One Can Make a Difference (9 page)

SHARON GANNON

Practicing Harmony and
Connectedness

Sharon Gannon founded Jivamukti Yoga School in partnership with David
Life. It is one of the most well-regarded yoga schools and yoga methods in the
United States. Jivamukti (which means living liberated) revolutionized yoga by
reintegrating all of the aspects other modern forms had divided. She teaches all
over the world (her students include Uma Thurman, Sting, and Trudie Styler)
and has authored two books on yoga.

I always think you can judge a business by the mood of its staff, and there
is such calm, kindness, and peace evident inside the Jivamukti studios that it
is a reflection of Sharon's personality, which I have always found astonishingly,
genuinely, and consistently loving and giving. Her path has inspired many
people to seek their own.

W
hen I was thirty and living in Seattle, I fell down some very steep and slippery stairs, fracturing my vertebrae, resulting in intense pain as well as intermittent paralysis of my right leg. I was a musician and performance artist at the time, without a lot of financial security, so seeing a doctor was out of the question. Plus, I'd recently suffered a personal trauma, which had led me to the brink of suicide. I'd come through it with an, at times, obsessive commitment to making something good out of my life. I'd also developed a high tolerance for pain and a no-tolerance approach to drugs, prescription or otherwise. Rather my approach was to continue with my daily activities regardless of whatever obstacles might appear. In fact, when there was difficulty I plunged into creative pursuits with a greater urgency, arising from a feeling that each day might be my last. It was with this surge of creativity that I moved to New York City to further explore my avant-garde artistic pursuits.

While I enjoyed my new home, the back pain wasn't diminishing; in fact it was increasing. I was waiting tables part-time, and a fellow waitress kept suggesting I take a yoga class. I found this advice to be silly and even annoying. I thought of yoga as just physical exercise and I was already getting plenty of that. In addition to waiting tables, I was also a bicycle messenger (I had to carry my bike up and down six flights of stairs every day), an aerobics teacher, a dancer, and a choreographer! Not to mention the strength it took to load and unload musical equipment for my gigs. So, I continued to do my best to ignore my body, but when the pain became so great that I could no longer concentrate, I went as a last resort.

During those first few yoga classes, I began to connect with myself in a radically new way. I had the rare opportunity of exploring the feelings in my body (I didn't even know my body could have feelings) and the judgments, assumptions, and opinions in my mind. Was it painful? Extremely so! But perhaps for the first time in my very physical life I was actually being physical. I wasn't trying to get out of my body, but I was going deeper into it with a sense of adventure. Previously, I'd objectified my body, viewing it only as a tool, because, after all, I was going to change the world and needed a body to accomplish this great work! Now I began to realize that ideas, even great ones, were not enough to change the world or to change my own life. Whatever I wanted to see in the world around me had to first become real in my own body right down to the molecular level.

To do this, I learned how to align with my breath. I discovered the only way that I was able to go deep into the pain in my back was by breathing. I couldn't think my way in, but only breathe. Breath is the life force; it is the Holy Spirit. It's what connects us all. Do you know that there are atoms of air in your lungs that were once in the lungs of everyone who has ever lived? We are breathing each other. There's a sense of deep relaxation and well-being when you actually feel that you aren't working against the world or the world isn't against you, when you feel that we are not only in this thing together but we
are
this thing together.

I began to practice regularly, and my back pain lessened. Initially, I had no intention of becoming a yoga teacher or of becoming the administrator of a large school with many other locations around the world. I still thought of myself as an artist. But when I got more deeply into the teachings of yoga, I realized that here was something that could help others understand how life works, how anything and everything works, how to be happy. The transition from East Village artist into yoga teacher wasn't a conscious one. It was an organic process. Many of the people who attended our performances (I was now involved with David Life and we were both performing art and practicing yoga together) knew we practiced yoga and would ask us about it. Eventually more and more people wanted to practice with us and not just sit in a seat while we did a performance. Of course, we continued to incorporate elements of our art into the classes, and we still do. Our trajectory is perhaps unusual in that we never went through a period of having to “recruit” students. We certainly didn't go about it all with a business plan. We knew nothing about business! We were poor artists, teaching in a basement on Avenue B, which we rented twice a week. Over the course of several years, I cocreated, along with David, the style of yoga called Jivamukti Yoga, which emphasizes the attaining of enlightenment through compassion for
all
beings; that if you want yoga, or enlightenment (the realization of the Oneness of being), then all of your relationships with others, which includes your relationship with the Earth, should be mutually beneficial, based in joy, and that this relationship should be consistent, not just when it is convenient for you. That is a powerful teaching! It could dismantle the foundation of our present culture, which is rooted in the notion that the Earth belongs to us. Unless you are able to live in a way that enhances the lives of others, you will not be happy; certainly you will not achieve enlightenment.

When I teach yoga, it's all of us involved in a communal effort to realign ourselves with the essence of who we all are . . . the Divine Whole. In the Aramaic language there is a beautiful word for this:
Alaha
. It means all that is, referring to the individual, others, animals, plants, nature, and that which could be thought of as God. The practices of yoga refine your perception so that you see yourself as one with the whole. As a gentle, but potent, reminder to myself to keep Alaha in the forefront of my mind, everyday I wake up and say this Sanskrit mantra that David and I learned from Swami Nirmalananda during our first trip to India:
Lokaha Samasta
Sukhino Bhavantu
. During the day, I remember it whenever I can. Swami Nirmalanada told us it means: May all be happy and free. Over the years of meditating on it, I have expanded on the translation, and so when I chant it I also add this in English:
May all beings everywhere be happy and free and may the
thoughts, words, and actions of my own life contribute in some way
to that happiness and to that freedom for all.
It's a powerful chant to teach because it reminds people of the power inherent in their own speech. If we say we want everyone to be happy, then we have to question everything that we do, how we live, how we eat, what we buy, how we speak. The best way to uplift our own lives is to do all we can to uplift the lives of others.

If you see something that's wrong and want to do something about it, first do your best to go to the cause of what you see, don't be content to deal with symptoms. This is a radical way to deal with things. The word
radical
comes from the same root word as
radish
, which means “root.” Dig out the cause of the problem. Effective change can only occur if you change the course of action from the casual level. It's hard to face the fact that whatever problem we may see out there in the world is coming from inside of us. In fact, there is no “out there” out there, rather it's all coming from within us. Therefore, we become the change we wish to see in the world.

I have been practicing yoga and practicing being an open and mindful human being for many, many years now, and I've discovered that the true test of moral fiber is to stand for peace. To give up the love of power for the power of love. Peace will come when we have given up in our own daily lives hateful thoughts, cruel words, and violent actions. Cultivate hopeful thoughts, sweet speech, and kind actions. Let go of the need to exploit and hurt others to feel better about yourself. Whatever you want in this life you can have if you first provide it for someone else.Work for the freedom of others, and you yourself will become free. Don't wait for a better world. Start now to create a world of harmony and peace. It is up to you. It always has been!

JOHN GARDNER

A Vision of Physical Loveliness

John Gardner was in his late forties when he became blind. He wasn't prepared
for it to happen. What he knew was that, somehow, he had to continue in his
career as a physicist, although that wasn't going to be easy. In fact, if it hadn't
been for his experience and effort, it might well have been impossible. John is an
example of when “the blind leading the blind” can mean something extraordinarily
positive.ViewPlus, the company he started, provides new tools for people
with disabilities, including what some people are calling “the new Braille.”This
advanced system allows the blind to access data in many different forms and
has revolutionized the field. When John lost his sight, he discovered what else
was missing and set out to fill the gap. His determination to succeed is a terrific
example of the power of one.

I
'd never had good vision. In fact, I was born with one functioning eye and I'd had glaucoma since childhood, but nevertheless I could see. I drove a car for thirty years! I like to joke that I didn't just get in and aim it, I drove it. I had absolutely no idea that I would go completely blind. Then, in my mid-forties, my functioning eye began giving me a lot of trouble.There was a problem with swelling, and fluid built up behind the eyelid. I had to put drops in it to keep the pressure down, but in the end that wasn't working. My doctor recommended a common operation to implant a pressure valve, and so I said, “Yes.” The risk of something going wrong was tiny, so tiny I never even thought about it. You don't make decisions based on a one-in-a-million chance. After the surgery, the doctor made some calls, and most ophthalmologists he spoke to had never seen someone go in for such a minor operation and wake up blind before. But that's what happened to me.

I was already physically weak at the time, because pressure on your eye affects your whole body. I had lost twenty-five to thirty pounds and become as thin as a rail over the previous two to three months. It sounds odd to say, but I was so happy to be feeling better with the pressure gone that at first the fact that I was blind didn't register. I just wanted to rest and get well. It took several months from the time when I woke up in the hospital to the time that I knew that I would definitely never see again. No one wanted to tell me I was going to be blind forever. When that realization hit, I became very depressed, knowing I wouldn't see my future grandchildren's faces, or the sunrise, the sunset, the cities in Europe and Asia that I loved. Then, I thought of some people I knew who'd suddenly become disabled and how they were sour, bitter, and withdrawn. I felt sorry for them, but I didn't like them. I knew I didn't want to get like that. So I decided I wouldn't.

At the time I went blind I was a tenured physics professor at Oregon State University, running a physics research group of ten to twelve students and postgraduates and visiting faculty. All of a sudden, I wasn't there to provide guidance. It was September and our funding agency was threatening to cut off funds as they do at the same time every year, except this time I found myself fighting that recurring battle from my hospital bed. I remember thinking, “I could do without this!” Luckily, my colleagues stepped up to the plate and said,“We'll take your classes.” They were great. No one but me questioned that I was going to keep on going.

I didn't know anything about being blind. I didn't know where to get the little white cane. One of the worst things was not being able to tell time. My father-in-law got me a talking clock, and later I found out about talking watches. But more than anything, I needed a way to communicate. My students were recording things on tape and a university reader would read me my mail and so on, which was helpful, but made me feel dependent. So I began studying Braille. I'd never used Braille before. All I knew about it was that it's made up of little dots. I learned it in a few weeks, which isn't hard to do. It's like learning basic piano. But it was slow, I had to keep stopping and thinking, and I wasn't exactly playing Rachmaninoff. The problem is that Braille is all about contractions, it's shorthand of a sort. The original Braille was punched out on a stylus. Then, when repetitive stress syndrome was identified (the realization that punching all those little dots is too much for a person), it became contracted, not everywhere—the Spanish and Italians and Swedes have a better system—but for English Braille you have to use contractions, which makes reading very arduous. When I discovered that blind people can use a computer it was a very happy day! It was only words, but it was something!

When it comes to math, there's a way with Braille to convert numbers into letters, but there are no symbols for such things as a plus, times, or equal. Letters are used instead, with “a” being “1,” “b” representing “2,” and so on. It's just impressions, and it's impossible to do serious math this way. I heard of a new computer that made heavy wax printings that you can feel, and I bought one, but the wax was sticky and came off on my fingers. Additionally, as a physicist, my real problem was graphs. Students have thousands of points plotted on a graph as a function of time, and all of a sudden I couldn't see the graphs, so I didn't know if they were good or bad. In the end, access to graphical information became the serious problem I couldn't overcome. I thought, “Why does this have to be so damned hard?” About a year after losing my sight, someone overheard me complaining during a visit to the National Science Foundation. He said, “If we give you $30,000, could you come up with a solution?” That began my new career.