Education, Inside Out
Leading a weekly yoga class at a nearby park for children at Pono.
In college, I hit “the sophomore slump” during spring semester. Big time. My social life was flourishing, so much so that I usually slept through an early morning course called “Religions of India.” I had an F walking into the midterm exam. I bombed that, too. Luckily I had a Jedi master of a professor, himself a Buddhist scholar and practitioner. He sat with me in his incense-filled office while I babbled excuses for my poor showing. He quietly challenged me to raise my grade by choosing from a menu of self-guided projects. I went all in. I prayed I could get a C.
I visited a local Hare Krishna commune; wrote the best essay of my college career about symbolism in Hindu art; volunteered as a local guide for visiting monks; made posters for Students for a Free Tibet; and perhaps most auspiciously, took my first formal meditation class and kept a journal of my daily experiences. My professor told me he’d know if I was making it up… and so I committed myself to 20 minutes of daily practice and journaling. I had always been a “good student,” but this experience was the first time I felt truly empowered in my education. I had stumbled on to the Pono methodology! I had created my own course of learning based on my intrinsic interests and desires. And… I got an A in the class.
A few years later I was still a committed meditator. Meditation kept me sane upon my arrival to NYC with nothing more than a few hundred bucks and a dream to make it here. The yoga scene was just beginning to flourish, and I soon discovered more practices that would eventually become a career.
A meditation circle is part of a weekly class for children at Pono.
The yoga of parenting is where the real work began! After taking my toddler to a 6 week “kids yoga class” that felt like a manic playdate (with bubbles! and glitter!) I decided never to push that on him again. And I didn’t. But he did see me in action — practicing, meditating, teaching. At one point early in his Pono experience he was feeling overwhelmed at the local playground, and asked me to come in and teach yoga as an alternative to outdoor play once a week. Thus Pono yoga was born. (And a parenting WIN.)
Having explored many lineages and traditions of meditation over the years, I felt called to share with my Pono Friends the more shamanic style meditation journeys. In this kind of meditation, there is usually a more active “adventure” behind closed eyes for the purpose of healing or insight. I’ve led groups of adults over long weekends who spend most of the time wondering if they are “making it up,” or berating themselves up for “not getting it.” Kids haven’t yet been taught not to trust their imaginations and inner worlds. The Pono students started having more profound emotional healing journeys and inner experiences than longtime practitioners I knew. Through these meditations, they are experiencing that the answers to some of their deepest questions are not found on Google, but within themselves.
As I shelter-at-home during a global pandemic, I dream of a world where all children are provided tools for insight and healing. The creative solutions we need in our city and on our planet will be born from the powerful imaginations of those who dare to dream — and who trust their inner voices and intuition. At Pono we like to say “every child has a voice.” In our practices together, they experience not only their voice — but also their inherent capacity to listen, to receive, to create. The great yoga sages remind us that “the world is as we are.” And so, the positive changes we long to see in the world truly begin within our own hearts and minds. The practice then becomes learning how to listen, for the whole point of quieting the mind and becoming still isn’t to quiet the mind and become still, but to LISTEN actively, creatively and generously. The answers we seek, and further questions for deeper growth, dwell in THAT space.
