wires and rescued by fishermen who risked their own lives to cut him away. “That, to me, is the definition of love,” he said. By the dozens we puppy piled into savasana at the end of class: I’ve always marveled at this bliss-master’s ability to turn a roomful of strangers into best friends and cohorts on a mission toward a better way of living. And when we got up and danced—and did a little limbo under a rolled yoga mat—I felt my hands had some new intention. And my eyes were soft. And I was ready to step up my game as a freshly inspired yogi. What I would do with all of this information would matter less than how I would do it—and why.