5 Years of Searching, Agony, and Occasional Glimpses of Insight!

by Garry
(Calgary)

Don't let anyone tell you that deep personal insight is easy! On the contrary, it is hard work, has, at times, made me physically ill... and yet...

Oddly enough, I am satisfied in my journey to date. I guess hard work is its own payoff, eventually.

I got started with Beth in 2005. I had just retired and I wanted to get back to exercising, and, frankly not doing anything was quite boring. A Buddy pointed the way to Beth's class and I went twice weekly, Tuesday mornings and Wednesday evenings.

It was like being in two different worlds!

Tuesday morning was all women (I was laughingly referred to as "the token male".) they all had several years of working with Beth, and even understood what she meant when she referred to "manipura". I thought it must be some female body organ that I had missed in physiology class.

Mostly I sat in the back corner and cursed under my breath and groaned a lot.

What a contrast Wednesday was. Half the class was male, and the dynamic was substantially different.

It took me a while to realize that Beth led us all down the same path; she made it clear that yoga was hard work, and she was dismissive of the "flexible body" types who just collapsed into a pose. She made them straighten up, or out or however... and they had to use muscles to slooowly move into a pose.

For us "rigid body" types she had others support us so our bodies could learn to feel the pose. that support was the "key" to her genius, I found out.

A typical class would start with meditation and chanting ("New age garbage", I initially thought to myself.) Then we would practise poses that led us to the culminating asana, wherein we tried, imperfectly as far as I was concerned, to mimic her efforts.

THEN, the ultimate yoga approach! We would get in groups of 3 or 4 and whilst one person moved into the asana, the remaining group members supported body parts. It gave us a chance to move deeper into a pose, since our muscles were not going into panic mode on the assumption that we were going to injure ourselves.

What an amazing approach. Supportive yoga. I love it.

Am I now more flexible? Not much... I'm still old and creaky.

Do I join in the meditation and chanting? YUP... I find it comforting and focusing and centering to do that.

Have I got some personal insights... inner connection... living in the now?

Definitely. And therein is the power of what Beth lead me to.

I am still having trouble coming to grips with all this and verbalizing it... but it is there. And virtually ALL of Beth's long-term students feel the same.

I am betting they will leave their stories here, too.