Dharma & Change: How Yoga Helps Us Live Our Dreams

I believe we’re all seekers of Truth. Some of us are better elephant hunters than others, willing to call out the obvious, even if it’s uncomfortable. On the mat, or the meditation cushion, even while on a run, we all see glimpses of Truth. We know the right thing to do. We know how we really feel. We know what we really want.

The real yoga is what happens next.

In the award-winning documentary The Cove, about the senseless and brutal slaughter of dolphins in Japan, the lead character is Ric O’Barry. Ric had been head dolphin trainer for the popular 1960’s TV show “Flipper.”

Kathy, one of five female dolphins who shared the role of Flipper, swam into his arms, took a breath, then refused to take another. Ric emotionally describes her suicide and how Kathy sank to the floor of the tank that had been her prison. It was the catalyst for him to change. The very next day he was arrested for trying to free dolphins that were being held in captivity.

Just like Ric, none of us plan to be activists. But life will rile us to anger. We’ll be overwhelmed with love, revulsion, desire, compassion, disgust. We’ll have tragic experiences that ask us to grow. These beautiful and harsh moments of Truth always demand we change.

Resistance to growth, to being an activist of our own Truth, usually comes from within. In our heads, a war begins. The small version of ourselves, tells us all kinds of lies. Or maybe other people told them to us and we believed them. Some favorites: You’re not good enough. No one cares what you have to say. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ll get hurt. How we handle, resist, force, avoid or accept change is part of our yoga practice.

Often, the deepest Truth is the whisper of our most wanted, personal and powerful dreams. Yoga provides us a place to hear those dreams. It’s where we finally stop being busy and actually show up for ourselves. We purge the mental clutter that we misinterpret as reality and then hear the actual Truth. It can move us to tears.

Hearing our most profound dreams, making time for ourselves, getting out of the shadow of our past, focusing on what we want, removing obstacles (behavior, people, attitudes, etc…) requires the tenacity and stamina of a wild animal. In yoga we build physical and mental endurance as well as the chance to rest and realign ourselves. We gather the necessary courage to make changes that move us toward our dreams. We learn to be very honest with ourselves about where we’re way out of alignment with our Truth.

Our dreams, our deepest Truths, don’t want to die. No matter how long we ignore them, they persist, and will still be there waiting for us as soon as we listen to them. These dreams are our very nature. We can no more remove our dreams than stop being who we are.

This is my personal definition of Dharma; to be in accord with nature, we must be true to ourselves and follow our dreams.

It may be painful and difficult as we shed our old skin and grow into the new version of ourselves. I think many of us need this pain; without it we may never have the impetus to transform. Like a butterfly, the movement from caterpillar to flight may destroy the old way, but on the other side of the chrysalis we find our wings.

In the 17 years I’ve practiced yoga, I’ve used every excuse to hide from my own dreams. I’ve been paralyzed by every possible fear. I’ve had years of emotional pain and suffering, much of it from my own inability to let go of control and get out of my own way. I’ve also learned to recognize signs, behaviors and thoughts of the True voice, as well as the one that comes from the “little me,” that some would call the ego or the shell.

To live from Truth can be scary and challenging. Often we have to let go of people and places we love that no longer fit, like an addict who has to get a whole new set of friends to support his sobriety, but we need the change.

Like Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, we usually don’t want to step on the battlefield and fight for what’s right. We’re overwhelmed with emotion and cry out for help. When frozen in the face of uncertainty it’s confusing what’s the Truth and what’s fiction. And those are the most crucial moments to get to our yoga mats and sit on our meditation cushions. And when we do, we can listen for our authentic voice. We can observe our attitude and behavior, too, to see if we are aligned or misaligned.

If we continue to move in the face of the fear and discomfort that’s present when life pushes us to grow, and it always will, we find a sense of completeness, a freedom and joy we never thought possible. As Gil Atkinson said, “Those on top of the mountain didn’t fall there.” We have to stand up for our beliefs, fight for our dreams, and live by what we know to be True. It’s our Dharma.