Recently I wrote an article about my first time experience with practicing yoga. During this I had a great opportunity to get in contact with one of my first teachers, Jess Robertson.  Jess has been busy.  Not only is Jess the co-founder of Moksha Yoga, along with Ted Grand, and leading teacher training around the world with him, but Jess has still managed to keep her life simple.  Living not only as an example of this yoga way of life, but breathing those ideals and actions into the foundation of Moksha Yoga as well. 

At the start of May, yoga teachers, students from all walks of life, and the Moksha Yoga community at large will be taking part in a Living Your Moksha Challenge (LYM for short).  This is where each individual has an opportunity to challenge themselves in the seven pillars of what Moksha Yoga tries to embody:

• Be Healthy: We work to support lifelong health of the body and mind.
• Be Accessible: Make real the idea that yoga’s benefits are limitless and accessible to all.
• Live Green: Live to protect and serve our natural world
• Sangha Support: Believe in the power of community.
• Outreach: Use creativity and energy to help others locally and abroad.
• Live to Learn: Commit to always learning to stay humble, open, and inspired to serve.
• Be Peace: We offer the benefit of our practice to the benefit of all beings everywhere.

 (More information on the LYM challenge can be found here: )

I had a chance to ask Jess some questions before the start of this seven week long event and this is what she had to say.

What does yoga mean to you?

Yoga means union or oneness.  So for me union takes many forms - unifying what I feel or think about the world with what I do to manifest these thoughts/feelings.  To me, yoga is healing, it teaches me to live a happy life, even when things are difficult.  Yoga is my life however, so I could say a lot more about it...how long's this article!

Why Moksha yoga?

The Moksha is all about changing for the better through community.  Over the past century or so, with the loss of organized religion, the exodus away from rural communities into big cities, the ease of travel, the incredible health-giving support a community provides has been lost.  To me this is the best part of Moksha yoga, it is extant, living, breathing, fighting, loving, growing, evolving community at its best.  Moksha is part of my family.

What benefits are there to this practice?

For the muscles and joints we focus on opening the hips, toning and stretching all major muscle groups and lubricating the joints for long-term health of the knees, lower back, and entire spine.  Moksha is cardiovascular so it's great for the heart and lungs, and immune function.

If an HIV+ new yoga student was coming to your class, what information, if any, would you like to know?

I'd want to know everything they are able/willing to share.  The more a teacher knows about a student the more they can help.  Using HIV for an example - right after diagnosis the best thing yoga brings is anxiety relief. The yoga studio provides a safe and non judgemental place, period. This is often the best thing after a recent diagnosis. A place to rest and be. If someone is living with HIV for longer I would ask them about diet, addiction, goals so that I could help with their goals as much as possible.  

If you could say something right now to the HIV+ yoga student out there, what would it be?

Everything is already OK. This is actually the message of a yoga text from the Isha Upanishad.  I would however probably not 'say' it - I'd probably communicate it with a nice mid-class foot massage!  I would also say, you are welcome here, at the studio. And as usual - I'd remind them to AMPLIFY the benefits of practice by drinking at least 3L of water a day (not tea/coffee/juice/kombucha...water!). I would also say life is filled with challenges of varying degrees, and beyond the physical challenges and benefits, yoga gives practical tools that I have seen, and many yoga teachers have seen help with all forms of challenge.  We are all here in this world to serve, yoga helps take challenges - death in the family, cancer, HIV, poverty, abuse - and transform it into a way to give, to serve.  I believe in this stuff (can you tell) and hope you get to try it!  I would also say - start with doing the living your moksha challenge!

Thank-you so much Jess for sharing your thoughts with us.

If you wanted to try this style of yoga, and you live in Canada, there are ample locations to choose from. Check out: www.mokshayoga.ca and find a place near you. There are also locations in the US popping up all the time.  If you do go to a studio and check them out, tell them that Daniel Uy from Toronto says Hi.  Seriously!  We really are a close knit community!

 Metta

I am unfamiliar where other people are in their journeys with self-identification and I am not advocating that it is necessary or even required, but for me, I found that if I was going to be trusting someone with my body and waned them to keep me safe, then I would want them to know I may have limitations that may not otherwise be noticeable from the outside.  That is a choice I made around the five-six year mark of being HIV+ when I took up this physical practice of yoga.  It was a style of heated yoga that aroused my personal interest for two major reasons: I wanted to detox some of the chemicals I was taking (both prescription and “prescription”) and it was three blocks from my home.  I was probably in one of the worst shapes of my life.  Not just physically unfit, but my diagnosis was in transition back from having full blown AIDS and slowly on the mend.  I didn’t have much energy or the ability to move around too much and the idea of being in a gym environment scared the crap out of me.  Images from Grade 9 gym still haunted my mind’s eye and my low ideals of my body didn’t help either.  Ofcourse crazy me chose a style of yoga that has a giant wall covered with mirrors!  Oh ya!  There I am fully in reflection and there is everyone else.  No hiding in this room!!

I went to Bikram Yoga Danforth, which eventually became Moksha Yoga Danforth and I was there at the start of a newer style of hot yoga: Moksha Yoga. I went with my roommate at the time on a Friday evening Karma class.  A karma yoga class is a regular class but instead the money isn’t paid to the studio but given as a donation to a local charity.  Honestly, I was scared.  I remember filling out the release forms and coming to health things and pausing and trying to figure out if I should say something or not.  I figured that I should, not so much that I wanted people to know, but hopefully to give me a future excuse not to have to try so hard in case it kicked my ass, and not in a good way. 

The class was hard.  I had never sweated that much in my life.  I seriously started to reconsider long shorts and a thick cotton t-shirt.  There was so much sweat.  It burned my eyes.  I could swear people were staring at me but they weren’t.  This wasn’t like gym class.  Nobody turned and looked at me or made fun of me as far I can tell.  The person I was sort of following in front of me seemed to send out nice thoughts and glances, if she was even ever really looking at me.  I had the same feeling about my teacher (who would one day become a friend and colleague).

The postures were hard.  I hadn’t really moved like this before.  Some of them were just awful, but some were actually wonderful.  I remember enjoying backbends from the beginning – which I found out later many people dislike.  They seemed natural for me; perhaps it was the high-like feeling I got when coming out of them! LOL!  Who knows?  Before I knew it, we were on the floor and that brought some relief but we kept on sweating.  I looked over at my roommate and he was struggling too.  That made me happy.  He’s younger and way more fit then me so if he’s finding it hard then it suddenly made it OK for me.

I looked around and other people were sweating a lot too.  I wasn’t the only one.  I was not alone.  Eventually the class lead up to us finally getting to lay down at the end and the lights were dimmed.  The teacher asked us to send a thank-you out to those that helped us practice and I thought of the really fit girl in the front row who I stared at for a majority of the class.  I thought of my roommate who came with me because I couldn’t have come without him.  I thought of the teacher for being kind to me.  She said some quote and I can’t remember the words of what she said but I remember the impact it had on me.  I felt rested.  I laid there in the dimly lit room with all these people and felt rested.  I wanted more.

I ended up coming back.  I signed up and things went from there.  I eventually got to a point where I didn’t care as much about the clothing and my outfits became less clothing oriented.  I remember the day I took my top off for the first time.  It is really the first time I had ever done that in public as an adult.  I even swam with my shirt on at that point.  But it was just so hot and I’m like “nobody cares what you look like” and just did.  It was freedom.  Eventually it led me to skimpy Lululemon Hot yoga shorts.  I still have the original pairs today (side note: Lululemon makes incredible clothes that last a long time).  Things changed.  I moved up to the front row one day.  Here I am, in a room full of strangers – many of them women, contorting my body, practically naked, sweating like a pig, in front of a full wall to ceiling mirror with the lights on and I feel good about myself.

I participated in their first 30-day challenge.  The goal was to practice yoga everyday for 30 days and see how many you could do.  This seems hard, but not completely unattainable.  I was already coming a few times a week and thought I would try.  Ted and Jess, my teachers encouraged me to try and see what I could do.  And I believed them.  I tried.  I made it up to about Day 27 before I had to bow out.  I figured though, that for someone who was dying less than a year prior, I should be awarded some extra credit and so it didn’t seem like a fail but a victory.

There was a party to celebrate the start of Moksha and this new journey for the studio and I was there in the beginning; not exactly the splendor of health but I was there.  Moksha was and has been cited for their environmental conscious but importantly, from a yoga asana perspective, as being accessible. It was open to all – which included me.  I have never really been included in something like this before and it was nice.

Several years later, I was in a matted basement on the Westside of the city doing my Moksha yoga teacher training.  And those same teachers who encouraged way back then were here again, encouraging me to follow this path and I did.  Training was grueling.  It was two practices a day in the hot room and long hours.  I was up at 5am, six days a week and burning out fast.  One morning while on a subway, I prayed.  Or perhaps you can call it questioned.  I closed my eyes and tilted my head upwards and said inside my mind quite audibly “Why am I doing this!?!”  I was so upset and ready to quit.  Then I opened my eyes.  And there on the wall of the subway was a post-it note.  To this day I have never seen another post-it note ever on the subway, but in the heat of my questioning, there it was.  The post-it note read “The possibilities before you are INFINITE” I cried.  I looked around, peeled it down and took it with me.  I have carried it around in my wallet ever since and have never looked back. 

In less than a year I was teaching FT and I haven’t looked back since.  Who knows what can happen right.  I wasn’t the model student, but I tried.  They created an environment that allowed me to feel safe enough to try without judgement and I am grateful for that.

As I write I hope that my students know that they are always welcome, regardless of anything they perceive to limit or keep them separated, that they are always allowed to be included.  If you are thinking about this style of practice as a possibility for you but think its daunting or that perhaps you cannot, think again.  Let the teachers and staffs know your situation.  It has been my experience that not one community in this yoga world I have been a part of has ever excluded me based on health.  If you’re inflexible, in bad shape, in poor health and may possible have a bad attitude, you’re welcome here.

I am in the hot room often, several days a week.  It isn’t the only style I teach anymore and my practice and teaching have broadened to include and encompass a variety of offerings, but my home is always in a Moksha space.  In the yoga world, it was in Moksha that I learned how to fly free.

Metta 

So I am writing from my sickbed... or rather my sick couch.  I forget at times that even though strong, I am not infallible.

When the body says rest, you rest.  It’s just that simple.  But it doesn’t have to be a depressing time.

Here is my favourite pick of five movies to watch when down for the day!

5 - Priscilla Queen of the Desert 

It’s fun.  It’s camp.  And I can go in and out of consciousness and still know all the lines and can see the picture with my eyes closed.

4- Kung-Fu Panda I & II

Ok.  So this is two movies, not one.  I normally can’t stand Jack Black, but as a pudgy panda who gets banged around, he’s charming.  Normally sequences of these sort of cartoons are not the greatest, but watching them back-to-back it feels just right!

3- Horrible Bosses  

Hilarious!  Loved it the first time, and still doesn’t get old.  The little guy, Charlie Day, steals many of the scenes he’s in.  Some great actors play parts in unconventional roles. 

2- Date Night 

They just make me laugh.  I have no idea what the story is most times as I lose track of the plot through waves of headaches or nausea but it still doesn’t seem to matter.  I hope Tina Fey and Steve Carrel do a sequel or another movie together.  Plus Mark Wahlberg – still as hot as ever!  I seem to always pay attention when he’s on – ain’t that funny! ;)

1-     The Italian Job  

Ok.  It’s not a funny one.  But stuff goes fast and there’s Jason Statham, Ed Norton....and OMG Mark Wahlberg!!  LOL!  It’s just occurring to me now I think I have a thing for him when I’m sick.  How funny! 

Again the plot seems of little importance but everything is moving and stealing and cunning and blowing up. I just don’t seem to care.  That and the mini car chase reminds me of the time I got that ticket from the police for using a rental mini Cooper and... Hmm... perhaps I should save that story for another day!

Now if they were to come out with a comedy movie with Mark Wahlberg playing a shirtless nurse, I’m sure I’d feel better in no time!

“Give up the battle of fighting and find freedom in the shackles of service.”

Lately I have been practicing Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga in a Mysore-style setting six days a week, working out three times a week and teaching about 10-15 yoga classes a week, some in a heated environment and some not.  I love my life and my job, and the joy of being strong and active at this point in my life, HIV+ or otherwise.  It’s a real blessing.  But it’s physically challenging.  Work, love, joys all feel like chores sometimes – a big hassle – so much that it makes me want to rebel against my own great life.  But I have found a way to take some of the edge off.  And it’s not exactly what you’d think.

A year after I was diagnosed with HIV, I began what was to become my longest living relationship with another living thing - with my dog, Brenton - or more formally – Brenton Cornelius Ulysses Uy.

I have to be honest; I hated that dog for many years.  I happened to come by him accidentally through a series of events and now that I had him, I really didn’t want him.  I was never a dog person.  But here was this dog that needed food, and attention, and walks.  This living creature required my assistance daily just to poop. 

The reality of my health situation was really starting to set in during this time. I wasn’t really working at my full potential and my thoughts were often of self-destruction. I wanted to get everything over with and move on because life wouldn’t be so grand and most likely painful – but there was this life that needed me.  The only thing I could fully commit myself to was keeping this innocent life alive.  And so it began.

I put up a picture on the fridge and the back of apartment door with a picture of his face and the caption that read “Do it for him.”  I also had one at my desk and in my wallet.  I needed the reminders.  It was in these darker times of life, that looking back, I had small rays of light.  Although I hated and loathed doing it, I trained that dog, kept him fed and well maintained to the best of my ability.

When I had full blown AIDS for the first time, I was living alone at 27yrs old in a bachelor apartment with just him.  There are days I would cry and scream and curse myself and him for being in my life.  But the mantra “Do it for him” kept me alive.  He kept me alive.  Even my mother will attest that if it wasn’t for his presence, I probably wouldn’t be here today. 

I haven’t thought about this for sometime but was made more aware of it over dinner recently with a good friend in talking about my daily routine.  Sure I am healthy and strong and not nearly as maniacal as I used to be, but this same intent exists.

In yoga, there’s a word in Sanskrit we use, sankalpa, which means "will, purpose, or determination." To make a sankalpa is to set an intention—it's akin to a New Year's resolution but deeper.  Recently, I posted an article about my sankalpa for this year on letting go.  But I have found this to be my daily one – service.  A lot of things I struggle through some days like everyone else.  I have mentioned my challenges with food and a bit of my daily regimen.  It’s not always easy to do.  My buddy Elias was pointing out to me recently about a few of my male colleagues and the work they do, and practice etc and reminded me of a very important point about myself - that I can stand alongside them at the same physical intensity despite 15yrs of being HIV+. 

I have never been an activist but I do believe I have a message.  The actions of my life are a reflection of it.  I honestly cannot do this by myself.  I find the work and effort daunting and some mornings I feel like I just want to lay in bed all day and sleep for five days.  But I get up.

In my morning practice, just after the morning mantra (chant), I whisper softly to myself “Do it for them.”  With my eyes closed, I think of my family, friends, students, people I’ve met or talked with.  Usually only a few images of people’s faces I’ve recently had connections with will come into the forefront of my mind and I lock them in place.  This practice is hard.  Facing each day is hard at times.  But it’s easier if I do it for others.  If I can keep myself in better shape, practice more, eat well and get enough sleep, then I can be at my maximum for when help is needed for others.  I’m just like a fireman, except without all the sirens, hoses, and 911 men! LOL! 

Does it really work? I don’t know. I’m still here right?  Perhaps there is something that has been a struggle to get through.  Some job or task or project that is hard to face on your own.  Is it possible that by doing it, there may be a benefit to someone else?  And isn’t it a really cool feeling when you can help someone else out, be it a stranger, or friend, or dear loved one?  Then dedicate the job or work to them.  Make that 9-5 grind be about that special loved one, be they human or non-human.  Even if you hate the idea of doing it, give it a try, it may surprise you.

Since someone else has said it better then me, I will leave you with his words:

“The best way to find yourself, is to lose yourself in the service of others” –Ghandi

Metta.

Vegetarian or not.

I was on a subway recently with a friend and both headed Eastbound.  I was heading towards Donlands Station (editor’s note: in Toronto) – home of one of my favourite burger places – Square Boy.  I am not sure exactly what it is about their burgers that I enjoy so much.  Perhaps it’s the nostalgia.  The place has existed long before I was born and I have a vague recollection of my father taking me here as a child – since our family doctor’s office was just around the corner back then.  Perhaps I have an unconscious desire and attraction to older Greek men.  It’s completely possible.  Growing up in and around Greektown can do that to someone I suppose.  Have you even seen some of the statues of Zeus?  He’s a looker!  Ok sure he liked to get it on with people in various outfits and animal forms, but really he isn’t half bad.

I should mention though that I have never seen one of those statuesque forms here in the Square Boy though!  That’s part of the deal though, isn’t it?  It’s a greasy spoon – a food indulgent locale.  A place where one can just relax and be without consequence or judgement. Of course as I say this I think of the mid-30s man who works here with the light grey-coloured eyes who I catch myself gazing at too long and have to turn away, only to want to look back again a few seconds later.  The place is old.  It shows the wear of time.  So do the workers and many of the patrons.  Despite all of this, a part of me longs to return here.  I would love to judge this in some way, or explain that it’s awful and bad, or that I hardly ever do it.  But I love it. 

There is a belief that yogis - all yogis - for one reason or another are vegetarians.  Some are.  Some are vegan or raw-food vegans or will eat vegetables and eggs (since free-range chickens will lay eggs regardless).  Some do this out of religious/spiritual connotations, some out of moral or ethical reasons.  My personal take on this tends to come from the first of the eight components of yoga.  This being the Yamas – our attitude toward our environment.  I have chatted about a few already.  There are five yamas and the first one is Ahimsa.  Ahimsa has many translations but the one used more commonly is non-harming or non-violence.  It is through this avenue that many yogis believe that in order to move further down this path and be less harmful one must forgo eating meat. 

While this may work for many as a viable option, this may also be a daunting task for others.  I remember first learning about this almost 10 years ago at the beginning of this yoga journey and recalling how upset that made me.  For someone who can barely take care of themselves, keeping up with medications and doctors appointments and trying to eat around pill intakes was already a tough enough job, then radically shifting my diet in order to practice yoga and learn to meditate.  What I found was that these self-observances are essentially just that; things that work and/or may not work for each individual to decide.  Yogis are trying to live life in a reduction from harm both in cause and effect.  This may include the absence of meat.

Harm reduction in daily life

But non-harming is broader than this.  Where I think its greatest impact in the lives of us mere mortals is in judgement.  The words and phrases I use to communicate with you and about you are more devastating than the actions about which we talk about.  If yoga is truly about connection and drawing together and becoming more united and more whole, it cannot be accomplished at the sacrifice of my brothers and sisters.  Non-harming is first and foremost the number one practice a yogi begins.  It starts with self.  If there any actions, things in life going on right now that are causing you pain?  The way we work or sleep or play?  My suggestion would be to stop it.

It’s funny.  There is a pose I teach often called sleeping hero pose (Supta Virasana) that I warn students each time if there is any sharp pain in the ankles, knees or lower back, to back off from coming all the way down to the floor.  I have found various ways to say this over the years and many of my students laugh when I talk about it.  Each and every single class I have taught through the years though, there is one student who pushes themselves too far and ends up shooting right up out of the posture because they hurt themselves.  In yoga, if there is pain, there is no gain.  Yoga is about awareness.  And starting in our own bodies is a great beginning.

My words and thoughts have power (see article “Just two more Inches”).  How shall I use them today? Do I choose to destroy others with my thoughts and my words or do I choose to build them up?  Sometimes it’s justified, that to be completely open and honest one has to say some tough and mean things to people because they need to know the truth.  But I am reminded that, from a yogic perspective, Satya (truthfulness) comes second to Ahimsa – this means that it’s more important to not hurt someone’s feelings or burst their realities then it is to tell the truth.  As one of my spiritual guides likes to remind people, unsolicited advice is abuse.  And he’s right.  I do not have a place in telling someone else what is right or not right in their lives; nor does anyone else.   Each may choose for themselves based on their own path.  Not all will reach the same place in a path at the same time.  That’s the wonderful thing about journeys. 

After my first class of yoga I had a smoke (tasted amazing), grabbed some beer and ordered a meat-lover pizza and applauded myself for my wonderful commitment to practice.  Through the years as I became more aware of what worked for me and my life in those times and places, things changed.  Some things came and went and others came back in again and left.  It became a practice of what worked for me and what didn’t.  Of what is harming me and what wasn’t.  And so I say grab that burger for all you are worth and chow down!  I love them.  As funny as life is, of course, as this present time, the last burger I had tore through my body like nobody’s business.  And as I write this I pause and ponder if I need to make new changes in my life that will cause me less harm.  I hope you take the time out to do the same.  Namaste.