Be Kind To Yourself

One of my yoga teachers once said "Please forgive me, God is not finished yet." As soon as I heard it, I committed it to memory.  What a great way to say.... life is a constant learning process.  As part of my learning process, I went to my first weekend of teachers' training at Yoga West a couple of weekends ago.  To give you some background on this, teachers' training is one weekend a month for 9 months, Saturday from 7am-8pm and Sunday from 7am-6pm, basically 180 hours.  There are many other requirements but these are the "classroom hours" requirements.  Within these hours, we probably did about 10-12 hours of yoga work, the rest is teaching theory.

When I had signed up for training, I had two fears, the mental and physical commitment. I knew the mental side was something I had to conquer, so even though I feared it, I welcomed it.  As for the physical side, this was my main struggle.  My spine has been a source of much pain in my life throughout the years.  Various doctors and xrays have given me the following list of diagnoses: 3 herniated discs in my lumbar region, twisted sacrum, loss of curvature in the neck, worn away L5 vertebrae, and lordosis of the lumbar region.  In addition, or because of all this, I also have horribly short hamstrings and a very week core which basically give me zero flexibility.  Needless to say, I constantly struggle, and fail, to even touch my toes.  

Not only can the physical pain due to this be tough to bear, the emotional and psychological pain of being in a yoga class and seeing everyone do so many of the poses and breathing with such little effort is tough to endure as well. This brings me to my Sunday of my first weekend of training.  Having gotten through the Saturday somehow, my body was aching with pain and soreness by Sunday morning.  My struggle to get through the Sunday was evident.  I could barely complete the poses and breathing.  During one of our breaks, I approached my group trainer, Gurudhan Singh, and explained to him that I was having  so much difficulty even doing the exercises and I was feeling inadequate watching everyone else.  "Not all of us have flexibility", Gurudhan said, "Some of us have a meditative mind for example... we are all different and we must remember above all to be kind to our bodies and love what they CAN give us."

I decided I would go back in and try again.  This time it was Guru Singh's class.  After another of his amazing lectures (I really urge you to check out his podcasts), we started our third repetition of the kriya for elevation, which was for our first 40-day sadhana.  Having barely gotten through the first two repetitions, my back was screaming at me and going into spasm.  Despite Gurudhan's words, my self-doubt and negativity started to creep up.  What was I thinking signing up for this training?  I mean really, how on earth can I teach exercises that I am physically struggling to do myself?....but I am still here.  Keep going....don't give up.

The kriya is completed by an 11 minute long meditation of the Adi Mantra, also known as Long Ek Ong Kaars.  By this time, I was having difficulty even sitting up and keeping my back straight and legs crossed.  I let my legs move any which way I could to try to allow the pain to subside but I kept my hands in gyan mudra.  When we finished the meditation, we stayed there with our eyes closed.  Guru Singh then instructed us to place our hands on our body where we needed the most healing.  Instinctively, I moved my hands to my lower back and gently placed them there.  As soon as my hands touched my back, tears came to my eyes.  I wasn't sure why except that I must have been absorbing my physical pain in an emotional capacity.  Within seconds though, my back became warm where my hands were and then... I felt nothing.  Yes I felt the heat on my lower back, but that was all I felt.  Panic struck me in that moment.  For a few seconds there, I thought I had pushed my back too far; I thought I somehow paralyzed myself.  Now I know that SOUNDS silly, but to go from the amount of pain I was feeling in my back, to feeling NOTHING.... it was such a shock to me.

While this is all going through my head, I hear Guru Singh's words pierce through, "Now turn to the person next to you and tell them what you felt."  Too scared to move, I just sat there and waited.  The lady next to me turned to me and said, "What happened for you?"  Then, a dam broke, tears poured out of my eyes as it hit me.  "My pain is gone."  Were the only words out of my mouth.  "What pain?" I was too overcome with emotion and tears but I managed to sputter out that my back was in agony and all of a sudden my pain was gone.  I don't know what happened but something happened.  She had told me that was amazing and she was so happy for me, and these types of things happen often in kundalini. Nevertheless, I still had to run to the bathroom to collect myself.

Upon returning from the bathroom, Guru Singh was speaking again.  "Some of us have a bad back," he said, "but its not really a BAD back... it's just a good one that needs a little bit of work."  He then explained that when he started kundalini he had a fracture in his spine and could barely bend forward and with time that healed.  "Be kind to your body... love your body... if your muscles don't stretch as far as you would like them to, thats ok.  You ask them to stretch a little more with you each day, but always be kind to yourself."

My first training weekend was completed hours later.  I still felt the warmth on my back and that stayed with me for a couple of days.  Did the pain come back?  Yes and no.  The soreness from that intense training weekend remained with me for days in my entire body, but my lower back was still fine.  Within a week or so though, my back went back to its "misalignment" which I am currently seeing a chiropractor for. However, for those few blissful days, I floated on a cloud of both amazement and pure bliss.  Magic had flowed from my hands through meditation.

We are all capable of healing.  The body is an amazing thing.  Your cells regenerates every 72 hours.  Why not imprint them with something positive?

Be kind to yourself, and in that kindness, you find the grace to project kindness to others.