Ganga White - Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

Copyright 2007 by Ganga White. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by North Atlantic BooksP.O. Box 12327Berkeley, California 94712

Cover and book design bySuzanne Albertson

Unless otherwise noted, all photos are from Ganga Whites archive collection.

Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, call 800-733-3000 or visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

White, Ganga.

Yoga beyond belief: insights to awaken and deepen your practice / by Ganga White ; foreword by Sting.

p. cm.
Summary: An integrative, new vision and context for yoga, illuminating its internal dynamics, providing inspiration and guidance for a lifetime of practice, and appealing to anyone practicing this traditionfrom beginner to experienced studentthis book offers a coherent explication of yogas philosophy and practiceProvided by publisher.

eISBN: 978-1-58394-335-9
1. Hatha yoga. I. Title.
RA781.7.W493 2007
613.7046dc22

2006024363

Dedicated to the development of the total human being

First, I would like to acknowledge the teachers and lineages who have handed down and expanded yoga through the ages. I especially acknowledge those who have given themselves the freedom and liberty to question, to test the boundaries, and to grow beyond the limitations of tradition into new expressions and new revelations. I honor my many teachers and many friends who have taught me what yoga is and, equally important, what it is not.

Thanks and appreciation go to my friend and compatriot, Mark Schlenz, for his editing wizardry. Great appreciation to Frank Rothschild and Evelyn de Buhr for their help, encouragement, and insight, and to Diana Alstad and Joel Kramer for many wonderful hours and long nights in the shared joy of inquiry.

Special thanks and appreciation go to Sting, David Gordon White, PhD, Jason Saleeby, PhD, Brent Derry, PhD, Joel Gotler, Jane Freeburg, Venkatesathe laughing swami, J. Krishnamurti, all the editors and staff at North Atlantic Books, the staff of the White Lotus Foundation and Retreat in Santa Barbara, and so many others along the way.

And finally, with immeasurable gratitude, none of this would be possible without the love, support, joy, and partnership of the sublime, graceful, beautiful, and brilliant yogini, Tracey Rich.

What if our religion was each other
If our practice was our life
If prayer, our words

What if the temple was the earth
If forests were our church
If holy waterthe rivers, lakes, and oceans

What if meditation was our relationships
If the Teacher was life
If wisdom was self-knowledge
If love was the center of our being.

GANGA WHITE , for the Rainforest Benefit,
New York City, April 1998

It may surprise you to read that someone who sings for a living like I do would enjoy singing in the shower as much as anybody else.

My shower, I suppose like most, has the kind of hard surface that reflects the notes back at you with a satisfying and friendly echo, almost as effectively as the walls of a church or an underground cavern or even the electronic reverb in a professional studio.

Admittedly, I dont sing what anyone would recognize as songs per se, nor do I use the shower fitting as a fantasy microphone, but instead limit myself to vocalizing long resonant tones. I will sustain a single OM for as long as my lungs can hold out, and advance semitone by semitone of the chromatic scale, beginning near the bottom of my range and gradually rising high enough for the sound to disturb the Labradors sleeping in the kitchen below. When they start to howl in sympathy (or agony, I cant tell which), I know its time to dry off, shave, brush my teeth, clothe myself, and start the day.

As I enter the kitchen, the youngest of my six children greet me ironically, seated cross-legged at the breakfast table, chanting their own tuneless but grand, guttural OMs, eyes crossed and little hands flipping the bird in irreverent imitation of those mudras theyve watched me assume at the end of my yoga practice.

Good morning, my little philistines!

OHMMMMMMM ohmmmmmmm ohmmmmmmmm!

Why do you make that noise, daddy?

Noise? Noise? I feign professional outrage while reaching for the coffee, black and bitter. Well, I suppose its a fair question. Why do I make these noises? And why do I spend a good deal of my morning attempting to turn my body into a pretzel, while breathing like a telephone stalker, or chanting ancient unintelligible sounds in the echo chamber of my bathroom?

When my good friend Ganga requested that I write a foreword for his new book on yoga, I was both flattered and daunted by the task. While Ive been practicing for more than fifteen years now, what do I really know about yoga? And has my fifteen years of practice changed me to any significant degree?

In fact, I dont spend a lot of intellectual energy thinking about yoga, or trying to articulate the processes it awakens, because, for one, I dont have to teach it, and, two, its become an intrinsic part of my whole life, permeating it to such an extent that I dont really know where it begins or ends.

I have benefited from the wisdom of many teachers whose example has inspired me to undertake a voyage of discovery as complex and fascinating as music, through a realm that is mysterious, unexpected, and startling.

I have made a space for myself and my yoga practice every morning for fifteen years. I can perform feats of flexibility with my fifty-five-year-old body that I couldnt do when I was an athlete. That never ceases to amaze me, but is it the point?

Part of yoga practice, Ganga has often reminded me, is to connect.

And he makes his point clear: To connect flexibility and strength, balance, concentration, sexuality, consciousness, and spirituality, so that what may have begun solely as a physical practice can evolve into an integrated and holistic approach to all aspects of ones life.

For example, after Gangas advice, my chosen profession of singing has morphed into yoga and yoga into singing.