The Internet to the Inner-Net by Gopi Kallayil

Author:Gopi Kallayil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hay House
Published: 2015-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

ONE MINUTE OF MEDITATION, ONE MINUTE OF YOGA

I’m 19 years old, sitting in Padmasana, Lotus Pose, under the thatched roof of an outdoor yoga practice deck. Legs crossed, eyes closed, I breathe in the fragrance of coconut, jasmine, and banana, feel the warm breeze drifting from the lake. As I focus on my breathing, I’m faintly aware of the water lapping the shore, the temple bells ringing, and a cow mooing in the distance as a farmer walks it from the field for its milking. I could stay here forever, but soon I will be graduating from the yoga teacher training program and leaving the Sivananda Ashram in Neyyar Dam, Kerala, India.

For the past month, I’ve felt I’ve had some sort of integrity toward a regular practice. Every morning, along with 119 fellow students from around the world, I’ve awakened at dawn, moving promptly into half an hour of meditation, followed by kirtan singing, morning satsang, and two hours of yoga. In the evening, we reverse the order—two hours of yoga, meditation at 8 P.M., and then kirtan singing, followed by evening satsang. The mental and physical discipline has changed me, transformed me inside and out in an amazing way. With every breath, I feel the power of what is possible.

I’m excited, living in a more elevated state than I have ever known in my short 19 years of life. At the same time, my mind is much quieter. It’s magical what four hours of yoga and one full hour of meditation a day have done. As I walk through the gates of the ashram and down the hill, my backpack strapped to my back, I make a commitment to myself. To maintain this amazing energy outside the walls of the ashram, I’m going to practice yoga for an hour and meditate for 30 minutes. Every day.

I kept my vow for two days—yes, days, not months—after I left the ashram. By day three my grand plan for my life had completely collapsed. After that, I rarely met my commitment. As a college student, my commitment to my practice shifted to a commitment to staying up until 2 A.M., drinking masala chai, and listening to Jimi Hendrix or Led Zeppelin—all because we wanted to be cool and hip.

As the years went on, business school demanded all my focus, and later at McKinsey & Company, and then Google, business meetings, travel, and long hours ate up my days. The only time I could find the structure, the rhythm of life, that supported me was when I went back to one of the Sivananda Ashrams in Neyyar Dam, Grass Valley, or the Bahamas, or when I visited my spiritual teacher Rama Devi’s spiritual community in Mangalore. While on retreat, I’d spend two hours twice a day in yoga class. I’d meditate for 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening. I’d come back to myself, feeling centered, feeling grounded, and, most important, feeling I had an integrity toward my practice and a sense of control through somehow reining in my mind.

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