I was not a particularly athletic kid. During college I wore pearls, Bermuda shorts and keds to play intramural basketball. The ref had to stop the game because he couldn’t see through his tears of laughter as I jumped down the court holding the ball (I was attempting to avoid a call for traveling). My husband worried throughout my pregnancies that I would pass my “two left feet” gene on to our children. And, so, it came as rather a surprise to find that not only do I love yoga but I am a pretty successful practioner of the art.
The most surprising aspect of this fact is that I actually practice a very aggressive, Americanized form of vinyassa yoga — loud music, heavy sweat, “make it burn”, “go to your edge”, head standing, flow building yoga. I am totally addicted. For nine years, while slowly building my own commitment, strength and stamina, I have watched others flit in and out. I have often felt lucky that I have not been injured over all the years of hard practice. I have made fun of my one track mind and even blamed my car “for being able to drive itself up to the studio”.
But the truth, I think, is deeper than that. I believe that my TM practice supports my yoga in profound ways. It helps me maintain my own internal silence despite the heat, the noise and the vigorous demands of the exercise. It allows me to connect with my intuitive sense of my own body’s limits. It feeds me through rest and it offers me a backdrop with which to subjectively understand what a transcendent experience feels
like. My yoga informs my TM too, as it allows me to release the physical stress of my everyday life and really pushes me to want to sit in the quiet and just breathe later in the day.
Molly Beauregard | Educational Consultant
