Weaving a thread of Unity
Part One - Origins and my discovery of Yoga
The early part of my life was on a surface level quite normal and unremarkable. I grew up in a loving family of European ancestry in central Canada in a city called Winnipeg. It was a quiet and beautiful neighborhood with an interesting mix of people. I had a little exposure to the native peoples indigenous to the region, but mostly interacted with other descendants of European settlers and a variety of immigrants from all over the world.
I was a quiet boy who was intelligent and good looking, but also very awkward, unique, and I struggled socially. My sister loves to tell me a story of when I was toddler gleefully dragging around a blender which I’m told I considered something of a treasured toy.
I found the natural world beautiful and wonderful, if at times very uncomfortable should I be unable to control the terms in which I interacted with it. I loved to explore the wilderness in my backyard and neighbourhood and would fearlessly climb high into trees. I remember vividly the intense sweet and sour taste of raspberries from the fence in our backyard. And the bitterness I felt at being deprived of the comforts of home on numerous camping trips our family would take on trips for days or weeks into the wilderness. I once quipped that “I wish all the trees would burn down so we wouldn’t have to go camping anymore”.
Evidently, I had quite the high opinion of myself and although I wasn’t aware of it at the time probably also a great knack for rubbing people the wrong way. Although a very nasty and selfish thing for a seven year old to say, I also think it’s amazing in a way for such a young child to have the gall to make such a bold and self-oriented statement.
Being someone who felt things very deeply, I became a target for bullies at a young age because of the predictable explosive emotional reaction they could get out of me. For several years in elementary school I was ruthlessly tormented until I learned to protect myself with a hardened shell of stoicism and an acid tongue. I learned to suppress my natural emotions, and to use my sharp intellect to cut to ribbons anyone who attacked my character.
Let’s fast forward to my early twenties; I received an invite from a friend to attend a yoga class. The year was 2009, and I didn’t have much interest in yoga or things related to it. I was in my last year of studying neuroscience at Mcgill University in Montréal, and considered myself very logical and objective.
Still, for some reason I accepted this invitation. My friend Katherine was very sweet and kind and she made it seem very inviting. I made my way down to a quiet studio tucked away on Maisonneuve boulevard in downtown Montréal near Concordia University.
The first thing that struck me about it was how hard it was! I was quite fit at the time, regularly biking upwards of 15-20km (9-12.5 miles) and rock climbing strenuously several times a week. Still, I got my ass kicked and could barely keep up with the instructor’s cues. At the end of it, I lay down exhausted and I remember having this profound sense of peace; like I had come home to something.
From there I began attending yoga classes regularly and it really grabbed me. I learned that I had stumbled upon a studio owned and operated by two senior teachers in the Ashtanga yoga tradition of Sri K Pattabhi Jois. I started to search and read for whatever I could online to try and better understand what Yoga was and where it had come from; there was not much at the time. I remember finding an old video of Pattabhi Jois talking about breathing. Even though his english was broken he had this incredible charm; a beaming smile on his face and this palpable feeling that he really knew what he was talking about.
The more I practiced the more my curiosity grew. I started to have more energy, to feel clearer, and had more motivation to get up in the morning. Up to that point I had been a lifelong heavy sleeper who loved to sleep in; during my late teens I would regularly sleep in to between 11am and 2pm! I was curious enough to consider attending 7am classes taught by the founding senior teachers.
About six months into this whole process, I moved to Japan to teach english. I found an Ashtanga yoga teacher near where I lived and started practicing with him and hanging out with the community that surrounded him. His name was Govinda Kai, and he had a unique and captivating charisma. For the first time in my life, I had met someone who seemed to be living what I had always been looking for even if couldn’t really find the words to describe what that was.
That was the beginning of large and rapid changes in my life. I met a young Japanese man named Go in the locker room of a yoga studio in Fukuoka in southern Japan. He had a John Lennon esque quality to him, a carefree and sensual approach to life, and it was through him that I met Satomi.