Is it:
- Find a yoga school with the most skilled teachers.
- Go to an ashram in India; study with a famous guru.
- Find the best and oldest style of yoga; practice three times a week.
- Practice what ever style of yoga you are doing every day*.
Hint: It’s the least-sexy choice.
Do you remember Gorbachev? Russian President from the ‘80’s? He brought down the wall between East and West Germany. Ended the cold war.
Why? Because he practiced yoga every day.
(That was choice number 4.)
The mark on his head came from an early headstand injury. Those crazy Russians, trying to out-do each other in the snow. Polar Bear yoga, they called it. But this crazy ego-driven phase didn’t last long for Gorbi. That’s what I used to call him in my class. Because his daily practice pushed him lightening speed towards the higher echelons of enlightenment.
Without a daily yoga practice, life abides by the forces of yin and yang. Imagine all aspects of life separated into two camps: One called the light side, and the other, the dark side.
The light side – yang, light, open, strong, life.
The dark side – yin, dark, closed, weak, death.
There is a dot of the opposite colour in each side.
The yin-yang symbol is not static as we see it on paper. That dot inside each ‘colour’ grows, like a seed, until the side that was once white becomes black. The same happens on the other side.
Let's pause for a moment and transpose this moving image of yin-yang over 'life'. Is your head nodding involuntarily because you're having a profound realisation about the mechanics of life? Me too!
Without a daily practice of yoga, the forces of yin and yang are true. However, when you practice yoga daily, another force becomes truer. I know, you can’t have something truer than true – except for (whisper for dramatic effect) right now !
There is an alternate system that runs parallel to the forces of yin and yang. It shows up when you take on a daily practice such as yoga or meditation. Some call it wu-chi. Bless you. Its symbol is a circle that has only white inside. No black. It is emptiness from which fullness flows.
Woah!
In the beginning Gorbi used to come to the yoga center every evening totally stressed out, mumbling something about wanting to wipe the United States off the map, finish his war heads sooner.
After a few months he would come in with smaller complaints - the cold, traffic, missing the Ashtanga mantra. After one Mysore class, which had a particularly potent affect on him, he complained that he was starting to feel like he was unsticking from the drama of politics.
More months passed. In silence. He seemed to be observing his own transformation.
In 1989, then a year into his daily practice, Gorbi ordered the wall to come down. He fast made peace with his enemies and endured another two years of politics before he deemed the game utterly ridiculous. He told me that politics simply washed over him and he felt unmoved to react.
Kryptonite for politicians.
Through the looking glass of wu-chi, the show is still the same. All that changes is one's point of view: from the mosh pit to backstage, so to speak.
You can ask Gorbi what wu-chi feels like, but he will just tell you what he tells everybody.
Sit. Practice. Every day. Find out for yourself.
This is not a picture of Gorbachev.
(* If you practice an inappropriate style of yoga, practicing it daily will quicken your resolve to find a style that suits you better.)