PHOTO COURTESY OF DEBORAH PERKINS92
june 2016yogajournal.commarianne
williamson
YOGA JOURNAL Issue 283 (ISSN 0191-0965, USPS 116-050), established in 1975, is published nine times a year (February, March, May, June, August, September, October, November, December)
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POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Yoga Journal, P.O. Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235.Internationally acclaimed spiritual
author, lecturer, peace activist,
and co-founder of Peace Alliance,
a grassroots organization committed
to preventing violent conflict.
Interview by Elizabeth MarglinI’M A YOGI
“My morning call
to the Divine is
a prayer from
A Course in
Miracles: ‘Where
would you have
me go? What
would you have
me do? What
would you have
me say and
to whom?’”WORDS TO LIVE BY
We are bombarded with fear-inducing stimuli these
days—the news, toxic chemicals, air pollution—
and it throws us out of alignment, both physically
and emotionally. Our spiritual practices recalibrate the
nervous system. I took private Iyengar Yoga classes
for years, and I come back to that practice daily. I see
meditation and prayer doing the same thing that yoga
does: They all get us back into the correct position.
That’s what allows everything to flow.My mornings are very precious—I need time to
prepare myself. Rather than heading straight to the
computer, the television, the newspaper—all of which
mean taking in the stress of the world first thing—it’s
important to set aside time for your spiritual practice.
Just as you take a bath or a shower in the morning
because you don’t want to go out into the day with
yesterday’s dirt on your body, a spiritual practice helps
you avoid taking yesterday’s stress into the day.
I started writing in 1988, with the encouragement
of author Jerry Jampolsky. I had been lecturing for
five years, but I didn’t know how to shape the material
from my lectures into a book. He said, “Let’s agree in
consciousness that there is someone out there who
would know how to do that.” The following week,I met two literary agents, one of whom worked with
me to publish A Return to Love in 1992. At that point,
I was just hoping to sell enough books so I wouldn’t
be embarrassed. It went on to become a mega-hit that
sold over a million copies.
I write with the same hope every writer has: that
somebody, somewhere is going to read something
I write and have one of those “aha moments” that we
all love to have when we’re reading. I’m not one of
those disciplined writers who writes a paragraph every
day. I have to get pregnant with a book. Then, when
it’s time, it starts to come out. When it does, it’s like
mother’s milk—it needs to be expressed.
If I’ve done my yoga and meditation practice, the
chances of doing something stupid—like sending
a snarky email, or saying or texting something
I regret—are reduced because these practices give
us impulse control. Otherwise, you are spewing
your forces. Too many of us leak our energy.
I’m 63, and as I get older, I can actually feel my
muscles constrict. It’s creepy, but I can also feel
how yoga keeps my muscles more open. Yoga
helps energy flow through my body in ways that it
wouldn’t otherwise. The physical benefits are great.