When you are searching for a teacher it is a good idea to approach with caution. How much do you know about a person before you begin to place yourself in their care?
May I share a little about myself?
The short version is just over to the left if you are in a hurry. This is the longer version.
I have only recently begun to call myself a spiritual teacher. I am owning what it is I do.
I have always had a yearning, but for most of my life I have dismissed it as ridiculous, a myth, or at least not attainable by the very ordinary like me.
But now I know that is not true.
About ten years ago I stopped dismissing it and started pursuing it. But I kept my heart's yearning a close secret for a long time. I am now opening my heart and my story for all to see. this is who I am.
Early years
India called me when I was a child in primary school. I was turning the pages of my social studies book when there on the page was a black and white line drawing of a woman in a sari. My heart leapt out at it, I had such a yearning to wear a sari. Be careful what you long for. I now have many more saris than I really need, and at one stage in my life I wore them to do my housework!
Yearnings of the soul were also present when young. I remember a moment when I must have been very small and the sense of a separate me came on board when my sister became really angry at me. All of a sudden she and all the objects around us were separate.
In my teens I began seeking beyond my Protestant Christian upbringing for something to satisfy my spiritual yearning, I found most resonance in what little I could find of the spiritual philosophy of India.
Around age 18 I started learning hatha yoga. I attended several classes per week for about ten years. My teacher for nearly all of this time was Edna McNamara, Mrs Mac. In yoga I found something that soothed the yearning. I was also drawn to various meditaiton classes, and eventually to Transcendental Meditation.
As a child and young adult there were experiences of momentary cessation of "me" and an extraordianry sense of oneness with everything. These were such fleeting moments that I didn't really believe in them afterwards ... I must have imagined them. Nevertheless they fed the yearning.
In 1978 I became very ill when trekking in Nepal. I was three days trekking from Pokhara - only accessible on foot. I could no longer even keep water down, it was vomitted straight up. I knew that three days without water and it was curtains. And I was becoming too weak to walk. My friends hired a porter who popped me on his back and started to trot back to Pokhara. I felt was facing my mortality when one morning the clouds parted over the mountains and I had a vision of Siva striding across them, dreadlocks flying, and speaking straight to my mind, "I am not finished with you yet, this is not your time". Later I didmissed this as just a hallucination.
Losing my way
In 1981 the love of India became the love of an Indian. Married in the US, moved to India for awhile, and then back to Australia. When I married and took on the life of householder and mother, I was off on the adventure of my life. You would think that this drawing closer to India would have drawn me closer to my yearning, but actually I turned my back on it for some time. I was too busy navigating life to even do any yoga. My physical and mental health went haywire. I was lost. Well, just barely saved when my TM mantra found its way into my mind. When I could remember to meditate, I was OK.
Coming home
In 2004 I returned to yoga classes, walking through the doors of the Torrensville Yoga Studio and taking classes with Rebecca Richards. Yoga began to work its magic again. Four years later I joined Rebecca's Yoga teacher training program, graduating in 2009.
