Yoga + me + Keith, by Greg Bishop

So I gave my son Jack, the book “Life” the autobiography of Keith Richards, as a present this past Christmas. And fittingly he gave me the same present. I have been wondering lately whether there is any connection between my reading of Keith Richards Life and my practice of yoga, and to tell you the truth, I don’t see much of a connection at all, except...................there is the issue of collateral damage...........

Sometimes it takes a series of dramatic and seemingly destructive events in your life to force you to re-evaluate and make some changes. For me it was the dissolution of a twenty-year marriage that caused my world to suddenly appear very unfamiliar in a strange and disconcerting way.

I had practiced yoga in the past but only sporadically. As an architect with family and kids it was difficult to carve out enough time to practice yoga on a regular basis. But when my work dramatically slowed at the beginning of this summer, I bought an introductory 10-day unlimited pass at Be Luminous and challenged myself to come every day within those ten days.

I really struggled in those first sessions, but I gave myself permission to just show up and not over extend myself; to pace myself so I could still practice the next day. And now seven months later I am riding the momentum of that initial impulse, grateful that I can carve out the time to devote to this practice.

I have always loved to travel and see new places and landscapes but I have recently come to appreciate just how far I can travel locally, just within the confines of my own body, and within my own mind. There was a whole vast territory within myself waiting to be explored, if I could ever just get out of the way of myself. Because when you are struggling in your life, your mind confines you in a very small room with circus mirrors. You can take that small room with you wherever you go and project those distortions back out onto the world and think it is reality.

So with great attempts at patience and humility, I have been traveling the back roads of my body reacquainting myself with a body I have long taken for granted. I had forgotten how much my body thirsted for physical exertion and challenge. It startled me in my first vinyasa flow sessions how much sweat I was wringing from my body, like I was wet clay. My god, I thought this is totally exhausting but feels absolutely cathartic. Now if I could just figure out a way to do the same to my wandering mind, tactilely wringing it free of its mirages and distortions.

The practice of Yoga has given me a tool to sharpen and reshape my perception of myself as an individual and as an integral element of a necessarily larger fabric. I like practicing in a heated room with the company of others, feeling the flow of like energy. We are all charged particles in motion and I feel that I am in and of a larger dance.

And while I am aware that yoga and its eight limbs leads inexorably to the breakdown of our American Christian moral fabric, to socialism and might even be unconstitutional, (practicing yoga across state lines can be considered to be in violation of the interstate commerce clause), I am planning on continuing to practice this delightful and delicious art...........of yoga.

Greg Bishop
21 January 2011