The World Shifts When You Shift

HEATHER MASON is the Founder and Director of The Minded Institute, a professional yoga therapy training organization. She is also the recipient of four master's degrees. She is interviewed by RUBY CARMEN on the simplicity and strength of coming back to the mind, body, and spirit through yoga, and how her own yoga practice has changed her life.

-  RUBY CARMEN

Q: Good morning, Heather. Thank you very much for this interview with Heartfulness Magazine. What inspires you on this path of yoga and yoga therapy?

The first thing is the felt experience of the practice. The world shifts because you shift. Perception is everything. When you I calm the mental processes, the nervous system, while also invigorating an awakening inside, the world shifts. You see things more clearly and with greater ease. When that happens, there's an organic inspiration and a love for the practice, for the arising experience of self, which is not all about ego. Then, it also arises for the external world.

I am also deeply inspired by colleagues, students, and clients who overcome great adversity through these practices. First and foremost, it's the practice itself.

It's easy to get caught up in all the trappings of the world. It's easy to externalize and worry about the vicissitudes of life and the problems that emerge, which may be great or small. So, the spiritual teachings of yoga are incredibly important, even if we already know them intellectually to embody them and find nourishment.

I lived in Buddhist monasteries for about three years. When you're enmeshed in that world, day in and day out, the remembrance is there moment by moment. But when you're not in that environment, it helps to have an active process of being with other people, reminding you of the values, reading literature, maybe spiritual texts, so you inculcate those ideas on a daily basis. You can choose the approach yourself; I'm not suggesting any indoctrination because there are so many competing factors, and we live in a world that's very much based on success being material gain and prestige. Unfortunately, chasing those things doesn't lead to joy.

It's important to keep coming back to what it feels like to be present in your energy-to watch, feel, stretch, breathe.