Once upon a time a long time ago, in a mid-century modern house in Arcadia California, two young boys, brothers, about seven and eight years old sat at the breakfast table before going to school. As their mother put scrambled eggs and bacon on their plates she said, “There was this yogi right here in Pasadena who died, and his body didn’t even decay for 20 days.
I’m not sure what kind of 1950’s housewife got that information and then decided to share it with her two young sons, but she was apparently excited about the prospect of such a miracle. My brother and I were, I’m sure, far too preoccupied with thoughts of breakfast, and the adventures of the day ahead to pay much attention. At the time I didn’t think too much about it, but the funny thing is that while I never consciously thought about it, I also never forgot it.
At some point after that my brother and I came home to find our mother on the living room floor doing some kind of exercise with a book. We asked her what she was doing, and she said, “yoga.” The book was by Swami Sivananda.
Soon we, and our neighborhood buddies were attempting all the hardest postures. Sometimes it worked out, and sometimes not. My mother soon lost interest, probably realizing that getting a body that didn’t decay was not going to be worth all the work. Yoga for us faded away, but the seeds had been planted.
Fast forward 15 years.
I was practicing martial arts and was interested in gaining flexibility. My brother had come into a yoga book titled, The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga, by Swami Vishnudevananda. I began practicing out of that and soon realized that the book’s author was the direct disciple of Sivananda from my mother’s book – the next generation of that lineage. This was not, however, the last of yoga “coincidences” I would encounter.
Soon after that, a friend suggested a book. It was Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. I was instantly attracted to his story and his message and signed up to study and become a student of his meditation and living lessons from Self Realization Fellowship.
It wasn’t until I finished the book that I got to one of the very last pages that told the story of how Yogananda’s body had shown no signs of decay for 20 days after his death. The story was told via a certified letter from Forest Lawn Mortuary documenting the events. It was at this point that I realized I had just read the life story of the yogi my mother had told us about all those years before at breakfast.
All of that was over 40 years ago, and both the physical and spiritual aspects of yoga had come full circle to me from a child to an adult.
Over 20 years ago I took some yoga classes at a local studio. After watching my practice for a week or so, the owner recruited me to start teaching. I’ve done it ever since. Sometimes life conspires to nudge you onto potential paths in the most subtle ways.
That has been my path since. I have studied many other types of “Hatha Yoga” (Physical methods) since then, and SRF is still my “Spiritual” practice of choice.
Through all the many things I have been through and done in this fairly long life, yoga has always been my “port in the storm.” I can’t imagine a life without it.
The cancer part is a whole other story…
Peace and Blessings.