Hiking as a path to your self: Living yoga

Living yoga via hiking

Hiking on a sunny day... turning to sunset. It is my favorite time up on the mountain.

image @ Cora Varnes

I can watch the day sunlight culminate from warmth to secretive, from life-giving to artistic. With that change comes a change of heart too.

Hiking is a type of yoga for me, as I pay attention to my breath in the same way as I do on my mat. Living yoga outside of yoga class is the true test of a healthy yoga practice anyway. Hiking is part of having a well-rounded yoga life for me.

If I take an intention with me, it unravels with every step. I can even go through the various chakras as I climb, balanced together with music of the soul. What's most important in order for me to make my hike into a yoga adventure is silence—not necessarily inner silence but literal silence (i.e., no orating any words). This can be done with a partner as long as this is agreed.

Another important factor is breathing through my nose, using what we call in yoga the ujjayi breath. It is done throughout an Ashtanga practice. This breathing is done by making a sound in the back of the throat. Some people like to refer to Darth Vader from Star Wars when describing it.

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Life is a journey: Don't forget to be inspired

Life is a journey. I intend to make it worthwhile.

Be inspired

With regards to this journey it is not important what the venue, physical activity, or endeavor, or even the goal. What we make of our experience is what counts. What matters is the lessons that remain with us after we have completed whatever it is we do and how we integrate this knowledge in our hearts back into the society in which we live. It is a true life meditation to keep lessons we learn inside us and never let the magic die.

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Spiritual escape, spiritual bypass

Overwhelmed?

Have you ever felt so overwhelmed that you dropped everything and turned to your spirituality? I know I have. In fact, I have done it for days on end, which led to months and then years.

I added yoga to the mix as well as dream interpretation and psychology. Although it is all good to dig deep into yourself and find all of your secrets, it can be a double-edged sword. Is it part of the path to enlightenment, or it is a danger to avoid?

Yoga addiction

From the start what got me into yoga was the feeling of loneliness and a special group of people to practice with to stir it all up inside me. I think we were all there for the same reason. It was an escape while I was doing it, but it led to my freedom and happiness.

I was feeling bliss as if flying, yet I was also genuinely lost and ungrounded while I was not practicing yoga. I escaped my life and reality and lived in my yoga, always moving, isolating myself more and more from friends and family into my inner world. I was obsessed to meet some end, knowing on some level that the only way to open the door to peace was through this uneasiness and drama that I created.

Stop escaping

With much strength and years I was able to get a hold of the escapist manner in which I was dealing with my life. I realized I mimicked my life in my yoga! I was able to get out of the endless loop

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How to find your true power through injury

Without yoga ability, I learned

It is through an injury which brought me over my physical edge and left me unable to do my yoga practice and function in my life, that I was able to see my true power and find my true courage!

It was as if I quickly was shown what life would be like without the blessings I currently take for granted: my capable and amazing body. Through a significant injury I questioned, in a desperate way (as if the injury could be permanent), how can it be possible for me to maintain even a basic means of living? I learned how.

Our path teaches us lessons

I knew it was my path. Our path always teaches us lessons. So I tried to see this injury was a gift and I surrendered to it...

With my neck and twist intensive yoga practice I've come to rely on periodical chiropractic neck adjustments from an amazing man—a yogi, in fact—so that I could continue to do the yoga poses which brought me to the most spiritual places that were unheard of before I learned how. They truly are the key to me.

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Embodying our experiences

Embody all of your activities

Whether it be through yoga or through other means of moving the body such as hiking or surfing, our experience is embodied when we let our body absorb the essence of the movement allowing it to sink in to who we are. It is here that we no longer think with our mind and our ego, but feel with our mind-body. Here is where the magic begins.

Think now of the difference between hiking for two full months along a medieval trail mimicking the ley lines of the stars above vs. reading a book about the transformation of such a journey or path. Think now of the difference between surfing in the Pacific Ocean feeling the pure power of nature as it carries you to shore vs. watching a movie of someone else doing this and reading about their feelings of the experience.

The outcome of the experience cannot be easily described in words. The nature of it has the power to teach that silence, breathing, and being present with the experience are the true transforming powers.

The more awesome experiences in our lives are probably the ones that brought up the most fear in advance. What becomes torturous is putting ourselves into situations that force us to feel what we fear most. Surrendering and challenging our fear through boldness is the way, however, to crack open the secrets inside.

"Leap and the net will appear" (Zen saying).

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