How We Live Our Yoga: Teachers and Practitioners on How Yoga Enriches, Surprises, and Heals Us Paperback – September 13, 2001

Different people have accounted their trials and struggle in their yogic path. It's refreshing to read that despite their ordeal their end result was one of peace and joy. It has encouraged me a great deal to stay focused on spiritual goals.

I have rarely enjoyed a book as much. Reading these stories feels like reading pages from the diaries of the writers through their own journey's. Each story is deeply personal and has helped me understand a particular aspect of my own journey.

This collection of short essays by yoga instructors, authors, and others details the many varied impacts of yoga. Some of the stories are fun and lighthearted, such as the email exchanges between cousins Janet Bowdan/Roz Peters and Judith Lasater's reflections on yoga and parenting. Others, like Adrian Piper's "The Meaning of Brahmacharya," are more academic in nature and more geared for those interested in yogic philosophy.For myself, the stories which I found most compelling were those which were born from tragedy. In "Brick by Brick," Samantha Dunn shares her discovery of kundalini yoga after a devastating horse accident left her badly injured. Robert Perkins' "Journey in Yama-Yama Land" describes the depression he experienced after the death of his wife and the role of yoga in providing him with a way out. Both Elizabeth Kadetsky's "Coming Apart in Pune" and Lois Nesbitt's "An Insomniac Awakens" relate tales of lives unraveling in the midst of a yoga practice (the former became part of the book First There is a Mountain, a memoir of Kadetsky's studies with BKS Iyengar in India). And in "The Art of Breathing," the suicide of Reetika Vazirani's father plays a central role in her own yoga practice.Although not all of these stories spoke to me personally, each contains an element of the personal, providing a window of insight into just a few of the infinite ways in which yoga is lived by those who practice it. Anyone with a regular yoga practice is bound to find at least one connection here, but this book is likely to be of little interest to non-yogis.

There is so much in this book that is wonderful and unique in the literature of yoga that I want to comment on, but for this review I want to concentrate on just one of the essays, the brilliant and penetrating, "The Meaning of Brahmacharya" by Adrian S. Piper.This essay by Wellesley Professor of Philosophy Adrian Piper centers on two yogic practices, both much misunderstood, and worse, much misrepresented. The first is celibacy (brahmacharya). A lot of cant about how brahmacharya really means moderation or monogamy, sex within marriage only, or a non-lustful state of mind, etc., is given the ghost by Piper, who is a long practicing brahmacarin and expert on jnana yoga. Piper's first point is that brahmacharya means quite simply what it is purported to mean, that is, celibacy. Period. Of course this is hard to accept, and for young people well-nigh impossible, and so most "authorities" have cheapened the message, have compromised the intent, and have said, what is meant is "moderation," etc. Some cultist gurus have even exploited this "interpretation" by assuming this mentality as their mantra: "I make love to you and only you (at this time) because you are special. In this way I practice brahmacharya, I practice moderation and restraint."Very appealing, but one might also slip through that eye of the needle and enter into the kingdom of heaven wearing a money belt. Piper has no such delusions. She's got it right. Celibacy is celibacy. That is why in the Hindu social philosophy one is first a student, and then a householder, then a mendicant and finally a renunciant. Householders are not celibate. In is only in the latter stages that one can be truly celibate. (There are exceptions of course, just as there are exceptional people.)Having said this I must confess that I disagree with Professor Piper on one particular. She writes (p. 39): "...the policy governing self-stimulation for brahmacharins is: Hands above the sheets!" What this means, I imagine, is that one must, in so far as it is possible, not practice onanism. Instead one should realize that celibacy means, as Piper phrases it, "to walk with God." This reminds me of the Catholic tradition that has the nuns "married" to Jesus--although, of course the God that Piper is referring to, the God of the Vedas, is Ineffable, being beyond anything we can say or not say. I would differ with Piper by insisting that a complete understanding of celibacy includes this most important distinction of how one should practice sex, that is, quite simply, not with others. Instead one should make love to oneself. Indeed, this is part of self-study. To say that one should not practice sexuality at all is to remain ignorant. There are many reasons that the path of yoga includes brahmacharya, but the most important one is that the practice of celibacy is the best answer to the problem of sex. Sex leads to copious karmas created. It leads to distraction and worldly responsibility. Ultimately, it leads to birth and death, to the perpetuation of the wheel of karma, which is exactly what the yogi wants to get away from, what the yogi is working to transcend. One also acts through nonaction, the Gita teaches. A kind of non-touching of oneself only prolongs and exacerbates the excitement, the tension and leads further along the path to sensuality. That is why in tantra it is taught that the man should withhold...himself for as long as possible. This is not done to conserve his strength, as some strictures have it, but to prolong his and her enjoyment. Putting this minor disagreement aside, I have to say that Piper's delineation of brahmacharya demonstrates a profound understanding of the intent and practice of yoga.Her essay is also about the somewhat infamous tantra of the left-handed path, which she calls "California Tantra," a felicitous phrase that captures the essence of the practice. Again, Piper's insight and expression reveals her deep understanding of the subject. As she writes (p. 56), "Variants on the general rule of thumb [for tantric yoga] might be: Party until you've gotten your yayas out; or until you've had enough partying for three lifetimes; or until you've learned the lessons from it you need to learn." This is tantric yoga in a nutshell: one finds liberation by giving into one's desires, it being believed that finally when the fires of youth are exhausted one will find samadhi (as Siddhartha does in Herman Hesse's celebrated novel). Piper acknowledges on page 55 that this liberation is "nothing to sneeze at." What she doesn't say in her essay is that tantra of the left-handed path is a torturous and very painful way of finding God, to be employed only when all else fails. It is the path of the junkie and the libertine; it is the roller coaster ride of exhaustive highs and lows; it is the path that will burn the aspirant out at an early age. It is dangerous.Piper's final note is magnificent: "The point of <ascetic> practices is not what one gives up but rather what one gets." She adds, "One does not give up the good life, but rather maximizes its goodness."--Dennis Littrell, author of "Yoga: Sacred and Profane (Beyond Hatha Yoga)"