Читать книгу The Yoga of Relationships - Yogi Amrit Desai - Страница 8

Introduction

Fifty years have passed since I first began teaching asanas in the U.S. and progressively evolved my system into the deeper practices of authentic yoga—the return to the Source, which is our Soul-being. My early workshops on the significance of relationships took place among my small community of spiritual seekers at the Kripalu Ashram in Sumneytown, Pennsylvania. People were desperately searching for something elusive beyond the limits of the mind and the body, yet the more they struggled the more they remained mired in dysfunctional pairings, left-over resentments from childhood and, of course, distant unremembered incarnations that had indelibly marked them in this lifetime.

Since then so much has happened: an explosion in the popularity of yoga from a handful of followers in the 1960s who at first thought I was talking about yogurt, the healthful sensation from the mid-East (itself 6,000 years old) to the estimated 20 million practitioners in the U.S. alone in 2015.

Just as so much has changed, so much has stayed the same, as the saying goes. After a half century of teaching, I find myself returning to this topic of relationships again and again. When students come to me for counseling, their situations run the gamut, but at the core of every outpouring, I see that their distress is a relationship problem that has spiraled out of control, consuming their thoughts and their precious life energy. Literally an emotional death by a thousand cuts, relationship issues are at the heart of all human suffering—the misunderstanding of the roles we play with our parents, teachers, friends, enemies, and most of all, our lovers and children, those who are the closest to our hearts and cause us the most pain.

But who is causing the pain? Unfaithful spouses or ungrateful children? Neither. We are causing your own pain and until we acknowledge that fact, we remain caught in the grip of relentless recrimination. When others behave in a way we don’t like, we make them wrong and continually blame them until we make ourselves sick. Over and over again, we replay the story in our mind, rationalizing our position and making another the guilty party. Despite whatever self-belief we cling to, by holding on to the conviction that someone else aggrieved us, we will never be free and will never be able to create the loving relationships we so desperately desire. Even after an event is long over, we continue this self-destructive dialogue until there is no hope for resolution. Yet there is always the potential for transformation. We just have to be willing to take responsibility and let go. Then miracles begin to happen.

Just as the foundation for this book is indebted to Patanjali’s first two limbs of Ashtanga Yoga, the Yamas and Niyamas, I also derive inspiration on relationship issues from the great Indian scripture, the epic “Bhagavad Gita,” authored by Vyasa. Chapter II focuses on a key yogic principle—equanimity in all things. This truth is the bedrock of my own teaching. Often it is difficult to be objective in relationships because emotions are so dominant we cannot see past them. Remembering the wisdom of Krishna to Arguna when he was faced with the task of warring against his own family, we, too, must dispassionately observe ourselves, accepting our faults and weaknesses, as we have unjustly judged those same frailties in others.

It is my heartfelt desire that readers will realize that the timeless teachings represented here are the gifts of the sages, Patanjali and Vyasa, and those of my own lineage of masters, Lord Lakulish and Swami Kripalvanandji, whose practical wisdom is as true today as it was 5,000 years ago. Read, embody and absorb. These truths have the potential to come alive in your own life and bring you back home.

With love and blessings,

Yogi Amrit Desai