Inhale, feel the breath travel through your body. Exhale, clear the mind and focus. Concentrate on nothing else. This is yoga.
I distinctly remember my first lesson almost two years ago, where the instructor was teaching the difference between the Western conception of yoga as a trendy secret to weight loss and its origins as an Indian practice designed to liberate human beings from suffering. Contrary to pop culture expectations, the objective is not to contort the body into impossible positions or to tone the muscles.
The goal is simply to breathe freely.
I came to yoga in a time of great emotional distress. I had just left Princeton to recover from the end of a long-term relationship. Western medication intended to ease depression put me into the emergency room, and neither my parents nor my closest friends could soften my despair.
Hearing that yoga provided a possible means of recovery, I began a daily practice. In that practice, I could divorce myself from external expectations and unify myself with the chaotic world around me. Yoga challenged me to achieve the seemingly impossible in a way that involves no struggle or fear. I found healing, returned to Princeton, and never looked back.
At Princeton, I lead a hectic life. Trying to balance academic work with extracurricular commitments is incredibly difficult, and personal time is even harder bought. But I strive to keep yoga in my life, exchanging design work for lessons and even teaching others techniques to calm themselves in times of distress.
With the Dale Award, I hope to pursue my interest in yoga by experiencing first-hand its spiritual implications for India. Traveling to Nasik, a center for Hindu pilgrims, I hope to visit areas largely unaffected by Western consumerism, to understand the role of yogic spirituality in the lives of the locals, and to use that understanding to reform my own beliefs. My experiences volunteering in rural China and singing in the campus gospel choir have shown me that interacting with the foreign consistently revises my perspective.
I have found and contacted a yoga ashram in Nasik, located 170 kilometers from Mumbai. The school is accessible to Westerners unacquainted with Indian culture but offers rigorous yoga instruction and a teacher training program meant only for serious students. The ashram is dedicated to a holistic, Ayurvedic study of traditional yoga, teaching its philosophical, physical and spiritual dimensions, and emphasizing yoga as a means of serving others with compassion. Through the program, I hope to learn much about myself as well as how to use yoga to affect the world around me. To record my journey, I will create a photojournal blog, combining my passion for design with my quest to understand yogic spirituality.
My life to this point has been filled with attempts at fulfilling expectations outlined by the outside world. I want this summer to provide a respite from resumes, internships, and all such “practical” concerns, to gain a refreshed perspective, to garner a greater sense of peace, and to share that peace with others.
