Written by Lisa Miriam Cherry
A book about how yoga has transformed your life or how you’ve changed others’ lives through yoga.
“Stories from the Yogic Heart” is a labour of love that grew out of my life set-back with lead poisoning from pesticides.
The Multiple Chemical Sensitivity that resulted took my zest for life, and almost my life itself. Yoga gave it back.
Out of tragedy are said to come blessings, and yoga was one of them. I began to live for yoga-it allowed me to feel the spirit within, the energy coursing through my body, my heart chakra opening, and my connection to all.
This year, as part of my recovery, and as part of my love of journalism, I decided to compile stories for a book that would inspire others to embark on the yoga journey, as yoga stories were what inspired me.
Below is my story. Thank you so much for reading it.
And namaste, Lisa Miriam Cherry
About five years ago, while extremely stressed from work, from trying to escape the brain fog of environmental illness, and in need of escaping the scorching hot, polluted summer air of Toronto (Canada), I decided to drive to a small resort north of the city and relax by the lake for the weekend.
I felt like I was losing my mind with all the negativity swirling around my head like a tornado, and one of my best friends, who had run out of advice for me, told me to try yoga. “I’ve heard that it changes your perspective,” she said. Well, something had to change the record track in my head, and my naturopath had been recommending yoga to me for 20 years, so I decided to give it a try!
Fortunately, I found a yoga magazine that featured stories that month on how yoga changed peoples’ lives, so I bought it.
Sitting by the lake, trying to blur out the noise of jet skis speeding back and forth, I was mesmerized by the amazing stories of transformation in health, so I was raring to try it.
I had to drive back the next day, but due to my severe fatigue often from my environmental illness, I dreaded trying the yoga class, at 8am since I am not an early riser!
But I was able to drag myself (a feat for me then!) to the class held in a small, musty room (I think they delegated the teacher to a storage room!), where my fellow yogis were a beraggled mother and her eight year old son. I guessed no one else wanted to awaken on their holiday either!
It was a very gentle class, and I thought nothing was happening to me, but by the end of it, I had so much energy and my head was so clear that I had no problems driving the two hours home.
All along the drive, I couldn’t quell my amazement. I felt great. I was so hooked, I went right to the Yoga Studio and did another class at 1:30.
My only regret is that I never thanked the teacher to tell her that she had changed the course of my life.
Over progressive months and years, I’d experience things I never imagined would happen from my practice.
Brought up with an alcoholic relative where my sisters and I were regularly mentally and sometimes physically abused, I felt no sense of self, like I was almost a blob, feeling like others controlled or had the right to control my body and mind. Life was a rollercoaster of fear alternating with numbness.
Suddenly, with yoga, I began to feel taller, felt like I had a body, then felt what I can only describe as a body within my body–an energy or my soul.
With this came a wisdom which whispered in my ears as I meditated or did my asanas. Wisdom beyond my consciousness, a “knowing” which opened my mind to how we’re connected to each other, to God, and on some level to even knowing how the universe herself works.
I wasn’t looking for this, it just came, and I felt for the first time in my life a safety, an inner peace, a happiness because I finally understood life and my soul’s place in it.
I don’t know if my energies were now unblocking, letting information in, or what was happening, but as Einstein said, “thoughts are things”, and as bitter memories floated from my body as I did various poses, they seemed to leave room for the higher energy of wisdom to enter.
Later, I was drawn to books about yoga, such as “The Quest for True Self”, by Stephen Cope, or “The Heart of Yoga”, by TKV Desikachar to see if I was just imagining the phenomena I was experiencing, as some teachers told me I was just getting too serious.
Some would even laugh off my idea of drishtis (gazing at the third eye, heart chakra or other points which helps lead to the feeling of union) which I came to on my own.
But the authors confirmed my experiences, ones which I would never have believed by reading about them beforehand. Yoga, as they say, is union, and is about feeling one with God. Only by practicing would I have believed it and I was grateful I went that route first.
I was blessed to have a dream one night, where I was taking yoga teacher training, and a glowing, blonde woman about seven feet tall came up to me as I practiced in the long, grand, taj mahal-like hall.
She leaned over, and asked me to come into the other room with her. I paused, then hesitantly followed her.
Standing in front of with her long, flowing gown, she motioned to her heart chakra with both hands, and slowly opened and closed them like flower buds. “Do yoga every day and it will open your heart,” she said telepathically. “It will change your life.
And it was doing that. In ways that no therapist had been able to do for me with talk therapy, as old emotions were leaving on their own.
“Yoga is about the mind…just do yoga and you will heal the mind,” TKV Desikachar told me during a workshop a couple years ago.
I used to think the mind was over-rated and that we should be more concerned with work and achievement, but inner peace can never be over-rated. For through that state comes wisdom, compassion, a connection with one’s soul, and a “knowing and understanding of oneself, one’s path, and the universe” which has a value beyond compare.
That was always my deepest desire, and it came to me through the grace of yoga.
