Growth Entails Healing

"Growth entails healing. At this time in humanity most people have been hurt fairly seriously in the growth process and unless they do their healing and work through this negativity, they will never become totally who they are." - Sister Evalene from the movie "One"

Yoga is a way to look at yourself more deeply. I think that for most people, hard things will eventually show up, and we can face it through yoga practice, or soothe ourselves and make the pain go away. Yoga is not a heal all miracle worker that heals all ills. Yoga is not a religion. My yoga practice can actually be an obstacle to healing if I use it to hide from my problems...from the negativity that is just waiting to show up an hour or two after my practice in the form of angry thoughts or resentment. Yoga can be similar to eating for emotional comfort or over-exercising to run away from unpleasant feelings or realities that simply must be faced if we are to heal.

We can abuse yoga practice by doing this, just as we can abuse our bodies by abusing them in other ways.

We have to face the Whole picture, both sides of the coin! We can look at just the shiny side of the coin and ignore the flip side, which may not be so shiny, but both sides are the same coin. We need to see the whole picture and do the work on what needs to be worked on (or through) if we are to be fully who we are...This will most likely be the greatest challenge of a yogi's life, and the greatest gift...!

As a theatre grad student, I have been writing lots of papers including papers on various artists over the years. I like the following quote from Orson Welles when he said:

"For thirty years people have been asking me how I reconcile X with Y! The truthful answer is that I don't. Everything about me is a contradiction and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There is a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles. You just recognize them."

Both sides of coin...