On Seane Corn, Kripalu, Coming Together, and the usefulness of Fame.

From someone who had a punk rock teen phase with Goth inclinations—you know, I wore all black and stuff—this is a pretty amazing revelation.

I never felt like I fit in anywhere.

In yoga, I found a community, but had somehow managed to hold onto an outdated thought that groups and popular things are bad: I was more of an alternative person I thought. Now, twenty-or-so years later here I am questioning this need I have felt to be different. And these days I don’t think that I was ever that different, anyway.

The way I see it now is that the world has big problems, and we need to make something good happen. So it might take something really popular (like yoga?) to bring us together to create a positive solution. And the people who initiate this positive gathering might have to be famous people, or they might become famous in the process. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be easy to criticize and be skeptical of someone who is famous. And I’m not suggesting that anyone blindly trust the choice of crowds, but I think that it is good to check out popular things or people and really look into it. Some will probably be shallow, and some might be amazing.

I came to do programs at Kripalu with Seane Corn through intuition. I knew that I desperately needed to break my routine. I received an email from Kripalu, and thought the programs sounded good, but I didn’t realize the depth of what I was getting into. I really thought (without thinking much at all) that I was going on a no-brainer yoga vacation. To my surprise, we did really powerful work physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

I thought it would be relatively light and safe psychologically, and intense physically based on the fact that Seane is a famous American yoga teacher. I’ve seen her beautiful smile and blond curls in the media so much. The work we did blew through my unexamined assumptions.

Seane Corn informed us that she likes to offer a “detox” retreat because it tends to draw a wider or more varied group than what she usually offers. She said that people come in who want to poop and then she delivers her message about yoga and mysticism. The session was about emotional cleansing, and how important that is. I couldn’t agree more. When the tears need to flow, they should. And they did. Maybe it’s enough to say that when I put my hands together for “namaste” at the end of class, my fingers found snot trailing from my nose. I had a moment of wondering, “What is going on?” It wasn’t obvious why I had just had those powerful tears. I felt humbled, grateful, connected, and in awe. I was thanking God for suffering and healing and for everything that led up to me in that moment.

I had a sense of enormity and great suffering and I was okay and this was a miracle.

* content provided compliments of Yogic Muse *