What is Yoga For Jyl today?

Over the years, Yoga has been my best friend. I had to learn how to detach from the way I thought my practice “should be” and put my ego aside. I began yoga when I was in my twenties and I am now in my fifties, so with time, my practice has changed considerably.

Yoga offers the most incredible devotional practice -- one that continues to heal and feed me on my journey.

I have studied and taught yoga for the last twenty-five years. But my first exposure to yoga really started fifty-two years ago. Grandfather Harry was an old German farmer who would pray, meditate and do yoga postures after his morning farm chores. As a small child in the Midwest, I would sit for hours and watch him embrace his devotional practice.

Yoga is the journey. Years later, when it was my time on the mat, devotional yoga replaced a high stressed-fear based lifestyle with a spiritual flow. This was the same spiritual flow I had been missing since my childhood days on the farm. I stumbled into a yoga class one day in a local gym. I will never forget the emotions that were rattled after just one class. I had come home again –to a spiritual home inside myself.

Yoga is the magic. I actually started teaching yoga by mistake. Okay, I know there are no mistakes in life. One day, I received an incoming call from a man living in La Jolla, CA. He wanted me to provide private yoga lessons. I told him I was a marathon runner and had a corporate sales and marketing job that kept me pretty busy. I also shared I was just getting back on my feet after a personal health crisis. I confessed that I loved my Ashtanga Yoga practice, but I was not a yoga teacher. Somehow, he still convinced me to take him on as a student. It was as if I had a personal wake up call that day. Life as I knew it was about to change forever.

Yoga is having courage. In those days, the only way to become a yoga teacher was to go to India to study with a Guru. I had studied with the great Shri K. Pattabhi Jois from Mysore, India, when he was visiting California but felt I needed more. I happened to see a flyer announcing Roger Cole’s first Yoga Basic Teacher Training. Soon, I found myself week after week learning the safest ways to instruct and move into healing yoga postures. At the time, I had been studying with Tim Miller for about six years and I realize the minute I committed to becoming a teacher, my yoga practice shifted. I always say to become the best teacher be prepared to become a brilliant student. Learn to stay humble and use the beginner’s mind with all that life offers.

Yoga is the healing. My career as a yoga teacher took off from my home yoga studio. Yoga By Jyl offered evening and morning classes to the locals in Del Mar, CA. I created devotional yoga classes which included: live music, Ashtanga Prep Yoga, prayer, chanting, spiritual readings, foot & head massages, essential oils and of course a freshly home cooked organic meal to follow each of the evening classes. If the truth was known, I was really just goofing around at first as I dreamed up the most outrageous devotional yoga class with a spa like spin. Well, classes took off and I soon had to quit my day job just to maintain my yoga audience and duties in the kitchen.

Yoga is having faith. I was a bit scared a first. Here I was leaving the security of a big corporate job with a very nice income to become a yoga teacher. The left-brain side of myself was thinking or should I say, screaming, “How will YOU pay the bills?” Lucky for me, the minute Lifetime TV (October, 1998) came to my studio and aired my story to a national audience, my worries left. I would spend the next eight years in Del Mar offering nutritional healing foods and devotional yoga to my beloved loyal students and myself.

Yoga is the union. My studio now had become the venue for energy healing, psychic counseling, flower readings and conscious dinner parties. I soon realized the yoga had opened my students to eagerly receive other healing modalities. In the spring, we would cleanse and go on yoga retreats. In the fall, we would discuss our Ayurveda healing systems and Doshas. My loyal students, who were mostly women, started to bring their children for kid’s yoga. Followed by husbands, as they too started to show an interest. Soon yoga conscious dinner parties would become the new couple’s date night. The Yoga had created community and we were all learning to become our best selves.

Yoga is freedom. A lot of changes occurred over the years. Yoga was helping me shed an old worn out skin like a snake as I climbed into a new spiritual energy and embraced my own lotus flower within. I was using the practice to cleanse and heal my body, mind, soul and emotions. I used yoga to shift my vibration. My sensitive psychic gifts were coming back as well as my healing energies. I would soon add both of these God given gifts to all group and private yoga classes.

Yoga is expansion. Soon it was time to leave Del Mar and my students. It would be time to spread my wings and fly into the world to help heal the planet. What’s Cooking Within, a spiritual yoga cookbook was written as a result of my teachings and yoga days in Del Mar. It was a way to collect all the sustainable recipes along with memories of an intense loving time. I will go to my grave with the sweetest of memories. I must say yoga has been a marvelous gift and I thank God daily for all the students, who turned out to be the best gifts of all.

Yoga is the tool to help you shine. Today, you will find my living in Europe. I am spending time writing my second book called, Getting High…. on a Higher Vibration. It is time to reflect, write and give back what I have gleamed from my days on the sticky mat. This new book recounts true healing stories of clients who came looking for their spiritual truths. The book also includes yoga Kriyas to heal addictions and disease. It seems that a devotional yoga practice created a forum for people who were in great need of spiritual healing. I have worked with hundreds of remarkable people. Some souls found me doing yoga while others came by referral in their darkest hours. Most healed their lives, became great yogis and created a life of freedom and joy.

Yoga is the truth. I have found over time, my yoga practice has become cellular in nature. I really don’t find myself running off to a yoga studio these days to spend an hour experiencing a physical workout. No, these days I have become the practice. I take the practice of yoga and my spiritual essence to all the countries I travel. As an international spiritual teacher and healer, I feel compelled to be an example of the benefits of yoga. Yoga has taught me well and I know God is at the core of my practice.

Yoga is for you. Yoga will take you on a journey of a lifetime if you dare begin the practice. Remember to look for the magic and have the courage to embrace the changes that a yoga practice will offer. Allow your body, mind and soul to heal as a result of a daily practice. As you heal, let go of all anger, hatred, shame and fear. Keep the faith that you are on the right path and look for the signs along the way, as you learn to flow with life. Let your yoga offer the freedom you need to grow. Love other yogis and share the common bond as you form a community. Know your spiritual truths and spend time daily in devotion… and all is coming.

I had a dream early in my yoga career. In my dream I kept hearing a loud voice shouting at me. The voice was saying; “Don’t look for the Guru, find the Guru within, don’t look for the Guru, find the Guru within, don’t look for the Guru, find the Guru within.”

I share this dream with all my students. I can’t stress enough how yoga is much more than an asana practice and stretching. It is a beautiful connection between you and God. Yoga is the union of all living things and the oneness that can exists on this planet. I challenge us all today, to find the Guru. The great teacher that lives within each of us is just waiting to lead you back home. G-U-R-U!

God Bless you-Namaste-Sat Nam,
Jyl Auxter, RYT