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A Balancing Act

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Each week, I travel back and forth between Mayne Island and Vancouver on the mainland; making my way from here to there until all at once, there is here.

By instilling a kind of poetic trust, in his new book, Yoga For A World Out Of Balance, Michael Stone, a Toronto-based yoga teacher, psychotherapist, Buddhist and author, explores how yoga can be relevant to culture, ecology and politics. He speaks with clarity and courage about the notion of oneness, unity and interconnectedness, by using the Yamas as a platform from which not only to stand, but also to shape his heart-felt sense of urgency.

Stone says: “Psychology and spirituality as well as social and ecological action are all intertwined.  Our yogic goals may be quietude and stillness, but they need to be put to work on contemporary forms of suffering both ecologically and socially”.

Mr. Iyengar applauds Stone’s work in his introduction to the book, offering him praise for clearly breaking down sophisticated yogic principles to life. Indeed, Stone has gone beyond (or perhaps before) the yamas even to include concepts such as Lack, Karma and Communication in an attempt to help the reader to develop a necessary strategy of inquiry, since a healthy state of inquiry is essential for change.  “We must begin now to articulate and reenvision a yoga that is responsive to present circumstances-rooted in tradition yet adaptable and alive in contemporary times”.

His writing is clearly clever and language dexterous as he invites the reader into a balanced conversation about the nature of our relationships with ourselves, our values, and our place in the world.  He focuses on not dwelling in the periphery of those relationships, but rather encourages us to come back to the primary conversation of stillness in order to meet something other than ourselves and thus know how to take action.

It took me many ferry crossings to complete Michael Stone’s latest book.  Written in a style akin to a distance education course, I repeatedly found myself fascinated and inspired to discuss his work with whomever I happened to be sitting beside on the boat.  It is this kind of grass-roots activism that Michael writes about when he talks about the importance of such things saying: “It is time to stop trying to find enlightenment by turning away from the world” and instead embrace his message that: “The organism that is yoga is being restimulated by its move westward, and as it grows roots in this new soil, we must help create the conditions for its emergence by offering to it the reality of our personal, cultural, sexual, ecological and economic lives. Only then will yoga have something real to offer us”.

Indeed yoga is moving westward and in its move it has gathered no moss. Touching more lives now than ever before, yoga appeals to many and has begun to transcend, to go back to its integral shape as it builds momentum on its path. Michael leaves no Stone unturned in his complete account of a tradition very much alive today imploring that we find balance and take action. It is precisely this kind of balancing act that we all must endeavor to take.

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