Archive: “I’m going to India.” - March 25, 2009 by Holly Walck
"Focus your mind on action alone, but never on the fruits of your actions.
Your goal should never be the fruits of your actions, nor should you be attached to nonaction.
Practice yoga, and perform the actions you are obliged to do, but don’t be attached to them.
Treat success and failure alike, this even-mindedness is yoga.”
The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, verses 47 & 48
This weekend the reality of my situation crystallized: I am leaving home for a month and traveling halfway across the world to study at the Ramamani Iyengar Yoga Memorial Institute (henceforth to be known affectionately as “RIMYI” or “the Institute”), the heart and soul of Iyengar Yoga worldwide. It is here that the Iyengar family, BKS Iyengar, his daughter, Geeta and son, Prashant teach their most dedicated students who will return to their own yoga communities and share what they have learned. I will take six yoga classes a week for a month and, if allowed, spend additional time each day observing the Institute teachers working with the patients in the medical classes. It will be a month-long immersion in this subject that has captured my heart and I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity.
One of the things I know, to borrow a line from Oprah, is that being a practitioner and teacher of Iyengar Yoga is my dharma (duty) in this lifetime. Being accepted to study at the Institute is a milestone for any student of Iyengar Yoga and I am honored to be so blessed. But mixed in with these feelings of good fortune are fears and anxieties about leaving the comforts of home, work and family for a month and traveling to a foreign country. Whenever I am faced with doubts I remember Guruji’s challenge to “venture from the known to the unknown,” and I am up to the task. So everytime I begin to citta vritti about who will watch the cats or teach my classes, or how I will coordinate traveling 8,000 miles to Pune, India, or find housing in a country where I don’t read or speak the primary language, I will remember my guru’s directive. For the truth, as Arjuna learns from his guru, Krishna, in the timeless Indian tale “The Bhagavad Gita”, is that work done in the calm of self-surrender, is far superior to work done with anxiety about the results.
