The Seeker - Chapter 2

2007. I was a few years into teaching yoga and still very much in the mode of seeker. I was raised in the Methodist Church in Arlington, Texas. I dearly loved the community of the church, and yet I struggled in my late teens with the messages and teachings I received. I often felt less than.

In college I sought out different viewpoints to feel as good as. I studied philosophy, literature, history, journalism, and politics. My college roommates were Buddhist, atheist, or agnostic.

My Grandmere (mom’s mom) would ask me regularly if I’d visited the Wesleyan House on the edge of campus. I knew it would mean a lot if I could tell her I’d gone, but I never did.

My rebellious streak had nothing to do with drugs, alcohol, or bending rules. It was in spiritually seeking beyond the faith environment I was raised in. What if there was something more, different, in addition to, or separate from for me?

Continuing in that place as seeker in 2007, I attended the Yoga Journal conference in New York City. I was seeking my yoga. Just as Christianity has dozens upon dozens of denominations, so yoga has various sects, theologies, leanings, styles, etc.

Paramahasana Yogananda first traveled to the United States in 1920 as a delegate to the International Congress on Religions. Crowds were drawn to his lectures on Self Realization. He brought light to every space he was given a stage. And long before Yogananda’s visit Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau studied the Bhagavad Gita and wrote extensively on Self Reliance and Civil Disobedience.

This is to say the seeds of yoga have long been in the United States, including the traditions of the people Indigenous to these lands who lift spirit, beauty, and wisdom inherent in mother nature.

And yet it is only very recently that mainstream American culture further embraced the yogi. With the good comes the bad; the white washing, the cultural appropriation, the billion-dollar industry with very few winners.

But before that chapter, comes the creation of various styles of yoga. More teachers came from India to share yoga. More Westerners went to India to learn yoga. Our global melting pot created sects with varied representations of the eight limbs of yoga.

I’m getting off course. Back to 2007 and that yoga conference. I went to explore various yoga styles that had a strong foundation in the third limb, asana, but that also taught more.

That week I attended 2–3 classes a day and as many lectures. There were two teachers I kept gravitating towards. The first was Rusty Wells and the second was Sianna Sherman.

Rusty had created Bhakti Flow Yoga. He led a sweaty, fast paced vinyasa yoga practice infused with messages of devotion, service, and love. The physical practice made me feel cleansed and strong. His message made me feel good, but I wasn’t sure that was enough.

Sianna on the other hand confused the hell out of me both on and off my yoga mat. In the asana class her alignment cuing really frustrated me. It was intricate and detailed, and I couldn’t always translate what she was saying into my body. It made me want to learn more and keep trying. Her classes pushed me way outside of my comfort zone. And in the panel lectures, Sianna was captivating and easily wove her knowledge of yogic philosophy through storytelling. Whatever she was serving, that was my yoga!

When I got back to home to Washington, D.C. I looked up Sianna to see where she might be doing a teacher training or if she ever came to town for workshops. She didn’t have anything affordable or close by on her upcoming calendar, but before closing the door I dug into her story a bit more.

I learned that she was an Anusara Certified Teacher and that apparently this was kind of a big deal. Once on the Anusara Yoga website I navigated to teacher directory and hit the jackpot.

There was an Anusara Certified Teacher at Capitol Hill Yoga, the tiny community studio within walking distance of my condo.

I arrived for my first class plenty early. I opened the door and was immediately in the middle of an ongoing class. I quickly closed the door in embarrassment and only then read the signs and schedule of classes posted on the door. The waiting room is essentially outdoors. Please be quiet while classes are ongoing. Oops.

Fifteen minutes later (after the prior class students had left), I slunk into the studio and apologized for my earlier interruption. I wouldn’t say the teacher excused me, but she readily told me all the rules for class registration, payment, and expectations. I liked it.

I became a regular student in Elizabeth’s classes at Capitol Hill Yoga and continued to be more and more intrigued with Anusara Yoga. I learned that Elizabeth had trained and now also taught at Willow Street Yoga Center in Takoma Park, Maryland (just over the D.C. line).

Turned out Willow Street was the largest Anusara Yoga studio anywhere. I began attending workshops and classes at Willow Street too. I was exposed to more Anusara teachers and found each gifted and knowledgable. The practice itself was intelligent and made me feel as good as.

Around this time, having found my yoga I decided to leave my 9–5 job at the lobbying firm to pursue teaching yoga full time. I was in hook, line, and sinker and devoted myself to deepening my study and teaching Anusara Yoga.

I decided to bow out just as my colleagues began joining the Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton campaigns in the lead up to the 2008 presidential election.

Not many people understood, and I’ll say there are plenty of moments I regret this pivotal decision, but here we are. I was still seeking.

It helped immensely that Jason moved into my condo around this time which cut my expenses in half and my private health care cost was only about $100 a month. I went from teaching 6–7 classes a week to more like 11–12. It was just enough to scrape by. I was spending more time and investing more money than ever in yoga study, classes, workshops and trainings — all of it concentrated in Anusara Yoga.

One of the classes I picked up was a lunchtime class at the U.S. Supreme Court. The class was held on the basketball court, what is dubbed the highest court in the land. It sits on the fifth floor of the building, directly above the actual court room on the fourth floor. The class is open to all employees of the U.S. Supreme Court. Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor even joined (though never paid — ha) from time to time! If memory serves, I made $4–5 per person and class averaged maybe 8 people per week. The irony of offering a service at the highest court in the land with such little take home pay has never left me.

And that is perhaps a good place to wrap this chapter. In summary, I traveled to New York City in early 2007 to take some yoga classes in a hotel ballroom. The teacher I found in the ballroom cascaded to my choice to leave my traditional career and go all in on Anusara Yoga.

The good, bad, and ugly of that as soon as I write chapter three.