Cyra Sherman: I couldn’t live without yoga

Cyra executes a difficult pose (ashtavakrasana) with a smile.

When we asked long-time student and teacher Cyra Sherman about her experience with yoga, she wrote this beautiful essay which explains what her practice has meant to her…

I have been practicing yoga for over 14 years. It has been an amazing adventure and journey into myself over the years. I like to think of myself as ageless. Yoga does that for me.

Yoga has helped me grow as a woman, know myself and continue to learn about my body and mind. There have been times when yoga has help me through life’s challenges, it has kept me balanced and centered. It helps keep me focused and clear-headed. Yoga has become over the years very much a way of life and not so much a sport.

I have had many teachers and each one has something to teach me about my practice. Tania Jo Ingrahm has been an inspiration and a motivation for me.

But I really have to say my best teacher is myself. I teach myself daily what I am doing and what I need to do. I learn from my own body and mind. I know my weakness and my ego. I know the monkey in my head very well.
I know when my body isn’t feeling it on a given day and I know when the monkey in my head is talkative and can’t be silenced. I have learned most of the meditation part of yoga from my Buddha studies at the dharma center, from my llama.

I meditate daily and without it, yoga would not be possible after all these years. You have to have the meditation part of your practice to make the asana and life itself have purpose.

You cannot have one without the other, a lot of students miss that part and they become bored or inpatient with their practice.

I know when I become out of balance in life it is because I have lost the meditation or the ‘mind’ part of yoga. I bring it back and all is good again.

I have been doing yoga so long that I just know I couldn’t live without it. As I breathe every day and wake up every morning, my yoga is there.

Yoga also helps Cyra release the stress from her job as an emergency room nurse.