The Ancient Practice That Keeps Finding Us New

When I first stepped onto my yoga mat at fourteen, I had no idea I was beginning a conversation that would span decades. My friend Sanjaya’s simple suggestion echoed in my mind: “It calms the body. It prepares the mind for meditation. Try it.” I tried it. My meditation practice deepened noticeably. But I discovered in yoga much more than just a preparation for meditation.

I discovered a transformative journey of self-discovery and awakening. We are not who we think we are. Beneath layers of conditioning and false identities lies our true nature, waiting to be remembered.

Today, over 300 million people worldwide practice yoga regularly—from living room floors to professional sports teams, from the Miami Dolphins and Chicago Bulls to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Madonna does it. Sting does it. But these numbers, impressive as they are, don’t capture what keeps drawing us back to the mat, breath after breath, day after day. They don’t reveal the inner pilgrimage each of us undertakes—from unconscious conditioning to conscious awakening, from self-estrangement to self-discovery.

The Immediate and the Mysterious

The physical gifts arrive quickly and undeniably. Yoga is probably the world’s most perfect form of exercise—cultivating cardiovascular health and musculoskeletal strength without the painful side effects of high-impact aerobics. It tunes up every organ system: respiratory, digestive, reproductive, endocrine, lymphatic, nervous. We breathe better. We sleep better. We digest our food better. We feel better. We may even begin to recover from chronic illness.

And for many of us “Westerners”, the best part is that none of these amazing outcomes requires long years of training and apprenticeship. The benefits of practice are immediate. Yoga is a very practical endeavor.

Yet these physical benefits—widely reported in medical journals and the mainstream press—may be only the tip of the iceberg. The body, I’ve learned, is just the outward and visible form of an infinite interior world of consciousness, intelligence, and compassion. The body is a gateway to deeper spiritual and psychological insights.

Regular practitioners describe a whole host of subtle transformations that seem more mysterious, more difficult to quantify and even to describe. Moments of sharply increased mental focus and clarity. Heightened perceptual and intuitive powers. A dramatic increase in energy and stamina, emotional evenness and equanimity. A heightened feeling of connection to an inner self, ecstatic states of bliss, and profound well-being. And there are the not-infrequent stories of truly miraculous healings—physical, emotional, spiritual.

The Body as Portal

Through yoga, I learned that the body holds profound intelligence and acts as a portal to our subconscious mind, emotions, and spiritual essence. By tuning into bodily sensations, we can access repressed memories and feelings, release trauma stored in the tissues, tap into intuitive knowing, and experience states of expanded consciousness.

Our posture, breathing patterns, and muscle tension reflect our psychological condition. The body’s responses in these muscles are not complete: muscles contract but do not fully release. Through yoga postures—asanas—we work to release tension and trauma stored in the body. As physical blockages release, related emotional and psychological material often surfaces. Spontaneous emotional release. Memories or insights arising. Shifts in mood and energy.

This somatic wisdom became my teacher. Breath became my guide—the switching station between the physical body and the energy body. By working with the breath, I learned to regulate my nervous system and emotions, increase my energy and vitality, access altered states of consciousness, and purify my subtle energy channels.

Finding My Way Through the Mystery

When I first began inquiring more deeply into yoga, I found myself bewildered. I bumped up against an incomprehensible stew of every conceivable philosophy, psychology, and metaphysic ever brewed up on the spiritually fecund subcontinent of India. Veda, Vedanta, Samkhya, Tantra; ancient and modern, esoteric and practical, magical and scientific. As novelist Arundhati Roy says of her native land, “India is a land that lives in many centuries at once.”

I lamented the fact that there were so few books about the real experience of transformation wrought by this practice. There were plenty of how-to books about postures and breathing. Mountains of hyperbolic accounts of Indian saints who could bilocate and understand the languages of birds. Floods of nearly incomprehensible Hindu metaphysics filled with descriptions of union with the Absolute and transcendence of the phenomenal world.

But where were the descriptions of neurotic Western seekers like myself? Where was my story?

I kept asking: What is kundalini and chakra? Where does this practice lead? Would I end up wearing saffron robes and drinking vegan matcha, disconnected from the life I know? What happens when prana moves methodically through the physical and energy bodies, unwinding blocks, holdings, and karmic knots? What about the spontaneous movements, the sensations of heat or tingling, the visions or altered perceptions, the emotional releases?

Cultivating the Witness

One of the most profound gifts yoga offered me was the cultivation of witness consciousness—the capacity to observe my experience without getting caught up in it. The witness is the part of already awake mind that is capable of standing completely still, even in the center of the whirlwind of sensations, thoughts, feelings, fantasies—even in serious mental and physical illness.

This skill allowed me to gain perspective on my thoughts and emotions, to respond rather than react to situations, to access deeper states of meditation and insight, to integrate different aspects of my being. Through mindfulness meditation, self-inquiry, body scanning, and cultivating equanimity in challenging yoga postures, I learned that only reality is wholly safe.

Regular practice built inner stability—a calm abiding self that could remain centered and grounded amidst life’s challenges. This wasn’t about transcending life’s difficulties, but about meeting them with presence.

The Evolution We’re Living

For more than three decades now, I’ve lived and taught yoga and health, day in and day out. It is a privilege to hear the stories of contemporary seekers, many of whom are quite a bit like myself, asking the same questions, hoping that it will help. And most often it does. But how?

The point of intersection between East and West is fascinating not only because of the capacity this ancient science has to change our lives, but also because of the capacity we have to change yoga. Through its encounter with the West, yoga is undergoing a time of enormous evolution. It is being “feminized”, “democratized”, and brought into relationship with contemporary medicine, Western psychology, and with Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism, etc..

The global yoga industry now exceeds $88 billion, projected to reach over $215 billion by 2025. Over 120 million practitioners rely on virtual classes. Men practicing yoga increased by 150% in just four years. This isn’t dilution—it’s evolution. The ancient practice is speaking in new languages, addressing new suffering, finding its way into new bodies and hearts.

Yoga speaks in a startlingly fresh way to the concerns we Western seekers bring to our psychological and spiritual journeys. We suffer inordinately with what therapists call problems of the self—an inability to self-soothe, to sustain a satisfying sense of self over time, to warmly love the self, to maintain an ongoing sense of belonging and a deep sense of meaning and purpose in life.

“Self-estrangement” is the curious word we’ve devised to describe this particular brand of suffering. We live deeply ensconced in the cult of the individual, often disconnected from the world of nature and from the dark and mysterious world of the soul. We live cut off from a sense of our true deep mutual belonging and interdependence, suffering from a painful sense of separation—from the life of the body, from the hidden depths of life, from the source of our own guidance, wisdom, and compassion, and from the life-giving roots of human community.

What a surprise to find that the psychology and practice of yoga speak directly to these problems of self-estrangement. Here is a systematic exploration of the unconscious that predates Freud by thousands of years. Here is a psychology that described the collective unconscious and the transpersonal self several millennia before Carl Jung. Here is a philosophy that understood life as an archetypal pilgrimage to the center long before the New Age. Here is a psychological language not yet rendered impotent by cliché or commercialism, uncomplicated by Calvinism and Puritanism, free of the Western obsession with guilt and shame.

The Valleys and the Mountains

The West’s love affair with yoga is still unfolding. And as with all love affairs, there will be highs and lows, light and shadow. As one of my teachers repeatedly declares, “The valleys are as low as the mountains are high.”

I don’t shy away from the lows: the unrealistic idealization of gurus and the creation of yogic cults; the unbalanced pursuit of supernormal powers instead of liberation; the commercialization of a spiritual path; the attempts to transcend the painful realities of intimacy, identity, and work instead of meeting them with presence.

As we progress in practice, we may encounter various energy-related experiences—spontaneous movements or kriyas, sensations of heat or cold, visions or altered perceptions, emotional releases or mood shifts. The key is maintaining a balanced, grounded practice, seeking guidance from experienced teachers, cultivating acceptance and non-attachment, and allowing energy to move and release naturally.

The Questions That Keep Us Company

So we must continue asking: How can yoga help us navigate modern anxiety? How does it address our technological disconnection from the body? What happens when mindfulness meets neuroscience? When pranayama meets polyvagal theory? When ancient chakra and Nadi wisdom encounters our understanding of the nervous system and fascia?

We must ask: How can yoga evolve without losing its essence? How do we honor tradition while making it accessible? How do we distinguish authentic transformation from spiritual bypassing? How do we bring the wisdom of the East into conversation with Western depth psychology, somatic therapy, and trauma healing?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re the living inquiry that keeps the practice vital, relevant, and true.

Community as Container

I’ve learned that surrounding ourselves with supportive people and a nurturing community—what yogis call sangha—is essential for sustained growth on this path. The key to your heart lies in the heart of another. Community provides accountability and motivation, shared wisdom and experiences, opportunities for service and contribution, and mirroring of our blind spots and potential.

Through attending retreats and workshops, engaging in study groups, practicing karma yoga, and seeking out like-minded practitioners, we create the container that holds us as we transform.

More of Us There

As author Jon Kabat-Zinn has said, “Wherever we go, there we are.” And yet it is my experience that for many of us, after exposure to the practice of yoga, there is simply—and at times astonishingly—a great deal more of us there. More consciousness, more energy, more awareness, more equanimity, more life in the body, more connection with the mysteries of the soul.

And there is that wonderful, haunting voice of the true self that calls to us, that keeps us company as we stride deeper and deeper into the world, determined to save the only soul we really can save.

The stages of this transformation unfold naturally: recognition of suffering and disconnection, seeking practices and teachings for liberation, purification of body and mind, expansion of awareness and energy, integration of insights into daily life, and embodiment of higher consciousness.

In my teaching, I attempt to share the guide that I needed as I started my own exploration—an account of the intersection of Western and Eastern upbringing, psychology, sociology, somatic wisdom, fascia study, and the timeless practices of TCM’s Meridian Lines that somehow, miraculously, still work flawlessly.

The practice found me at fourteen. Over thirty years later, I’m still asking questions. Still discovering. Still grateful for every breath, every student who reminds me why this matters, every evolution that makes this ancient wisdom accessible to one more seeking heart.

The conversation continues. The practice evolves. And we keep asking: How can yoga help us? How can we help yoga evolve? What healing becomes possible when we show up, honestly and humbly, to meet this ancient teacher on our modern mats?

The answers, I’ve found, arrive not in books or philosophies, but in the lived experience—one breath, one practice, one question at a time. Through the body’s gateway. Through the witness’s steady gaze. Through the community’s loving mirror. Through the breath that connects us to life itself.

We are not who we think we are. And that, perhaps, is the most liberating discovery of all.