Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Beryl Bender Birch. Beryl is one of the most popular yoga teachers in the United States and is the bestselling author of Power Yoga, Beyond Power Yoga, and Boomer Yoga. With degrees in philosophy and comparative religion from Syracuse University, Beryl has been teaching the classical system of Ashtanga yoga for 33 years. In 2000, she was named by Yoga Journal as one of their “Innovators Shaping Yoga Today.”
With Sounds True, Beryl has published several titles, including a new book, Yoga for Warriors: Basic Training in Strength, Resilience, and Peace of Mind—a system for veterans and military servicemen and women.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Beryl and I spoke about “engaged yoga” and the art of paying attention. We also talked about how yoga can be helpful for people with post-traumatic stress and how one of the first techniques that Beryl likes to introduce to people who are suffering from post-traumatic stress is the technique of ujjayi breathing. Beryl even led us in an initial practice of ujjayi breathing. Beryl also talked about the relationship between quantum physics and yoga. And finally, [we talked about] how yogis are called to be “spiritual revolutionaries” at this time in history.
Here’s my conversation with a true pioneer, Beryl Bender Birch:
Beryl, here you are: almost 72 years old, and I think, someone who is widely considered one of the pioneers—one of the trailblazers—of the development of yoga in the West. I’m curious here, at the beginning of our conversation, to know what is most important to you for people to know about yoga? If you had to really boil it down, what matters the most to you to communicate about yoga?
Beryl Bender Birch: What a good way to begin our wonderful conversation, Tami. It has always been important to me to let people know that yoga—the word “yoga”—we tend to use it synonymously in our conversation in today’s world with the word asana, or the practice of the yoga postures. When people say, “Oh, I’m going to do yoga,” their friends tend to think, “Oh, you’re going to do that exercise.”
My intention has always been to let people know that yoga is an experience. We use the word to describe a method. We use it to describe a practice. But it really is classically an experience. It is something that happens to you when you’re able to begin to—as it says in the Yoga Sutra, which is one of the great textbooks on the methodology of yoga—is it’s what happens when you’re able to quiet the mind.
I think that it’s a natural thing that—when we first step on the path—whether we’re young chronologically or young experientially with yoga—most of us get kind of enamored or swept up into the physical practice. Particularly if we do a strong, active practice—like some of the practices today [such as] the Vinyasa Flow and some of the asana practices—like Power and Ashtanga and Vinyasa Flow.
So, we tend to focus on that physical aspect of the practice. I think that’s normal. I think that’s a natural part of our evolution. But I also think that asana sort of represents the doorway. We walk through the doorway thinking that’s all there is. And then we get into the practice, and we walk into this enormous, cavernous room—this beautiful room that is the experience of yoga itself. We say, “Oh my gosh! This is yoga?”
I often ask students that in my teacher-training programs. I ask this question at almost every workshop I teach. [It’s], “How many of you feel like yoga has changed your life?” Everyone always puts up their hand. And I say, “Well, what happened? How did that happen? How did that happen?” Because a lot of things we do change our lives.
But I think we get drawn into the practice. I tend to joke around and say, “Once you get into it, you can’t get out.” So, make sure this is really what you want to do.
But it draws us in. We learn all the practices—whether you’re doing asana or breathing or meditation—[it] all teaches [us] to pay attention. There’s something about learning to pay attention—no matter what tradition [or] spiritual path you might be following—that drives transformation.
You may not think that’s going to happen. When you first start, you might start because you want your hamstring muscles to be longer; or your doctor told you [that] you need to relax; or, “Oh, you should to yoga. You could be a little more flexible, you know?” Or you have an injury you’re trying to heal.
And then you start practicing. If you really are practicing [and] making an effort to pay attention in whatever practice you’re doing, I think things start to change. And you begin to really drive change. You begin to drive transformation.
TS: Now, Beryl, hearing you talk about the “experience of yoga” as something that perhaps the postures are a doorway into makes me want to understand more [about] what you mean by this. This “experience of yoga.”
BBB: I’m looking pretty much at the classical definition, as it comes right from the Yoga Sutra—which is the book that was gathered together [and] was kind of organized by a rishi named Patanjali over 2,000 years ago. When you study classical yoga, it’s your textbook, so to speak. What’s totally amazing to me about the Yoga Sutra—which is the name of this book—is that it’s so relevant today. It starts out with a pretty esoteric sort of explanation of what yoga is, and then it goes on in the next chapter to be a little more practical. [It] gives a sort of practical roadmap for poor, unenlightened souls like us [for] how we can have this experience of yoga.
But basically, what it’s saying is that yoga is what happens—very often, yoga practitioners think, “Well, yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.” The Sanskrit is, “Yoga chitta vritti nirodha,” which I’m sure you and many of your listeners are probably familiar with. And it translates as, “Yoga is the quieting or the cessation or the stopping of the thought-waves,” [or] of the arisings out of the chitta—out of the mind.
If you look at that, you think, “Well, that’s not really a definition.” It’s kind of like Patanjali is saying, “If you want to have the experience of yoga, go this way. Do this. Quiet your mind.” And then he says, “This is how you do it. There are two things you need to do. You need to have a practice, and you need to learn non-attachment.” He defines “practice” as making an effort to keep your mind steady.
So, I always look at that and say, “Well, if the Sanskrit word for ‘practice’ is abhyasa—if that’s what ‘practice’ means, then when can we practice?” If it’s simply about paying attention, then we can practice all the time. We can practice when we’re in the shower, when we’re driving our kids to school, when we’re stuck in a traffic jam. We can practice when we’re scooping dog poop in the backyard. It’s all about being present.
So, for me, yoga is really the experience of samadhi, which is the Eighth Limb or the Eighth Step in this Eight-Limbed Path—which is enlightenment. And you go, “Well, you can’t really say what yoga is.” It’s a science of self-realization; it’s a way to consciously evolve; it’s a practice. You could ask many people and they would say, “As we started out here, it’s going to a yoga class.”
But really, classically, it’s the experience of—you can’t say what it is. You can only experience it. I guess the best way to describe it would be to say boundlessness or that experience of oneness. That experience of looking into the face of God. That experience of recognizing that, “Wow! We really are all connected.”
You can hold that worldview. And it’s great if we do—if we say, “Well, yes. We understand that we’re connected to the people on the other side of the planet.” Quantum physics is sort of bearing that out. They’re saying, “Well, there’s this idea of non-locality.” It means that things can be connected even though they’re not in proximity. I look at that and say, “The yogis have known that for thousands of years!” You know—that we’re all connected.
From what we read about people that have had this experience, they all seem to say that you can’t really describe the experience. But it’s this understanding that, really, there’s only one of us here. If one of us is hungry, we’re all hungry. I think we’re all sort of evolving toward that.
This huge turnout for the People’s Climate March in New York City that happened in September—to me—is engaged yoga. It’s a lot of people—many of those people, I know, probably are yoga practitioners. And they’re out there, taking their yoga into social activism—which I think is happening more and more these days. [This] is really exciting, because that’s something that has really interested me for a long time.
TS: I’m curious: how do you make the connection for someone who comes into a yoga class because they want help reducing stress or help losing weight? Whatever [it is], they have some motivation that’s like that. “That’s why I’m here. I’m here to work on my belly fat issue.” Whatever it might be.
How did they—through the postures and through doing the practice—connect to this experience of samadhi and this taste of oneness?
BBB: Slowly! Slowly, progressively. You don’t even go there, I think, as a teacher. I think you have to meet people where they are. If you’ve been doing yoga [for] 40 years, your perspective is going to be a little different than someone who’s just stepping onto the path.
And I think it’s important we all realize that there are people behind us on the path and people ahead of us on the path. I don’t think everyone is at the same level of awareness or evolution. I mean, some people are still throwing trash out of the windows of their car, and other people wouldn’t think of it.
I think what’s important is that—as you gain a little more awareness—I mean, as you learn to pay attention, which is what yoga is about. I used to tell my beginning classes in New York City—back in the ’80s, “This isn’t a stretch class. If you want a stretch class, go to the gym. Yoga is about learning to pay attention. You’re going to start by paying attention to your toes and keeping your feet together. [It’s] paying attention to your alignment, paying attention to your breathing. You’re going to start to see what distracts you.” You might be in class, and all of a sudden you’re looking at the person next to you, and you’re thinking [about] what a nice outfit they have on. Maybe you should go shopping. Your outfit isn’t so nice.
The next thing you know, you’re on the bus going down Fifth Avenue in New York City, shopping—when, physically, you’re still in the yoga class. The moment you recognize that you’re not present—that you’re not here—a good yoga teacher will encourage you to come back. Bring your attention back to your breath. Be present. All these yoga practices are mindfulness techniques.
<pThat’s what creates transformation. I think the more we pay attention, the more conscious we become—the more aware we become of what’s going on around us. It’s like it drives conscious evolution. You start to move from the first floor to the second floor to the third floor, and pretty soon you’re looking out the fourth-story window. And you’re saying, “Wow! I didn’t know all this was here! Six months ago, all I could see was out the first-story window.”
So, I think it’s about matching impedance levels, really—about just meeting people where they are without arrogance, without proselytizing. I talk a lot about spiritual arrogance and saying, “I’m so evolved. I recycle.” And looking with disdain at people who don’t recycle.
[I think] increasing awareness that comes as a result of your spiritual practice should create compassion and gratitude. [The other day,] one of my students—well, a couple weeks ago, I guess—was moaning about something that was obviously very important to her—but really, in the big picture, pretty insignificant. I said, “Well, go spend a couple days in the labor camps in North Korea. Then come back and tell me how miserable your life is.” I think our yoga practice teaches us to be grateful for what we have—and to focus on what we do have and not what we don’t have.
So, that person that comes in looking to lose weight: I think that that’s the language you speak to them in. You go, “Oh, this is great. Learn to breathe. Become more mindful. Be mindful of what you eat. Begin to move a little bit.” Slowly, they lose a couple pounds.
Swami Satchidananda always used to say—and someone asked him once, “Oh, I’m a smoker and I don’t want to smoke. I’m trying to quit and am so worried.” [The Swami] said, “Forget about it. Don’t worry about it. Just do more yoga, and the desire to smoke will fall away.” I find that kind of happens to people.
TS: What would you say to someone who says, “I’m inspired by what you’re saying. And yet, I find it really difficult to have the discipline to do yoga regularly. I’ve done a little bit. I went to some classes. I kind of got turned on. As you’re talking now, I’m starting to get excited. But I have some kind of discipline problem when it comes to practice.”
BBB: [Laughs.] Oh my God. What do you think? I mean: isn’t that a huge question for all of us? About finding discipline in our lives? If you want to master anything—George Leonard used to say—he wrote a book called Mastery. [He] talked about [how] if you want to master anything, you have to get used to the idea of doing the same thing—whether it’s guitar or [singing opera] or the computer or yoga, you have to do it.
I just started a teacher training program here in Great Barrington, Massachusetts—just this past weekend. It’s a yearlong program. It was the first weekend. I have young people in the training who are very enthusiastic. I assigned them a pranayama practice—a breathing practice. They get a calendar and they have to put a little check on the calendar every day that they do it.
I said, “When you wake up in the morning, you’re going to do two minutes of conscious breathing.” I taught them three-part yoga breathing. I said, “Do not tell me that you do not have time to do this.” Just start with developing the tiniest discipline. Just breathe for two minutes. You brush your teeth every day. There are a lot of things that you do every day. I don’t care if you do it while you’re lying down in bed, or if you do it while you’re hiking. Just do two minutes of conscious breathing.
Now, 10 months from now, I’m hoping that they can do 15 minutes of real pranayama practices. But, what do you think? How do we build discipline at anything? How does that happen? Just little by little, right?
TS: I think so. I liked your answer very much.
Now, Beryl, I want to turn our conversation to a new book that you’ve just released, called Yoga for Warriors. It’s a yoga training system for veterans and military servicemen and women. Can you talk a little bit about why here, in this point in your life, you decided to turn your attention to Yoga for Warriors?
BBB: Well, it kind of came to me through inspiration from some of my students. In 2007, two of my students and I founded a non-profit called Give Back Yoga Foundation. I had required graduates of my school—who graduated from teacher training programs—to do a Give Back project in their communities.
Again—similar to what I said at the beginning of our talk, Tami—I tell them, “Look, it isn’t just about teaching asana.” I don’t care if you walk dogs at your local shelter, or plant trees in an impoverished neighborhood. There are many ways to practice yoga, and all of these Give Back projects would be service projects that we would accept as an extension of your yoga practice.
So, that turned into this desire to start a non-profit—called the Give Back Yoga Foundation—to support yoga teachers to do the same thing. If you want to develop a Give Back project in an underserved or under-resourced part of your community, we’re here to help you. We’re going to raise money and we’ll help you—we won’t pay you a salary, but we’ll help you in any other way that we can provide. We can provide resources. We can provide transportation. We can provide printing costs, shipping, and include publications.
So, that was how started. For the first couple years, we worked with yoga in prisons. We also funded some projects for women in shelters. We had some programs for at-risk youth. All of these were teaching either mindfulness or meditation programs or asana programs.
One of my students began working with veterans about eight or nine years ago as her Give Back project when she graduated from my school. She got very involved in working with veterans, volunteered for years, and finally wrote a little book and did a CD and did breathing practices. Today, her Mindful Yoga Therapy for Veterans is in about 42 VA hospitals. We’ve made tremendous inroads with having yoga becoming available in all its forms—not just asana—to veterans and veterans’ groups.
So, I thought, “What a great idea. Maybe I should work on a book for veterans.” I started it about three years ago and—thanks to Sounds True and Give Back Yoga Foundation—I’m holding a copy in my hand. I just can’t believe it. It’s so exciting.
Our goal is to get this to about a hundred thousand veterans. There’s so much research coming out now and so many studies coming out showing how so many of these practices—we’re getting a lot of lot of clinical-based data. [We’re getting] evidence-based data in clinical trials that are showing that meditation, asana, and breathing are really helping and [are] worthy of integrating into treatment modalities for all of the anxiety disorders like post-traumatic stress, insomnia, and anxiety.
So, I just spent three years working on this book and now we have it. Now, our goal is have it help.
TS: Toward the beginning of the book Yoga for Warriors, you introduce the technique of ujjayi breathing as a way to calm down an over-stimulated nervous system. I wonder if you can introduce for us—here in this conversation, for our listeners—how they might be able to start experimenting with ujjayi breathing as something that they could use if they find themselves needing to calm down their nervous system.
BBB: I would just be delighted to do that. The ujjayi breath is what I guess we could call “very adaptogenic.” It’s kind of like ginseng—it can be an activating practice. It can stimulate the sympathetic nervous system if it’s done really strongly and powerfully. It also can be a very calming and relaxing breath if it’s done more gently and softly and quietly.
But it’s basically a controlled, close-mouthed breathing technique. There’s a very soft sound that accompanies it. It’s kind of like when you whisper. When you’re whispering, you can feel there’s a slight contraction right at the base of your throat. What’s actually happening is the glottis—or that space between the vocal cords—actually contracts a little bit. It narrows the passageway, which increases the velocity of the air going through there. So, as you whisper, you’re controlling the flow of air.
Our listeners and people joining us at home can practice this by just whispering the “ah” sound. So, as you go, “Aaaaahhhh,” you can feel that little contraction. Then you can do it on the inhale—“Aaaahhh”—and do that a few times until you get a sense of the way that feels. Then, close your mouth and continue to keep that sort of sibilant [sound.] It’s kind of aspirant sounding on the inhale and kind of sibilant sounding on the exhale. You just, [breathes deeply in an example of the technique.]
If you increase the length of the exhalation slightly so that it’s a little bit longer than the inhale, it has a very calming and relaxing effect. Exhalation tends to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the part of the autonomic nervous system that calms us down. So, if we’re startled or stressed or anxious or having a flashback to some traumatic experience—whether it was just being offended or insulted by someone—you can use this breathing. You just sit and you just [breathes deeply in an example of the technique.]
Soften the exhale and inhale. [Breathes.] Exhale. Soften the exhale. Make that sound.
I was called upon right after 9/11 to work with the families of some of the burn victims that were survivors of the World Trade Center bombing. I went in not knowing in the least what I could do to be helpful. I walked into this room of people—one of my friends, who is the director of the Center for Traumatic Stress Studies at Weill Cornell, called me and said, “Just come up here and do what you can.”
So, I walked into this room of about 20, 25 people. I just sat down and burst out crying. This man came and put his arm around me. I was just like, “Wow. What can we do together? Let’s just sit together and see what we can do that will give us a moment of relief or a moment to help us strengthen our ability to deal with what we’re facing.” I certainly wasn’t to go in there and teach these people how to relax—or even presuppose that I knew what could be helpful. The suffering was beyond what you could even imagine.
So, I taught them this breathing. We all sat there and just, [breathes deeply in an example of the technique.] They just listened to the breath. The idea of making that little sound is that you bring your attention to the sound. You just follow the sound. It was amazing how these people just kind of grabbed onto this technique like it was a life preserver. A couple people fell asleep. One man who had said, “Oh my God, I haven’t slept in 48 hours. Since the towers fell,” just fell sound asleep on a couch.
When we came out of it—we sat like that for 35 or 40 minutes. The man who had been sleeping woke up and said, “Could you come back tomorrow?” So, I did, and that program turned into a still-ongoing training for many of the therapists that work in the Center for Traumatic Stress Studies and for all the employees—the caregivers—at Weill Cornell. So, it was started with a simple breathing technique.
But yes, it’s a great technique. It’s one of the first techniques we teach veterans, to begin to just get their attention present. We find that that’s really helpful in dealing with the clusters of symptoms of post-traumatic stress—like re-experiencing, avoidance, and hyperarousal. We all experience trauma, but some people have more catastrophic trauma than others. People have different levels of resilience. Not everyone who goes through trauma ends up with post-traumatic stress.
This idea of getting your attention in present time certainly can pull the mind away from re-experiencing trauma and anticipating more trauma in the future if you’ve been really startled by a pretty traumatic event.
TS: Beryl, what does this word “ujjayi” mean?
BBB: Ujjayi. It’s a Sanskrit word. Good question. It’s a Sanskrit word that means—jayi means “hooray.” It means “victory.” And uj—kind of the way it sounds—it means “to expand into victory.” So, technically, the definition of the word “ujjayi” is “to expand into victory breath.”
Pranayama—as many of our listeners probably know—is just the control of the prana or the energy. It refers to breathing exercises, but it technically means learning how to manage your energy—which is something most of us can benefit from.
TS: Now, you talked a little bit about how yoga might work with post-traumatic stress even just here at this very beginning level—by teaching people to work with the ujjayi breathing. I’m curious to know more [of] what your understanding is of how traumatic experiences are stored in the body. What [do] the yoga postures do to help release trauma—if you think they do release trauma—and how [is that] potentially quite an effective approach to working with post-traumatic stress?
BBB: Oh, boy. I think there are a couple ways to look at that. Bessel van der Kolk—who is a wonderful psychiatrist and researcher on the effects [of] and treatment for post-traumatic stress, [as well as] the beneficial effects of using yoga practices for post-traumatic stress—[is] really the great advocate of yoga. His new book is called The Body Keeps the Score.
All of us have this awareness—of working with people with post-traumatic stress—that, very often, the body is a pretty uncomfortable place to be. If you’ve been through an accident, violation, or some kind of traumatic event—say, for a veteran, while deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq—that trauma sets up in the cells. The memory of it is stored in the cells.
So, it kind of makes sense that you wouldn’t consciously want to be in that body. It can be an uncomfortable place to be. Often, there’s a good deal of avoidance. One of the things that I find—teaching people to work with the yoga postures and with the breath—is that it gets people back into their bodies. It gets you grounded. It gets your feet solid on the ground. You begin to understand that the body can be a safe place to be—that you can be in control. That things can be relatively predictable.
When we go through trauma, usually those are the three qualities that we don’t have. We’re not safe. It wasn’t predictable. We’re not in control. So, once you start a yoga practice—let’s say you’re in a yoga class specifically designed for working with post-traumatic stress—the first thing the teacher would do would be to really create a safe space. One of my students works with veterans with very severe post-traumatic stress, and she sits in the room with her back to the door so that they can all face the door. She doesn’t touch them. She doesn’t walk up behind them and touch them. These are men and women with severe hyperarousal issues. If you go up behind them and touch them, they’re liable to jump five feet off the floor, turn around, and slug you.
So, it’s a long, slow unraveling of these deep-seated traumas. In yoga, these traumas are called samskaras, or “impressions.” They set up in what’s called the koshas, or the energy fields. It’s believed in yoga philosophy and tradition—and I have certainly seen this bear itself out many times—that through the practices and the detoxification effects of the practices—whether it’s breathing or meditation or asana—that you begin to release some of these traumas that are set up in the energy fields.
You start with the physical body and start working the traumas out of the physical body with asana practice. Then you start working out some of the more deep-seated traumas that are lodged in the subconscious and unconscious mind. In psychological terms, we’d say they’re in the subconscious or the unconscious mind. In yoga, you would say they’re in some of the more subtle energy fields—the less accessible koshas, which are more subtle. Like the causal body and the mental body.
[We continue] through pranayama, for example. Breathing techniques begin to work out some of the more deep-rooted traumas that are storied in the prana body or in the energy body. Once you get into meditation practices, you’re going even deeper.
So, you’re not just taking out stress from last weekend. You’re taking out stress, perhaps, from your early childhood. Certainly, yoga thinking is that you’re carrying samskaras—or these impressions. You can carry them from as far back as previous lifetimes. But they get worked out through the practices.
TS: That’s very helpful, Beryl. If it’s OK, I’d like to ask you a personal question. Which is: I’m curious to know [how] in your own journey—granted, quite different than someone who has been in military service—but in your own journey, whatever the “traumas or pains” of your life might have been in your now almost 72 years of life. I’m curious a little bit about how yoga has been instrumental or effective in working out some of those pains or challenges for you personally—if you can give us some examples or share with us about the yoga process for you through those difficult passages.
BBB: I started meditation in 1971. My first two teachers were a Jain monk by the name of Muni Shree Chitrabhanu and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche—who was the first Tibetan to come here and started the Shambhala School. So, I actually started meditation pretty early.
After that, I took a few asana classes. But I didn’t really make that connection between meditation and asana until about eight or nine years later, when I started studying classical yoga and realized, “Oh! This is a path. This asana stuff is supposed to lead you toward meditation.” I was working as a biofeedback researcher in LA in the early ’70s. We were studying the effects of meditation on the brainwave patterns of martial artists, Tibetan monks, Zen meditators, and I just kind of fell into this job. [I] learned how to meditate with these wonderful techniques that I got from my teachers [and] with the aid of biofeedback—or what’s now called neurofeedback instrumentation.
So, I really had the advantage of using these techniques pretty early to deal with—you know, my mom died when I was 15. My father remarried fairly quickly—like a year after that. He threw out everything that belonged to my mother, so there were no memories of that. This was the ’50s. There’s no grieving process. It was just, “OK, that’s over. Let’s get on with it.” And I didn’t really deal with my mother’s death until I was in my 40s. I just thought, “Well, that must be the way it is.” I was an only child.
I went through lots of stressful times—as anyone [will]—and [I think] using my yoga practices has kept me sane and on track and evolving. I sort of feel like my only purpose, really, is to consciously evolve—consciously work on my own evolution. That brings me happiness, joyfulness, contentment, peace of mind—and, certainly, the desire to share these practices with other people.
I’m thinking, for example, about—everything changes. We all expect that our parents are going to be there forever—that our kids, that our jobs, that our retirement account [are going to be there.] The source of our suffering is primarily caused by the fact that we look at things that are impermanent and expect them to be permanent.
When something changes—when we lose a job or a loved one—[or] when I found out I had pretty severe arthritis. I walked into an orthopedist’s office and she said, “You’re going to need a hip replacement in 10 years.” I went, “Wait a minute. I’m a yoga practitioner. I don’t do hip replacements.” And I’d been a runner for 10 years, played lacrosse in college, was a skier for 10 years, [and] was a dog musher for 10 years. I had been in a minor automobile accident where I sort of banged my knee into the dashboard. That kind of threw a hip slightly out of alignment, which created an injury that I was totally unaware of. I just had no idea. I didn’t think I’d been injured. And that misalignment—and doing all this stuff on top of it—it started pretty soon.
It’s like having a dent in your car. It throws the alignment out, and pretty soon your tire blows out. And you’ve got to take out the dent before you can—you can’t just put on a new tire.
So, I went through all of the classical stages of first being in denial, then being really pissed off, then being angry. Finally, I went, “Well, it’s finding that middle path. Do I resist this and do I fix this with yoga?” Because I had always been able to fix everything with my asana practices and my pranayama practices. Or do I accept this as inevitable and come to terms with it? Finding that middle path—when do you hang on and when do you let go?
I think we face that decision every day of our lives in one way or another. How strong are you in any situation and when do you just let something go?
What helps me to be more clear about right action—about what to do in any given situation—is my practices. My practices help me to be more finely tuned. You always make mistakes. But the practice brings you greater awareness—whatever your practice is. You go, “Oh—well, OK. It’s probably at the point where I need to accept the fact that I’m going to have titanium hips.”
I remember I was teaching at a Yoga Journal conference. I think I did one of the keynotes. I was talking about my hip replacement—which I had in 2009 and 2010. Yoga Journal sent me some feedback from one person. Her question was, “Well, why would I want to do yoga with somebody who had done yoga their whole life and still had to have a hip replacement?” I wrote back to Yoga Journal and said, “You know, you might want to tell this person that yogis die too.”
[Tami laughs.]
Sooner or later, we are all of the nature to wear out. At some point, you come to peace with this change.
So, I still have a great practice. I hike and ride my bike. I just got a paddle board. I have a paddle-boarding community, a hiking community. I don’t run anymore.
But I think our practices really help us deal with change. You come to the realization that your practices have to change as well.
And I’m asked that question all the time. People write and say, “Oh, I have arthritis and I’m facing the possibility of a hip replacement. I want to be able to do my practices and my Ashtanga [yoga].” [I] just go, “Look, it’s all about human movement. It’s not about getting both feet behind your head.” Yes, it’s great if you want to be really flexible—if that’s your ultimate goal in life. But can you walk up and down a flight of stairs? Can you get up off the floor? Can you hike five miles? Can you pick up your children or grandchildren? Can you be an active participant in the world?
I mean, it’s about maintaining health, fitness, well-being, and peace of mind. I think our desire—when we’re younger—to be extraordinary physical yogis [is] a great thing. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. But it’s not going to be there forever—just like anything else. Just like our children or parents or our job or a retirement account. Or, you know, the old-growth forests. Or clean water or clean air. Everything is changing.
TS: Now, Beryl, I read that you’re working on a new book that is exploring some of the parallels between quantum physics and yoga philosophy. You mentioned earlier in our conversation this idea of “non-locality” and how the experience of yoga can tune one to what the physicists are calling non-locality—that what’s happening in one place can be felt or affect what’s happening in another place. That we’re not bound by these limits of spatial distinction.
I’m curious to know what some of the other parallels are between quantum physics and yoga philosophy that are particularly important to you.
BBB: Well, I have to confess at first that I am a frustrated physicist—that that was my goal in college. [It] was to study either cosmology or astrophysics or quantum physics. I am severely dyslexic, and I didn’t think that the students that were in my physics classes were any smarter than I was. But they were a lot faster at being smart than I was.
So, I switched to comparative religion, philosophy, and English, and did really well. But the physics classes were really tough for me.
So, I’m really fascinated by the theory and philosophy of some of the discoveries. Let’s look at the observer effect. In quantum theory, what is presupposed is that when you go to measure a subatomic particle and you’re looking for a particle, you’re going to see a particle. But that particle has the capacity to change into a wave. When we observe something, it automatically changes it. There’s this world of sort of infinite possibilities—what the Buddhists call “emptiness.”
Everything arises out of this soup of infinite potential. Our reality—our experiences, our thoughts, our wood-burning stoves, our cars. From the material world, everything we experience and think come[s] up out of this soup into manifestation for a nanosecond, then drop[s] back down into the soup and [is] re-manifest again.
So, the quantum physicists say that, really, all physics has been looking through a reductionist method for, “What is the ultimate building block of the world?” We thought it was the atom for a while, and then it was subatomic particles. And then they divided subatomic particles. Some of the current thinking now is that reality may be nothing but vibration—that it’s simply waves that the yogis would call “the sound of Om.” [This] would be the sound of the Supreme Purusha—the supreme consciousness. That could be the building block. That is the one thing that doesn’t change. This vibration is always present. The yogis call it “the unsounded sound”—the ayyappa mantra—which means it doesn’t need to be sounded, because that sound is always present.
Someone like Michio Kaku, who is a physicist, says that it may be very well that the world is made up of nothing but music—or vibrations and sound. So, [there is] the idea of the observer effect—which is that when you look at something, you’re creating it. It may be that there really is nothing out there—that all we’re seeing is particles of light.
It’s fascinating to me to realize what a small percentage of what’s really out there is delivered to us by our senses. There is no color in the real world. The color is created in our receptors in our eyes, [which] are receiving light and turning it—depending on the vibration level or the frequency of the light spectrum that we’re getting—into a color.
So, there’s no smell. No sound. It’s impossible to kind of get your head around, but the question, “When a tree falls in the forest, if there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” We know now that the answer is no—because the sound is created in our ears. It’s just air moving or light moving.
As I study this more and more, I see more and more parallels between what the Buddhists say about emptiness, what the yogis say about Supreme Purusha, and what the quantum physicists say about, “Maybe it’s all just vibration.” I just keep seeing more and more parallels between the two worlds.
I wish I knew more about physics. When the explanations start getting really complicated, I just say, “Oh, gosh. I need a simpler way to understand this.”
TS: Well, I noticed [that] in listening to you talk about the observer effect and emptiness, I started feeling intensely happy. I just have two final questions. That happiness leads me to my penultimate question, which is: Beryl, talking to you, what I feel is your sense of being in love with life, if you will. You just seem like someone—here, in your 70s, a life of yoga behind you—you seem to really enjoy life. And I’m curious to know: one, if that’s true. And then secondly, if there is truth in it, what do you think is the basis for your in-love-ness with life? What do you attribute it to?
BBB: Isn’t that a wonderful thing to say? Thank you so much. I am in love with life! I’m so lucky. I have been through some difficult times. I was married for 25 years to a beautiful spirit, but [also] a man who was relatively tortured. He had bipolar disorder and was on the autism spectrum. It was a difficult time. It was a wonderful teaching. There [were] some wonderful experiences, but it was challenging. My practice is what got me through those many difficult times—just like many of us.
He died about seven years ago. The next morning, I was in the yoga shala, doing my asana practice. I was there every day because [I referred to it as a] life raft before it was my life raft. It was the way to accept change and say, “Well, it’s the end of this chapter and I’m going on to the next chapter.” It helps me deal with fear.
I have tremendous amount of faith in my practices because I’ve certainly seen them bear fruits. I’ve certainly seen them take care of me. I’ve certainly seen the positive effects of meditation and doing yoga practices. I feel that when you try and live your life according to some of the ethical and moral precepts of yoga, the universe takes care of you. When you really work to support the universe, I think the universe kind of looks after you.
So, I’m totally happy with my life. I love hanging out with my dogs. I love paddle-boarding. I have Siberian huskies that I just adore. I don’t have children. I don’t have brothers and sisters. Both of my parents are dead. So, I have some very close friendships with a few people who are sort of my family. Certainly, I think of many of my students and yoga buddies as part of my family.
I think there was a second part to that question, that I didn’t get to after being happy with my life—
TS: No, you did. Which was: what you attribute that happiness to. But it really sounds to me like you attributed it to your practice—to your yoga practice.
BBB: I think I do. I also have to attribute it to many of my teachers, [who] explained the way things work. I guess I do come back to the practice, because when you study the practice and you study the teachings, I think this faith that you develop—that if you try and follow the teaching—that you are going to become more happy. You are going to become more healthy.
My mom died when she was 45. My dad died when he was 61. But that was the era of smoking and drinking. My dad was a Rhodes Scholar and a super-scientist and was a chemist. He worked with a lot of chemicals, smoked, and drank, but was a brilliant mind. I sort of missed having him around, certainly as a scientist—to ask a lot of these questions about physics that he could have helped out with.
But I just feel it’s been my awareness of diet and nutrition—as that applies to the yoga lifestyle—that has helped me outlive my parents, really. I know that’s always a milestone for people. When you know your dad dies at age 60 and you live to be 61, you think, “Wow. Phew! I made it. That’s great.”
I heard the Dalai Lama say one time—someone asked him, “What is our ultimate purpose in life?” I thought he was going to say, “Oh, to help relieve suffering.” And he said, “To be happy.” If you don’t know the Dalai Lama, you could sort of think, “Well, that’s kind of self-serving. Is that my only purpose—to make myself happy?”
But you start to realize that it isn’t stuff that makes you happy. You look at what you have. Maybe you have a big house or a big car or lots of things or lots of prestige or a big important position. You look at that and I find people get to the point where they think, “This isn’t bringing me all the happiness that I thought it was going to.” I see this great move toward downsizing among people that have acquired a lot. Now, people are sort of going in the other direction—of realizing it’s kind of a burden to have a lot of stuff.
So, I find what makes me happy is helping other people be happy. In giving this book—I just gave this book just the other day, right after I received one, to a veteran that I just met. [This person] had returned from Iraq several years ago. Just the feeling of sharing this practice with somebody and thinking it might be of help gave me such an overwhelming sense of joy.
I think we evolve into this. This whole idea of “engaged yoga”—of the confluence now of the path of our monastic practice and combining that with social activism. I think we, as yoga practitioners, have a responsibility to be “spiritual revolutionaries” and to go out there and do the work—because there’s a lot of work to do. For the planet, for the water, for population, pollution.
I think this idea of service and sharing the benefits of my life’s practice with other people—and seeing them begin to step on the path, begin to be transformed, and begin to experience the benefits of doing yoga and living a yoga lifestyle—is just so thrilling. I find that everybody that’s in the teacher training programs I run around the country—I ask people, “Why do you want to teach yoga?” They all say, “Because I want to share what yoga has done for me with others.”
I find that’s pretty universal. I think that it’s not a mistake that yoga is prevalent in our life today. It’s popping up everywhere, like dandelions in the springtime. I think it’s here to serve a purpose. It may not be the only way to evolve. It’s certainly not the only answer to some of the problems that we’re facing as a species and a planet. But it’s certainly a good one. I think a lot of people are jumping on—which is great. It makes me happy!
TS: Beryl, just one final question that I want to ask you. If people are listening, they heard your statement that your goal is for a hundred thousand copies of Yoga for Warriors to get distributed to veterans. If they want to help—if they want to support the work of the Give Back Yoga Foundation—what should they do?
BBB: What a wonderful opportunity to share this with everyone. [Go to] GiveBackYoga.org. On our website, there is a place where you can order the Yoga for Warriors book. For every one that we sell, we’re giving one away. So, we have this campaign of “Buy One, Give One.” If we sell a hundred thousand, we hope to give away a hundred thousand.
You know, 25 years ago, if someone had said, “You know, the US military is going to be doing yoga practice. They’re going to be meditating and doing asana. That the Defense Department is going to be running studies on the benefits of meditation, and that soldiers getting ready to deploy are going to be learning yoga. That veterans are going to be taking teacher training programs and becoming yoga teachers so they can teach yoga to their fellow military brothers and sisters,” who would have believed that?
[They] would have been just incredulous. People would have been incredulous. “That’s not possible. That can’t be. Isn’t one of the primary teachings of yoga nonviolence?”
But I think it’s the dharma, or the path, of the warrior to go into the world and pursue justice. Sometimes, that requires . . . that’s another day’s podcast, Tami. The role of the warrior.
But I think our warriors—their ultimate goal is to create peace. And to bring peace to the world. Very often, on the way to that end goal, it requires setting some people on the correct path.
I find that all the veterans that I’ve worked with and talked to—they all are looking for peace of mind, peace in their hearts, and peace in the world. Perhaps, their duty has been to be a warrior for a time in their life. But I think that this idea of bringing a yoga practice to those who have been called upon to be warriors is a tremendous joining-together of the power of attention. Warriors are trained to pay attention in the external world. As yoga practitioners, we’re trained to pay attention in the internal world. It’s just about turning the direction inward.
So, yes. It’s great. Please—I would encourage everyone to order a book from Give Back Yoga Foundation and give it to someone you know who perhaps has returned from Iraq or Afghanistan or [is] flying [there soon]. We have new adventures being created all the time. Our young people need these practices to help keep them safe and sane and healthy.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Beryl Bender Birch of the Give Back Yoga Foundation. Someone who not only leads teacher trainings, encouraging people to be spiritual revolutionaries—but Beryl, you’re a spiritual revolutionary for sure in your own right. And you’ve been at it a long time. My hat’s off to you.
She has written with Sounds True a new book called Yoga for Warriors: A Basic Training in Strength, Resilience, and Peace of Mind. It’s a system for veterans and military servicemen and women.
Beryl Bender Birch—wonderful to talk with you today. Thank you so much.
BBB: Tami Simon—thank you so much. It has been an absolute delight, and I’m so grateful to have an opportunity to share this time with you and all our listeners.
TS: SoundsTrue.com. Many voices, one journey. Thanks for listening.
