August 2026: Nothing Personal
NOTHING PERSONAL
Jai! Shri Krishna!
May your Heart remain connected to Krishna. Every encounter becomes an offering, and every greeting becomes a form of bhakti rather than mere social convention.
Kindness and compassion are at the very foundation of yoga. They are not simply virtues to practice, but expressions of our true nature. Yet make no mistake—an authentic yoga practice will dismantle the ego. That's how you know it's real. Yoga challenges every assumption about who we think we are and the stories we tell ourselves. It invites us to discover something far greater than our personality.
One of the ego's greatest habits is personalization. It constantly asks, Why did this happen to me? Why did they say that to me? The ego survives by taking things personally, assigning blame, and reinforcing separation. Left unchecked, it can trap us in an addictive form of victimhood where lasting joy becomes nearly impossible.
Lao Tzu reminds us, "If you blame someone else, there is no end to the blame." As long as our peace depends on someone else changing, freedom remains out of reach.
The beauty of vinyasa is that it offers the remedy.
Each mindful transition asks us to become completely present. Breath interrupts the endless stream of stories. Movement anchors us in awareness. For a few precious moments, there is no one to defend, no grievance to carry, no identity to uphold. There is simply breath, movement, and presence.
This is the deeper purpose of vinyasa. It is not merely linking postures together—it is linking us back to our essential nature. Every inhale receives life as it is. Every exhale lets go of what no longer serves us. Presence dissolves personalization.
Many great teachers have celebrated humility. Chögyam Trungpa wrote, "The spiritual path is painful... it involves insult after insult." Swami Sivananda taught that one of the highest yogas is to "bear insult and bear injury." Mother Teresa simply said, "Love anyway.”
Why?
Because when we identify with the Soul instead of the ego, we discover that what we truly are cannot be harmed. The Bhagavad Gita tells us the Self cannot be burned by fire, cut by weapons, drowned by water, or diminished by time.
Ram Dass said it perfectly: "When somebody upsets me, that's my problem." The disturbance reveals not the other person, but where attachment still remains within us.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama embodied this understanding. When asked if he hated the Chinese after Tibet's occupation, he replied, "No. That's not functional." Compassion became stronger than resentment.
For me, yoga has meant learning not to define my life through my mother's suicide. The practice has shown me that healing begins when we allow our wounds to cease organizing our identity around our wounds. Whatever wisdom I have as a teacher has grown from that acceptance.
The truth is, we all take things personally—a text message, criticism, politics, traffic, social media, family, strangers, even the weather. The ego is endlessly creative.
But every time we step onto the mat, we practice returning.
Returning to breath.
Returning to presence.
Returning to the awareness that exists before thought, before opinion, before offense.
As our world continues to wrestle with division and uncertainty, may our practice remind us that no one is truly our enemy. When we stop taking life personally, compassion ceases to be something we practice—it becomes the natural expression of remembering who we truly are.
In Yoga we dwell,
Jeffrey
August 2026
*this pushti is being revisited from November 2024