Why I do Yoga

When I read a yoga teacher's biography, there is often a part about why that person came to yoga: to mend an injury, to find peace, to de-stress, etc.

I am also often asked, "Why do you do so much yoga?", or "Why do you want to be a yoga teacher?", or "How did you get into yoga?"

The real honest answer is, "I don't know". I really don't know. I didn't have any ground-shaking reason to start yoga. I don't have any grandiose "save-the-world-now" reason to want to teach yoga. I do not necessarily *expect* anything from it when I do it.

All I know is, I feel most myself when I do yoga. That's all there is to that.

This fact used to bother me a little bit, "But, don't I need a fancy schmancy explanation to tell the world?", I'd think to myself. After all, when someone asked me why I do yoga, "I dunno" just doesn't seem to inspire confidence, does it?

After reading the quote below by Martha Graham, I can now say this, I do yoga because I am directly aware of the urges that motivate me.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable it is nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than others.
- Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille

Teachers who have influenced me: Part I - Steve Ross

Steve Ross was one of those first "real" yoga teacher I knew of. He had a show on the Oxygen channel, and in high school and college, every day I would wake up at 6AM to catch his yoga class, Inhale.

Waking up at the crack of dawn was no small task for me, a major night owl, so I would sleep on the couch in the living room, and set the TV to automatically turn on at 5:55AM, and most of the time, I was doing yoga half asleep, and would only really wake up when I fell over trying to do Vrksasana (Tree pose).

I didn't know much about yoga then, at least not the way I know about it now. I didn't know how the psoas works as part of the hip flexors, and how it affects the lumbar spine and femur. I didn't know who Patanjali was, and what yoga citta vritti nirodha meant. Steve's class was something I liked doing for no reason.

Years and years later, after Inhale went off the air, and I had been branching out in the wide world or yoga, I snagged a copy of his book, Happy Yoga, from the Seattle Public Library, and brought it on a vacation to Floria to hang out with my friend Gayle. Little did I know that this book was the first door to my exploration of yoga philosophy, and the simple but definitely-not-easy lesson: "you can't get happy, you can only be happy".

A year after scouring Steve's yoga book, I finally met him in person, flesh and blood, at the Southwest Yoga Conference. When I stood in front of him, I cried, cried, cried, and then I cried some more.

The most important thing that Steve Ross taught me, and brought to my life, is that life is full of humor and music, and that yoga without laughter is just a lot of painful stretching.