The forever spiral of yoga

Inside an old brewery in north Berlin, there is a tiny museum dedicated to artifacts and snippets about life in eastern Germany between 1945 and 1989.

Any story can be told in a million ways. This one is told with melancholic derision. Can you believe all children were forced to learn Marxist theory? Can you imagine not having access to branded goods? Look at the force used to keep folks from voicing dissent!

It’s not that I don’t get it. Humans are hardwired towards freedom of thought. Anything that limits our ability to make up our own mind feels uncomfortable, counter-natural, wrong.

But I don’t see the stark difference between then and now, them and us. All societies have a tendency to group-think. The violent clamp-down on student peace demonstrations these past months in the US tells us that voicing dissent isn’t considered acceptable there either. No group in power has the monopoly on wanting to keep that power to themselves in perpetuity.

What does this have to do with yoga, you say?

More than you think.

As a process of self-discovery, yoga is inherently counter-cultural. There can be no group-think when you truly enter yourself. This is not a pendulum swinging — action and reaction, forever and ever — it is more like a spiral turning inwards and outwards all at once.

There is no unknowing yourself. There is no unliberating yourself. There is only diving in and re-emerging, similar but forever changed, over and over again.