Yoga Journal #55: Enlighten Up.

Had a POWER yoga class this morning – it was awesome – loads of vinyasa’s with double dips and planks, planks and more planks and more double dips! The savasasana at the end was epic – felt like I was just sinking into the ground after all that work!

Power yoga is for the yoga for the “A-type” personality – and there is definitely a part of me – that LOVES it!

We starting looking at themes within yoga classes and sequencing – so interesting and first looking at sequencing and it seems like it’s COMPLETELY overwhelming because there are SO many different options, variations and combinations to it all a bit eeeeee!!!!!

We also looking at themes in teaching which I really found useful – I really like it when teachers have specific themes – it helps the class feel like there is some kind of focus or centred-ness to everything.

On Friday we watched the documentary “Enlighten Up” about a journalist who asks the question – can yoga “transform” anyone? So she picked a random guy (also a journalist) and got him to follow a yoga practice daily for 6 months.

He went to a few different classes and teachers until he found a style that he liked – ashtanga. He started doing a bit of yoga in the USA and then decided they were to go to India to meet the founders of Yoga Sri Pattabi Jois.

In India he did yoga every day – he questioned so many of the indian gurus who are freaken awesome. He said that he was starting to feel quite a few changes in his body/energy etc but nothing really more. After a while he is interviewed and started to get emotional. When asked what “yoga” is – he says he can’t really explain and that it’s like a tool to be able to analyse and give him perspective to the black box that is his mind.

He starts getting emotional and he says that yoga makes him feel more connected with himself and other people. He says he wants to go home. He says he misses his family (even thought he had just said a few weeks earlier that he was thinking of staying on longer after the completion of the documentary)

At the end of the 6 months he goes back to the USA and said he didn’t feel like there was this huge transformation or that he reached “enlightenment” or got closer to “god” or whatever it is that he was supposed to feel.

When he returned to the USA the documentary said that he had taken up a journalist job writing for a rock climbing magazine and doing lots of rock climbing. He was not continued with Yoga.

We had some discussion about this movie afterwards and I have to say I was quite disappointed with the ending. I guess I expected him to have this massive transformation – to see the complete amazingness of yoga and to get back home and continue on. Many of the others said that perhaps his path is different. Perhaps this is not his time to come to yoga. Perhaps his path of clearing his mind is not through yoga at all.

It was good for me to see this movie I think – because of how desperate I feel to bring everyone I love to yoga because I know the amazing effects it has had in my own life. But maybe it is not for them – maybe this documentary is just the seed taht has been planted and maybe the  change is more subtle and more subconscious. I’m not sure.