Reflections: This Feels Different

Prajna Yoga has been the “true north” in my yoga studies for nearly two decades now. Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to study with various wonderful teachers, but the teachings of Tias and Surya Little felt like home from the first time I stepped onto my mat in their presence and began absorbing their wisdom.

I recently had the sublime experience of practicing with them in-person again for the first time since the pandemic began, at a weekend immersion here on the Cape. It had been three years, and it was expected that all sorts of emotions might bubble up. But one thing came as a surprise, something that unfurled early in the workshop and remained persistent throughout, one observation that offered abundant opportunity for exploration: “This feels different.”

Turning the lens of inquiry to this unexpected experience, I asked myself, if it feels different now what did it feel like before? Each year, the hours spent in Prajna immersions and trainings were held like precious dewdrops glistening on a blade of grass. They were beautiful, ephemeral, and contained worlds within them if I could only look deeply enough before their inevitable evaporation. I eagerly jotted notes, reviewed sequences, and felt gloriously wrung out by the end of it all.

So what was different this time around? Throughout the weekend workshop, I certainly felt the same sense of opportunity, of being offered a precious gift and the feeling of deep gratitude that engendered.

What was different was that once I settled onto my cushion for the opening meditation, the accumulated eagerness and expectation just fell away. And without that clutter, I gave way to an experience that felt spacious and natural, an understanding that I was traveling through both the familiar and the unknown and it was all the same because what was important was the exploration.

This was a new foundation from which to view things, and it resulted in experiencing the teachings and my movement practices in a different way, a more holistic and encompassing way. I was embodying the entirety of the practice in a way I never even realized I hadn’t been before. There was a degree of clarity that felt sharp and sure.

The potential for all of this to arise had of course always been there, but in recent years I’ve felt my practice deepening and strengthening. Practice makes practice, Tias says. And for the past three years, I’ve benefited greatly from studying on the regular with Prajna Yoga, thanks to the “Maha Zoom Room,” as Tias calls it. Distance learning didn’t feel distant for me at all (this type of learning environment doesn’t suit everyone; I feel very fortunate that it does me).

Now, back in an in-person immersion event, it boiled down to this: I wasn’t grasping. I wasn’t clinging to the experience or grasping at the learning. I was letting it flow through me.

I have to say that this is just the sort of realization that for me could set me distractedly abuzz with excitement (and lead to that clinging all over again). But that didn’t really happen, not during or after the workshop. I just settled in and enjoyed the new space, open to what it offered. While I’ve been contemplating the experience in the weeks since, it’s just now that I’m sitting down to try to articulate it.

Prajna Yoga, more than anything, is about the inward journey. Translated out of the Sanskrit, prajñā means wisdom, insight, deep understanding. We use asana to help us get there, but it’s only part of the path. From the beginning, yoga for me was never really about getting into more and more physically challenging poses; it has always been about accessing wisdom. The illumination provided by my Prajna teachers guides me, and along with dedicated effort on my part, I’ve traveled a small distance on the path.

I’ve always loved how Tias and Surya call their workshops “immersions”…like they’re an opportunity to dive into the ocean and refresh and renew. But now I see that it’s more than that…that it’s about using the experience to realize that actually we’re already immersed and the vast ocean is there for us to explore.

In my element…