By Ruth Ann Penny. Ruth Ann has spent her life teaching; her focus has been adult learning, learning in the workplace and community relations. She’s about to be an LYP graduate and hopes to offer the wisdom of yoga to older adults and those with physical limitations.

I live in my head. My favourite colour is periwinkle blue – that lovely place between blue and purple that you see in spring’s first bluebells and lilacs. Most of my yoga wear is shades of purple and I have two mats, one purple and one blue. Nicky Poole jokes with me that I’ve gravitated to my dominant chakra - ajna, located at our third eye. Purple of course.

The Living Yoga Program appealed to me the instant I saw it advertised over a year ago, because I saw that I could not only develop my own practice, but read and learn philosophy, healing systems, Sanskrit. I could do body and head work! It’s been immensely satisfying on both fronts. I’ve been drawn to the complex weave of the Bhagavad Gita and I noodle continually on the meaning of one sutra or another. I ate up the intricacies of anatomy and just bought the full unabridged Gray’s Anatomy for my yoga library. I’m memorizing a couple of mantras. All fun for the head!

But what I wasn’t counting on was my epiphany of the heart. My greatest learning, by far, happened late in the program, after the last formal class. I witnessed Scott Petrie’s Hatha and Meditation class one snowy February evening; observing three classes is a course requirement. The room was candle lit and quiet. Scott greeted everyone gently, most by name and as the group gathered, I noticed how diverse it was. The gender split was balanced, unusual at 889, some older adults attended, I saw a wide variety of yoga experience and one or two individuals who were clearly in physical pain and moved with difficulty. Scott paced slowly and evenly to a rhythm that matched the breath, and every instruction was an invitation. He led people like a shepherd, retreating from the day’s grey pressures into a sanctuary of calm. He planted subtle imagery in the mind, clearing a space for meditation or at least less encumbered thought. I began to weep as I watched. This was love in action of a kind I had not witnessed before. As a teacher I have always known that emotion affects learning. I was relearning this truth. And through the silence came a question, trumpeting out to me: “Can you do this? Is there enough love in you?”

I must believe the answer is yes, and I feel called to find out. The colour of the heart chakra, Anahata, is green, the green of spring, of promise. All energy draws to the heart, we are told. Up through the roots of our body and down from our heads. Toward heart centre, where the deepest learning abides and grows.

 

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