What Practicing Yoga in Nepal Really Taught Me
As the world commercializes a practice hitherto labeled as “Oriental” and idiosyncratic, the country of its genesis continues to celebrate yoga authentically, and in the same spiritual vein as its ascetic ancestors.
I’m sitting cross-legged on a beaten-up yoga mat that would have offended the sterility of my Western teachers. My yogi for the moment is called Assin and he is lost in meditation — “aligning his chakras”.
I’m also supposed to be meditating but I can’t help but open my eyes, taking in with breathless abandon the Himalayas stretching out in front of me.
What yoga in Nepal has taught me is NOT how to bend irrevocably, strike poses in front of bridges for photographs, or invest in the most comfortable leggings for flexibility.
Not that these things don’t stem from a similar celebration of culture. I don’t believe that the 21st-century spread of yoga is exploitation unless, of course, its core values are discarded or degraded.
Actually, what I discovered living in the mixed and magical land of Nepal is the acceptance for every naturally opposing thing: Hindus live alongside Buddhists with no competition for being top theology. Remnants of the Newari kingdom coexist with their former battlefield rivals in Kathmandu. Tibetan refugees have been so absorbed into Nepali culture that dishes like Laffing and Thupka are merged into the language of local foodies.
More than this, tourism and locals intersect — just as it has since the influx of hippie nomads in the ’60s — which means that yoga is practiced both commercially and not-for-profit.
The bright and dangerous snow-capped Himalayas roll in front of me like icey rollercoasters. I hear Assin breathe in deeply, once more, before his eyes flutter open. He is smiling, his chakras aligned, and I smile back at him, under no pretense of having been under the same spell as this Ashram-dweller.
“Let us say Om,” Assin whispers, and I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and let the Sacred Sound reverberate beyond my body, massaging my throat and organs.
Before Nepal, I would recoil at a chanting session post-workout (which was all yoga was for me at that time). I would even giggle a little, struggling to get those weird notes out of my throat, telling myself I was no singer.
But that’s what I learned from yoga in Nepal: to let go of my ego by being completely self-aware.
Sounds like a paradox, doesn’t it?
Yet there is no other explanation for the feeling of complete peace within me right now as Om vibrates across my body.
Sitting on top of this hill, I feel my feet, my hands, my spine, I feel them shaking yet strong. I feel the weight and lightness of my head as the spot between my eyes breaks free from my perception of I.
I feel everything within the microcosm of I, and yet everything that is without “I”, outside of this body, I feel that all those things vibrate with Om, too.
I am wearing a 10 year-aged t-shirt from Africa — one of those generic, “My Dad Went To Kenya and All He Got Me Was This Lousy T-shirt!”. My baggy trousers are made from fake linen, and I have my re-worn socks (crusted from sweat and dirt) pulled over my ankles so that my pants don’t fall off when I downward-dog.
Not exactly the picture of yoga I used to inhabit. Not exactly the weight-loss workout I used to practice yoga for either (after being told by my very first boyfriend that I should probably lose weight). Not even the sweaty, sultry, sessions I used to enjoy in the city that made my shoulders strong, unlocking a counterfeit cosmopolitan confidence within me.
Not anymore a conscious effort to pull myself from cross-legged to crow-pose. No shakes in my arm muscles, no vein protruding from my forehead.
Just total and utter acceptance, flowing and free.
It’s like floating on your back in salty water. Like running your hand over softly-petaled flowers. Or watching the sand fall through your fingers one microscopic pebble at a time.
Like running at full speed when you’re a kid and kicking off to find your feet floating, to find that you are flying — finally — after weeks of trying to take off!
What yoga in Nepal taught me is that life is intertwined and it doesn’t matter where you are or what pose you are in: if you can feel your muscles and blood thumping through your body effortlessly, then you are practicing yoga.
If you can smile through your eyes and let the warmth of your heart echo across countries — then you are practicing yoga.
If you can breathe in — and know that you are breathing in — then you are practicing yoga.
Assin breathes out Om with a final “Shanti Shanti” attached to the chant, and we let the feeling hang in the air before it flits and bounces across the open sky, wrapping itself around the garden of snow atop the Himalayas.
What yoga in Nepal taught me, sitting cross-legged in various mountain-highs, in places where the altitude is so constricting you feel light-headed, others where the cacophony of birdsong is so intense it is transporting — in all these places yoga has taught me to be at peace within myself and the world around me.
I didn’t need the newest sports-bra to teach me that. I didn’t even wear a bra for most of the time spent stretching in Nepal. All I needed was my body and my consciousness.
In Nepali culture, people will greet you with their palms together in front of their hearts, heads bowed slightly forward. Yet “Namaste” is not merely saying hello: it means “I bow to your spirit”, or “I bow to the divine you”.
In every dimension of Nepali life, from saying hello to cooking Dhal Bhat to trekking the Annapurna in flip-flops, yoga is practiced.
Nepalis share a special spiritual connection with each other, with their monumentous mountains, and especially with their cultural intricacies, food, drink, and alphabet.
So that’s what yoga in Nepal taught me. That indiscriminate love forms the fabric of everyday life.
It taught me to normalize the incandescence of the ordinary, to marvel at the mundane.
It taught me to be aware of my breath and how it flows to all breathing things around me. To notice and respect my heartbeat and the heartbeat of all things.
To accept, celebrate, and chant Om whenever it is deemed appropriate… or, I should say — necessary.
