Transforming lives and healing communities one breath at a time

"A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials."  --Seneca

This morning, a man approached me at the gas station as I was getting back inside my car--a full tank ready to be used at my command. He asked me if I could spare a couple of dollars to help him pay for a tank of gas. I handed over a few bills, and he thanked me. He also told me how sorry and ashamed he was for having to ask. He said that part several times until I began to feel sorry and ashamed for not having to worry about having enough money for a tank of gas. An errand took me across the street where I observed this man and his wife taking turns with this uncomfortable task, partners as well in the consequent humiliation it triggered.

Earlier this week, I attended the memorial service for a colleague's husband who died suddenly from cardiac arrest one day last week. Like that. After dinner and with no warning. He was 64.

Moments ago, I had a phone call from a friend who relayed almost identical news of another husband's death, this one the husband of a fellow yogini. Sudden cardiac arrest. He was 68.

Here is a snapshot of universal suffering, and it doesn't even address the tragic in today's headlined news. Patanjali, like the Buddha, identified life as suffering, and like the Buddha, the sage of yoga was also careful to include its antidote. In Yoga-Sūtra (2.16) Patanjali wrote, "Pain that has not yet come is avoidable." This does not mean that we can create lives completely devoid of painful experiences. What we can learn to do, however, is understand and monitor our response to it.  In his book Full Catastrophe Living, author Jon Kabat-Zinn provides the following as a fitting translation of Patanjali's antidote when he writes that suffering is one of many possible responses to pain.


At the Niroga Institute in Oakland, California, staff have been trained specifically to understand life's multiple catastrophes--chronic stress, trauma stemming from emotional and physical abuse, neglect,  anxiety, addiction, incarceration. They are committed to providing alternate responses to pain by teaching yoga in the form of Transformative Life Skills to some of the most marginalized populations in its neighborhoods. These populations include: at-risk students at various San Francisco Bay Area inner-city schools, youth in juvenile correction centers, the homeless, people battling addiction and seniors. Ultimately, Niroga's mission is to help these under-served and under-represented populations not only cope in the midst of the catastrophes of living, but learn how to thrive there, too.

The visionary at the head of Niroga and the person responsible for working to make the research coming out of the organization's efforts both valid and robust is Founder and Executive Director Bidyut K. Bose. In conversation, Bidyut--or bk as he refers to himself--gets right down to business. I hear in him immediately the trained scientist he is, precise and erudite. In one breath he is quoting from William James, Nelson Mandela, the Bhagavad Gita, and the sūtras of Patanjali, while in the next bk is telling a moving story from the commencement address of a recent graduate at an alternative high school who credited Niroga's curriculum for giving him a vision of his future and the tools to make it happen. And when the podcast recording of my conversation with bk on Out on a Limb two weeks ago wound up with only my side of our conversation, he graciously acknowledged our freshly delivered lesson of non-attachment while diffusing my embarrassment by sharing with me a smiley face.

For bk and the dedicated staff at Niroga, this is a glimpse of the social revolution yoga is capable of manifesting in our communities here and around the world. One empowered graduate--or recovering addict or juvenile offender or senior disenfranchised by age--seeing for himself a meaningful future of social engagement. A tall order for the small Oakland-based non-profit, but exactly the kind of dream-big thinking bk wants for the members of all communities. Bk's vision for communities is not unlike Gandhi's Be the change axiom. Bk believes in the idea of a community "where most of us are living and breathing this practice (of yoga and mindfulness) even as we are engaged in the world, changing ourselves as we transform the world around us."

At the end of the fourth and final book of Patanjali's Yoga-Sūtras, the sage takes us full circle back to the second and third sūtras in book one. Here at the end, Patanjali offers the following counsel as his way of saying that all of the teachings of yoga contained in the four books are merely an elaboration of Sūtras 1.2 and 1.3: "Rest in your own true nature. You have played your games, you have gotten all of your experiences. Now your true nature rests." Our very lives are our scripture, our book, our path of yoga. We learn while living through our experiences, our moments of celebration as well as our moments of suffering. As bk says, our emotions are a treasure; we need good tools to polish them; we need good tools to help us make them shine.