This is my second time reading this post. I wanted to spend more time with your words as my first time with these words prompted much reflection. Reflections of much conflict within.
I can relate to your experience and felt much of it in the few classes I took with you over this time you write about. Some Zoom live classes, others in the early darkness of morning with a Vimeo video. I very much felt your exploration and questioning, which opened my own. The space was created.
My conflict is not so much with the practice itself.
As my Ram Dass words of wisdom reminded me today, "Are all methods to be avoided? It doesn't seem so. But it does seem useful to see them in perspective. Methods are ships crossing the ocean of existence. If you're halfway across the sea, it's a little silly to decide methods are a bummer if you don't know how to swim; but once you get to the far shore, it would be silly to keep carrying your boat because there is no more water."
My conflict lies as a teacher of these practices. How do I create that space breaking down the walls of the old ways of teaching/classes? How do I stay strong and steadfast in my convictions in our current society with all its trappings in relation to these practices? How do I let go to honor each individual's way and not identify with the role they want me to play?
I have played with these questions over and over and over with no answer for myself yet. I have left teaching and come back and left again and come back. I have tried new ways and been frustrated. I have had vision and not known how to bring it forth. I have pondered and reflected ending in the same lost feeling. I have so many things that all make me want to scream!
I know my failures and foolishness quite well. Part of my process. This comment being part of that process.
So, I leave you with a deep bow of appreciation. Thank you for inspiring me to inquire within through your clear simple open hearted wisdom. I'm pretty sure I just stole that from Jack Kornfield's podcast intro. I may have a Heart Wisdom addiction, please forgive me 🤦♀️
And, I'm pretty sure my rambling on this subject has just begun. What a great gift I have received 🙏
Hi Eddie thanks for your honesty around your practice. I have had the same experience but was too afraid to follow my feelings for the fear of “getting it wrong” or “not doing it right”. Even though it felt right. Do you think lockdown and the Covid 19 period forced you into the awareness you described?
Hi Eddie I relate to your experience and thanking you for sharing your inner thoughts and emotions you being a Master Yogis I feel aligned with your directions am following you
Thank you for this beautiful read. Your wisdom has so much clarity and simplicity that it gives me courage and belief. That I’ll also be guided. Thank you for everything you do and share 🙏🏻
As a novice to any form of meditation - much less yoga, this post was hard for me to read - yet so intriguing and worth it. I wrote down many relationships of words, thoughts, and ways of being....My background consists of a lifelong struggle with institutions, going against the conventional grain of civic duties, and "the church." My calling is to give voice to liberation theology - advocating for those on the margins; and proclaiming reconciliation and restitution. Now, I'm aware of dynamics of judgment, grasping, maybe blaming. How can I jump into righting wrongs while allowing space?. Is being aware enough, or shall my nature and character listen for a more nuanced call? It seems I need a whole new language in order to find my way.
This is wonderful and resonant. I radically changed how I practiced in 2021, letting go of the Ashtanga practice I’d held sacred since 1997. I’d floundered all through 2020. I’d always been a lone practitioner, so it wasn’t lockdown. Ashtanga had simply lost its shine for me: it felt awful whenever I tried to do it. My body rejected it.
Ultimately, I remembered my old friend Anthony Grimm Hall’s extensive blogging on all things Krishnamacharya—and his love of Srivatsa Ramaswami’s teaching of Vinyasa Krama. I was lucky to find an amazing teacher, one of his students, Khushi Malhotra—zooming from a primary school in Uttarakhand. She is comparatively “under the radar”, yet is perhaps the best teacher I have ever studied with. I don’t say that lightly.
Reading your words here makes me feel something in the Ashtanga world started shifting, maybe even before COVID. Maybe it’s just all of us aging?! Regardless, I’m so much more at ease practicing VK— less compulsion, more freedom. Less pain! More awareness, too, as you say. It’s a deeper practice— for me anyhow.
Glad to know you’ve found a new groove, too, Eddie. All things change.
This is my second time reading this post. I wanted to spend more time with your words as my first time with these words prompted much reflection. Reflections of much conflict within.
I can relate to your experience and felt much of it in the few classes I took with you over this time you write about. Some Zoom live classes, others in the early darkness of morning with a Vimeo video. I very much felt your exploration and questioning, which opened my own. The space was created.
My conflict is not so much with the practice itself.
As my Ram Dass words of wisdom reminded me today, "Are all methods to be avoided? It doesn't seem so. But it does seem useful to see them in perspective. Methods are ships crossing the ocean of existence. If you're halfway across the sea, it's a little silly to decide methods are a bummer if you don't know how to swim; but once you get to the far shore, it would be silly to keep carrying your boat because there is no more water."
My conflict lies as a teacher of these practices. How do I create that space breaking down the walls of the old ways of teaching/classes? How do I stay strong and steadfast in my convictions in our current society with all its trappings in relation to these practices? How do I let go to honor each individual's way and not identify with the role they want me to play?
I have played with these questions over and over and over with no answer for myself yet. I have left teaching and come back and left again and come back. I have tried new ways and been frustrated. I have had vision and not known how to bring it forth. I have pondered and reflected ending in the same lost feeling. I have so many things that all make me want to scream!
I know my failures and foolishness quite well. Part of my process. This comment being part of that process.
So, I leave you with a deep bow of appreciation. Thank you for inspiring me to inquire within through your clear simple open hearted wisdom. I'm pretty sure I just stole that from Jack Kornfield's podcast intro. I may have a Heart Wisdom addiction, please forgive me 🤦♀️
And, I'm pretty sure my rambling on this subject has just begun. What a great gift I have received 🙏
Hi Eddie thanks for your honesty around your practice. I have had the same experience but was too afraid to follow my feelings for the fear of “getting it wrong” or “not doing it right”. Even though it felt right. Do you think lockdown and the Covid 19 period forced you into the awareness you described?
You are so refreshing modern and inspiring the true essence of yoga practice as I believe in myself thank you always for sharing
Hi Eddie I relate to your experience and thanking you for sharing your inner thoughts and emotions you being a Master Yogis I feel aligned with your directions am following you
Thank you for this beautiful read. Your wisdom has so much clarity and simplicity that it gives me courage and belief. That I’ll also be guided. Thank you for everything you do and share 🙏🏻
This resonates deeply! See myself in <every> paragraph... beginning to end.
Deep bow, Eddie Stern—genuinely realized and beautifully said. Thank you.
Lokaha samastaha sukhino bhavantu.
As a novice to any form of meditation - much less yoga, this post was hard for me to read - yet so intriguing and worth it. I wrote down many relationships of words, thoughts, and ways of being....My background consists of a lifelong struggle with institutions, going against the conventional grain of civic duties, and "the church." My calling is to give voice to liberation theology - advocating for those on the margins; and proclaiming reconciliation and restitution. Now, I'm aware of dynamics of judgment, grasping, maybe blaming. How can I jump into righting wrongs while allowing space?. Is being aware enough, or shall my nature and character listen for a more nuanced call? It seems I need a whole new language in order to find my way.
This is wonderful and resonant. I radically changed how I practiced in 2021, letting go of the Ashtanga practice I’d held sacred since 1997. I’d floundered all through 2020. I’d always been a lone practitioner, so it wasn’t lockdown. Ashtanga had simply lost its shine for me: it felt awful whenever I tried to do it. My body rejected it.
Ultimately, I remembered my old friend Anthony Grimm Hall’s extensive blogging on all things Krishnamacharya—and his love of Srivatsa Ramaswami’s teaching of Vinyasa Krama. I was lucky to find an amazing teacher, one of his students, Khushi Malhotra—zooming from a primary school in Uttarakhand. She is comparatively “under the radar”, yet is perhaps the best teacher I have ever studied with. I don’t say that lightly.
Reading your words here makes me feel something in the Ashtanga world started shifting, maybe even before COVID. Maybe it’s just all of us aging?! Regardless, I’m so much more at ease practicing VK— less compulsion, more freedom. Less pain! More awareness, too, as you say. It’s a deeper practice— for me anyhow.
Glad to know you’ve found a new groove, too, Eddie. All things change.