The Rev. Susan W. Springer - Flow: Growing a Spiritual Yoga Practice in Church

flow

GROWING A SPIRITUAL

Yoga Practice in Church

S USAN W. S PRINGER
with Sirena Dudgeon

Copyright 2022 by Susan W. Springer and Sirena Dudgeon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture marked (NKJV) taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), Copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Church Publishing
19 East 34th Street
New York, NY 10016

Cover design by Dylan Marcus McConnell, Tiny Little Hammers
Typeset by Rose Design

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Springer, Susan W., author.

Title: Flow : growing a spiritual yoga practice in church / Susan W. Springer with Sirena Dudgeon.

Description: New York, NY : Church Publishing, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021048207 (print) | LCCN 2021048208 (ebook) | ISBN 9781640653535 (paperback) | ISBN 9781640653542 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Christianity and yoga.

Classification: LCC BR128.Y63 S67 2022 (print) | LCC BR128.Y63 (ebook) | DDC 294.5/436--dc23/eng/20211115

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048207

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048208

Skeptical but Desperate

Name a sport, and Ive probably pursued it: from back-country skiing to paragliding, from cycling to golf, from trail running to kayaking. As an adult Ive lived in places like Maine, Alaska, and the Rocky Mountains that are conducive to outdoor sports. I was working as an Episcopal priest in Boulder, Colorado, and playing outdoors as much as I could when a couple of car accidents changed that. As I convalesced, my body hurt trying to do all that it had done before, and I watched myself grow more sedentary. One day, in desperation, I tried yoga.

To say I had an unmerited bias against yoga would be an understatement. Boulder is something of a yoga mecca, where studios abound, and people get dreamy-eyed talking about their favorite teacher. Yoga festivals, schools, and clothing retailers mark every block of the downtown. Yoga talk and Buddhist terms thread themselves through casual conversation. Earnest and wispy young practitioners bicycle about, with dreadlocks flying and tanned, tattooed arms clutching rolled-up mats. As a dread-less, tatt-less older person, I had always determined that yoga was not for me. As one who felt her flexibility, agility, and balance were pretty darn good for a late-middle-aged woman, I had always assumed yoga would not be much of a challenge. As someone more drawn to speed than silence, I had always thought that yoga would be b-o-r-i-n-g. And as a second-generation cradle Episcopalian, I didnt think my theology and spiritual practice needed any accessorizing.

On all counts, I could not have been more wrong.

A fellow yoga-virgin friend and I went to our first class together. It was a community drop-in class open to all levels of practitioners, held after hours in a bike shop. For me, that was a promising sign. Sirena, the teacher, greeted us warmly. I sized her up. Namaste T-shirt? Check. Tattoo? Check. But that was as far as I could take the stereotype. Cascades of blond ringlets framed a blue-eyed cherub face, and the body before me was not wispyit was a real, lived-in, birthed-two-children body. I was intrigued. Sirena offered the kind of welcoming persona we church leaders seek to offer: genuine, calm, warm, approachable. Ten minutes into my first class, it occurred to me that I hadahemsubstantially overrated my flexibility, agility, and balance. Still, embracing the challenge, I made it through and resolved to come again. And I did. That was five years ago, and I am still practicing.

This book is, in part, the story of howas my body was learning to fold itself into impossible positions (asanas)my heart was learning to unfold itself to see the congruence of yogic philosophy with Christianity. From there, I became inspired to engage Sirena and with her offer yoga in the church I was serving, inviting people in to place their yoga mats on the 117-year-old floor in the lofty and beautiful main worship space of St. Johns Episcopal Church in downtown Boulder. Sirena led the flows (the series of asanas), and we took turns exploring a given topic from the perspectives of progressive, mystical Christian theology and the yoga sutras and other yogic philosophies. We want to offer you a template for how you can begin a yoga ministry in your church and why you should seriously consider it. This is not a journey I anticipated. Few good and holy journeys are.

The White-Leafed Turning Point

Every significant journey has a turning point, a place where something (often momentous) happens and the traveler confronts a choice about how to proceed. For me that point was quite specific: Monday night bike shop yoga on July 23, 2018. I realize that Methodists more often than Episcopalians can point to the day and time of their heart-strangely-warmed conversion. What can I say? It happened, evidence that the Holy Spirit is not bound by the denominational particularities we observe.

It was the end of class, and we were easing into savasana, the final resting pose that typically ends a session of yoga. Sirena cued up a gorgeous chant in Sanskrit performed by a female vocalist as she led us into a short, guided meditation. I remember wishing she would stop talking so I could lose myself in the music, and I remember she said something about getting out of our own way. Without much conscious effort, I proceeded to do just that, and what happened next was extraordinary.

I imagined myselfthe ego meclimbing out of my heart-space and crouching at the right side of my supine body to watch. That conscious imagining took just a moment before I became not the thinker or the doer but simply the observer. In astonishment I watched my chest open, the layers of skin and flesh and bone parting bloodlessly, as a white vine at least six inches in diameter began to rise. It was made of a stuff Id never seen before, closed-cell spongey like the stem of a forest mushroom but shimmering silver and wet. Fascinatedand, frankly, slightly freaked outI watched it rise toward the ceiling of the bike shop, lazily winding its way upward through space. Im not sure how it penetrated the roof or the trees or the power lines, because in the next image the vine and I were spiraling up through what meteorologists would call the tropospherethe highest level of altitude to which passenger jets climb and fly. We ascended through layers of clouds stained apricot and purple by the setting sun. It was beautiful and peaceful.

I looked up to see a canopy of white, heart-shaped leaves extend from the vine in all directions. It was the kind of sudden beauty that makes you gasp. I remember a moment of worry that this marked the end of the vision, but it did not. The vine continued its upward climb, and it was then I began to understand where I was going and into whose presence I was entering. Suddenly, I was washed and held in a golden-colored familial love so deep and profound it was pure ecstasy. All the human and canine loves Ive ever experienced, added up and multiplied a hundredfold, could not begin to approach its power. The God I encountered was not Hindu or Christian or the property of any religion. I began to weep at the joy and the relief of it. A second canopy of leaves shot out from the vine, and then Sirenas voice called us back to the awareness of our bodies on our mats. Moments later, as I made my way to a sitting position for our final prayer