Yoga teaches me who I am

Almost 30 years ago, I trained as a massage therapist. The instructor also worked with energy and auras, and she did a short workshop on the topic (because we asked her to). I think all of us were somewhat skeptical, because, I mean, auras?! But she said something that made a lot of sense to me, even at the time, and that has become an increasingly important insight as I teach yoga.

She said, you don’t have to believe anything. You just have to feel what you feel and experience. If you feel energy, if you see auras, well, then believe what you feel and see.

This is an obvious truism in some ways. Beliefs that derive from experience are more like knowledge, because you know what something feels, tastes, and looks like, and you feel you can trust that.

But it is not always that obvious. All of us have to some extent learned to ignore the knowledge our body produces. To eat at certain times, hungry or not (or to eat too little to stay “attractive”); to sleep on a schedule determined by our work-places; to override the mind’s craving for spaciousness and connection in order to not appear so “needy” or “difficult” or “weird.”

In many ways, feeling what we feel is not something we are used to doing. It is something we have to relearn.

Yoga does that for me. Slowly, over time, but that’s what my practice offers: a chance to learn who I am.