Celebrating The First International Day of Yoga

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LET MY LIFE BE A PRAYER A Funny Thing Happened to me on the Way Home From the Yoga Class By Ken Whiteley “Call nothing your own. Even this body is not yours. Rejoice in the soul or Atman within.” – Swami Sivananda Little did I realise how I would come to directly experience this quote! On Friday, Sept. 9, 2011 I had just taught the morning asana class at the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre on Harbord St. in Toronto. The previous June I had finally completed my yoga Teacher Training after twenty years of involvement with the Sivananda Yoga organisation and I had been feeling great. I rode my bicycle home and then I had to move a bunch of heavy sound baffles to prepare my space for a rehearsal. In two days I was to close the Sudbury Jazz Festival (about 4 hours N.W. of Toronto) with an 8 person gospel concert. After the rehearsal, I had to gather up all my instruments because I was performing two concert sets that evening for the Vegetarian Food Fair in Toronto. I started to feel unnaturally tired. By the time I had finished the first set at the Food Fair I was exhausted, but I made it through, packed up and went home for an early bedtime. I wasn’t just tired – something definitely didn’t feel right, but it wasn’t like an infection or cold. In the middle of the night I started coughing up some blood, so first thing in the morning I called 911 and went by ambulance to the emergency department. When I got there, they X-rayed my lungs which showed that fluid was beginning to build up in them. The doctor told me that I would not be going to Sudbury on Sunday, so I spent the next few hours arranging with all my musicians, singers and the organisers of the event so the show could go on without me. That evening I moved upstairs to a ward of the hospital. By three in the morning I was really starting to feel terrible. I walked down to the nurses station and told them. Little did I know that would be the last time I would walk unassisted for almost 30 days. By five in the morning I was hooked up to a bunch of machines monitoring my body and surrounded by people. They said, “We’re taking you to intensive care, right now!”. What happened next becomes somewhat blurry for me. I have many vivid memories of that next 11 days, but what I was experiencing and the “objective” reality around me were not always the same thing. I remember telling a doctor who was telling me they were going to intubate me to please be very careful as I was a singer and I still wanted to be able to 48 YOGALife |Autumn/Winter 2015
LET MY LIFE BE A PRAYER sing. I remember feeling like one of the nurses had weighed me down, when in fact they had strapped my arms so that I wouldn’t disturb the intravenous system they had set up. I could hear my wife’s voice, but I wasn’t able to communicate out loud to tell her I wanted to be released. I could hear a good friend of mine singing to me (he was in the room singing) and I wondered why he was singing one of my songs on the radio. Other experiences I definitely perceived as “out of body” Ken giving a concert at Sivananda Ashram, Val Morin, Canada “Throughout this whole experience I actually felt incredibly lucky. I had the immediate love of my family and the support of many friends. I had had a life saving medical intervention and not died. The gurus had been present with me throughout. I felt that God’s grace never left me. ” experiences. I experienced going to a small African Canadian church in Nova Scotia where there was to be a rehearsal for my funeral. The next year when I was on tour there, I tracked down the church. Although I’d never seen it before, the setting was just like my hospital experience: a small bay, a lone pine tree, a gravel road and on the other side, a small white church. Inside, the church in Birchtown, N.S. was much smaller than what I remembered, but I felt it was the same place. Perhaps even more striking was that I felt the hospital had been visited by Swami Vishnu and he had conferred on it a status in his True World Order. My perception of the space kept changing, but throughout I could see the large pictures of Swami Sivananda on one side and Swami Vishnudevananda on the other and in between them some swirling colour that was sometimes a dancing Siva and other times a beneficent Saraswati. After nine days in the hospital a new doctor became in charge of my case. I was on life support and getting worse. Fortunately she ordered new tests and they revealed that I had a torn mitral valve in my heart. I was wheeled underground across the street to the hospital where they did open heart surgery and on Sept. 22 they operated and were actually able to repair the torn flap in my heart. (On another bright note, while I was opened up they were able to see that my arteries were very clear, with no sign of plaque – another testament to my years of vegetarianism and daily yoga practice.) Finally four days after my surgery I knew where I was. I could barely move by myself, I had tubes all over me and the only sadhana I could do was to “rest in dharma”, trusting in the universe. It felt to me that it had been much longer than two and a half weeks since I had first entered the hospital. Somehow though, throughout the whole time there, I felt incredibly supported. Family and friends had been right there the whole time. There were many communities praying for me. Almost all of the hospital staff were great. The hospital physio - therapist began working with me. I told her I was a yoga teacher as well as a musician. As she later said to me, “The idea isn’t just to be able to function when you get out of here, but to be at least as good as before you came in.” It wasn’t until I got out of intensive care and moved up to the regular cardiac ward that I realised in what bad shape I really was. I still had a feeding tube through my nose and I had become concerned about my steady diet of genetically modified soy with vitamins as my only source of nutrition. However when I asked for a pencil and paper to write a note to the hospital dietician, I found I couldn’t even write. I had been asking for several days for someone to bring in my smallest guitar and when they did I found out that I couldn’t even hold it! But now I had the actual picture of the gurus in front of my bed as well as a healing Buddha my brother had brought in and an image of the Last Supper. Although I still couldn’t walk, I was now able to prop myself up in the hospital bed. I began getting up at 6am and doing my meditation. I couldn’t do asanas, but I could still practice bhakti and I began chanting and singing spiritual songs after my meditation. Between 6.30am and 7.30am all the nurses were on a shift change so I was undisturbed. I was diligent with my exercises and the physiotherapist worked with me every day. I regained a lot of the movement of my arm, I was relearning to walk and before I could go home I had to accomplish going up and down stairs. Finally after forty days in the hospital I was sent home. It felt so good to be where it was quiet and where I could eat organic food again. I had cancelled all my work for the rest of the year so I was able to focus on healing. A great physio - therapist came to the house and he knew that my goal was to be able to do the sun salutations and stand on my head again. Shortly after Christmas I accomplished that goal. I made my first singing appearance at the Toronto Centre for the annual Christmas party. When I finally got in to see the cardiologist he said to me, “You are, in three and a half months, where I’d expect someone to be in six months to a year.” Throughout this whole experience I actually felt incredibly lucky. I had the immediate love of my family and the support of many friends. I had had a life saving medical intervention and not died. The gurus had been present with me throughout. I felt that God’s grace never left me. The one time I actually cried tears was near the end of my hospital stay and I could finally play my guitar again. I was singing a song that I had written a number of years earlier and suddenly the words were much more profound to me: Our time upon this planet is surely but a span, And things are bound to happen which we cannot understand. So in both joy and sorrow, I take Your outstretched hand, And let my life be prayer YOGALife |Autumn/Winter 2015 49
Page 1 and 2: $5 Canada $3.50 US £2.50 UK 3.70
Page 4 and 5: EDITOR’S LETTER International Siv
Page 6 and 7: UNITY OF EXISTENCE Unity of Existen
Page 8 and 9: MENTAL PROCESSES IN YOGA Mental Pro
Page 10 and 11: MENTAL PROCESSES IN YOGA really use
Page 12 and 13: SWAMI SIVANANDA SWAMI VISHNUDEVANAN
Page 14 and 15: THE YOUNG SWAMIJI Nemarra High Scho
Page 16 and 17: THE YOUNG SWAMIJI As a child Swamij
Page 18 and 19: NERVE IMPULSE AND PRANA IMPULSE Ner
Page 20 and 21: NERVE IMPULSE AND PRANA IMPULSE Alt
Page 22 and 23: DIET AND NUTRITION The Failure of P
Page 24 and 25: THE DIAPHRAGM The Diaphragm An Amaz
Page 26 and 27: SPECIAL REPORT: INTERNATIONAL DAY O
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Page 41 and 42: SIVANANDA YOGA VEDANTA CENTRES CHAR
Page 43 and 44: STAFF REFRESHER, 2015: SPECIAL REPO
Page 45 and 46: Ashram de Yoga Sivananda Swami Siva
Page 47: ASHRAM DE YOGA SIVANANDA, FRANCE Ho
Page 51 and 52: OM NAMO NARAYANAYA MANTRA BANK Goin
Page 53 and 54: PEACE DÉJÀ VU As a child I made a
Page 55 and 56: MADURAI ASHRAM, SOUTH INDIA Above:
Page 57 and 58: NIGHT BLINDNESS met only with a spu
Page 59 and 60: TEACHERS’ TRAINING COURSE July 31
Page 61 and 62: LIVES OF THE SAINTS Fight Against R
Page 63 and 64: YOGIC VEGETARIAN RECIPES Serves: 4
Page 66: 2016 SCHEDULE HIGHLIGHTS 45th anniv
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Page 71 and 72: PRISON YOGA OUTREACH PROJECT Bhagav
Page 73 and 74: ASHRAM AND CENTRE NEWS Ashram and C
Page 75 and 76: HEADING Teachers’ Training Course
Page 77: wantari Ashram, Kerala, India Sivan

Celebrating The First International Day of Yoga

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