I've encountered many teachers over the years while I've meandered in and out of yoga, stepping into the stream of Iyengar, testing the hot, powerful currents of various vinyasa, and lying back and lapping up the slower, more sensuous instructions of Spanish yoga, Argentinean yoga, Brazilian yoga. I've found teachers on a mountain ashram, under the stars (and under the influence of Bob Marley's birthday) in Jamaica, surrounded by ice flows in Antactica. I've even experienced Republican yoga at the Nancy Reagan Spa and Yoga Center in Florida where the mantra was more Oleg Cassinni than Om Shanti, but some yoga still lingered in the vicinity. I thank all my teachers wherever they are now for the precious gift of yoga. But I have to admit that I've gotten a lot of my best lessons interspecially, especially as taught by the great canine yoginis Sri Sugar and Swami Tamale, my two resident dogs.
Sugar is an ancient dachshund dogi and an advanced practitioner of right attitude. She's been leading me down a hallway first thing in the morning for fourteen years. I follow her delighted footsteps out the front door and into whatever weather while she wags her tail and is really happy first thing in the morning. Really, really happy, like being awake and heading into daylight is the greatest thing that could ever happen to a sentient being. It's a contagious approach to the day. She shows me how to walk like I'm lucky and I'm grateful all over again every time it happens.
Dachshunds have a lot of space between their teeth and their tailbones, so they're particularly good at demonstrating Ahdo Mukha Svahasana and Urdhva Mukha Svahasana, those doggy poses we spend so much time inhabiting in yoga class. Her prayer squat is pretty good too. Sugar didn't particularly believe that she needed any help with my yoga education, but she was recently joined by Tamale, a presumptuous puppy so full of prana she can hardly stay on the earth. She resembles a tiger with her stripes and swagger, but is definitely doggy in her appetites and diversions. She corrects me in my attempts to do normal yoga by leaping under me as I press up into down dog, taking over my yoga mat, licking me, sniffing and pawing my every pose until I give up and take her for a walk.
She teaches me that I don't have to "do" yoga to do yoga. We walk and breathe and stay in the moment. Boy, do we ever stay in the moment. Doga is really the practice of staying in one, big, never-ending moment like a puppy who somehow has more moments every day than the rest of us. Everything is amazing.
Last night I was lying by Tamale's side, listening to her breathe as I rubbed a spot low on her back. She began to use her Ujayi breath, practically purring. Ujayi breath for my dog is a sign of deep contentment. I tried it too and immediately felt the energy in my body move out of my head and into my heart where it belongs. Thanks, Tamale. I'm not thinking about how you just chewed up my flip flop.
So my new teacher keeps bringing me along, showing me new things every day. My old teacher mostly lies around looking inward these days. Up dog. Down dog.
