YOGA, THE TRANSFIGURATION, AND HEADSTANDS

I had just finished a 200 hour yoga teacher training and was sitting on faux lambskin rug in my tiny Santa Monica guest house contemplating the meaning of life - assimilating what I’d learned in teacher training with what I had already come to realize about the human experience and existence-at-large. I was putting it all together you might say. I had grown up with a belief in a God of Spirit with whom all things were possible. I had experienced and witnessed many so-called “miraculous” things from an early age and had always been a seeker for the deeper meanings of life. Living in New York City for 12 years of my adult life there was much available to explore and I explored a lot of it! When I made the move to Los Angeles, I spent a couple of years without a solid connection to anything that had previously provided a spiritual core.  Yoga teacher training found me here. It once again gave me an underpinning. I remember drinking in the philosophy like it was my first sip of water after a long trek in the desert. Many of the principles sounded very familiar to those I had grown up with in the teachings of Christianity (specifically Christian Science), and subscribed to in adulthood as well. It was definitely east meeting west and it was teaching me what I had suspected all along -  that universal truth is the thing that connects all spiritual teachings.

 

That morning in Santa Monica some waves of unresolved grief were coming up. My mother and two brothers had passed away years prior at different times but all in what you might say was “before their time”. My father had gone on a couple of years before at what would be considered a normal age, but we were living 3000 miles apart at the time so I didn’t get to see him. Looking back it was beautiful how the east and the west came together in a moment of revelation. Something had lead me to take another look at the biblical story often referred to as the transfiguration (narrated in Matthew 17 and Mark 9). This story depicts Jesus with three of his disciples Peter, James, and John being “transfigured” (defined as being transformed into something more beautiful or elevated). In this state his disciples witnessed him interacting with Moses and Elias – prophets who had lived over a thousand years prior. Revisiting this story from the expanded context I now had, I realized that while the form it takes is temporary, identity is eternal and can be recognized by senses that are attuned beyond the world of form. As far as I can understand it, that’s what was happening with Jesus and his disciples in that experience, for not only were Moses and Elias there but their unique identity was still intact and recognizable, though not physical. In a similar way, the spiritual teacher Ram Dass speaks of how his guru Maharaji would interact with beings that were unseen to others who were tuned only to the physical plane of reality.  I’m not advocating a type of spiritualism here nor do I claim to communicate with spirits. I will say that when I go into states of meditation – both moving and still – I do often experience a presence that causes me to feel a sense of oneness with everything – you might say with Life Itself.  And as I thought about my loved ones from this perspective that day all sense of grief lifted once and for all. I understood and felt – not just intellectually, but physiologically and in my bones – that their identities were (and are) still intact and alive though not physical or in the world of form. It was as if the roof of that little guest house lifted off. I felt bigger than my body, bigger than the walls I was sitting inside, and lighter than a feather. Suddenly without even thinking about it I found myself fearlessly standing on my head in the middle of that faux lamb-skin rug. It was as if my body had to find a way to express what my consciousness was experiencing. I might add that before and since I still use a wall for my inversions so that momentary release from the human mind’s limits was a special one and perhaps a type of “transfiguration” in and of itself.

I’m so grateful that an inversion such as headstand (Salamba Sirsasana) was in my body’s vocabulary of movement. My years of teaching since this experience continue to confirm that there is a kind of psychology to every asana (pose). Different poses express and invoke states of mind – the physical can be used to influence the mental and vice versa for they are really one and the same. This may be a giant leap, but suffice it to say that the message highlighted for me in this one very small experience is that all religious and spiritual teachings merge in universal truth. Ultimately that’s what connects the east and the west and every individual. Human consciousness has evolved to a place where we can no longer divide by differences, we must find the common threads that unite us. That’s what I found in the experience I describe here. How fitting that the word “yoga” is often translated as “to unite”.