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Yoga is a journey

This is an excerpt from Beyond the Pose by Lisa Greenbaum.

At the beginning of 2009, I was working through my yoga-teacher training journey and taking the deep dive through yoga philosophy. In the same moment, my father was diagnosed with stage 4, inoperable, and therefore terminal pancreatic cancer. This is a story of how these two worlds came together and forever changed and shaped me.

I was just shy of my 34th birthday at the time, for all intents and purposes a grown-up, but really still the furthest thing. To be clear, “growing up” was never high on my to-do list. Despite that, I have been fiercely independent for as long as I can remember and still am—not everything changes. I was grown up in that I had my own apartment and paid my own bills. But I just kept pretending the future was this far-off thing. I thought the things that I wanted most out of life would just come, despite my best efforts to push them away, if that makes any sense at all. Also, I was watching a lot of rom-coms at the time. I was still recovering from two painful breakups and about to add a third, in serious discussions as to whether or not to declare bankruptcy, and trying to salvage a failing business. I was also really good at living in my own tiny bubble: sweating out my stress every day by working as a full-time fitness instructor, with lots of friends who also preferred drinks and dancing to commiserating over life’s problems.

It all worked reasonably well until the rug was pulled out from under me—until the very safety net I had always counted on not only was in danger but was no longer going to exist. My father, standing in front of me looking as if there was nothing wrong, was dying.

Either because of or in spite of this, I found yoga. Not the yoga that is often misunderstood for its fancy poses and, according to social media, often performed in bikinis and on the edge of a cliff—but yoga. The yoga that is experienced by the very fiber of your being, with each cell working in harmony, from brain to heart to body and back again. The yoga that gives you a buzz of pranic energy by merely thinking about its great power. The yoga where true magic happens.

And while I have dedicated the last 15 years of my life to studying, teaching, writing, and reading as much as I can about yoga, it is a never-ending journey of discovery. I would be doing you a disservice if I even attempted to say that I knew everything about yoga. I do not, and I don’t expect I ever will. However, I promise you that once you begin this path, it won’t look or feel anything like you think it will, but it will irrevocably change you. My hope is that the words from this book spark a touch of inspiration for you to truly begin your own journey, if you haven’t already. That these words bring you the healing and solace that you need along your own path.

More Excerpts From Beyond the Pose

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