I am a yogi who works at the quintessential U.S. multi-national company. I don't know how I happened into a career in finance, but a yoga mentor once told me it must be part of my destiny since I've been at it for almost 20 years.
Year after year, I have felt like a fish out of water--a creative, spiritual type amid a mass of gray suits. A chubby pink crayon in a box of number two pencils. I've walked the canyons of Wall Street and meditated at the Himalayan foothills in India within the same month. Instead of being bothered by the friction and incongruity of it all, I decided to embrace it, and bring my real self to work. I set up a little altar with Ganesha and Yogi Bhajan (master of Kundalini Yoga) quotes underneath the Bloomberg screen. I am off the mat and into the board room, teaching my colleagues to breathe as we go through some tough days in the office.
Several of my teachers studied with Yogi Bhajan for many years. One told me that Yogiji didn't particularly wish to spend the most vibrant years of his career in the U.S.A., away from his native India. But he felt his mission was here. He arrived on the scene in the late '60s and happened upon a population of souls in pain who increasingly sought refuge in substances and the material world. He wished to share a technology that brought them home to themselves. Teaching each soul that it is complete, perfect and joyful in and of itself (or as he put it, "bountiful, beautiful and blissful"). This was his mission: to birth a generation out of pain and into the present, and to create teachers of this yogic technology to continue his work. He, too, was a fish out of water (and certainly looked the part, wearing flowing white garb and a turban to match!).
While my ego resists the idea of a mainstream career, I feel my mission is in the corporate world. Each day I try to uplift my team, my organization and my company with my presence and my work. I am in the world trying to make it a better, more graceful place. And as a sweet payoff, I have the honor of being a mother (the most sacred work of all) and teaching Kundalini Yoga (my joy and saving grace).
The mantra "Sat nam" means that the truth is my identity. Kundalini Yoga teaches that chanting this mantra awakens the soul and delivers one's destiny. I look forward to sharing the experiences and insights of a yoga teacher both on and off the mat--reconciling the spiritual mission with the human condition. For as a spirit having a human experience, it is all one.
Year after year, I have felt like a fish out of water--a creative, spiritual type amid a mass of gray suits. A chubby pink crayon in a box of number two pencils. I've walked the canyons of Wall Street and meditated at the Himalayan foothills in India within the same month. Instead of being bothered by the friction and incongruity of it all, I decided to embrace it, and bring my real self to work. I set up a little altar with Ganesha and Yogi Bhajan (master of Kundalini Yoga) quotes underneath the Bloomberg screen. I am off the mat and into the board room, teaching my colleagues to breathe as we go through some tough days in the office.
Several of my teachers studied with Yogi Bhajan for many years. One told me that Yogiji didn't particularly wish to spend the most vibrant years of his career in the U.S.A., away from his native India. But he felt his mission was here. He arrived on the scene in the late '60s and happened upon a population of souls in pain who increasingly sought refuge in substances and the material world. He wished to share a technology that brought them home to themselves. Teaching each soul that it is complete, perfect and joyful in and of itself (or as he put it, "bountiful, beautiful and blissful"). This was his mission: to birth a generation out of pain and into the present, and to create teachers of this yogic technology to continue his work. He, too, was a fish out of water (and certainly looked the part, wearing flowing white garb and a turban to match!).
While my ego resists the idea of a mainstream career, I feel my mission is in the corporate world. Each day I try to uplift my team, my organization and my company with my presence and my work. I am in the world trying to make it a better, more graceful place. And as a sweet payoff, I have the honor of being a mother (the most sacred work of all) and teaching Kundalini Yoga (my joy and saving grace).
The mantra "Sat nam" means that the truth is my identity. Kundalini Yoga teaches that chanting this mantra awakens the soul and delivers one's destiny. I look forward to sharing the experiences and insights of a yoga teacher both on and off the mat--reconciling the spiritual mission with the human condition. For as a spirit having a human experience, it is all one.
