MIND/BODY: Passing with grace

I learned last night that a yoga teacher, and someone I admired from afar, had passed away after struggling with cancer for the past two years. Mary Dunn, the president of the New York Iyengar Association, died on Sept. 4. The news felt very emotional for me - I didn't know her well or take her classes, but I had the priviledge to interview her (along with James Murphey) in 2005 and am an active class-goer at the institute. Her blog, which she maintained nearly til the end, is an unbelievable portrait of the grace and beauty of life and death.

I have been part of the Iyengar network on-and-off again for the past 10 years. I am not sure how I was introduced to the style, but I spent a year taking classes at the Palo Alto Yoga Studio with a teacher named Catherine. (I think the studio is still there under a new name.) I moved to New York and stopped yoga for about seven years. And then I found my way back: namely, through the interview with Mary Dunn. She was able to convey in words both the spiritual expansiveness and physical concreteness that is available to Iyengar practitioners; she was accessible, smart and enthusiastic. The interview was tied to a celebration event for BKS Iyengar, which I also attended.

The event had an enormous impact on me - physical, emotional and intellectual. I was overwhelmed with the power of love that filled New York City Center that night. While I didn't connect the dots at the time, it put into motion a series of life changes and helped me articulate my own hero's journey so to speak. Two months later I had quit my job, and four months later I was in Thailand for the start of a four-month journey through Southeast Asia and India. A year later, I put down unhealthy vices like smoking and drinking, and in the process have kindled an active spiritual landscape. In the three years - to the week - since that moment I have deepened my own yoga practice and added a deeper study of Zen meditation. The goal of Iyengar, as Mary Dunn told me in that interview, is to educate yourself in what is possible.