The Complete Yoga Community

Smoking, drinking and profanities aside, Ashleigh Caradas asks what it means to be a yogi living in modern times..

The word “yogi” to many people conjures up images of saffron-robed, serene-faced, Buddha-type beings sitting in the full lotus upon a rock or high mountain top. While meditation is as integral to yoga as breath is to life, the modern-day yogi is more likely a business suite-clad executive, cell-phone in one hand and yoga mat in the other. What we learn through our spiritual journeys is that it doesn’t matter whether you have denounced the material world or whether you have embraced it; a true yogi is able to apply the principles of yoga to just about any way of living.

According to the ancient Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the great yoga sage, the purpose of yoga is “to surrender the projections of the mind”. This, as most would agree, is a tough feat in present times where urbanisation and city life seems to have been built on the cornerstones of worry, anxiety and doubt. We try stilling the mind through meditation only to get bored and frustrated within minutes. A part of us says we don’t need it and that it’s not all that necessary, but, more and more, people are drawn towards it – if only as a means to alleviate this anxiety and stress! As with most natural laws however, it usually turns out that everything you desire comes to you in good time.

That’s how it was for me. After some time f physical “mat practice”, the realisation that what yoga offers is more than just a form of exercise, came to me on a three month long adventure to the land where yoga originated – India. It was in Goa that I understood yoga to be less concerned with judgements, lifestyle choices and the ability to bend yourself into an impressive pretzel-like pose and rather, and more accurately, as a solid framework for life that’s about living and loving well, and obviously too with a high regard for honesty (hence these confessions!).

There I was in laid-back, liberal Goa on a yoga teachers training course with a frightfully small portion of my wardrobe I might add, some beauty accessories (including my GHD hair iron, of course), large quantities of medicinal supplies, a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi in one hand and my MacBook in the other when, at last, I got it! But it wasn’t a smack-inyour- face revelation either, but rather an unfolding of truth as my learning progressed and still continues today.

Surrounded by these eclectic “Westernites”, all fun-loving, travelling, modern hippies from around the globe – some eating meat, smoking and drinking alcohol, many using profanities but all sharing this love of yoga and its learning – these travellers became my teachers and, each one, a mirror for my in-built prejudices, as these were hardly those Budhha-type exemplary yogis, that I too had once imagined.

One of the first things you learn in yoga is about the eight limbs of yoga of which the Yamas (restraints) and Niyamas (observances) are a part. These “attitudes for living” provided me ample learning ground and insights into the maya (illusion) that had been clouding my mind.

While Ahimsa or non violence is about not eating meat, I discovered it’s also about not pushing ourselves too hard towards an ideal of perfection. Satya, or truth, teaches about not falling into self-deception and rather being honest about who you are – your limitations and gifts. The other Yamas teach equally these truths about finding a way “to surrender the projections of the mind”, as Patanjali taught, and it applied as vividly to my experiences in India as it does in everyday life.

I have found that Bramacharya, or “walking with the Divine”, is not about making more rules and more “do’s and don’ts” even if what you are doing is deemed wrong by religion. Rather it means choosing our expressions in the world with awareness of God.

Asteya simply meaning “not taking or not grasping”, with the most obvious translation being “not stealing”, instead to me today represents not trying to take what is not available to me, but rather being open to receive what it is I truly desire and believing that abundance will flow.

Aparigraha, which means to be unpossessive, has taught me that in addition to being unattached to our possessions and the “stuff” of our material lives, it also means we should be unattached to our identities and our beliefs about ourselves.

It became clear to me that while meditation is one goal of yoga and asana practice a means to discipline our bodies to attain that goal, it’s what we do as yogis off our mats that is equal to and also more important.

I feel less guilty today about those things I’m not supposed to do and also more aware of how to not go about doing them. I’m also more attuned to the things that I should be doing – the Niyamas. And, having broken free from the maya surrounding what it is to be a modern-day yogi, I am embracing myself as I am, with all my flaws
and ungraces.

But, having said that, what I should be doing then is leaving this Svadhyaya (self investigation) and Tapasya (burning enthusiasm) for another time, surrendering (Ishvarapranidhana) a while, so I can find my Shaucha (purity) again and then a dash of Samtosa (equanimity) for my soul. Thank you yoga for understanding me though, and until then…