I claim the title of a New Yorker Yogi for many reasons. One, because of its literal physical meaning - I am a practitioner of yoga from NYC. But I also claim the title because it is my job to attain liberation, in the present, in the day. Perhaps that is why I am so drawn to the Jivamukti style, “jivamukti” meaning “liberation while living,” a style of yoga developed and curated in New York. The foundation of yoga in India has been regarded as the renunciation of action in this lifetime in order to stop the cycle of reincarnation. In this school of thought, everything is for the next life, a preparation for the future. This is a great foundation and many lessons can be learned from this, but that is not why I practice yoga.

Liberation while living means staying in the day without projecting into tomorrow or being paralyzed by the past. This concept of one day at a time means staying present with what is best for us at the moment, not with what we think will be best for us tomorrow because we don’t really know anything about tomorrow. No, this is not an excuse to relinquish self-care - it is a closer look at what it means to take care of ourselves.

I will offer an example: One day last week, I had plans to go to a yoga class and then a party. As I walked in the pouring rain to Union Square, I played the chitta vritti tape in my head of, “But I have this early appointment tomorrow…and I want to wake up at xyz time and I’m scared of being tired, etc, etc, etc.” I got so into tomorrow that I left the day on the 5 train home. And you know what? I ended up regretting it. And I stayed up at home just as late as I would have stayed up if I went to the party.

For years, doing nothing used to be a tremendous comfort for me. Zoning out in front of the TV watching Gilmore Girls was my dated version of bliss. Yoga deeply changed that. I have discovered a productive way of zoning out that allows me to be in life rather than in front of a television (there’s totally nothing at all wrong with TV, btw).

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, “discipline in action surpasses renunciation of action.” That is a true yogic lesson to stay in the day, go to the class, join in the party of life, and know that home will always be there for me to return to.

I have what I like to call “Double Life Syndrome.” When people I meet for the first time ask me what I do, there is a mouthful I’d like to tell them, but sometimes I feel forced to choose. During the school year, I study Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. I am also a student and teacher of yoga. Yogi and feminist have always seemed like two identities that occupy separate parts of my brain yet they have so much in common. I learn through my practice that yoga is not about switching hats. I don’t just put on the hat of the yogi when I sling my mat over my shoulder and then take off the hat of a feminist, or of a woman who seeks empowerment. Yoga is like everything that goes on backstage at a concert. It’s all the prep that has to occur before we can show up in the world, on our stages as divinely empowered people, embracing all aspects of the Self.

Lately, the Universe has been providing me with countless signs that my Double Life Syndrome can be cured. The yoga community has been immersed in heated discussion of women’s empowerment and leadership through taking the asana off the mat and into the world. Yoga Journal published a whole issue on how women are using yoga in leadership and empowerment practices. Embracing the feminine nature in all of us has the potential to create a safe space in which not just women, but all beings everywhere, can be happy, joyous, and free.

Yoga teaches me to be mindful. To be mindful of signs, of what they mean, of the synchronicity in my life. So it should be no surprise that today, I leave my second to last day of teacher training thoroughly exhausted and entirely exhilarated (as I usually am after long days of training) and go on the subway just to see a man wearing a shirt that says, “The joy is in the journey.“ 

Then, I get home and settle in front of the TV to unwind with some Pad Thai and How I Met Your Mother. Marshall mentions the Hindu god who we have a golden representation of in my training, Ganesh, remover of obstacles. Coincidence? I think not!

The joy is truly in the journey and all the funny things we pick up along the way…

This post is written by Maggie, an example I am so grateful to have as both a college yogi and teacher. It is my honor to have her pass on her wisdom via this forum.

I came to my deeper spiritual and physical practice of yoga during my YTT last summer. Since that magical time on “Yoga Planet,” I have struggled to maintain the inner peace and self-discipline of those days, consistently comparing myself of today to myself of yesterday. I forget that it is easy to be a yogini among yoginis! For me, the challenge comes when practicing these principles in the insanity of my daily life—practicing patience, acceptance and self-love off of Yoga Planet.

During YTT, we had to take a vow of silence, “Mauna,” only for one day. Last week, something told me to take a Mauna again. No TV, internet, iPhone (which I must confess, sleeps on the pillow next to me…) or music. And of course, no talking. Yes, I thought! This is what I need. A return to my spiritual roots. Why? I can’t say. But I already had dream-like visions of myself meditating, third-eye opening and kundalini unwinding. Yes!

I faced a less than perfect day of silence. I live in a southern town of 3,000 people. Try not saying hello. (Instant bad reputation). Music? Couldn’t go without it the whole day. When I felt like I was failing, I almost texted a friend—“Nevermind, I can’t do it perfectly. I give up. Let’s get coffee.” But I stopped and wrote to my journal instead—the insecurities, the imperfections, the impatience, even the moments of serenity and clarity. By the end of the day, I had 25 pages. Some of it innocuous, some reflective, and some I had no idea was in my heart and my mind before that day.

Being alone with myself without distractions proved difficult. But after my Mauna, I felt as if I had gathered the prana (energy) I expend on outside sources and brought it back within myself. Although I may not have reached Samadhi, the highest level of consciousness, I felt self-loved and rejuvenated, which I can take with me off to any planet.

Sunday was the last day of my yoga teacher training. There is so much I have learned, concentrated so heavily in these last two intense and beautiful months, but what I carry with me on a day-to-day basis is not necessarily the Bhagavad Gita or the Yoga Sutras (although those are incredibly important in my study and practice). I carry with me what I have learned from my sangha, my community of yogis who have taught me so much.

We are all innate teachers as we walk, breathe, talk, and perform life’s simplest actions. We area ll teachers because we are all informants of how the world works. So here, on this public forum, I would like to share some of the yogic life lessons (some sutras - threads - you might say) that I have learned from the people I share this path with.

• Love life. Cry as a way of being in the present body. Be open, honest, and unashamed of vulnerabilities. Be an absolute child with the heart of a grandmother and the large, wondering eyes of a toddler.
• It is possible to travel all over the world, to roam naked on beaches, to call exes “past loves,” and boyfriends “partners.”
• Be a spiritual intellectual rather than an intellectual spiritual by using intellect to further spirituality rather than have it be harmful in trying to think out everything.
• Use energy as service by being boundlessly joyful, putting the oxygen mask on yourself first in order to put it on others afterwards, using a sense of true purpose and dharma while being a soul of love, light, family, and nonjudgment.
• We are all perfectly imperfect. No one is as they seem.
• Simple sound can give people who are otherwise silenced a voice.
• It’s awesome to be young, totally light-hearted, absolutely hilarious, finding humor in the mundane, and not taking myself so seriously. 
• To be driven in one’s dharma is to channel service and a deep-seated need for it productively.
• Be true to your nature and use it to be of service in a population that can use your own uniqueness.
• A yoga practice is sustainable and life is not about either/or; it is about both/and.
• Give without expectations.
• Show up even when it is hard and I may not want to. Soften by finding lightness in the dark.
• Make life bigger in the small ways.
• It’s okay to be a seeming contradiction as long as you embody those contradictions in such a way that makes them a unifying wholeness instead of split parts going in opposite directions.

So while I carry translations and interpretations of these beautiful philosophical texts with me on the subway, I think first of the people in whom this philosophy is embodied, and I am humbly grateful for these living, breathing, walking examples in my life.

Originally, I thought I would relocate this blog to my new website, but then I realized something: this blog is not about me. This blog is about yoga in college and while I am the demographic that I am writing about and to, yoga for college students is a cause and topic so much larger than just me.

And Tumblr is the venue where I want to write about it because Tumblr is social and interactive and allows me to connect with likeminded people through seeking out inspiration from them.

That said, I want to introduce the future of this blog:

Sunday Routine ~ I have a slight obsession with how people spend their time because what we do says a lot about who we are. Thus, I will be modeling this series off the NYT’s Sunday Routine column in the Metropolitan section. But there’s a twist! The routines I will profile will be those of yoga teachers! Clearly, they’re not in class or teaching 24/7. They have lives outside of the yoga room and it is using these lives that we see how the practice can be embodied off the mat.

Meditation Mondays ~ My own meditation practice currently consists of ten minutes in the morning of Metta, or Lovingkindness meditation. It is something I have not explored super in depth and yet the purpose of yoga is simply to get a better seat for meditation so I will embark on this journey through this blog, by featuring different styles of meditation every Monday.

Dharma Talk Tuesdays ~ Pretty self-explanatory - I’ll post a dharma class from one of my classes that week, now that I’m teaching!

Teacher Thursdays ~ Expect a video of an awesome and inspiring yoga teacher!

Sutra Saturdays ~ The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are, more or less, the yogi’s handbook to life. There are many translations out there, but on this blog, I want to synthesize the translations I’m reading and translate them into the language the college student speaks - that of hookups, midterms, dorms, roommates, frat parties, libraries, and campus life.

Oh, and in case you can’t tell, I’m a sucker for alliteration!

I’m excited to embark on this journey with you.

  Yoga, Slam Poetry, & Activism

Where I go to school, slam poetry is the new football. At the start of every slam, the MC will remind the audience, “The point is not the point. The point is the poetry!” This is true for yoga as well…but we’ll use different terms to coin our metaphor. In yoga, the point is not the pose; the point is what that pose can do for you, how it can allow you to carry yourself off the mat and into the world. If the pose exists exclusively on the mat, it does not matter. At all. “But it gets me a tight ass,” I hear the whines. Okay, maybe those sri namaskars are working your toosh, but what exactly are you going to do with that tight ass? Where is it going to go? What meaning can you cultivate for yourself on the mat that you can take out into the world? We are Generation Change. This is evidenced by Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan and by the rekindling of restlessness on college campuses. On my dorm room wall, I have the quote, “We don’t do slactivism.” To keep your yoga on the mat, condensed into the limitations and exclusivity of asana is to do slactivism. To take that composure, grace, desire to be of service, intention, and attention into the world is to do activism.