Yoga Journal
23 March 2009
Why did I write the book? My trip to India was inspired by Paul Brunton’s wonderful book A Search in Secret India. I was enchanted by his journey through India in the 1930’s – by his search for holy men and enlightenment. I wanted to visit the ashram of his guru Ramana Maharshi in Tiruvannamalai, and to meet some of the present day gurus and sages – Iyengar, TKV Desikachar, the Hugging Mother - and their disciples. My practice had been limited to asana, and occasionally pranayama and meditation so I wanted to try some of the more esoteric approaches to enlightenment - Bhakti yoga – the yoga of devotion, Jnana yoga – the yoga of self knowledge, Nada yoga – the yoga of sound. Much of what is written about yoga is so serious – it can feel quite intimidating. I hoped that my book would be a welcome relief for all those people who like me, are not natural born yogis – people who weren’t raised by hippies, who don’t have bodies that can bend into the shape of pretzels, who work in the material world, who struggle their way through class trying hard not to think about having a glass of wine afterwards but, despite all this, long for the chance to go on a spiritual pilgrimage to the heart of yoga. It seems that yoga can't help you find a husband! But it could be useful to improve relationships with the opposite sex. What do you think? Given that every yoga holiday I have ever been on has featured only one man statistically it’s a very bad way to meet a husband! But if you look beyond the statistics at what yoga actually does for the internal then I think there is no better way to improve your relationships. Before I went to India I felt that there was something missing in my life because I didn’t have a boyfriend. I found that by the end of my six month yoga trip I had a much greater sense of self worth, of compassion and self acceptance – I attribute this to a combination of yoga, travelling alone around India for six months, and the humbling example of the Indian people who taught me to be content with life as it is. I no longer thought that finding a boyfriend was the answer to everything. I came home, downshifted to a smaller flat, got a part time job and started working on my next book – a year later I met my fiancé David. We are getting married next year. Living in peace with ourselves, with our defects and faults, accepting fully our inner self. Perhaps this is the new nirvana, is your conclusion in the book. How can we reach such a balance? Attending a yoga class or deciding to live in India for ever? India’s true gurus are the so called ‘ordinary’ people of India - the waiters, tailors and government officials. They see yoga as a state of mind, an attitude to life, and the world as their school. Yoga is, for them, ‘a harmonious way of living’, not a one off physical goal, it is something internal – all they have to do is look within. Enlightenment is, for them, about trying to increase the moments of seeing clearly, and choosing wisely in daily life. Yoga is, for them, an unremarkable thing – breathing, meditation and perhaps a few simple sun salutations. It is practiced informally, not in a big class on the instructions of a big name teacher, but at home – quietly, without fuss. The thing that really distinguishes these ‘ordinary’ people is their ability to take pleasure in everyday life, to wonder at small things. Their happiness, their contentment isn’t spoilt by a desire for material wealth. Their day doesn’t start with ‘If only…’ They don’t need to own something, to have something, in order to be happy. Their happiness is right here, right now, in this place, wherever ‘this place’ happens to be. This is the true yoga practice, and the one to which I aspire every day – and every day I fail – held up by some desire for a new pair of shoes, or a lack of consideration to a stranger. My greatest desire is that perhaps one day I will earn the honorary title ‘ordinary’ Indian. Why is yoga practiced by so many Western people nowadays? I think that many of us Westerners start off practicing yoga because we want to get fit, or perhaps because we feel stressed. But the more we practice the more we find that the practice goes much deeper – that it helps us to peel back the layers of our physical, emotional and spiritual being – so that we begin to use it to find out what is important to us, to know when we are off track. It keeps us grounded and returns us to simplicity, and to self reliance, enabling us to listen to the wisdom of our bodies, to be quiet for a while when all around us is at sea. I think it helps us to understand our place in the world, at a time when it is very easy to feel lost. What about your job after the long journey in India? Do you think the yoga experience can increase creativeness? I think that yoga’s ability to help us peel back the layers enables us to discover what makes us happy, to find our bliss, to unlock our creativity. I always used to take a bath when I wanted to relax and let good ideas come to me – now I just get on my mat and do a downward dog or a headstand – literally turning the world upside down seems to help me see things differently. Nehru started each day in New Delhi with 20 minutes of yoga practice, including a few headstands which he said increased his good humour. I believe that the discipline of yoga gives us a focus, an ability to concentrate which enables us to let that creativity flow, which makes us much more productive. You came back from India, feeling that your natural place was London. How can yoga help to live everyday life in a big city like London, Milan, New York, Paris? Yoga can help us to feel peaceful and calm wherever we are. I’ve always thought that hiding away in a mountainside cave to find peace, as some of the holy men of India do, is cheating. Chances are the mountain is a pretty peaceful place to be. The real test of yoga’s ability to help you find peace is in the daily life of a big city. When I think about the ‘ordinary Indians’ living in ‘maximum cities’ like Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai – the rickshaw drivers, the shopkeepers, the mail man at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram - they all found joy in small things, they could be happy on any street – even if, in the case of the rickshaw drivers, they seemed to have absolutely no idea what street that was! It teaches us a sense of detachment, to stay calm in all of the madness of city life. Yoga gives us the space to be calm; it’s like a little oasis that we can carry around with us. The image of Lucy in the book is yoga-oriented, ironic, disillusioned and a little bit sinful at the same time, searching for a spiritual path as well as a worldly satisfaction. You are one of us! How does yoga help to reach practical yet spiritual targets? What's the link of sacred with profane through yoga? After seven years of study in a remote cave, Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya - the godfather of modern day yoga - was asked by his guru Sri Ramamohan Brahmachari to forgo the renunciate life and instead to return to his home in southern India to marry and teach a yoga that benefited the modern (1920s) householder. The academic prowess, aloof manner and disciplinarian teaching style of his youth eventually gave way to a desire to communicate the joys of yoga to a wider audience. Realising that yoga had to adapt to the modern world or disappear forever he laid down yogic paths as diverse as Iyengar and Ashtanga - there was something for everyone. What I take from this is that yoga is not a static tradition; it is whatever the individual needs it to be – constantly evolving through each practitioner's deepening knowledge and experience. In today’s world most of us yogis choose to combine a spiritual path with the pursuit of worldly satisfaction. That it can help us navigate a path between both of these desires is a testament to the power of yoga in helping us to live a harmonious life.