Atha Yoga Anushasanam

I’ve been a part time road dog for a smidge over a decade, and a full timer for fourteen months. I never thought it would happen to me but it has. I’m happy.

Those in the know say the Road is something that once you get it in your blood, your hooked. And there are many hooks -  the travel, the excitement, the music, the fame, the fans, the money or lack thereof, and such. Intoxicating and alluring, there are as many hooks as there are road dogs. For me, it happened not in the hype of a rock concert, but rather so quietly it might have gone unnoticed.  Standing at the merch booth in the lobby of the hall, I watched as the audience poured out the show. Laughing, dancing, light on their feet and youthful in the face. This was a miraculous transformation from the crowd who entered the show. The Music is some kind of love potion. To be a part of the service to that is a high form of yoga indeed. Especially when the leader of the band is your partner, and he's asked you for help.

I work behind the scenes and I work pretty much around the clock doing whatever needs to be done. Its incredibly demanding and at times overwhelming, and I could very easily have burned out and been road kill, but rather I have been nourished and awakened by my practice of yoga in the midst of all that.

Which brings me to the point of this blog.  The Road has been my biggest practice of  yoga ever. Daily life, it seems, is not only the path, but the point of it all. I mean,  I can be the lovliest person on the planet on my mat, but when working the seventh show of a long few months of touring, and ten thousanth Dave Mason fan tells me about smoking a joint with him in Pittsburgh in 1973 and demanding I bring him backstage to reunite with his long lost pal its not very yogic of me to shoot him an evil look and wish him dead. Where’s the patience and tolerance and kindness there?

So far it seems the more time one spends in yoga, the easier it is to access in moments when I need it most, like thousands of moments every day. So when it is possible I enjoy practicing yoga daily. And like the Dalai Lama who remarked about kindness…”Be kind whenever possible. And its always possible”,  to be in a state of Yoga, is always possible.

This blog is about the possibility of Yoga on the road. Sometimes its in a class, sometimes its my own practice, and sometimes it’s the most magical moment when instead of losing my cool with an innocent bystander, its remembering the deeper Truth that we all are connected to Love, and that we are all connected together in Love all the time.

Namaste.