I’m writing this now because I can’t bring myself to teach yoga at this time. This makes me incredibly sad because I want so much to serve my yoga community and many of them are hurting too. However, I have felt this darkness in my past and I know that I need to take really good care of myself. I’ve suggested checking into a mental institute for the next week but I would probably hate the food. I only say this in light because I have ended up there before in a dark time. This is a bit different.
The last few days (3 to be specific) have been the most heartbreaking for me as teacher after teacher resign from Anusara, the man, and the company. What took 14 years to build has been dismantled in almost 14 days! I am devastated! One of the many analogies I have come up with to try to express the raw emotions spewing from my heart and my guts is that I have been going to a “university” for 8 years and all of a sudden the university has disappeared and I can not finish my degree!.
I don’t know what will happen to the company but I do know that I am really going to miss John and his workshops. Not only for the incredible information I take in each time, but the community I care so deeply about. We may never have that again! Well something like it but it will never be the same and it shouldn’t.
When all this started one part of it hit a nerve for me. The one thing that happened that really got me was the “married woman” thing. I just sat with that for a while and felt good that I had something to be pissed at him about. A married women, geesh, couldn’t you have waited until she got a divorce or something and I sat back in my purity chair and threw stones at that behaviour. 
After a bit I realized that I needed to understand why THAT part of all of this was really bothering me so much. Why wasn’t I pissed about the pot (how can you be, really?), what about the pensions (I don’t have a pension, I’m a yoga teacher in Canada), the wiccan coven (my word! If only my Catholic mother knew what I was involved in)?
Nope just the married woman thing! Then I had one of those unbelievable moments of truth, out of nowhere, a clear insight into it. Magical! As John stands in front of us, and I in front of my husband, my mom, my dad, my sister, my friends, my students I carry with me a long lineage of energy and beliefs, even if I don’t know they are even there or I hate them!
The person that you see in front of you is a miracle! An embodiment of energy that is both Divine and completely fucked up! My family had a Catholic bomb go off when there was “an affair”, “in the church” no less. The couple involved loved each other even though they hurt many other people around them and it was difficult. They didn’t get there because they were both so happy in their marriage, there lives! Their living arrangements changed and I watched my aunt go through a very difficult time begin alone after my uncle went off to work in another city for, well for far too long, I guess.
Sorry for the history but I do have a point to make and it’s coming just not yet. The person who suffered the most in this situation was my mom! She is loyal, Catholic and has been married to my dad for a bagillion years. I witnessed first hand how this hurt her and I warned her year after year that she needed to let it go, to heal, that she was only hurting herself. She has finally let go,well a little bit and I’m so proud of her, but it’s taken almost 10 years!
So perhaps that is where my “married woman” button came from, without me really knowing at first where it came from. John’s behaviour has held up a mirror for all of us. And what we have a problem with is something we see in ourselves that we do not like but we know it is there! This of course does not forgive him but when I think of him, I see not just the man, the company, but a long history of lineages that are woven through the tapestry of his body and mind. I wonder if each of you affected by this picked out one thing that really truly bothered you about all this and recognized that it isn’t the first time it’s shown up in your life, or you families history!
Then we can have compassion! Every person is a complex being of layers of energy and thousands of years of history. I think John is a person capable of working this out in this life time. I hope I am. Look deeper and then deeper still. I love and respect my teacher within but also without. I love and respect John and the other teachers that I have studied with because they have given my some guidance, some help, some direction. I do not follow them blindly but so far they haven’t personally led me any where but back to my own heart. 
This has been the most powerful mirror ever held to my soul, I want and hope my response is in alignment with the highest. I feel like this mirror has shattered into a million pieces, each one representing a yoga student that has healed or thrived in the teachings of Anusara yoga and I hope we catch a glimpse of our true nature and that we get to see each other shine again.
Healing to all of your hearts,
Mindy