Unity in diversity is the order of the universe.
Just as we are all human, we are all distinct.
-Swami Vivekananda

I am compelled to begin this offering to you, the reader of How Ya  Feeling Yukon, with a confession: I am not an expert in yoga.
In gratitude to a way of life that has carried and nourished me for 20 years, I humbly offer up a few simple stories and reflections on what yoga has become to this one life. And in doing so, I hope to cultivate a curiosity that will inspire us all toward greater self awareness.
Every person’s experience with yoga is uniquely their own and, at the same time, like spokes on a wheel these expressions of yoga take us back to the centre of who we are.  Each individual path of this spiritual practice appears as distinct as the people who enliven it. But when we meet in the hub of the wheel, these appearing diversities are re-united into a remembered whole.
So, in offering my unique expression of this artful and scientific spiritual practice, I also acknowledge there are many reflections of yoga that are equally as important to be heard and experienced.
With that in mind, may I take you back 20 years ago to a Bonnie that even I must squint to recognize ...
My first recollection of yoga lands upon the teachers that stirred and continue to stir a deep memory of what it means to be whole. I pay homage to those people who took the form of “teacher” and helped me to find places inside myself that had only become shadows.
My memories of those early yoga experiences come not in chronological order that can be imparted easily, but more in feelings and darting images. I was in my early twenties when I came to the Yukon in the mid-1980s and was trying to outrun the life I had been living.
Sadly and thankfully, life has a tendency to follow us wherever we go. I attempted to run further still by volunteering to go overseas with Canadian Crossroads International, and I found myself in the Cook Islands.
Upon my return to Canada, in 1989, I was beginning to crack open ... and into those cracks poured the light of yoga.
Like many people in the West, yoga came to me in the form of the physical practice of asanas (postures). I jumped in with both feet, as I have a tendency to do, and spent six hours with a small group of men and women, asking my body to do things it would never have even dreamt of doing.
The workshop was led by a local woman who would become a mentor to me for many years to come. This initial experience was like a foreign taste to my palate: we moved in ways that my body found to be delightful and uncomfortable at the same time.
Already I could feel the invitation to turn my solidified perspective upside down and inside out. I very quickly felt like the practice was encouraging me to remember the way to a hidden treasure that was buried deep inside. The asanas had started the journey of living again inside the body and slowly began to lead me toward the other aspects of yoga that allowed me to live from the heart.
I came to yoga lost and confused.
These early classes and teachings did not dispel the disorientation immediately. But they did serve as signposts that pointed me back toward home and wholeness.
May any goodness that arises from these moments we share here, together, be offered to you, the reader – and, in turn, may you smile upon our community.
Namaste.

Bonnie MacDonald is a certified yoga instructor who has been practising yoga for 20 years and teaching it for 14. She teaches out of the Vista Outdoor Learning Centre and can be reached at 668-2791.