Join me on a three-week journey toward real change, transformation that happens from the inside out and has real staying power. I’m not saying you’ll be transformed in three weeks. That’s not possible. What I AM saying is that I can give you the tools, the practices, and the motivation to set yourself on a course for finding what your soul is craving. ReVolution, not resolution is our rallying cry!

Resolve to Evolve is a three-week series that will focus on meditation, mindfulness and discovering the miracle of the mundane right here in the midst of our busy lives. I will be offering this series in-person or online through Jai Yoga School on Sundays, January 2, 9, and 16, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. We won’t just talk about these topics; we will get down to the hands-on practice of each. I can’t wait to join you on this journey and see where it takes us!

The three-week series costs $60. You can register by clicking HERE. Additional option: If you have the time and inclination, you can sign up for the Gentle Yoga class I teach at Jai each Sunday from 11:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., also available in-person or online. While it’s certainly not required, it’s a great way to prepare for meditation. Class sign-up is available HERE.

If you plan to join me, bring a yoga mat, a blanket or cushion (although Jai has blankets if you want to use one of those), and something to write with. I will provide small journals. Other than that, just bring an open heart and mind and a willingness to be still and silent for a little bit. That’s where the magic happens!

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In 1990, when I was deep into my practice and working as the part-time manager of the Austin Yoga Center in Texas, I signed up for teacher training, but circumstances made it impossible for me to get very far. Fast forward to two more near-misses with Yoga Teacher Training in 2011 and 2016, and I began to believe it just wasn’t meant to be. But when you’re meant to do something and you want to do something deep in your soul, the universe keeps chasing you until you put all the fears aside and take the leap. That seed of fearlessness was planted last summer. I wanted to get my yoga mojo back and signed up for a discounted new-student offer at nearby Jai Yoga School. Within weeks I was at Jai constantly, taking every kind of yoga class I could fit into my schedule. I didn’t just love the classes; I loved the community, the chanting, the whole package, and I quickly dusted off my old dream, pushing aside worries that 57 was far too old to take up a physically rigorous and mentally challenging program.

What began in January, with an amazing group of yogis learning alongside me, culminated in our graduation on Oct. 11 in a beautiful, socially-distant ceremony that was buzzing with emotion, energy and joy. We had traversed a pandemic-infused YTT program that lasted twice as long as planned due to COVID changes and required us to wear masks and refrain from hugging, much to our chagrin. Through anatomy and philosophy classes, sequencing and practice teaching, we carried on, pushing beyond our comfort zones and letting our guards down. We became a family, and we will remain a family forever because we have peered into each other’s souls, and you can never go back from that. And isn’t that a beautiful, magical, mystic thing.

Since graduation, I’ve been thinking about the yoga teachers who have walked with me on this journey — teaching me, inspiring me, motivating me, loving me. So let me start at the beginning, even if most of those teachers will never read this. Thank you to Sarah Brumgart, the modern dancer and yogi, who first introduced me to yoga and taught me semi-private lessons for the years I lived in Austin in the late 1980s. She was the first person to inspire dreams of being a teacher, and I will be forever grateful. Thank you to Suzy Yoga, who taught me pre-natal yoga when I was pregnant with Chiara and reminded me how much I loved and needed this practice. Thank you to the many teachers who only briefly touched my life but made an impact, such as Larissa Hall Carlson and Father Tom Ryan, C.S.P., both of whom taught me on my one visit to Kripalu, and Lauren Toolin, who encouraged me when I considered YTT in 2011 and 2016 and tried to get me to look beyond my fears.

Thank you to Deanna Beyer, who is not just a teacher but a dear friend who taught those pre-dawn classes at the Bethlehem YMCA that fed my soul and kept me sane. I loved the drive through darkness to those classes that Deanna managed to infuse with a spiritual light even though we were in a gym room next to treadmills and weight machines. When my dreams of YTT were dashed by what was believed to be a hernia, Deanna gave me personal training, helping me bring my yoga down to the most basic level so that I could maintain a simple practice while nursing my condition. She never gave up on me.

Finally, thank you to Meg Horan, my lead teacher at Jai Yoga School, who is not only an amazing yogi and teacher, but a beautiful human inside and out. I was so blessed to find your school and land in your classes and YTT program. Such a tremendous gift! There is nothing I can say that could adequately convey just how grateful I am for all you have given me. Thank you, too, to Dustin, Sabrina, Kristi, Natalie, Allison, Deb, Blair, Mandy, Mareena, and Laurel — all the teachers at Jai who have helped shape my training and my practice over the past 18 months. You are an amazing community.

A huge shout out and thank you to my family — Dennis and the kids, who put up with my long hours away from home and frantic studying and practicing. I could not have done this without you, and I am so grateful, not only for your support, but for your enthusiastic encouragement of all my crazy dreams and schemes. I love you to the moon and back.

Probably one of the common questions I get when I tell people about this journey is whether — or how — it complements my Catholic faith, or even if it’s possible for the two to co-exist in the same spiritual universe without harming one or the other. I am here to tell you that they can more than co-exist; the practice of yoga has made me a better Catholic, a more prayerful and compassionate person, and a more engaged and energized spiritual pilgrim. Years ago, I wrote about this in an essay called Where the Amen Meets the Om. You can read that HERE,

For those who don’t venture over to that essay, here’s the bottom line: My Catholic faith is my bedrock. The message of the Gospel, the teachings of Jesus, are essential to my life, to my very being. But I also know how easy it is for me to get distracted, to skip prayer or find it impossible to settle into prayer. Enter yoga, a practice that slows down my fast-moving body and mind and settles my soul just as it settles my limbs on the mat. When I step onto my mat and stretch and balance or sit cross-legged and breathe deeply, I open up a space where God can enter. And that is why yoga is so vital to my own Catholic spiritual life. And it is why I am so excited about teaching others how to use their practice to deepen their own prayer lives and to move them forward on their spiritual journeys in the most beautiful way.

If you’d like to know how to book a yoga class or retreat, or just want to know more about my yoga journey, visit my page dedicated to this topic HERE.

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The past two times I considered YYT-200 training, it was with Lauren Toolin of Yoga Vidya. Both times she was encouraging and firm, letting me know it wouldn’t be easy but it would be so worth it. She didn’t need to convince me, and yet both times I let fear get the best of me — I’m too old, I’m not fit enough, I don’t have the time, it’s too much money, where would I teach anyway, what about liability insurance, and every other excuse in the book. I hate it when fear wins.

Today I was on Instagram and came across a Yoga Vidya Salon with Lauren, where she answered questions about her own path in particular and yoga in general. Her message is one that so resonates with me: It’s not about perfecting a pose; it’s about going deep within. Sitting in total silence for 30 minutes can be much harder than doing a headstand. And yet I get stuck on the fact that I can no longer do a headstand.

Toward the end of her video, in response to a question, she says:

“Yoga changes people, and that’s a beautiful thing, but change isn’t always pretty or easy…Yoga is a great way to change, if you want to change…”

Ah, there’s the rub. Do I really want to change? We often say we want change, but we usually want a transformation of our own making. We have an idea and an image in our head of what our transformation should look like, but that’s just us trying to put our human constructs on the Divine. True transformation means accepting that we might not have any idea what it will entail or whether we’ll like every aspect of what needs to happen, and beginning anyway. That involves letting go of fear and falling in with trust.

Do you want to change? I’m putting together a plan to gather a little tribe of sorts to support each other in whatever change we’re after, to encourage each other, and to give each other a little nudge when one of us is stuck in fear. Do you want to join me? Let me know, and I’ll keep you posted as things develop.

Here’s the full Yoga Vidya Salon video with Lauren if you’d like to check it out. Enjoy.

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So as I was driving to yoga class this morning at 5:15 a.m., energized by the cold air and cheered by the twinkling lights that still decorate many front porches and trees in our town (Thank you, whoever you are!), I was writing the headline for this post. Because that’s what I do, even when I’m driving, even when I’m showering, even I’cleaning bathrooms or raking leaves. I write. It doesn’t always end up here or anywhere, for that matter, but I write almost non-stop in my head. And so I walked into yoga class knowing that I would come home and write a post titled “What are you feeding?” and I had already planned to use that graphic up there, the one that says, “Please do not feed the fears.”

I sat down on my mat in the dark and quiet yoga studio and entered into that silent sacred space that exists wherever we want to find it, if we’re willing, even at the YMCA, and I waited for class to begin. And then this is what my yoga teacher read to start our practice:

Listen. Love laughs
at fear. Can you hear it?
And fear fades in the face
of laughter. Let nothing
distract you from the fact
that fear will grow if you
feed it, and shrink when
you pay it no heed. There.
See? Fear disappears, and
leaves love laughing.

— From “One Soul” by Danna Faulds

By the time she got halfway through that poem, I was smiling on the inside. By the time she got to the end of that poem, I was smiling on the outside. How did she get inside my head this morning? Not sure, but I’m glad she did. At the end of class, I went up to my teacher and asked if I could have a copy of what she read and she said something like this (might not be exact but close enough), “I was sitting in my car this morning picking out this poem and I thought to myself, ‘I hope Mary is in class today,’ because I knew you would love this.” Talk about a soul connection, and just when I needed it most. Thank you, Spirit. You never fail me.

I came home from yoga class, went directly to my computer, and unfriended someone on Facebook who was taking energy I didn’t have to give, a “friend” I didn’t even know but who had entered my life through the magic of social media. Why feed the negative? Because we humans tend to have a weakness for that kind of thing, I think. We want to be loved, we want to be understood, we want to be successful, we want, we want, we want. And so we continue to try to make a connection with people who don’t deserve our time and energy, and we focus our hearts and minds on the fears and worries rather on the gifts and blessings. We think by focusing on those things we’ll become stronger, we’ll overcome the fears, but just the opposite happens. We end up feeding that fire of negativity, and it will burn our joy to the ground if we let it. So don’t.

Today I challenge you to let go of one fear you’ve been feeding, one negative thing that takes more than it gives, and use all that energy to feed something good in your life. Focus on one blessing, one person who deserves your attention and love, one joy, and see what happens.

Peace, blessings, joy, love, namaste.

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Because our local YMCA is refinishing the wood floors in the various studios, including our early morning yoga studio, our teacher decided to hold class outside in a pavilion back near the woods. I trudged off to class this morning at 5:20 a.m. and arrived as my teacher was pulling a wagon full of mats through the parking lot to the pavilion, which could not be seen at that point because of heavy mist and fog. If I hadn’t checked to see where the pavilion was beforehand, I never would have found it. Yeah, that foggy.

I settled my mats (I always use two for extra cushioning) down on the concrete slab and sat down to face a stand of enormous pine trees, rising majestically through the misty morning air. Breathtaking. So breathtaking, in fact, that I have now vowed (Finally!) to get an iPhone because I really would have liked to capture a “View from My Yoga Mat” photo for you today. (Instead I’m using that beautiful photo above from Now & Zen. I’m linking to them here, so I hope they don’t mind.)

As class began, the sound of birds chirping, an occasional woodpecker, and a distant train whistle turned that little concrete slab into an outdoor monastery. It was beautiful in every way — the sounds, the smell of wood chips, the dampness on my yoga mat from the mist, the gray of dawn giving way to the light of morning.

We did several Sun Salutations just as the sun was coming up. I felt like I was lifting the sun with my arms, and all the while I was thanking God for his beautiful creation, for the glorious morning, for the people around me on their mats, for my teacher. I found myself smiling through the poses because at almost every turn I was surprised again by the beauty around me, right there in the back of the Y parking lot.

When I returned to the Y later that day for a Zumba class (I’m a woman of many talents), I told the manager how much I liked the outdoor yoga class and asked if they would please let that happen again, even after the floors are all dry. I hope they go for it because it really shook things up in the gentlest, most beautiful way.

If you have a patch of grass or a patio or a balcony, take your mat outside one morning and see how it feels. Even if you don’t have space, just go out there and do a few still poses — Tree, for example, which we did this morning, reaching our arms toward the sky like all the other trees around us. Spectacular. Even in the tiniest space you could do Tree or Mountain or Chair or Eagle or whatever strikes your fancy.

Change your view and you just might change your day.

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Every time the door opened I couldn’t resist the urge to open my eyes and see if was the teacher. Nope.  As 5:45  gave way to 5:48, then 5:50, and soon 5:53 (or so, based on my general clock sense), a few of us looked around at each other and shrugged. Surely it’s just as easy for the teacher to hit the snooze and oversleep as it is for any one of us. Lord knows I contemplated rolling over this morning before finally throwing back the covers and setting the day in motion.

Funny thing was, we all just sat there on our mats, quietly facing front in the darkness. One or two whispered questions, another got up to look outside, but, for the most part, we sat. We stretched a bit more and then continued to sit. No anger rising, as it might if we were standing in line at Walmart and the person in front realized she didn’t have her credit card. (Not that I have any experience with that sort of frustration.) No annoyance coming out in body language or sarcastic commentary, as might be the case in a traffic jam or a doctor’s waiting room. Nope, we just sat, perhaps a little confused or resigned, but not impatient or angry.

Finally one student got up and went to ask a Y staff person if he knew what was going on. They phoned the teacher who had, in fact overslept, and she asked if we’d be willing to wait 12 minutes. Most of us said we would. A few left, probably those who had to get to work sooner rather than later. The rest of us stayed, either stretching on our mats or walking the track or treadmills until the teacher showed up. And then we did yoga, just as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

How wish I could say I’d have that same attitude in so many other situations when I find myself growing impatient and frustrated. Why is it I can sit quietly in a darkened Y studio, knowing I may have gotten up at 5 a.m. for no reason at all, and not lose my cool when I lose it so easily at other times? It comes back to the heart of yoga, of course, and why we’re all there in the first place. We’re not just there to build muscle or lose pounds. We’re there to gain peace, to find a balance the normal world cannot give, and even a 20 minute delay in starting isn’t going to distract us from our appointed rounds.

So the question is how to translate that mat-based patience into everyday patience. Why can I sit and feel such compassion and kindness toward my yoga teacher — even at 5:30 a.m. when  I could be warm under my covers — when I can’t muster up even a fraction of that patience for the old lady driving 15 miles per hour down the back road to our house on a busy afternoon or the bank teller who disappears from the drive-in window for what seems like a half hour while I’m waiting to deposit a check?

Maybe it’s the deep breathing. Maybe it’s the God connection — because I am always in a state of heightened spiritual awareness at yoga, and even for the ride to and from the Y. Maybe it’s the unity I feel with the people around me, each one of us trying to do one small thing to make our lives better, to make ourselves better, not in a selfish way but in a real effort to live up to our true potential as human beings.

“Love is patient,” we read in Scripture. Today in our little yoga studio, that verse was palpable, and it reminded me that sometimes — often — love is a choice we make.

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By Mary DeTurris Poust

When I took my first yoga class more than thirty years ago, I was in a bit of a crisis in terms of the Catholic faith of my birth. My mother had recently died and I had moved out of my family home and across the country. I was searching in so many ways and came upon yoga through a friend who knew a teacher who held classes in her home. There, on a mat in an empty living room, I learned how to stretch and settle my body in new ways, ways that allowed me to more easily enter a spiritual realm that has always beckoned to me.

So began my odyssey into an Eastern world that some would have us believe is not only incompatible with Roman Catholic faith but dangerous to it. Of all the posts I put on Facebook, anything having to do with yoga is sure to stir up ominous warnings. I have been told, on more than one occasion, that it is the work of the devil. And yes, I have read what the Vatican has warned about “New Age” religions (FYI: Yoga isn’t even remotely new). Quite frankly, someone who is inclined to make an idol of yoga, turning it into an obstacle rather than a pathway to God, is probably just as likely to turn certain devotions within the church into idols or superstitions—from obsessing over the trappings of the faith, to burying a statue to sell a house, to leaving slips of papers in pews as a guarantee that a prayer will be answered. Idolatry comes in all forms; it doesn’t take yoga to make that happen.

Permit me, then, to take you into my world of yoga, a world where Amen and Om happily coexist. During my early days of yoga, I threw myself into the practice. I even managed a yoga center for a while and began training to become a teacher, something I regretfully never completed.

I read the Bhagavad Gita and Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras.

I chanted.

And yet, when it came time to meditate on a mantra, I didn’t want anything Sanskrit. I wanted Christian scripture, because that is my core. As I sat in half-lotus position with many other yogis-in-training, I breathed in and out to the words: “Be still, and know that I am God,” or, “I am with you always.” At a time of personal confusion and chaos, yoga gave me a peaceful place to reconnect with God, a way to listen to what He had to say above the din of my life, and an open door that led back to the richness of my own Catholic faith.

Over the years, my practice has waxed and waned, but inside me beats the heart of a yogi. When I recently returned to yoga class at my local YMCA, I was not on my sticky mat five minutes before I could feel myself smiling, my shoulders relaxing, and my heart singing. Different types of prayer methods work for different people and, for me, one thing is clear: Yoga is my entry into prayer, even in a sweaty, crowded YMCA studio.

Most people in this country don’t do yoga as a spiritual practice. They do it because it helps their backs, or makes them more flexible. But I always hope for the daring YMCA teacher who inserts spiritual elements into a class. I don’t do yoga to lose weight or get stronger, although those are surely side benefits. I do yoga to find that still, silent space at my center, where God can enter in.

Think of your own prayer life for a moment. Does kneeling help you enter more deeply into prayer? Does lying prostrate before an altar convey a sense of total surrender before God? In much the same way, yoga uses physical positions to help us reach spiritual heights, whatever our faith tradition.

As I stood on my mat last Sunday, listening to my teacher walk us through some difficult poses, he reminded us that we need to look at ourselves with compassion when we can’t get something right, and he urged us to let that gentleness emanate outward when we left class. Yoga is about compassion.

My Monday night teacher, who belongs to my parish, starts each class by asking us to bow our heads and think about the “intention” we have for our practice. How beautiful and perfectly complementary to the intercessory prayer we practice as Christians. She always ends the class by saying: “Shanti (peace), shanti, shanti. Peace in our hearts, peace in our homes, peace on our planet.” Yoga is about peace.

Finally, every yoga class ends the same way, with hands held in prayer position over the heart as we bow slightly to each other and say, “Namaste,” which means, “the divinity (or light) in me bows to the divinity in you,” not so dissimilar to the way Benedictine monastics have always bowed to “the Christ in each other” as they process in and out of choir. Having grown up believing that my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, this practice echoes my own Catholic beliefs. In fact, I should take that posture and attitude toward more people in my life, not just those on the mat next door. Yoga is about recognizing the presence of God, in ourselves and in the world around us.

I think a lot of fear and confusion stem from the unknown. People don’t know what to make of the strange Sanskrit words, the poses with animal names, the chanting. There is a sense that if you do yoga, you must be exploring Hinduism or at the very least looking for something outside Jesus Christ. But nothing could be further from the truth for faithful Christians who use Eastern traditions to strengthen our prayer lives. We are not there to be converted away from our faith but to grow stronger in it through methods that influence our Catholic spiritual lives in powerful ways.

Many traditional Catholic devotions don’t work for me. I’m really not that good at saying the Rosary. I struggle with the Liturgy of the Hours, even though I continue to pray it as often as possible. But the physicality of yoga as a way to enter into meditation? That feels as natural to me as breathing. And as I breathe in and out and bring my body to a point of stillness, I can feel myself inching closer to God, pose by pose.

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