Folklore

So, the abridged version: I started my practice of yoga in January two thousand and five. Aching from an undergraduate’s life and conceits, yoga offered a haven, an awareness of something totally different. I would not necessarily say I felt defeated by yoga at first, but I definitely did not have a huge sense of control in regard to the philosophy nor the apparatus of my body. Nevertheless, I persevered and found, in yoga, a science that speaks to me universally.

In November two thousand and six, I committed myself to being vegetarian and doggedly began my greater pursuit of yoga. February two thousand and seven I went to southern America: Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile; renewing myself, my path, and my resolve. March two thousand and eight my rambling feet talked me all the way across the globe to South Korea, a personal discovery so sharp and distinct: loquacity reigned supreme. A panoply of teachers crossed my path in my year there, elucidating new techniques, furthering my boundaries, opening my mind.

November two thousand and eight I met my soul mate. He appeared as if simply from the ether: an effervescent burst of light and possibility. From the moment we met to today has been one adventure after another. Met in Korea, explored Korea, he left in December for Australia, I stayed. March two thousand and nine meet and travel across Australia living in a station wagon for three months, spontaneous yoga classes held at random locations, diverse students. Filling our hearts with sunlight as its banner glimmers off of the lush fields and dells. June two thousand and nine I depart for India via Malaysia. July I spend ten days completely silent, discovering weaknesses and aversions, cravings and caverns of deep emotions; absolutely cut off from human input, disengaged from societal pressures, norms in a meditation called Vipassana. August he meets me in Nepal: trek through the Himalayas, walk back across the border to India, watch burning corpses on the Ganges, vault huge distances in clacking, sky blue trains, separate again at Yoga Vidya Gurukul, my home and final destination in India for one month, the ashram.

I spent September rising at five o’clock in the morning for Sanskrit mantra chanting, sitting on my mat atop a cool concrete floor, the hints of sunrise nudging across the mountaintops. Green monolithic plateaus surrounded us, a philosophy steeped in such ancient tradition: its majesty permeated the soil, the cotton fabric. Four weeks of lecture, asana, pranayama, ahimsa, satya, Patanjali, om, Swara, Hatha, Astang, anatomy, physiology, ayurvedic diet and lifestyle, devotional singing and dancing, karma yoga, early morning walks up the hill behind to salute the sun in its purest form: on rising; singing our love and admiration in reverberating tones. I discovered a self liberated from misery, congregated with joy. My connection, the yoking of mind and body, was fortified to this divine point, the experience so organic and mosaic: being a student, absorbing the atmosphere of education, expanding consciousness.

October brought me back home, a space I had not occupied for nineteen months: great loves lost and gained in that interim. I spent the better part of four months reintegrating back into the family framework: a cartographer of relations, a metamorphosis of meditations. Apart for five months, we built something based not on the tangible but the fable. January twenty eight, two thousand and ten we came back together, knowing the wait was over, the time together could span on endlessly now.

We spent a week in the States, bringing Andrew into the fold, and then we bussed it north. Subletting in an apartment in the Mile End, we have been bestowed upon a massive gift: the ability to share our joy and devotion to yoga, traditional diets, vegetarianism, ecologically friendly living, local, plastic-free lifestyles, the sharing of ideas and art and music with a little part of the universe in the Plateau, in Montreal. To make, from nothing, an integral something: a piece of community that outlasts generations. My fascination with tribal living, the birth into, or the elective choice of, a tribe, fosters the idea that symbiotic living, graciously treading the earth as small, connected and interdependent, communities is the way toward freedom.

So, this blog is going to keep the universe, in whatever capacity, abreast of this journey we call life, through which Andrew and I have decided to walk together, a tribe.