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Reminiscences - Part 1
Jerry Kuhlman - Highland Yoga Co-Founder - 7/28/2005
Hanging out at a yoga studio, I often find myself in discussions about the
benefits of yoga. Restful sleep seems to come immediately. Some of our
students report a quick relief of chronic back pain or a cessation of
migraines. In short, the benefits reported are many and quite varied, short
and long term in nature. I hear lots of stories. So, when a new student
questions me about yoga’s possible benefits, it’s easy for me to sidestep to
the benefits I’ve heard from others, detouring what it’s done for me. In
looking back, my own story sounds a tad unbelievable, even to myself, and I
sometimes avoid the details, but yoga has been an amazing way of life for
me, morphing and adapting to meet my problems head-on, just as yoga should.
Over the years, it’s been my first-aid kit, physical therapist, shrink,
personal trainer, remedy for whatever ails me, companion, guide, and more,
much more. Yoga and I are like an old married couple. We just are...but I
still ask questions and marvel, and sometimes even ogle. Mainly I’m in the
here and now, not pondering much on the past, but once in a blue moon I
reminisce…
It
all started with an invitation to a free yoga class from my neighbor,
Marilyn. I was just out of college. She was a cutie. I accepted. We
walked into the room and I liked how the women outnumbered the men. What
other incentive did I need? I became a front and center fixture in that
class. Marilyn soon rooted out my motive, and lasted two or three more
classes, but I stayed the course. A short time into it, though, I began to
realize that something more profound was going on, beyond “meeting chicks”,
that is. My body felt different, looked different. My eyes were brighter.
I’d been a sports fanatic in high school and college, and I’d also worked a
very physical job in college, so I knew the feeling of “being in shape”, but
this was somehow different, better. I couldn’t put a finger on it. OK, so
I hadn’t done much in the way of exercise in the last year or so, but how far downhill can a 22
year-old body go? Even more interesting were my thought patterns. My
thinking seemed mysteriously clearer, more lucid. Hey, that was a new
concept. A recent college grad, I thought that I couldn’t possibly get any
wiser or more intelligent or more invincible (or was it invincibler?).
After all, I was already feeling my oats, deeply entrenched in a new job,
not liking the actual work involved, in fact, feeling a bit out of place,
but the new prestige, and money, after the scrounge fest of college…wow, it
made my head swell! Then, six months into it, I went out with the guys to
shoot pool. I couldn’t believe how aware and with it I was that night. A
switch had flipped and all of my senses and body were in perfect
coordination. I was a well-oiled, highly tuned machine with purpose and
direction. Somehow, the volume had been turned down. The background static
had diminished. My focus was laser sharp. I was in the zone. I could
handle anything. It seemed as though I was floating above that pool table
willing the shots into the pockets. I ran the table…twice. A few weeks
later, playing basketball...different sport, same story. I was a believer.
I was the calm center of the universe, and I owed it all to yoga.
The
months rolled by, then my one-year yoga anniversary. My teacher, Lex, had
started teaching fulltime in his own studio. I continued taking classes
twice per week and practiced on my own daily. Lex was a true taskmaster,
but enthusiastic in the way he presented himself and the teachings. As true
today as it was then, we loved exploring the poses and felt a great sense of
accomplishment when we nailed them. Meditation was a different story,
though. Toward the end of the class, students would rise and file out of
the room to escape the terror of being with themselves. Lex started
throwing us curves, beginning one class with a sit, then springing it on us
in the middle of the next class, and so on, mixing it up, force-feeding us,
tricking us to take those first small steps toward the mirror of
meditation. “If you’re not meditating, you’re not doing yoga”, he said.
Later he would say, “It’s not about the arms and legs, it’s about your inner
landscape”. Though it was incredibly difficult at first, I slowly took to
it. I was deeply inspired by it all. I talked yoga with anyone who would
listen. I did headstands at the beach, uttanasanas at the water cooler at
work, and sometimes, the cool poses at parties. I sat meditation in the
park. I was a show-off on a soap box. I wanted the world to know. I
brought my parents the news. Their response was, “Why is the religion we
gave you not good enough?” Huh? I’d never thought of it that way, but I had
to admit, I was religious about it. I felt great. I was incredibly
productive. I could immerse myself for long hours at work in the same
“stuff” that had bored me a year earlier.
Then my world fell
apart. One night I picked up the phone to hear my Dad telling me that my
brother, Johnny, had just died. He was four years younger than me, and was
working his way through college in the oil industry on an offshore drilling
rig in the Gulf of Mexico. An accident had taken his life. I’d worked the
same job, "roughnecking" for five summers and various holidays during
college. I knew the dangers, and had felt lucky to escape them.
That night I drove to Galveston, Texas, 1˝ hours away, to identify his
body. That was the worst and most surreal time of my life. I
practiced a deep-breathing exercise all the way, focusing on the highway, in
shock, there and back, and I kept asking myself…why? The vision of my
brother’s body stays with me still. With the ensuing months came
bitterness. A hatred for the oil industry grew within me, but at the
same time I was immersed in it with my job. The thought of corporate
America disgusted me. It seemed to me that my brother had been
expendable, indeed, that we were all expendable in the eyes of the corporate
giants. Moreover, the company Johnny was working for at the time of
his death was the company my Dad worked for most of his working days, in
fact, 43 years, at his retirement. Conflicts abounded. The
bitterness grew. The calm center replaced by inner turmoil.
I continued to
practice yoga. It became my relief valve, and the only way I could make some
sense of the world I was in. Yoga calmed my body long enough to get me
through the next day, while meditation soothed my mind. I began to
think of my work as a temporary measure, a springboard to a higher, and more
palatable way of life. No great epiphany there. That’s pretty
much how all young employees think, right? Well, yes and no. In
the back of my mind was a boiling pot of anger while the forefront was a
mask. The resentful attitude took a very short time to develop, and a
long time to dissipate. I didn’t like being around these people, no
matter how supportive they were. As far as I was concerned, even the
lowliest file clerk was responsible for my brother’s death, maybe myself
included, for even being involved. At the same time, as a design
engineer, I was pumping out one patented gizmo after another.
Otherwise focused. They loved me. When I received my silver
engraved employee of the year bowl, I took it home and planted a bonsai in
it. I was a very conflicted, but highly functioning, human being.
At this rate, it was just a matter of time ‘til the britches of my mind
would split at the seams. The only way out, I thought, was out the
door.
It
took me three years to take the steps, but when I did they were big ones.
With a more distant place in mind, I booked a trip to Mexico to think things
over. I gave my two-week notice and hit the road, first to Mexico, then
Guatemala. By that time, one month had passed, and I was on a roll. I
hopped a third class bus to El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica,
Panama, all the way to Colombia. I’d lived in Argentina when I was a kid.
I knew the language. I was more at home there than in Houston. Then I
reversed my steps back to Houston. Four months had passed. I’d met a
rainbow of people with varied philosophies and opinions: an NYC
dancer/actress, a mercenary, a ski instructor, a soldier AWOL from the
Canadian Army, a prostitute, a Mexican curandera (healer), and many others
. I was a missionary of yoga, teaching classes or one-on-one’s almost daily
in whatever dive hotel du jour for whoever showed up. Those four months
brought my practice to the next level. Yoga became a priority, a way
of life, for me
instead of a stopgap. I rose every morning to sun salutations, and strong vinyasas, followed by meditation. There were momentary hiccups in the
routine, a missed day here and there, or an occasional shortened session,
but I was dedicated. And my meditation practice was coming right along. I
witnessed a genuine change of mind occurring. Over the years, I’ve seen
lots of people come to yoga and meditation from crisis situations, using it
as a refuge. I was no different. It worked brilliantly. As I wound my way
through the strife and turmoil in Central America, what began to shine
through was the happiness on the faces of the people. Despite hardships
much more severe and trying than my own, the people of these ravaged
countries managed to keep their smiles. I began to see that the common
thread for all of us on this ball of clay is that despite the circumstance,
we are all just trying to be happy, and that all of us are responsible for
our own fulfillment. One's perception of the world is truly a product of
the
mind. To change our worlds, we must change our minds. The anger wasn’t
about my brother, it was about me. It had taken three years for me to
gather enough traction to spin myself out of that mud. Personal
responsibility is not a nap on the beach. It was also during this time that
yoga helped me to change my perspective by accepting a broader reality. By
so doing, my options in life began to multiply on themselves. I began to
cast a larger net on the waters of my future. I was coloring outside the lines,
and by so doing, I
broke the spell of anger. The world opened up. Thank you, yoga. Thank
you, meditation. While looking for my next job, I picked up a University of
Houston student newspaper one day, and read a fateful ad: “Caribbean cruise,
pay for your own food”. Now there was an adventure I could sink my teeth
into… (to be continued) see
Reminiscences -
Part 2
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