My Yogic Journey

(The below excerpt is the introduction of an essay I recently wrote (Yoga: Manifesting Our Dharma) in answer to the question, ‘What is Yoga?’)

I began my yoga and meditation practice in the Fall of 1991, just after completing a tour of duty as a ranger at a National Park in the Pacific Northwest. That fall, my brother first raised the idea of undertaking a bicycle trip over the Himalayas and across the Indian subcontinent. Time passed.

A year later, in the months before we finally embarked on our epic journey, my brother, a few years my elder and an aspirant of yoga, explained that to him, the practice of yoga was like lifting an upside-down cup off the ocean floor so that the contents of that tiny cup could freely mix with the greater ocean.

In his analogy, the water in the inverted cup represents our individual identity, and the greater ocean represents the vast, universal consciousness. Thereby, in yoga we “lift the cup,” shedding our insecurities and ego, and embracing the limitless wonder of the grand cosmos.

On our journey, we regularly stayed in ashrams (yoga houses) and attended yoga seminars across India. That bicycle trek deepened my understanding and practice of yoga and propelled me further ahead on the path of raja yoga, an all-encompassing approach literally meaning the ‘king of yoga’. That trip was the first time I was completely immersed in a yogic lifestyle.

Shortly after my return to the United States, I attended a local yoga retreat. There, a friend asked, “How was your bicycle trip?” In response, I told him stories of evening meditation sessions on remote hillsides, listening to the wisdom of aged sadhus (yogic sages), and rising in the pre-dawn hours to go practice yoga in the forest. My observant friend remarked, “Well it sounds to me like it was much more than just a bicycle trip.”

And it was. That trip reshaped my entire life and it made yoga the centerpiece.