It’s nail in coffin time for the remains of my former community.

John sent out  a letter yesterday announcing that he will retain control of everything, and be back to business as usual before long. You can read it here, if you care.

What do I have to say about it? Nothing. John’s missive is too entirely predictable to waste breath on.

As one who is undoubtedly considered a Vicious, Vocal Minority Luminary, however, I do have something to say–just not to John.

Dear Kula Evolution/ Steering Committee/ LC/ WTF Committee:

You know who you are. You are those public teachers who were in leadership roles, and who took the position of “waiting and seeing,” or “working diligently to salvage AY”.

We had a chance back in Miami. Your actions cut the legs out from beneath those of us who stood up to John and demanded change. You have enabled this corrupt guru model, directly contributed to this debacle, and done irreparable harm. Thanks for nothing. I’m not interested in cryptic public statements. I’m not interested in manifestos as substitutions for action. Spare me your disappointment, and your devastation.

Where the hell were you?

You saboteurs owe this entire community an apology.

No regrets on my end,
Bernadette Birney

I share this because we have a chance to learn from the failure of our leadership, and a chance to grow a pair.

Oh, and here’s a letter I signed and helped circulate in the early wake of the scandal in February 2012:

11 February 2012

Dear members of the Interim Committee,

Thank you for your letters today. In resonance with their promise of movement toward a teacher-driven organization with clear channels of communication, we are writing to make our voices heard.

Together, we request that John NOT teach the upcoming Dharma of Relationship workshop in Miami. Given the circumstances, we deem it inappropriate for John to have the seat of the teacher for this topic at this time.

We understand students have bought their plane tickets and are already en route. We suggest that a combination of Certified teachers and/or scholars instead collaborate to teach during the weekend, and that John participates as a student. This will provide a powerful example not only of John’s accountability, but also of the collaborative future of Anusara.

We feel this is the most appropriate, healing, and respectful way for the weekend to proceed, and we ask that you support this action.

In community,

Bernadette Birney

Suzie Hurley

Annie Adamson

Natalie Miller

Hillary Rubin

Claire Murphy

Emma Magenta

Marcia Wilson

Raymond Mohrman

John Levis

Andra Bekerescu

Sheila Donnelly

Marcia Wilson

Dianne Bondy

Jonathan Shoemaker

Jordan Kirk

Anne Libby

Katie Stephens

Laura Spriggs

Kara Schmidt

Andrea Barberio

Shelley Bello

Laura Jarrait Flora

Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

Katie Myer

Cheryl Chaffee

Stacey Millner-Collins

Carrie Ganz

Lara Voloto

Chris Arcucci

Kate Bilby

Erin Nealy

Rebecca Sykes

Jeanine Oburchay

Alisa Rose

Alison Alstrom

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller

Justin Faircloth

Linda Colletta

Megan Marie

Sarah Faircloth

Ulrika Engman

Jenny Otto

Eva Davant

Nicole Michaelson Traum

Kathryn Wiese

Erin Hansbrough

Maria Hamburger

Todd Vogt

Kelly Landrigan

Batya Metalitz

Jordan Bloom

Joe Miller

 

 

 

The voices of fear, cynicism, and shame can be louder–so much louder–than the voice of the soul, so, “put your ear down next to your soul and listen hard.”

~ Anne Sexton

A few weeks ago, a reporter from New York Magazine call to fact check an article she was writing on the scandal in my yoga community.

“Are you the one who said that the aftermath of the scandal has been like a death?”

“No, that wasn’t me,” I’d said, and hung up.

Days later, though, I realized that it had been me. Those had been my words. I hadn’t recognized them because the reporter had quoted them back to me out of context.

Yes, it had been a death. A part of my identity had died.

* * *

Monday night I was on a call for a coaching program that I am a participant in. We were scheduled to work on something called The Metaphor Tool.

“How about you, Bernadette?” Indrani, the master coach, asked, when nobody volunteered to be the client.

Sigh.

“Well, uh, I guess there is this thing that’s been sort of weighing on me,” I confessed.

“I’m teaching a lot of yoga, maybe too much, and I need to make some decisions about my schedule. Being so scheduled is making me feel, well–trapped. Also, there was this, um, thing that happened in my community, and to be really honest I don’t even know how much I feel like teaching anymore.”

“Are you an Anusara teacher?”

I hesitated for what felt like a long time but was probably, in reality, only a few seconds.

“Former. I’m a former Anusara teacher.”

* * *

“Can you say more about the trapped feeling you mentioned? What does that trapped feeling feel like in your body?” Indrani asks.

I close my eyes, as instructed, and try to accommodate. What does the loss of the joy in teaching feel like in my body? What does it feel like, physically, to be committed all the way through 2013?

“It feels like a belly full of poisonous snakes.”

(You wanted a metaphor? You’ve got one.)

“A belly full of snakes? Well, in that case, you’d better lie down.”

I do, right on the carpeted floor.

“Can you ask the snakes to leave, Bernadette? Can you make them leave?”

I consider various exit strategies, each more violent, and less appealing, than the next.

“No.”

Somehow I know there’s no dispelling the snakes. But, well…maybe I can transform them. That might be possible. Then it occurs to me that I actually already know something about snake metaphors in the body.

“Oh!” I say, “It’s Kundalini!”

(If I could find an online definition I liked enough, I would link to it for folks–like my dad–who won’t recognize the Sanskrit term. Dad, here’s all you really need to know:  Kundalini is a word that’s often used for a kind of spiritual awakening. The image is one of coiling and uncoiling snakes. When the snake is coiled, the spiritual energy is asleep. When the snake stands upright, it’s awake. )

I realize that I can redirect the vipers who’ve been swimming horizontal circles round my belly to move on a more vertical axis along my spine. So I do.

After that, my belly calms down and I don’t need to lie on the floor anymore.

* * *

In important ways, my life is soft and easy. While I often worry about paying the mortgage, I understand that–by the majority of the world’s standards–I am a pampered, Connecticut yogi. I live in a warm, dry house full of windows. There is never not plenty to eat in the well stocked pantry. I was lucky to be born in the West, not something I earned or deserved. There’s no merit involved, merely luck.

In important ways, my life is not always that easy. I live every day with a disease that requires medication, and careful maintenance. It’s not a bad disease to have–as diseases go–but I have paid its premium. A disease wasn’t something I earned or deserved. It was just bad luck.

I know what it is to be startled by the impossible greening of the woods in Spring.

I know, too, what it is to want. I know what it is to try hard, to give everything and then give more, and still to not take the day. There are alternate visions of selves I might have been, other lives I might have lead–but didn’t. There are people who ought to be here but aren’t–people I miss every day, every single day.

Don’t you know, too, really? Haven’t you, too, wanted? Haven’t you, too, been lucky? Haven’t you, too, lost? Haven’t you, though?

This much I know:  the world owes me exactly nothing. I am not entitled to one single thing. I do not expect it to be otherwise.

And yet the impossible greening of the Spring is enough.

The world is enough, and it is more than that.

In the course of a lifetime, foundations will be pulled out from from under. Identities will be forged, and lost, and re-forged. The metaphorical snakes in your own belly will roil. They will devour themselves, and you. They will coil and uncoil. They will wake and stand upright. They will sleep for centuries, sleep for so long you’ll forget they can awaken.

They will awaken again anyway.