Category: SPIRITUAL PATH

I introduced yoga (Hatha) classes in Mt. Shasta

My life took a special turn in 1968, when I moved to Mt. Shasta. The special and amazing gift to me of teaching and demonstrating yoga came “by chance”.

Here I relate my preparation for teaching Yoga, demonstrating yoga and explaining yoga to people to whom it was really foreign. (I know it is hard to imagine, now, that yoga was an unusual practice in the USA in the 1960s.)

My introduction to yoga was in my high school gym class around 1962. My training as a dancer since three years old had given me a dancer’s grace and flexibility. Yoga seemed a good fit. By 1966, convinced by my reading of Autobiography of a Yogi and several books on Hatha Yoga from the library, I dedicated myself to the practice. Practicing on my own several hours a day, I also took classes from Sivaram and other teachers in San Francisco.

Avid Reader

As an avid reader, I then devoured books about yoga, yogis, yogic, mystic and “Hindu” traditions. Browsing the library shelves, I focused on the shelves in the 180-200s of the Dewey Decimal System, the books on ancient, medieval, and eastern philosophy. At that time, the main library in San Francisco had open stacks. There was access to arcane and obscure books decades old. It was a time of great opportunity for me to learn.

This study was full time and intense, I had no other work. I lived on savings and proceeds from the sale of the stock that my grandmother had bought me when I was a baby.

A Beautiful Practice

The classes, books, and the four hours of practice every day, coupled with the graceful training of 16 years of dance bestowed a beautiful practice, which was private to me. It showed in my body, though, and in my face, my countenance.

One of the books I brought home from the library was an “I AM” book, published by the St. Germaine society based in Mt. Shasta. Unbeknownst to me, this book and others in the series were normally available only to the members of the I AM organization based in Mt. Shasta.

A believer in miracles at that time, I avidly read this book about sightings of high spiritual figures on Mt. Shasta and the superconscious that is accessible to humans who focus on the I AM presence above the human frame.

On the last page of the book was an image of Mt. Shasta. The book had activated a desire in me to go to this mountain, which, a few years before, I had passed on the way to Seattle without much of a second look.

I focused on that little picture in the book and strongly said to myself “Oh how much I want to go to Mt. Shasta”.

Whether weeks or months passed, I don’t remember. But one day, my brother, who I hadn’t seen in a long time, came by with a woman I hadn’t met. He said to me: “I want you to meet my new woman. Her name is Vera. We got jobs in Mt. Shasta. Do you want to come with us?”

My brother did not know anything about my desire to go to Mt. Shasta. Nobody knew. It was just a strong thought that came to me at the close of the book. The miracle was right there in my brother’s question, though. My brother had never moved out of the Bay Area. He had never had a “new woman” but had been married for 13 years. Separating from his wife, getting a new partner, and moving 300 miles away was really out of his normal context.

Of course I moved to Mt. Shasta, staying with my brother for a few months with snow piled up everywhere that winter.

I continued my yoga practices. At the time I was somewhat oblivious to the cold. Taking cold showers toughened me. I slept with the windows open. In the mornings, icicles hung past the opening. I stood on my head outside. If anyone was paying attention to me, I didn’t notice. Like a drunk passed out on on a sidewalk, I was drunk with the power of yoga. But my brother was noticing. And soon he talked to people about his sister, who was freezing out his home with open windows and standing on her head.

I introduced yoga classes

As a result, people wanted to learn what I was doing. My own teacher, Sivaram, told me to go ahead and teach. I gave demonstrations and taught classes in various homes and in my own rented cabin in City Park.

The energy of the sacred mountain permeated my life there. There was no doubt that I was blessed, that my “overself” or spiritual consciousness was accessible there. I reached people who later taught yoga themselves, an ever widening circle of spiritual and physical well being.

Mundane, but joyful

Moving from Mt. Shasta in 1970 began a different period of my life, a life of responsibility, which was unfamiliar and difficult at first. Gradually, this, too, transformed into a life creative and joyful. Wherever I lived, I taught yoga. Like a tiny pebble thrown into a calm pond, ripples made their way to shores far from their source. Many of my friends and students reached farther than I could have ever dreamed.

Although I’ve taken classes and workshops from many teachers over the years, some quite famous, the path of yoga practice and teaching that captivated my students was that of Sivaram, my first real “in person” teacher. I might add, I find no web presence for him, no bio or any information. Funny that. The most influential and powerful people may often be quite unknown.

My Path of Yoga

My path of Yoga involved lots of imitation, at first. I read Autobiography of a Yogi in 1966 and believed every word of the book. Shortly afterwards, several things converged to shape and define what it was that I was practicing or thought I was practicing.

I began a Hatha Yoga practice, based on an Indra Devi book and daily followed her suggested routine. Within weeks of that beginning, I had the good fortune to attend the Mantra Rock Dance at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. There I heard the great Maha Mantra, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. Allen Ginsberg introduced both the chant and the great teacher and devotee, Swami Bhaktivedanta. The crowd joined in the chanting while a memorable light show lit up the ballroom.

Forging My Own Path

Soon after, I attended the storefront Krishna Temple three evenings per week. I listened carefully to the lectures by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, later given the title of Prabhupada. I enjoyed Hatha Yoga classes at the Cultural Integration Fellowship, taught by Shivaram. Shivaram also taught South Indian dance. As a member of his dance class, I performed as a gopi in a play with the other student dancers. The play, about the saint Tukaram, was written and produced by Sant Keshavadas.

There were many opportunities for learning Indian philosophy and choosing a guru at that time. But I could not choose a guru – there was something that didn’t ring true for me. Forging my own path seemed more authentic, somehow. Something I neglected to add to my practice, mostly because I didn’t believe in it, was use of affirmations. I didn’t believe that the words we said to ourselves had much bearing on our reality. Now I know, however, that our self-talk is very important to all aspects of growth and change.

Rising Early to Practice

I read several books each week related to yoga, its history, philosophy, legends, illuminated masters and so forth, and developed a practice of arising at 3 am every morning to do two or three hours asana, pranayama and meditation. In the evenings I returned to my tiny room for a different set of postures, more meditation and chanting in the evenings. It wasn’t hard at all to do this practice as I had a natural propensity to solitary study and solitary acrobatics from childhood. It was more of a matter of applying the new practices that I was learning.

Imitation

In the meantime, I wondered how long it would take to be just like Ramana Maharshi, Yogananda, Bhaktivedanta Swami, or Meher Baba, or any of the other illuminated masters whose photos I had above my little altar.

How strange that seems, now. We are no longer in the age of gurus, at least in the modern world around me. But it was because of having idealized these personages that I put forth the effort to develop my practice. As I matured, I began to realize that it wasn’t about imitating another, it is about developing a relationship with one’s own Self.

My Path of Yoga Included Family Talents

I also recognized that, for some of us, there are also obligations to ones ancestors, unspoken obligations which propel us to express ourselves in certain ways. It is almost, karmically, as if we cannot move ahead spiritually without discharging our family duty. (The guru system seems to imply that the guru takes the student on and all family obligations are dismissed. Since that was not the path I followed, I did have family obligations.)

What is those? Well, it surely is different for each family. And, within each family, each member may manifest that duty differently. And, the word duty doesn’t imply that it is arduous, necessarily, just that it needs to be expressed. This was brought home to me in 1981. I had been working as a stained glass artist/craftsperson for several years. It was an art form that I “fell into” because there was a modest demand for stained glass windows in my community and it was work that I could do at home, yet still be available for my two young children.

The Tiffany Exhibition 1981

In 1981, the Tiffany Exhibition came to San Francisco’s De Young Museum. The museum bookstore accepted my lampshades on consignment there and sold quite a few of them. This brought me a bit of local fame, with a newspaper article and a spot on the Sacramento News 10. At some point during the months when my works were in the museum I had a very vivid dream.

The Dream

My family members were all in my dream, my aunts and uncles, as if at a big family event. All of a sudden, in walked Nono, my grandfather, who had died years before. My grandfather’s skin, in the dream, was green, the same color as the skin of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead. I said to my grandfather, in surprise, “Nono, I thought you were dead!” And he said, “I am dead, I just came back to tell you that I am very proud of you that you have your work at the De Young Museum”. Then I woke up. Nono was an artist, he always answered when asked what his occupation was. But actually, painting pictures was his hobby. With seven children to support, he was a house painter by trade. But he felt inside that he was an artist. Many family members follow an artistic path, two of Nono’s children were very able artists. Artistic giftedness has carried on in his grandchildren and great grandchildren .

I can’t ignore my hands’ needs to create things of utility and beauty. The work itself is a kind of prayer.