My First Yoga Class: The Surprising Start of My Journey Back to Faith

My first yoga class was in a library, not a gym or a yoga studio. It was a community school class held at the high school I’d graduated from five years earlier. I remember that class well, even though it was decades ago.

Even though I fell in love with yoga quickly, I only practiced for a few years before I got sidetracked more often than not. I attended classes on and off for 20 years before my practice became an essential part of my life in 2007. While I can’t know for sure what’s ahead, I can’t imagine a time when yoga won’t be a part of my life.

So, why am I thinking about my first yoga class now?

Oddly, it’s because of a book I’m reading and discussing with other readers. The book, by Franciscan priest and modern mystic Richard Rohr, is called “The Universal Christ.”

To understand the context, it would be useful to know that I was raised Catholic, and that was important to me as a young person. I even went to a Jesuit college. And I’ve been a spiritual seeker for as long as I can remember.

Soon after I graduated college, I stopped going to church. I needed a deeper experience of God. Around that time, I went to my first yoga class.

My First Yoga Class, or How Managing Stress Helped Me Stay Connected to God

For me, yoga is a spiritual practice, though I went to that first yoga class to manage the stress of being lost in what seemed to be a non-spiritual world I did not belong in.

I was lucky. The instructor was an Integral Yoga teacher. If she had been a fitness instructor or power yoga instructor, I would have had a very different idea about yoga after that first class. But Candace opened doors to the spiritual side of yoga right away. I can still hear her reminding us at the end of every class that our true nature is peace.

What does that have to do with Christ? More specifically, it has to do with Christ Consciousness, or the idea that the Divine resides within us all, waiting to be revealed—the theme of the book I mentioned above. This way of thinking was not part of my experience as a young Catholic, but it’s part of my experience as a grown-up who has learned to release my attachment to some of the more dogmatic aspects of religion.

That doesn’t mean religion in its various forms isn’t important. We need a starting point if we want to grow. A tree can’t be a tree if it’s never a seed — or if it can’t let go of being a seed.

Back to yoga.

Integral Yoga and Universal Truth

If you’ve ever practiced Integral Yoga, you know it is a relatively gentle, spiritual type of practice. And as the name integral suggests, it’s a synthesis of various branches of Yoga. When it comes to spiritual matters, I’m all about integrating, that is finding what works and what all faith traditions have in common at their core.

As Richard Rohr says, the path to enlightenment is not an exclusive club one needs to join. It’s the realization that God is everywhere, even if you don’t use the name God. (I use it with no reservations.)

At Integral Yoga “headquarters” in Virginia, there is a shrine that honors all faith traditions. My friends who have been there — the shrine is named LOTUS (Light of Truth Universal Shrine) — say it’s magnificent and awe-inspiring. That this shrine exists in the place Integral Yoga calls home hints at how that first yoga class kept me in touch with God and deepened my awareness of the sacred in all things.

That first yoga experience opened doors to yogic philosophy and Hinduism. Then, I started to explore Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies. And finally, I discovered the Christian mystics. I’d known of them earlier, of course, but it wasn’t until I’d understood mysticism more universally that the Christian mystics truly began to resonate with me.

My First Yoga Class Helped Me Keep My Faith

I remember early on someone telling me not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I wasn’t too concerned then with what he meant or why he said it. But after a while, I did wonder what happened to the baby.

Fortunately, the new direction I took eventually brought me full circle in a sense. Full spiral might be a better way to look at it. I didn’t return to where I started, but I came to see where I’d been with a new perspective.

Going in Circles

The awesome thing about circles — especially in spiritual terms — is they are infinite. While we sometimes feel like we’re back where we started, what’s really happening is a return to what was always there, ideally with the ability to see it with new eyes.

What I think I’m saying is the more I learn about Yoga, the more I understand Christ. Not Jesus the man, but the Christ that was revealed in Jesus the man.

I’m not talking about something exclusive to Christianity, though the name Christ might lead anyone reading this to think I am. So, let me use a different term: truth. Jesus was a messenger of truth. Regardless of whether you belong to one of the religious organizations that developed in Jesus’ name, the important thing is seeking truth.

Truth is what we’re after. And Jesus told us all not to be afraid.

It’s About Love

In the end, no matter what your religion, the higher power is universal love. If that sounds simple, it’s because I’m probably not saying it well. I don’t mean there’s no more spiritual work to do. In fact, it probably means there’s a lot more spiritual work to do, especially if you’re trusting that the truth is inside you.

The “you” the truth is inside of is not your small ego, but the divine working in you. That’s pretty big! I learned to describe it this way in my first yoga class, though it was years before I really understood what it meant. I had a lot of letting go to do!

And of course, I’m still letting go.

Love Does Not Exclude

Love is an inclusive force that drives creation forward. It exists everywhere, even in the dark corners of the universe, in lost souls, and in entities that appear to be nothing but evil. Of course, love, truth, and light are harder to find in some places than others. But it’s always there. As Richard Rohr says, no exceptions!

To know truth is to know mystery. In other words, if you think you’ve got it, you’ll soon find yourself going in circles (or spirals) again. Maybe it will feel a bit like the circling I’ve done in this post as I continue trying to make connections.

The quest for the unifying force that connects all of creation with Source is anything but a straight path.

Would you like to explore more yoga topics in depth—perhaps with a group of yoga friends? Get your copy of Yoga Circles, A Guide to Creating Community off the Mat. You’ll find lots of topics and activities for living the yoga lifestyle and enjoying time with like-minded yogis! Click here to order!