The Yoga of Finding Your Voice: Beyond Fear Towards Liberation

Yoga helps you know yourself so deeply you know others as well. It invites you into your own lineage of liberation. This is part of what makes great writing, leadership and teaching, and it can begin with facing your fears. It did for me.

Facing What We Fear

I could taste the orange tinted haze on my tongue mixing with a metallic sensation I’ve come to understand is the bitter tang of nervousness. I walked the winding stone streets of Varanasi down towards Manikarnika Ghat on the banks of the Ganges River in Banares.

The sun was peeking over the concrete buildings and the early morning streets were shivering with the swish of tree branch brooms clearing away the dust in front of storefronts. The closer I got to the Ganges the chants of Om Namo Shivaya lifted the dawn air as if it was part of the fabric of morning, weaving a soft tapestry of devotion.

Relishing the bite of the distracting cool air on my skin I began to see the smoke rise over the sparkling waters of the River Ganges. With the smoke arose questions that felt urgent and old: What is this life? How do we live in it fully, do we truly leave it? What is the purpose and point? Why am I so reluctant to look death in the face?

At the Edge of Life and Death

As I neared the temples on Manikarnika Ghat I could visualize the holy well Vishnu had created where he sat in meditation for thousands of years. It wasn’t hard to imagine Parvati, perhaps alighting from a water vessel or from the sky, lightly dropping her glimmering earrings into the well for safekeeping. And then as if on cue, I could see her beloved Shiva arrive, vibrating with pleasure at the spiritual beauty of this unique place in the universe that Vishnu had kept sacred through thousands of years of Sadhana.

I could imagine Shiva lighting the sacred fire in this very spot, a fire that burns to this day. Empowering the Dom to carry and tend this fire that brings souls to liberation.

Their sacred presences calmed me and in that moment, watching smoke from a soul departing as it wound its way into the bright grey sky, I could feel myself shrink down to a tiny red dot. A bindi blending into the salty ochre of India’s soft earth. A particle amongst particles. So insignificant in this form and life, standing at this sacred gateway to the immense beyond, death and liberation.

To Know Yourself Is to Know the Whole

Inside the dot was yoga. I could feel unity rather than know it. A raw, intimately hewn connection with all other beings. We are all impermanent, all born, live and die.

These truths, and all the feelings we have about them, bridge the tenderness of our humanity.

It’s this that we so desperately crave from ourselves and each other.

Our true, flawed and unique ways we live and express while we have the privilege of being alive.

Yoga invites you to know yourself more deeply and through that knowing; to know your universality. Svadhyaya, self knowing.

Something only available to you as you are here and now.

This is part of what it means to honor yoga and take your part in transmitting its lineage.

The deep dive into your own embodied experience of what it is to be alive. To speak, write, share your voice and expression in only the way you can.

Finding Your Voice Is a Yoga Practice

Exploring your voice and writing can be a powerful, if sometimes terrifying, way to practice yogic ethics. A deep yoga practice is not merely finding your voice, but facing your fears. And in doing so to trust, doubt, explore, express. To use your voice in alignment with yogic values, locate it within lineage, make it accessible, and ultimately offer it in service.

You have fear? Sure. So many of us do. Writers block? Feel like a fraud? Stare at a blank page and wonder if you have anything to say?

Of course. It’s part of being human.

Instead of thinking that makes you a bad writer, or teacher, or leader, or whatever you are telling yourself, perhaps turn towards these feelings.

It’s these blocks, these fears that make you uniquely human. Uniquely able to share, live and express your version of what it is to be alive.

Like Shiva lit the fire thousands of years ago that burns bright and brings souls to liberation, what is the fire in you that needs to be expressed?

Here are some yogic inquiries that might help lighting your path, they have for mine, as I practice with them over the last two decades and turn to them when I wish to write, understand or express.

Yogic Inquiries for the Page

Practice Svadhyaya, self exploration, and answer these for yourself in your mind or on the page:

Satya—truth: What is true for me right now? What am I afraid of and how does this fear connect me to other beings?

Ahimsa—nonharm and care: How can I offer myself and our world care as I tell this truth

Asteya—nonstealing and generosity: What lineages am I part to f as I steward this story or point of view forward?

Aparigraha—no attachment: Can I release my attachment to approval, publication, applause, and even being right or wrong?

Tapas—burning discipline and devotion: Can I stay with the discomfort of saying my truths to myself and others?

Ishvara pranidhana—sovereignty: Can I release control over what happens, turn this over to the divine and trust my unique way of shining light on our universality through my individuality - and let go of how my work is received?

Your Voice Is Part of the Lineage

Through this process of self awareness, writing practice itself becomes a way of practicing yoga ethics. I write through these inquiries as I share the ways I grapple with mortality and find a kind of purpose and peace, in moments that come and go like a gentle bindi placed on my forehead. I wonder sometimes if it’s this energy of connection that makes us immortal.

Just as we want to honor the full expanse of this ancient practice, Yoga invites you into the full expanse of yourself as a unique part of the whole.

Your voice is part of our lineage. Diversity in the unity that leads us to liberation. I can’t wait to see what you express.