Remember to care

Letting go of your own fears will open the door to helping others. By Katie Manitsas

One of the main reasons I practise yoga is that it helps me on a daily basis to, as one of my teachers puts it, “remember that I care.”  So often what holds us back in life is a belief that we are not important, that our opinions do not matter or that our actions will not have an impact. The teachings of yoga literally and metaphorically turn this perspective on its head.  Yoga philosophy says, “you do matter and you are important” to every single human being on the planet. 

With this knowledge comes a compelling desire to act and to be of service. Is activism a natural outgrowth of yoga? Yes, because yoga is about generating good karma and, simply translated, the Sanskrit word karma means “action”. We are all engaged in action every moment of every day; it’s the intention behind those actions that will inform the chain reaction of karma that follows. 

I have been running a not-for-profit organisation called Yoga in the Community (YITC) as an offshoot of my yoga studio in Sydney for several years. I was motivated to start it by a particular yogini who completed our teacher training.

Born completely deaf, and later partially paralysed by a road traffic accident, the practice of yoga had seen this particular student through a great deal.  That she had completed teacher training despite obvious obstacles inspired me deeply, and when I learned that she had been turned away by three other yoga schools before coming to ours, I was shocked. Her courage and persistence encouraged me to formalise an organisation that could open our door to anyone else that wanted to learn about and practise yoga.

YITC now runs 16 classes a week that cost just $5.50 and are available to anyone. We run programs in conjunction with drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres, juvenile justice units, clinics for patients with AIDS and at-risk child care services. Without exception, in each of these cases there wasn’t a system of expertise for us to follow. Yoga was new to our students and teaching it in this way was new to us as teachers (most of whom are volunteer graduates from our teacher training program).

One principle I’ve always followed with YITC is to never say “no” to a request even though we don’t always have the resources needed to say “yes”.  When you say “yes”, miraculous help often arrives, whether in the form of a volunteer teacher, a venue or some donated props.
 
What holds us back from giving more of ourselves is not usually selfishness but fear that we will fail or a belief that we don’t know what to do. The lesson I have taken from running YITC time and time again is that being “unable to accommodate” any student at any time is just a manifestation of fear and a profound lack of trust on my part. When I trust my students, whatever their backgrounds, then and only then can I trust myself to teach them and remember that in doing so I am simply the vessel through which timeless wisdom travels and that these teachings are not mine to withhold or covet. The teachings of yoga are holy teachings available to each and every one of us. As BKS Iyengar states, “If you can breathe, you can practise yoga.”

Katie Manitsas is the director of Samadhi Yoga in Sydney and a certified Advanced Jivamukti Yoga teacher. She founded Yoga In the Community in 2004. For more information visit www.samadhiyoga.com.au  and www.yogainthecommunity.org

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