After walking, yoga is one of the most popular leisure activities in Canada. Even though yoga has been regularly practiced for over 2,000 years in Eastern cultures, particularly India, it’s only in the last few decades it has become popular in Western cultures. Today, it’s becoming the top fitness trend across the globe. New studios and new styles (like goat yoga, hot yoga and SUP yoga) are popping up everywhere.
But Karuna Erickson from Nelson, BC, was practicing and teaching yoga well before the new trend started.
“I got into yoga in the ’60s when I was in graduate school,” she says. “The philosophy of yoga inspired me – that it was possible to not be run by the busy mind, and instead settle into a more peaceful place of ease and well-being. I started teaching because I wanted to share the practice with other students who, like me, were very intellectual, but not so connected with their body, heart and spirit. It provided a beautiful path for the journey from head to heart, which some people say is the longest journey we’ll ever take!”
In 1970, when Karuna moved to the Yukon Territory with her partner, Paul, she took BKS Iyengar’s famous book Light on Yoga with her, calling it her initial inspiration. Since then, she has practiced yoga almost every day.
Karuna found her education at University of Berkeley as a psychotherapist integrated nicely with her yoga practice.
“My background in psychology supports my exploration of the healing potential of yoga,” she says. “In my teaching, I invite students to not only be aware of their bodies, but to also listen to their hearts and be curious about what they are feeling.”
Along with her weekly yoga classes in a Nelson studio, Karuna sometimes teaches classes at other studios across Canada and internationally, as well as facilitating several workshops a year. She is known for her thoughtful weaving of Sufi poetry, Buddhist practices of mindfulness and loving-kindness meditations into her classes. Together with Paul, she also leads annual yoga retreats: one at an outdoor yoga tipi summer camp on the shores of the Kootenay Lake; and the other at a winter retreat in tropical Bali.
Although yoga practitioners have experienced the positive effects of yoga for thousands of years, there has been a dearth of evidence-based research supporting its positive effects. Recently, however, more research is being undertaken, evidencing yoga’s positive impact on anxiety and depression, pain, cardiovascular problems, autoimmune and immune conditions, and pregnancy.
According to Karuna, benefits are realized because yoga helps us in practicing awareness of the breath, health and flexibility in the body and finding a calm, peaceful place where the thoughts can settle, and the mind can be at rest.
“Learning to be present with whatever arises from a steady place of ease is a tremendous benefit of yoga,” she says.
Eager to pass on her yogic learnings as director of Heart Yoga Centre, a yoga training school registered with Yoga Alliance, Karuna has trained yoga teachers for over 20 years. She has also collaborated in teaching classes and workshops with other teachers like Rodney Yee of New York, and Andrew Harvey, founder-director of the Institute of Sacred Activism and renowned author of several books including co-authoring of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
Karuna and Harvey also teamed up to co-author Heart Yoga: The Sacred Marriage of Yoga and Mysticism, published in 2010. This collaboration is a revolutionary approach to yoga, with an intention to inspire the yoga community (of which Harvey says there are now 50 million practitioners worldwide), “to become the crucible for the divinization of the body and the birth of the divine human.”
But despite teaching, workshops and books, the goal on Karuna’s yoga path has remained clear: “to keep returning to my yoga mat and to take the time to listen to myself and settle into more presence and steadiness. Then, I can move out into the world and be of service from this wellspring of courage, strength and inspiration, and act in creative and transformative ways to bring benefit to others.”
It’s easy to understand, then, why Karuna describes the highlights of her yoga career to be when someone expresses to her how much benefit they receive from their yoga practice.
“Often people will express to me how yoga has helped them feel more present in the moment and more peaceful in their lives. I feel so glad when people share how yoga has given them a sense of belonging, and a way to be kind and gentle with themselves. This has made me happier than writing a book or teaching in wonderful retreat centres.”
Five Tips for New Yoga Students
1) Be gentle with yourself.
2) Listen to your body and trust your intuition. If the teacher says to do something that doesn’t feel right to you, don’t do it.
3) Do nothing that hurts. You can practice with steadiness and ease, never forcing or pushing.
4) Do 50 per cent of what you want to do, and then see how you feel the next day. If you feel good, do a bit more next time.
5) Do your own practice. It doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.
For more information, visit yogakaruna.com
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