Mark Morford

My first downward dog arrived, awkwardly and with terrific rigidity, at Pretzel’s Yoga in San Francisco sometime in 1997 – right along with nearly 100% illiteracy concerning yoga’s true lineage and profound spiritual history.

 

Didn’t matter. My shaken, sweat-drenched body and stunned perspective were both sufficiently convinced, following those initial classes, that they had discovered something wholly extraordinary in yoga’s ability to reshape my physique, my worldview and, eventually, my entire life.

 

It’s sweetly ridiculous that, within two years, I was teaching. But I had an ardent mentor in the studio’s owner, the late, luminous Bea (AKA Pretzel) France, I was quite passionate, and I already had an affinity for teaching from my years tutoring English while at Berkeley. I learned fast.

 

Pretzel trained me in intensive weekly bursts. We followed no formal outline, no crude 200-hour accreditation (Yoga Alliance, et al barely existed back then, and wasn’t exactly respected). We improvised. She trusted me. I wasn’t a kid, after all. My writing career was well underway and I’d already traveled, studied, achieved academic success at Berkeley, attempted rock stardom in L.A. – I knew a thing or two of the world.

 

Or so I thought.

 

Like my writing career, I came to yoga backwards and sideways, with a mix of confident irreverence and naive arrogance; I plunged in the deep end of teaching almost immediately, without really knowing all the strokes, much less the greater history. Only later did I cobble workshops and immersions, manuals and websites, teachers and mantras into my own fiercely self-made style and ERYT500 accreditation – which is, not ironically, almost exactly how I became a professional writer. I made it all up, on the fly. I earned it the weird way.

 

It would take another few years or so, spanning numerous teachers, lovers, spiritual thrashings, hallucinogens and humbling encounters for me to even begin to understand metaphysical potential of what I’d undertaken. It took a couple more after that to realize how my deepening yoga practice actually merged perfectly with my writing career. Now? Inseparable. Then? Unthinkable. Little did I know.

 

I taught at Pretzel’s for about six years, before moving to Mission Yoga’s glorious little Sun Room for a stint, and then, finally, to SF’s beloved Yoga Tree, where I still teach today. Along the way, a luminous circle of teachers and friends, mentors and loves: Bea, Rusty, Janet, Hareesh, Jai Uttal’s Kirtan Camp, India, Mexico, Guatemala, Bali, Burning Man (more than a dozen times now), Shaiva Tantra, Yoga for Writers, Absolution Flow, Yoga Alchemy, Everyday Sorcery, et al and so on.

 

I’m still bemused by how it all came about. Yoga was “just” my adjunct career, a fitness-oriented hobby that happened to double as a warm-hearted community, one which provided a rich counterbalance to the relentless media pessimism and political sleaze I was immersed in every day while writing for the Chronicle.

 

Then, an astonishing thing happened. Just as my yoga was deepening and my spiritual life was becoming sort of inexorable, the media world collapsed.

 

The Internet hit stride. Newspapers melted down. After 10 years on Chronicle staff, I was laid off and immediately re-hired as a freelancer. My column began to shift. I was (and am, obviously) still writing, but the landscape and tonal posture changed and evolved. Spanda. Jai Ganesha. OM namah Shivaya. I mean, seriously.

 

Meanwhile, I picked up more classes. Co-created immersions, manuals and teacher trainings with my fellow teachers, led retreats and workshops, taught at a burgeoning phenom call the “yoga festival.” My classes expanded. My yoga voice, style, approach leapt forward, inward, allward. Yoga, once a healthy little sideline, had reached full parity with my writing career, and beyond, to encompass, well, everything. BOM Shiva!

 

My worldview transformed. My consciousness became more fluid, spiral and expansive. Relationships changed, certain kinds of friends fell away and new ones appeared. I felt revitalized in my skin, my home, my sex, my breath. Food tasted different, and so did the sunlight. And Chandra.

 

My way in the world became less about grip and ire. My physical body was already transformed from the practice, but my emotional, spiritual and energetic bodies were reborn, challenged, tickled, licked, smashed, squeezed and released. The ongoing dance. The eternal OM.

 

And now? I no longer know if I’m a writer first, or a yoga teacher. Even better: It doesn’t really matter.

 

Of course, irreverence and insurrection remain. I am no “love & light” yoga mushball. Swirly, soft-focus “bliss bunnies” of the yoga world make me wince. I have never forsaken the visceral delights and manifest pleasures of this life. I like my bourbon and my leather, sex and my vices, high fashion and fine steak, tattoos and technology and illicit substances on the playa, too. They all fold in perfectly, messily, stubbornly.

 

They also don’t really mean a damn thing. Just energy to play with. Forms. Discernment. Yoga is a path of skillful means, after all. I choose as wisely and carefully as I know how, even though I don’t always know how. I honor and I bow, always with the open-throated understanding that I am blessed and grateful beyond words for what I have, and the life I get to lead.

 

But wait. Another stunning transformation was yet to come.

 

Around Valentine’s Day of 2017, my girl Desiree became pregnant. An intense 1o months later, Selah Lin Lake Morford arrived, fiery, beaming and lucid and eager to join The Resistance, on Thanksgiving morning, November 23, 2017. She’s a thorough delight. A beacon. Desiree is in her element like I’ve never seen her. And I’m a father, at 50, for the very first time. Talk about expanded consciousness.

 

I still try to get up, Selah (and Bodhi the dog) dependent, as close to sunrise as possible, and practice for an hour or two. I go as deep as possible. There is ritual and meditation, offering and humility and love. Shiva in Nataraja form remains my iṣṭa deva. It is not always perfect. It is not always easy. Sometimes it’s well after sunrise. Sometimes it doesn’t happen (after 20 years, that’s OK, too). Desiree sees to it that I get a proper kick-start, if needed. If she puts on the hot pants to practice alongside me, all bets are off.

 

But it is also not merely an option. It is not even a question. Yoga is no longer a thing I merely do, or teach, or believe in. It’s just the way of my life. It’s the philosophy, the lens, the breath, the modality. It’s not a thought, a plan, an app, or a workout. It’s just the way it is.

 

It’s all yoga. There is no separation. There is nowhere to get to. There is only consciousness, experiencing itself, over and over again, looking in and looping back upon itself, a sacred kaleidoscope, signifying everything, and also nothing. Simultaneously.

 

OM hrim namah Shivaya. x108. I mean, obviously.

 

See you on the mat.

 

-Mark