SHAGBARK YOGA

"My God, what have I done?"

 - Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime

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...or, Nothing Good Ever Comes Easy

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From adolescence onward I had some deep, if faint, understanding that I would (or should) some day end up doing something with my life that leapt beyond the conventional and required a personal commitment beyond the ordinary. What took me forty years of life was to begin to understand what that meant.

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I'd been rather despondently searching for life's meaning ever since I read Jonathon Livingston Seagull when I was 15. It was two decades later that I picked up a book that had been recommended years before. In the pages of Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior were answers to questions that I had learned to believe didn't really have answers. I joined a Buddhist study program and began to meditate.

My life changed.

 

I've enjoyed a host of extraordinary teachers who, through no fault of their own, gently and often unwittingly steered me toward what now seems the inevitable path that finds me here. Perhaps the most influential of these teachers has been experience itself, filled with all its surprises, its treachery and its gifts.

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Stepping into Yoga...And Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

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In 2011, I completed a 200 hour training in Vinyassa Flow and started teaching and learning in earnest. Once I started my training, I was slowly and inexorably propelled. I'm trained as a Pilates instructor and carry two Indoor Cycling certifications. I have a 500 hour certification in Viniyoga, an 800 hour Viniyoga Therapy certification, further Viniyoga training, and lots of study and practice. This cornucopia of teachings informs by body, my speech and my mind.

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In Sanskrit, the original language of yoga, there is a term: svadharma. It can be defined as our purpose, our mission in life. I'm not quite so bold as to proclaim that I'm fulfilling some sort of preordained destiny, and yet...

 

Here I am...

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I know that I love what I do. Insatiable interest and curiosity to understand and to share this work is what drives me, what inspires me, and at the end of each day, what satisfies me that I've done something to try and make a positive difference in this world.

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My hope is that our paths may cross, and that we can somehow share the experience of using the tools from this remarkable tradition to create change for both of us - and for all of us.

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- Steve White, C-IAYT, eRYT-500

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"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded"

- Ralph Waldo Emerson