My OHMazing™ Journey: Meredith Paterson

by Meredith Paterson

On Tuesdays throughout the fall, we will be blogging about our journeys in celebration of the release of our new DVD Vishnu's Ohmazing™ Journeys, created in partnership with Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® and the Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas.

Share your thoughts on your own journey in the comments below and you will be entered to win one of the new DVDs. We will choose one person at random each week.

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When Beth first asked me to write about my journey, I panicked more than a little. Journeys are slippery things, and I don't quite feel like I have my head wrapped around what my own journey means. But I guess that is kind of the point. We keep on moving.

My sister, Jennifer Seibel, Sara (my niece), and me doing
yoga at the Crow Collection of Asian Art

Right now, the word that most resonates with me in respect to my journey is flow. I can be a word hater sometimes, and flow is not my favorite-sounding word. I had trouble even writing it. Flow is hard for me. I like to resist and analyze and edit and squirm. But life is funny. Resistance is futile.

On my journey right now, I am learning to be more fluid. Fluidity, that sounds better. I am learning to be like water. And learning is the operative word here because still I resist like crazy.

I started my journey with yoga about 11 years ago. I was in grad school, struggling through a break-up, and like many people who walk into a yoga studio for the first time, in pain. Yoga became home for me, a time to move and sweat and get out of my brain. And the good news is that it never ends there. I have learned over and over again that yoga meets you where you are, embraces you, and before you're aware of it consciously, asks more of you.

Fast forward several years and I started wanting more than to sweat and get out of my brain. I wanted to get back into my brain and understand how yoga was working. I started yoga to disconnect from myself in some ways, and yoga taught me that what I really needed was to reconnect. The deeper I dove in, the more I realized just how powerful these practices can be. So powerful that it's often easier to shy away from them than to really feel them.

I was working in education at the time. I had always been deeply fascinated by brain development and learning, and my career was focused on helping struggling readers. As I experienced yoga, though, I began to understand in my body what we now know through research. Learning is a full-body experience. We do not learn very well when we're locked in chairs and lectured at, and unfortunately, our educational system (the system not teachers) willfully denies what science and our own experiences confirm.

Beth and Meredith at a training in Park City, UT

It became clearer and clearer to me that my path was to help children integrate movement, breath, mindfulness, and connection with their bodies into their daily lives.  Just as this dawned on me, I met Beth Reese, founder of Yogiños: Yoga for Youth®. Here was my calling, my dharma, a yoga program for children and families that incorporated language-learning (classes are taught in English, Spanish, and Sanskrit), art, music, social skills, environmental responsibility, and more into each class. She has created a brilliant program that helps children connect. To themselves, to others, to their planet. Through Yogiños, children learn how to learn.

I have met so many incredible, talented people through Yogiños. Each training that we do fills me up with excitement and hope for the future because all of the participants care so deeply about the health and well-being of our children. My heart swells with gratitude and love as I hear about how each teacher helps the children and families in their communities. To me, this is what it feels like to be tuned in to the flow.

with Sara at the Dallas
Aquarium

I'll finish with this, the thing that makes every struggle, every fumble worthwhile. Wisdom from my 4-year-old niece, a dedicated yogi who is always game to create new yoga poses with me and help me refine my skills.

[On the playground last week]

Sara (my niece): Aunt Mere, we have to jump and move like this.
Aunt Mere: Why, Sara?
Sara: Because it makes our brains grow.





I dedicate this to my husband, Steve. There aren't enough words to express how supportive he has been as I move down this path. He understands intuitively what it means to flow with life, and I learn from him every day. He reminds me to laugh and move and dance and not take it all so seriously. Love.


Meredith Blanks Paterson is the Director of Yoga Trainings for Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® as well as the Director of Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® Austin.