Yoga Therapy as a Whole-Person Approach to Health. Lee Majewski
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meant repeatedly bringing our attention to bear on the heart, imaginary breathing in and out of the heart, evoking in the heart positive emotions such as gratefulness, kindness, appreciation, mercy, and finally perhaps love itself. When I commenced this I have to say I was a bit suspicious. Was this just a new age dream? Did it actually do anything?
In one session quietly concentrating on my heart it suddenly burst into flame. I could not believe it; I suddenly had a veritable bonfire going in the area of the heart. Small to begin with, it began to flower until my whole interior horizon was ablaze. The session finished and I was left dumb with wondering, weepy, slightly shaken, unsure of what had happened but realizing something big really had happened. We dispersed for lunch and I wandered off on my own towards the kitchens.
As I entered the courtyard a clear intuition came over me that I had not quite finished this piece of work and so, seeking out a chair under a tree, I re-entered my interior world and brought my attention back to the fire in my heart. Almost immediately I saw the fire glowing deep down inside me and my attention was taken by one small specific coal that seemed to glow more brightly than the others. In my imagination I picked this glowing coal up in my fingers and stared at it deeply. In a flash I immediately vanished deep, deep inside myself, deeper than in any meditation I had ever done before and I swam around inside myself like this for some minutes, head “deep under water” so to speak. I suddenly popped out again and went and had lunch!
This experience has stayed with me when I returned to the UK and it’s as if a whole new dimension has arisen in my experience of being alive. I find it the most potent antidote to negative feelings and emotions. Should these crowd in upon me (as they are wont to do in grey old January London!?) I simply bring my attention to the heart and circle around it with positive affirmations of emotions such as joy, loving gratefulness for what I have, rather than what I do not have and lo and behold my negative feelings evaporate. As I usually do this in the early morning I come down to breakfast and my wife says, “Why are you so damn cheerful?”
Also I think once we re-open this center in ourselves a compulsion seems to arise, and it certainly did in me, to be more honest with ourselves and more straightforward and honest with others. I found myself being much more critical of myself in terms of relationships, wanting things straightforward, nothing concealed, a higher integrity as if the heart could not stand anything not quite right, not straight and authentic. Finally it seemed to me as if one other essential faculty was restored to me through this heart center work and that was that my gratefulness heart meditations turned into what I can only describe as praise. This did not seem to be praise to a specific God, or even an idea like it, but to something out and beyond my small self, something altogether larger and more powerful than myself, to which the only right attitude seemed to be praise. This has given my life a new sense of direction in this respect and it is a joyful thing.
So having completed this retreat and having been able to keep my practice going on my return to England my advice would be, chuck the anti-depressants away, stop rushing around trying to distract yourself with ever finer distractions, breathe, meditate and bring your attention to the heart again and again until it fills you up. You may be surprised!
NAMASTE.
Nick P.
This dramatic spiritual transformation opened “a whole new dimension…in the experience of being alive” for our client, changing his attitude towards life and “wanting things straightforward, nothing concealed, a higher integrity as if the heart could not stand anything not quite right not straight and authentic.” Although an atheist, Nick suddenly found something more—“something out and beyond my small self, something altogether larger and more powerful than myself, to whom the only right attitude seemed to be praise. This has given my life a new sense of direction in this respect and it is a joyful thing.”
This experience motivated him after going back home to dive deep into studying yoga and especially Patanjali’s Sutras. A few years later, Nick wrote to me:
I run study groups now on Patanjali because I think he, more than anyone else I know, articulates so well the difference between psychical and spiritual. The intense first priority is to get ourselves free from psychical enmeshment then we begin to get an idea of how it actually binds us and how we can become freer. Good psychotherapy! It seems to me this is the best way to deal with the various demons hanging on to our toes so we may get a glimpse of what the spiritual is…we do so love to take short cuts!
These two examples speak to the promise of true healing (but perhaps not always curing) through profound spiritual transformation, a promise that yoga therapy holds for our clients. Perhaps because of the intensity and duration of our program we witness many profound spiritual shifts in our clients after every retreat. Typically the attitudes are changed and the spark in the eye and spring in the step are back.
But not everyone goes through such profound transformations. Not everyone is ready or even sometimes willing to let go and risk exploring the territory outside their psychological and mental comfort zones. We, as yoga therapists, do not really know the deeper layers of our clients and their readiness for spiritual transformation. I found out how deeply Nick was transformed only after receiving his letter.
What is perhaps more interesting is that clients may not know themselves if they are ready for spirituality and transformation! This knowledge comes out only after they start intensively practicing yoga themselves. And either the client allows the new experiences to take them forward, reaping the positive effects, or they resist and hold on to the safety of the “known.” Here is the account of a 45-year-old female, an executive in a big financial firm in the US, with whom I worked over a few years:
I had a few different physical symptoms that were causing me unrest (vertigo, forgetfulness, anxiety, to name a few). Since modern medication wasn’t providing me with the relief and the best of doctors were unable to give me diagnoses, I decided to try a different path. At the end of 2012 I spent three weeks at Kaivalyadhama in Lonavala turning to yoga therapy.
I recall one of our early conversations and Lee asking me if the unrest in my body could be part of my spiritual journey to finding my peace. I was scared of the word “spirituality” and wanted to run from the conversation. To me it meant being religious, having blind faith, something to do with ghosts and after-life, general voodoo, and not taking things in my own control. I think in logic and purpose, and there was no room for something called spirituality.
Lee helped me uncover my fears, and my journey of being myself vs. living by expectations started. I returned home from my three-week trip with tools like breathing, meditation, and yoga practice that helped me deal with my physical symptoms. It was not like they disappeared—I was just not letting them control me. My family and friends noticed a sea change. I was calmer, nicer, took better care of my self, resisted situations and people that didn’t make me happy.
This is how my journey of finding myself, staying centered started! In 2015, I saw Lee again and told her that now I feel I’m on my spiritual path!… It is about being open to where life takes me, being comfortable with myself, being grounded and centered (and spiritual) that has helped me face life and its curve balls—fighting breast cancer, seeing my dad battle liver cancer and losing him…and so much more.
In this case we had daily two- to three-hour sessions throughout her three-week stay in Kaivalyadhama. She then went back home and continued to practice prescribed yoga techniques daily and regularly. I had sporadic contact with her in person and follow-up over the phone. But she was obviously ready to venture into transformation through her regular yoga practice (sadhana), as over time she made a great shift and progress in her spirituality and healing. Today she is able to understand why and when the symptoms re-appear, and is able to manage them accordingly.
The research data on yoga, spirituality, and health supports the notion that yoga enhances transformational processes, including spiritual and transcendent states. Furthermore, that these transformational states and processes may be singular to yoga practice and philosophy. Yoga is unquestionably a spiritually transformational discipline. It may also be the only secular science and complementary discipline offering a spiritual roadmap, which is beneficial and vital to the transformative healing of human beings.