I love elegant words and ideas. It delights me to find a new language that, in just a word or two, encapsulates a concept that would take many in English.
Words like yanantin in Quechua—harmony between two different things (a man and a woman, for example). Or l’esprit de l’escalier in French (thinking of a clever comeback too late). Or kleshas and gunas in Sanskrit.
Kleshas, as Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 2.3 tells us, are obstacles to growth (ignorance, fear of death, ego, attachment, and aversion). Gunas (Sutra 2.15) are qualities of nature or mind: rajas (fire), tamas (sluggishness), and sattva (balance).
With each discovery, a door opens in my mind at the depth, the cleverness, and the opportunity to explore, reflect, and practice svadhyaya (self-study) with each new wisdom stream.
For example, ignorance of a deeper understanding of yoga kept me repeating a very simple hatha yoga sequence for 18 years; never venturing to discover more. I prided myself at the time on all the money I was saving. From this little set of asanas, I had all I needed to know to take care of my scoliosis and remain pain-free in my home practice. Or so I thought.
Then, propelled by a mid-life crisis, I moved to LA and began taking yoga classes again. How much yoga had changed! It couldn’t possibly be me who had changed. Could it? Apparently I was ready for transformation.
I opened to new teachings. To new ways of seeing and doing things, because my life had become a tamasic quagmire prior to my move.
I turned a page of my life, chucked 18 years of living in the Bay Area, a partner of 15 years, and all else that was suddenly suffocating. A new self beckoned . . . one I could sustain, be proud of, and reenergized by as I entered my second 50 years.
And so I rebirthed a new me. If I was going to flash hot with my new rajasic hormonal superpowers, then I wanted my outer self to reflect the freshly forged 50-year-old I was capable of being. I had taken workshops with 70 and 80-year-old yogis and dancers. I knew it was possible to remain alive and inspired for a very long time. I wanted that future for myself.
I embarked on a sampling of the various yoga studios on LA’s West Side. I became attached to one teacher’s sweet, candlelit classes at YogaCo on the Promenade in Santa Monica, where—at the end of a gentle evening sequence—he serenaded us in savasana with his guitar.
Ego grew proud of mastering the choreography without mastering the inner workings of the poses. In my rajasic LA state, I became attached to power yoga classes. Digging the entrained ride of 75 lithe, 30-something bodies (plus me!) soldiering through Surya Namaskara B, mats ½” apart. Denying the growing aggravation I felt in my lower back. My ignorance of how to take care of my body in a yoga class, possible careless instruction, externally rotated poses not being introduced before neutrals . . . all this contributed to the aggravation of my scoliosis and the cultivation of a chronic SI joint injury.
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I learned proper hand alignment for headstand. I’d been a gymnast as a pre-teen, blithely performing back handsprings, walkovers, and somersaults. But with age and office work, I found the occasional adult attempt to revisit my limber past resulting in pain and injury.
Still, muscle memory kept reminding me of the exhilaration of a backlfip. An exuberant, spontaneous cartwheel at thirty, however, taught me a good lesson in humility, as I hobbled away from my attempt holding my aching lower back.
This fantastic, gymnastic realm still beckoned whenever I saw Cirque du Soleil or contact improv dance. Sadly, even by the time I was 30, it remained the realm of others—the young and flexible. A mindset of fragility was threatening me; and was reinforced by my peers. At my 30-year high school reunion I was shocked to find most of my former classmates stiff, decrepit, and gray—having already suffered cancer, major surgery to correct lifelong eating and drinking disorders, or worse—dead, from alcoholism, cancer, anorexia and a host of other modern ailments. What if I did a flip or a headstand at my age? I might break my neck. Or die.
With the headstand advice I nonetheless felt more reconnected to the joy I’d felt as a young flipper. The thrill of possessing a body that was a magnificent instrument, of being a “fine animal” (in the words of late runner/author George Sheehan) called to me. I wanted that feeling and confidence back.
I tried contact improv dance. At the invitation of a patient, strong partner, who was also my age, I rediscovered freedom in movement from all the protection I’d practiced for years because of my scoliosis. Flow and trust in my body’s inner wisdom returned.
My year in LA ended. I’d learned much about sadhana, screenplay writing, and love. Spirit called me back to the Bay Area to regroup and reconsider.
At first happily settling in, I soon found myself rattled by an odd and repetitive energetic occurrence. My hackles rose regularly upon encountering a certain person in a yoga class I take frequently. One morning, when this phenomenon began again, I decided to plant in my mind an idea I’ve been working with quite a bit lately. Sometimes what we resent most in someone else is something we have marginalized and need to look at in ourselves. An hour or so later, while in an inversion, point of view askew, my gaze rested on this puzzling person. I had an “aha” moment, where I realized exactly what part of myself I’d been pushing away upon my return to the Bay Area, and which this stranger personified. Aversion became a teacher. And transformed into gratitude toward this completely oblivious stranger who had taught me so much about myself without consciously doing anything on their part. The power of projection, guided with redirection, became insight.
I’d like to say that moving back “home” created sattva. At best, and perhaps this is true for most seekers—it is a state I visit from time to time. I wish to bask on the sattvic shores of life more often. With intention, renewed devotion, and discipline, the many aspects of my life—what I ingest, who I spend my time with, what I turn my attention to at the end of the day—will continue to evolve to embrace this balance. And not only will rajas and tamas become my lifelong friends, as they are beginning to, but so will my sattvic self.
