written by Scott Ishihara
As I approach the one year mark of first crossing the threshold into the warm embrace of the Hub, I am moved to remember where I was just one short year ago before being introduced to this community of yoga, healing and spirituality. I wonder about what actually led me to a job working at the front desk of a yoga studio when I had never done yoga in my life. A year ago I thought it was because no other employers were responding to my cover letters and that I desperately needed to start paying bills after 2 months of traveling through Europe following my graduation from UCLA. But after a year of being here, I now realize that something far greater than my need for income, something far greater than myself for that matter, guided me into the place that I now call home. Home is where the heart is, the heart is the Hub of all sacred places, and I’ve been called here to roam.
So Friday marks one year for me and I’ve been reflecting on who I thought I was when I arrived at the Hub’s door last October in comparison to who I know I am now. I was living in Rome after graduation with Livia, my partner at the time, and I had this experience in a park called Villa Celimontana. In the summer at this park they play Jazz in the evenings, and people come and lay out on the grass, play with their dogs and enjoy the shade of the trees while the blazing sun makes its daily retreat beyond the horizon. Livia and I were laying out on a blanket when she pointed out a butterfly floating by in the sky. We happened to be discussing butterflies on the bus ride to the park, and I immediately had this urge to stick out my hand, focus on the butterfly’s flight pattern and try to get it to land on my hand. It felt like something I would have done as a kid, and part of me was astonished when this Red Admiral actually flew closer and closer, eventually landing on my hand and staying there for what seemed like an eternity. That same part of me was even more shocked when it flew away, only to come right back and land on my hand again, this time elegantly folding its wings down from their previously upright position to show the beauty of its true colors. I was frozen, time was standing still and I was so tuned into the moment that I could feel the disturbance in the air as its wings gracefully descended toward my skin; I felt those wing beats send ripples throughout my hand, like a pebble tossed into a still pond, spreading further up my arm and then throughout my entire being. If Livia hadn’t been there witnessing the whole thing go down and capturing it on camera, that astonished part of me may not have let me believe that it actually happened the way it did.
Then there was the other part of me, the part of me which intuitively opened my hand and opened my heart to the possibility that I could somehow attract this butterfly to my hand. It was as if this part of me had been laying dormant inside, hidden beneath layers of dirt, like a seed waiting for the optimal conditions to begin germination. This part of me knew what to do, how to make it happen and that it was exactly the right thing to do in that moment; somehow it knew I would be deeply affected by this experience, which would inevitably lead me to an incredible journey of self discovery. In the days after, I couldn’t stop thinking about what forces were responsible for that experience. It led me to start questioning my current lens of perception about how the Universe truly worked. That part of me, my intuitive gut feeling, was telling me that there was something more to life than what I could then understand. There was something connecting me to that butterfly that I couldn’t see nor explain. This part of me continued to grow as I began seeking answers.
Soon after being rocked by this butterfly effect, my friend Josh started talking to me about coming back to LA to pursue a passion for producing electronic dance music, which we both fell in love with while studying abroad in Barcelona, instead of going back to Spain to teach English as I had planned to do after the summer in Rome. Again, my intuition was pushing me to go back to LA and to throw the plans I had made in Spain out the window. Where I was assigned to teach in Spain wasn’t really where I wanted be, and to even take up the position I needed to fly back to the States just to get a visa, and then fly all the way back to Europe, so ultimately I went with my gut, venturing into the unknown without any real plans or sense of security. Without realizing it, my metamorphosis had already begun...my days as a caterpillar were coming to an end.
Upon returning to LA and looking for any job to support myself while pursuing a passion for music, I found the Hub, or rather, the Hub found me, and on October 15th 2009, a year of heavy transformation began. I’ve recently realized that when friends and family ask what I’ve been up to since graduating from college and I tell them that I work at a yoga studio, it doesn't really capture the essence of what I am now fully immersed within. I know this because it’s taken me a full year to even realize a fraction of what it all means to me; so here I go attempting to describe the indescribable.
Yoga is far more than a trendy way of exercising. Not only is it more physically demanding than it seems, but as with most things, its roots run much deeper than its outward appearance. The practice of yoga that we know in the West (body postures) is actually only one limb of the bigger 8 branch yoga tree, which includes practices concerning morality, breathing and meditation among others. The word yoga itself means to yoke, or union, and the true practice of yoga is really aiming to realign the mind, body and spirit back to the inner perfection that we were born into this world with, which brings us back into harmony and union with the true nature of the Universe. It may sound a bit esoteric at first (it certainly did to me when I first started!), but this is exactly what yoga has done for me in the past year, and I now realize I was actually practicing yoga in that park in Rome as I came into union with nature and with the Universe through my connection with Vanessa Atalanta (red admiral’s latin name).
In this past year I’ve been monkeying around from branch to branch on this yoga tree, tasting the multitude of fruits that each limb has to offer along the way. As I’ve moved around to different vantage points, I’ve gained clarity in many individual aspects of my life, which is leading me to a greater overall clarity about what I truly want to do with my life. My practice has taught me how to make the small adjustments moment to moment, which eventually lead to larger transformations. For example, I’ve learned about the importance of non-judgement. I’ve really started to see how every time I judge someone or something, I am really judging an insecurity that I hold inside myself. By consciously working to stop making so many judgements about people and things, I’ve started to judge myself less and less, and naturally love myself more and more. This has helped me to free up more mental space to begin appreciating the true beauty that is constantly surrounding me in every moment of life. Taking the opportunity to slow down and experience the vibrancy of things that I’m inherently attracted to, like a particular flower, a sunset, a hummingbird, a baby smiling in the grocery store or a butterfly in the park, has ultimately led to me see how all those things are really just reflections my own inherent beauty.
The deeper I’ve gotten into these practices, the happier and more content I’ve found myself to be in each and every moment, and for me, this is what yoga is really about. As William Blake would say, it’s about cleansing the doors of perception so everything appears as it is, infinite. The clarity I’ve gained as a result has allowed me to see how it all ultimately comes back to love. I can honestly say that until I started practicing yoga and learning about self-love, I didn’t even know what true love was, or at least I didn’t remember. It turns out that for me, love was more of an idea than a reality. Everything I thought was love was really just an illusion, appearing to be the real thing. It had been far too long since I had truly experienced unconditional love: the pulsing, electric, buzzing, magnetizing feeling that radiates out from the heart and connects everything in the Universe with everything else. I now know that in order to truly experience unconditional love, I have to be generating it from within first, and somewhere along the way I lost my ability to love myself, and didn’t even know it! Practicing yoga has allowed me to rediscover what love really is, what it really feels like to be generating this ultra magnetic force. I’ve come to understand that love is actually a vibrational frequency that is incredibly attractive by nature; it is the universal connector. The more I practice loving myself, the more everything is naturally attracted to me and I to It. When I love me, the entire Universe loves me! It is our deepest desire in life to be love and be loved, but we can only experience this when we are in love with our selves first. It’s unreal to me that it took so many years to realize what love truly is, and also what it is not.
And now I know what led me here. Love is what transformed a caterpillar into the butterfly that touched my hand and my heart in Rome, love is what attracted me back to LA and ultimately to the Hub, love is why I now manage the studio, love is why I teach yoga, love is why I do healing work, love is why I am writing this right now! Yoga is not about exercising, yoga is about learning to love yourself so that you can realize that YOU ARE LOVE, nothing more, nothing less. The Hub is not a place to exercise, the Hub is a heart, generating the frequency of love; it’s a sacred place holding sacred space to attract more people who are carrying the same seed inside that is patiently waiting for the optimal conditions to begin germination, to begin the process of remembering their own true nature... so come here and roam. Don’t be afraid of the darkness of chrysalis, hold strong through the turbulent changes of metamorphosis. Follow the Light until you can break free, spread your wings and fly away, only to land on the hand of another, initiating this process all over again.
In the bonds of peace, love, unity and respect,
-Ishhhhhhh
