STORIES OF INNERGY

Students and Teachers recollecting their experiences of Yoga at the Innergy Centre as they progress year after year toward a life more expansive, more expressive and more integrated with their potential talents.

Sofia Kaba-Ferreiro, an Oxford graduate in her fifth year at Innergy. Her mother Fabiola is also a constant presence on the floors of the Centre.

Yoga student / teacher, Louise Stanion, recounts the beginnings of her journey, 6 years ago, sitting cross legged for hours through the sessions of Raja Yoga.

“I can’t believe you’re not just doing yoga now but sitting around talking about it as well!” 

Such was the exasperated response of an old friend at my resistance to leave London early on a Friday evening for a weekend of cycling.  Raja Yoga could be construed as being at a rather an inconvenient time, starting at 7.30pm and continuing sometimes, until the early hours. 

But then, that’s the point, isn’t it? 

To her I had become quite obsessed with something that I seemed powerless to explain.  I couldn’t quite lay my hands on the right words.  I sounded preachy but it wasn’t meant that way.  The fact was that part of our worlds didn’t meet any more.  It was easier not to rock the boat and stick to familiar subjects like sport or work or romantic dramas.  Best to leave aside my interest in yoga, and more specifically Raja Yoga.  It just emphasised a gulf.

But it was this attitude that had led me to Raja Yoga in the first place. 

Hold a torch high up in the air on a dark night, point it downwards and the rays scatter all over the place.  There is still an inkling of a bright centre, weaker than it should be perhaps, but as you move further out the brightness becomes decidedly weak and blurred. 

Darkness creeps in and the way home seems difficult and certainly more circuitous.  Confusion ensues. 

These blurry bits could be represented by thoughts such as, “I want to write but I don’t have enough time” or “I want to make a difference in the world but I don’t have any talents” or “I want to be able to sing, to perform, but I can’t get over my shyness” or “I’d like a relationship but every time I meet someone I really like, I loose my identity.”

Such is the mind of a person with the torch held high. 

Such is the suffering of a person with the torch held high. 

They have a feeling of incompleteness.  They have a hidden sense that somewhere in the world there is a place made exactly for them, like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle, but how to find it?  They know that somewhere they could shine, make a real difference, but how to connect to that place from which dreams can be realised?  How to connect with the feel of you?

This was my situation 5 years ago when I found myself sitting around a small circle of people at Friday night’s Raja Yoga.  Having already spent some time on the yoga mat, my increased energy and connection with the body had started to throw up all sorts of questions.  Who am I if I am not my body or my mind?  Who do I really want to be?  What’s holding me back? 

I found much in common with the other Innergy students, including a passion and drive to live well, free from all those self-imposed strings.  We had all developed such wonderful coping strategies for our lives. 

Things are OK, honestly they are.  Look, I have a glamorous job, plenty of friends and I travel a lot.  This feeling of emptiness will blow over, really it will.

But it was the duck on the water syndrome.  We were all there searching for answers.  It took me a while to fully appreciate that the way out of the dilemma comes not by keeping busy but by sitting still, by directing the attention inwards.

Raja Yoga was pioneered by a great sage called Sri Patanjali, who lived in India around 200AD.  His Yoga Sutras (aphorisms) are a clear account of the process by which one may come to a true understanding of the Universe.  Where Hatha Yoga liberates the body, Raja Yoga works on freeing the mind from negative and conditioned thought processes.  The two go hand in hand.

At Innergy, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras lie behind Fausto alongside Tolle’s ‘Power of Now’ and other such titles.  They gather dust.  It is not that they haven’t been read or that the material is not covered.  It is the format that is unconventional.  The learning style is much more spontaneous than working through a manual. 

Fausto started these sessions in 1985 and overtime began to hone his way of working.  He understood that people learn deeply through experience and not solely through the acquisition of knowledge.  And so Raja Yoga evolved into a week-by-week tuning in to spiritual teachings, which one would, through osmosis, naturally begin to apply in daily life. 

It took me a few sessions to click that the level of discussion was based largely around the curiosity of the people in the group.  I was so used to being crammed full with mostly erroneous information at school, that this approach was interesting, fun and free from expectation.  With the ball firmly in our court as far as asking the questions was concerned, it meant that we all progressed at exactly the right pace for our level of understanding.  Once I realised this I used to come with a mental list of questions to ask.  Often they would be answered even without me having to open my mouth.  Fausto seemed to have x-ray vision and to intuitively know what each of us needed.

I came to see that the Raja Yoga journey was the same for everyone.  How to move from head to heart, from thinking to feeling?  How to search out our own particular talents and begin to manifest them in the world?    

I also discovered that the answers to these questions don’t come overnight. It takes time, patience, persistence, an increasingly open mind and a big helping of humour.  The interest has to be there, a certain awareness of your suffering and a burning desire to get to the bottom of it.  What I liked about Innergy was the lightness around the process.  Learning and enjoyment went hand in hand and so, Friday nights became a regular fixture.

I think people are probably drawn to Raja Yoga when they are ready for it.  Each person has their own style of processing information, according to their nature.  Some people rant and rave, some people sit quietly, looking quizzical.  Others are defensive or are experiencing a depression that they just can’t see through.  Some form slow and thoughtful questions – gradually making sense of the information in their own way.  For me it was never a question of arguing with what was being presented.  I had a strong sense that what I was hearing would carry me in the right direction.  The challenge was integration. 

Could I stay there long enough for it to sink in, despite coming across some fairly unattractive thought patterns and emotions?  Could I begin to exercise an element of choice in everyday life?  Could I start to respond rather than react to the outside world more spontaneously without everything being filtered through a predictable and conditioned mind?  Just one or two moments when I could answer ‘yes’ to these questions became cause for celebration. The competition had begun, but this time the opponent took the form of my own mind.

So what’s really changed over the last 5 years?

Raja Yoga inspired in me a greater understanding of the Hatha Yoga I was practicing so religiously.  I started to understand the postures to be building blocks for meditation and the famous lotus posture where the mind can finally be faced.  Raja Yoga has brought me closer to my talents and enabled me to express myself more freely with less worry about what other people will think.  The negativity I was experiencing is still there but I have started to take responsibility for it and as such, established more control over my emotions.  I still suffer, I still get overwhelmed and I still beat myself up for it.  But these dramas have less hold over me now as I have developed the eyes for the happier side of human existence.  

Sustained Raja Yoga sees your escape routes come to light and drop away, one by one, until eventually you are just left with your mind.  A mind with the torch held high and a centre that is dimmer than it could be perhaps.  But, with a deep confidence that, with every moment you manage to breath, smile and bring some presence into what is happening in front of you, in your real life, that those rays are getting slowly less scattered.

It was a long time ago when I first came to one of Fausto’s Yoga classes that was held in the Pall mall deposit on Barlby Road.

A friend had persuaded me to come along. We left our 1 year old children with my husband and took the short journey next door to the class. I had already experimented with a few other yoga classes. All had promised a lot, but nothing had really touched me.

When I arrived at the class I was hit by a wave of shyness. All these georgeous people, glamorous, attractive and I imagined successful where flinging their arms around Fausto in a warm greeting hug. The musical Italian voice mingled with laughter and general warm appreciative banter. I felt very outside.

During the class Fausto started talking about deeper things than just yoga postures, about feeling, about uncovering who you really were, about reality and I was hooked.  I had been looking for someone to talk to me about these deep subjects.

Questions that I had always thought about, but had no one to share with.

As I continued with the classes, Fausto moved and opened the Innergy Yoga centre where the Raja yoga classes began.

I couldn’t have been more ready for them. Every week on a Friday, ideas of myself were challenged in the hope of becoming more objective. Clearer as to what was real and what wasn’t.

Sometimes in the early days those classes could be quite rough. Many times I was shown clearly how deluded I was! The vast gap was exposed between my ideas of myself and how I came across to others.  I learnt to listen to others, to allow myself to be wrong.

The freedom of just being , rather than having an agenda to fulfil in my communications. Week after week, year after year. The drip drip of this teaching changed me.

The yoga asana classes started to create the health and fitness of my body I had never achieved before. I had always been totally disinterested in exercise. (Being an artist I had been surrounded with a culture that preferred the pub to the gym).

The raja yoga classes started to change the chaotic, undisciplined, emotional person I was into a more relaxed and reasonable person.

The chanting evenings taught me how to find my voice and open my hearts expression.  To begin with I could hardly get any sound out that was at all recognisable!  I wanted so desperately to sing loud and strong and carry my hearts feeling in the sound but whenever I was asked to sing the nerves strangled any last chance of a nice sound coming out. Slowly, slowly I learnt to trust, to let go and allow the expression to flow. That expression is my love flowing.

I worked away at all these areas of yoga through my enthusiasm and inspiration. It was never a chore. I wanted to be there doing yoga whenever I could.  People close to me noticed the change.

I think my marriage would not have survived this far if I had not found yoga. Even though my husband found it very difficult to have me disappear most evenings to yoga.

A situation that was exacerbated when I became a yoga teacher.

My son grew up with me sharing these ideas of yoga philosophy. A subject he was deeply interested in. He practiced yoga since he was 4 years old and grew up observing the ups and downs of life. He grew able to manage more than most kids his age. So much so that teachers in his new school were shocked at how much he had taken on board, juggling more academic work and more societies and group interests on offer at the school than they thought was managable.

I have walked down this path so long now it is hard to imagine what I would be like without it. But there are situations in life which really show you where you have come.

Moments like when my brother died from cancer aged 50. My family where devastated, and with this devastation came the arguments the emotions the dark behaviour. People lashing out, creating as much pain as they were feeling. Somehow in the midst of this I was able to remain steady and there for my brother. Somehow I remained unseduced by the quarrelling and the upset going on around me and I could hold my brothers hand while he faced final moments. We talked, the raja yoga I had understood fascinated him.

Even through the very dark and scary places he went during his process (the cancer affected his brain). I was able to be there to meet his gaze and hold his hand. For this I am very grateful. It was a time of intense learning and beauty.

Recently my son has gone on a trip.  His journey will take him around the world. He will be in many unfamiliar situations that he will for the first time have to negotiate by himself. His trip should last 5 months.

This trip marks the beginning of a new phase. After his trip he will move on to University and his independence from his parents.

As the days approached his leaving I watched my husband grow more and more anxious and sad. I would check my feeling daily. I was excited for him. I knew this adventure would be an invaluable life lesson for him, a platform from which he would be able to launch his life.

I do not share the anxiety nor the sadness that my husband feels.

Even though I look around my empty ,rather tidy, house and miss my son, and of course I have thought about how my son will approach the challenges he will come across, I allow myself to trust. That place of trust has been uncovered by the yoga practices. And it keeps on growing.

And for that trust I have found in myself I thank Fausto, Innergy and all the Yoga teachers past and present.

For this is what yoga and Innergy has shown me. It a has allowed me to rest in that trust. Actively encouraging it, in a world that promotes anxiety.

That trust is trust in myself.

People have often bandied the expression about  ‘learning to love yourself’. An expression that left me baffled as to what I was meant to do on any practical level. Yoga at Innergy is that practical training.

Thank you Fausto.

Lucille Dwek / Painter and Hatha Teacher recalling her first encounters with Faustomaria  even before Innergy was born in the early 90’s.