What if our Practice was our life?

What if our religion was each other?

If our practice was our life?

If prayer, our words?

What if the Temple was the Earth?

If forests were our church?

If holy water—the rivers, lakes and oceans?

What if meditation was our relationships?

If the Teacher was life?

If wisdom was self-knowledge?

If love was the center of our being. 

~Ganga White

Thanks to local teacher Amanda Hale for a little morning inspiration today.  <3 <3 <3

Now the discipline of yoga begins.

From my new column at ExhaleAsheville.

Saturday Stillness.
by Kimberly Drye

A quiet Saturday morning. Shhhhh

It’s raining and Saturday. For the first time in a while, I wake up alone. This quiet house is mine. I’m finished with college. The holidays are over. My boyfriend is out of town. I light a candle and play Radiohead on Spotify. Lying in bed, I snuggle with my husky as the rain falls gently, steadily, outside my window. I pick up the book that’s been on my nightside table for months, waiting for the moment: this day. While not a book of particular grandeur, just a book I’ve been wanting to read in my free time, it is significant in this-- my alone time.

Sacred and cherished; however, after just a few short moments, the quiet in my house feels heavy. The list of things to do before I leave for vacation next week begins to tally. The silence of my cell phone suddenly makes me afraid that I’m not loved.

I check facebook. I check Instagram. I feel better for a moment. Then I realize, this is a problem-- my problem, and a societal problem.

I’m afraid to be alone, to sit still. Even now, after years of teaching and practicing yoga. Nothing about the feeling is rational. I’m afraid I won’t matter; that I don’t matter.

One person I know once quipped, “You have more friends than Mickey Mouse.” I love my friends. I think the relationships I have with other people are what offer the most richness to experiences in my life, yet I remember a remark by one of my teachers, Aadil Palkhivala: “Every relationship you have with another person can only be as deep and meaningful as the relationship you have with yourself.”

I neglect this relationship with myself, because the truth is that studying myself is scary. Getting to know myself is scary because along with what I hope I am is the fear of what I might not be. In these moments alone, caught inside away from the rain, I get to see who I am when set apart. There’s no one to pull me out of the shadows, no one but me. When I’m alone, I realize it’s up to me to make that choice, not anyone else. I need to reach out and grab the light with both hands. I have to choose to begin the discipline of yoga, I must chose to come into the now. And in the now-- there is no fear, there is no weight. There’s only the sun seeping in under the curtains as the rain begins to clear.

The first yoga sutra of Patanjali: “Now the discipline of yoga begins.” The inspiration for my classes last week, but also a reminder that I must choose to begin, and then make that choice over and over again.

In today’s world, we often think of discipline as trying to do as much as possible in as little time as possible. But, as my teacher (and owner of One Center in Asheville) Cindy Dollar says-- in yoga, this discipline “is about subtraction rather than addition”.

2014: I'm Ready.

2014 is here and there are lots of fun yoga events in the works for HereNowYoga.  Keep checking back for more information about these events as the details unfold.  (Or follow HereNowYoga on facebook!)

I haven't been writing much while I was in school at UNCA for the last few semesters, but with the new year comes a new resolution to jump back into writing on this site, herenowyoga.com and on a new website co-created with fellow Asheville yoga teacher, Kate Lundquist, called ExhaleAsheville.  I will have a regular column at Exhale, one of many voices from our community. Here's my first article for Kim's column:

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To the Four Believers

by Kimberly Drye

Several years ago, I taught one class a week on Monday nights with 3-4 attendees at Lighten Up Yoga. I was a brand new teacher, and this was my start. The same four people showed up week after week, and at the time, it was enough for me-- these 4 people believe in me, I should keep doing this. Teaching was my hobby until recently.

I decided to plunge.

I now teach twelve classes a week, maintain my own blog (herenowyoga.com), contribute to exhaleasheville.com, teach workshops and special events, and more. It felt like the right decision then and it still does.

I returned to UNCA six years after my original degree in Literature because I was afraid. Afraid that teaching yoga wasn’t a real career, that I wouldn’t be able to support myself, afraid I wouldn’t be any good at it. The plan was to finish all the science classes I needed to apply to graduate school for Physical Therapy. Yoga taught me that I love the human body and it’s intricacies, and I thought Physical Therapy would be a more validated way to explore this love. I thought to myself, ‘It’s time to get a real job.” After all, I was 29, and I knew I wanted a family. It was now or never.

Four semesters of science later, I look back at my motivation. Fear. Sure, fear can be a healthy motivator and I know my concerns about being financially secure and supporting a family were and are valid. But I’m left with the feeling that those semesters of science were a waste of time and money. I almost forgot for a moment in those sciences that it’s not just the exploration of the body that I love about yoga.

It’s all of it. It’s the emphasis on consciousness, philosophy, the connection with my students, the dissection of each moment. I do my personal practice to develop some understanding of this world and this life. A lot of what I love about yoga is what I loved about Literature-- a search for understanding, an exploration of ideas.

I’m letting go of choosing fear.

Some of you reading this will cringe, and there’s a part of me cringing now-my forehead crinkled up in concern. I’m choosing to believe in myself and teaching yoga as a career despite the odds. I know this won’t be easy. It hasn’t been yet and it won’t be as I continue.

I expect challenges. As Michael Johnson of Clearlight Yoga said in his class the other day, “Every resolution comes with obstacles.” I’m overcoming one obstacle at a time-- the biggest in the last few years being a lack of confidence in myself and a lack of understanding of my place in the world. I need to claim my place. So here I am, professional yoga teacher and blogger. Thanks to those who believed in me for the years I wasn’t ready to believe in myself. I’m ready now.