Coming Into Unity - by Mehtab, Yoga Yoga's Founder

Many people have the wrong idea about yoga. They think it is about self-indulgent postures that make your body beautiful or sitting by yourself and meditating with your eyes closed.

The classic image of the yogi is the solitary practitioner sitting in his cave, remote from the world and removed from everyone else.

In reality, one of the most important parts of a yoga practice is the one that is least understood by the public and by many yoga practitioners.

To experience yoga in its most complete form it must be practiced in a community - not by yourself or just for yourself. Yoga is actually more about discovering who you are and who you are in relation to others rather than living in self-absorption.

Yoga Yoga grew from a community of yoga students who came to our home in central Austin over 10 years ago to take classes my wife and I offered in our converted garage studio. The room held 6 students comfortably and the world's smallest bathroom opened directly into the yoga room. The homey coziness turned students into good friends.

We had monthly full moon healing meditations in the little yoga room. One evening over 40 people packed in there together! It was from this community of students and teachers that the first Yoga Yoga center was born. Today, Yoga Yoga has one of the largest yoga communities in the United States with thousands of students, over one hundred teachers, and the largest professional staff of any yoga center in the country.

Community is an interesting word, for it actually means to "come into unity" which is also the definition of yoga. In the practice of yoga, there are many words for those who come together in spirit to serve spirit.

The Sanskrit word for a "community of the heart," also refers to the experience of the union between Shiva and Shakti, power and consciousness that gives rise to the state of yogic enlightenment.

In Kundalini Yoga, the word for a yoga community is "sangat," or those who speak and live the truth together. It is considered to be an essential part of living a spiritually centered life. The ultimate goal of the practice of yoga - universal consciousness - is only reached through the experience of group consciousness. Only when we live in our "sangat," our community of spirit, do we really understand what this yoga stuff is all about.

And the interesting thing about a yoga community is that more people belong to it than you can imagine. Spirit knows no boundaries and makes no distinctions. You never know who that person in yoga class with you really is, and at the same time, you really do. It's you.

About a year after we opened the first Yoga Yoga studio on South Lamar, Jimmy came in to check us out. He lived around the corner in an out-patient apartment managed by the Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation department.

"You teach yoga here?" He asked.

I answered we certainly did.

"And meditation? - I like to meditate. It helps my mind."

Yes, we had classes with meditation. He told me he just got his monthly support check and figured he could buy 8 classes.

At the end of his first class, Jimmy stayed behind in the room after everyone had left. He was sitting very still when I brought him some Yogi Tea.

He sipped the tea, looking straight into space, yet completely connected.

"Was that the first time you did yoga?" I asked him.

"Oh no," he said.

"Where did you do yoga before?"

He looked up and held my eyes in a challenge. "On Jupiter," he said.

I nodded. "Awesome."

He came back every few days. After class he would take his Yogi Tea and smoke a cigarette. "Smoking calms my mind," he told me.

One day the person at the front desk told me, "Jimmy wants his money back."

"Give it to him," I said.

"He doesn't want all his money back - just enough to buy some cigarettes."

"Fine," I said. "It calms his mind."

Over the next couple of months Jimmy would come in for a yoga class or to borrow money back for cigarettes or coffee. Sometimes he just wanted a cup of Yogi Tea to drink.

Occasionally Jimmy swept the yoga rooms in exchange for a class. Then a year went by and Jimmy had not been back. As I walked around the neighborhood one day, I saw him in front of his apartment with a friend.

"Hey, remember me?" he called out to me.

"Hi Jimmy," I said and walked over to them.

"This is Mehtab," he told his friend. "He teaches yoga. He helps people."

I had never had such an eloquent and humbling introduction. I shook his friend's hand. "Have you done yoga before?" I asked him.

"Sure," he said. "I done yoga with Jimmy lots of times."

"Where?" I asked.

"On Jupiter," he said.

Jimmy laughed. "I told him to say that."

I remember one woman who showed up in our yoga classes and was at the studio almost every day, trying out all the teachers and different styles of yoga on her unlimited pass. She told us the classes were her "lifeline" and where she had met many new friends.

One day she called the yoga center and told us, "I need to cancel my unlimited pass."

We asked her if she was unhappy with the classes.

"Oh no," she answered. "I am going into the hospice next week and they don't expect me to leave."

I marveled at her presence of mind, as she was finishing up her life - making phone calls, taking care of little details, and preparing to die. I remembered her in my class just a week earlier as I served her tea. Doing yoga and knowing that this might be the last class of her life and keeping that secret to herself.

She died quickly. Her cancer spread at a faster pace than the doctors expected. Her friends said she was ready and completely at peace. One of the students who frequently came to Kundalini class with her attended her service. They sang her favorite song, May The Longtime Sun Shine Upon You -- the song we end every Kundalini Yoga class with.

Think about this the next time you come to a yoga class. Perhaps the person next to you is taking their first class ever, hoping to find peace, to find themselves, or simply to find a community where they may belong. Or maybe they are taking their last class, saying farewell to a place, a life, or a community they now must leave.

We come to go. And in between we only have a short time to be together, to live in a community of heart and spirit, and to be with those who have chosen to be our companions on this journey of yoga.

When I see people coming into Yoga Yoga, I try to see them fully, to see them as coming into unity, into community. I try to remember what my teacher Yogi Bhajan said time and time again, "If you cannot see God in All, you cannot see God at all."

Click here to read past articles from Mehtab!