Victor
I learned about Buddhism in Catholic school. I
remember my teacher saying in Global History
class that Buddhism was a philosophy, not a
religion, so you could be a Buddhist and still be
a Catholic. This had an impact on me, because
Buddhism was really resonating with everything
I felt on a personal spiritual level. I thought, “This
is kind of what I believe.”
My coed school also had a yoga club, and a
friend asked if I wanted to come. This was way
before the yoga craze. Yoga was considered
pretty out there and subversive. The only people
who went to Yoga Club were, like, the weird
people—a group I was proud to be a part of.
I was not the joyful person people know me to
be today. I was fifteen and searching—for noth-
ing specific, but nevertheless I was enveloped in
my own sadness. I respected Catholicism and did
not have any terrible experiences with it, but I was
curious about yoga from a spiritual perspective.
Yoga Club met after school. We gathered
in a classroom, pushed the desks aside and laid
down our mats. Ten or fifteen people were there,
including students, an art teacher, and a religion
teacher. My Italian teacher, a Franciscan monk,
led the class.
There was no inspirational discourse. The class
was just Brother Ben leading us through very basic
shapes. He would tell us how to get into a pose,
and we would hold it. At the end was the final rest-
ing pose, Savasana. To this day, I remember coming
out of the first yoga class of my life and feeling a
radiant peace I had never felt before. There was
no comprehension. There was no wondering. I
wouldn’t have been able to articulate it right then,
but I knew, “This is it. This is how I want to feel.”
No one has ever asked me what came up for
me during that first class. Now that I’m talking
about it, these poses unlock the body’s energetic
channels. I believe we’re all born with karma, and
that there was a lot of pain built up in me from
previous lifetimes. I am not an enlightened being
by any means, but in that first class I got a taste
of what it felt like to be free.DHARMA MITTRA HEADSTAND