The Journey to YEM, Part 4 – The Call to Serve

When I came back from India, my psychic senses were so alive that I could not take a bus or sit beside someone as I felt completely overwhelmed. I would know what happened to them when they were six or what would happen at 86. An Ayurvedic doctor said I was like a hi-fi stereo on volume ten. I had sensory overload and my dials were up too high. The psychic doors had blown open. I needed to learn how to turn down the volume and master the lock on the doors.

The next years were just as full of amazing people, places and teachings as my time in India. The weak health in my body asked me to move my attention inward in a way I had not yet done. I had touched the expansiveness of the cosmos. It was now time to find that same expansion within, rooted in my being. The universe is immense outside, just as much as it is immense within. In fact, I found that the notion of outside and inside were illusions that did not need to confine me. The more rooted in my being I became, the more useful and practical the psychic skills were. Like anything in nature, the more grounded I was, the more broadly sky-bound I could be.

I opened a small yoga studio in Montreal and worked as an assistant minister at the United Church of Canada. I found that my awakening had very practical use. My call was to serve. This life clearly was a gift. I had been given a second chance to live. All I needed to do was love.

I found that I could teach yoga and know where people’s energies were blocked or stuck. People could call me from the other side of the world and I would know what was ailing them. I learned to walk down the street or take a bus and find a place (or asana) of balance within the whole flow. Life was becoming Yoga.

Over the years, my studies deepened and my practice flourished. I studied Chi Kung, Ayurveda, Thai massage, shamanic soul journeying, sound healing, astrology and nature co-creation. I offered these skills in treating people. My musical career also flourished with much greater meaning. I went deeper and deeper into various forms of yoga such as intensive work within the Iyengar method and completing another teacher training program with Esther Myers of the Vanda Scaravelli lineage. Healing, yoga, meditation, music, life… it all started to flow as part of one greater whole that I understood as Yoga.

Out of this vast array of experiences, I grew to see that all things are interconnected in ways our limited mind and senses cannot comprehend. We are not the body, but we temporarily inhabit it and are responsible for its well being. Like a temple for our spiritual practice, the body houses the spirit and also reflects it. It is a temporal housing of the infinite spirit we are. Just like Siva and Shakti, or Yin and Yang, the body and spirit are married, sharing the most exquisite balance.

The years of exploring the meaning of Yoga and how to integrate it into my life led to a deeper listening to an arising from within. That arising guided my physical yoga practice and brought grounded meaning to my day. YEM: Yoga as Energy Medicine blossomed through my life experience.

YEM aims to both infuse the body/being with consciousness and awaken the inner intelligence already present within the body/being. It awakens vital energy through mindful breathing, meditations, vital energy work and subtle attention to yoga postures. It guides the practitioner more deeply into the body, into the present. This is done through exercises that clear the body’s energy channels (nadis), in order to master vital energy (prana and shakti), and tap into unlimited power and ease (samadhi).

Yoga is life. It is everything. It is the way the branches of each tree converge and make entirely unique patterns in each tree. It is within the mystery of life unfolding and it is the mystery itself. It is the gut “knowing” we all have from deep within and it is within the surrendered not knowing.

Next month, I will resume our exploration of asana practice within YEM: Yoga as Energy Medicine.

Parvati-YEM-headshotKnown as the Positive Possibilities Lady, Parvati inspires magnificence through music, yoga, words and activism. An award-winning musician, Parvati brings joy and hope to top 40 radio with her celestial pop songs “I Am Light”, “Yoga in the Nightclub”, and “Shanti Om”. Founder of “YEM: Yoga as Energy Medicine” and author of “Confessions of a Former Yoga Junkie: A Revolutionary Life Makeover for the Sincere Spiritual Seeker”, Parvati has been featured on radio and television talk shows and news and wellness magazines globally. She is the founder of Parvati, a not-for profit dedicated to realizing MAPS: The Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary to help stop global warming. More about MAPS, free YEM videos, self-help articles, her music and more at parvati.tv and parvati.org.