Marco Rojas so far…
I have found it very challenging for many years to write about Marco Rojas, my yoga instructor, although I have mentioned his influence on my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual development on several occasions when I write on Sundays.
I realize I am very blessed to have my path cross his through yoga and that is why I feel this compelling urge to transcribe the gift of freedom he offers us during practice to share with others.
But to avoid redundancy and the already very non-linear nature of yoga I gathered all that I have written about him so far. See below. If you read “Still Sundays” then you have read what is below.
From here on I will write short posts about Marco Rojas and yoga in this section on a regular basis. In time I hope to get better at articulating ‘what goes on’ in his classes and the myriad of issues regarding yoga and the “rock star studio” where I attend these classes only because Marco teaches there.
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January 30th, 2011
People often ask me what type of yoga Marco Rojas teaches given my thoughts and emotions about what happens during his classes. I remain speechless to describe this man’s gift. Words continue to fail me to offer proper gratitude to the Universe for blessing me by offering him as a “silent” teacher on many levels.
What I can share is this: yoga is a practice. Most people can’t get the ‘high’ I talk about because they don’t do it consistently. My entire schedule (social, work, writing) revolves around Marco Roja’s classes.
Most people are resistant to the changes that begin inside oneself—what you can eat and how much you can drink—once they begin a consistent yoga practice, only wanting the by-product: a shapely figure, no matter your body type. Eventually, the changes influence your thoughts, feelings, attachments, identities, and to watch yourself dissolve in many ways is unnerving to say the least. Most people don’t want that and if they do they are not willing to put in the effort required.
In art, yoga, relationships, love, writing, you have to bring yourself to yourself on a consistent basis to suck the delicious nectar that can not be available in drive-by attempts.
Self-exploration is not a one time catch for when you are ‘in the mood’ but it is a moment to moment undertaking. This doesn’t mean it lacks humor, fun, joy and is encompassed in dark seriousness, but a commitment to practice has to be made.
Otherwise…it is just a bunch of poses that make you sweat (depending on the type of yoga you are practicing).
Most people want to quit Marco Rojas for the same reason they can’t: freedom. Despite his massive following, there are some who are very critical of him. Biggest complaint: “I just want a great workout, not the ‘stuff‘ that starts happening if you continue to go to him.” Problem: no one offers a better “work out” than Marco Rojas. Not the hot yoga classes, not even ‘Bikram Yoga’ (which is the only type I don’t consider yoga due to copyright infringement issues among other concerns).
Although there are many other very good instructors, Marco Rojas is not afraid to speak the truth as he understands it through yoga, out loud during yoga. He is a human phenomenon and anyone not willing to recognize that…
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January 23rd, 2011
Someone was surprised by my ‘ruthless dismissal’ of another given my “compassionate, friendly, and outgoing” nature. If I have learned anything from Marco Rojas during his arduous, mind-bending, body twisting, spirit-shifting 90 minutes of yoga, four times a week, it is this: pain is counter-intuitive and my body knows before my mind the difference between expanding to an uncomfortable, unexplored horizon and contracting into torment. Freedom never precludes self-preservation.
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January 9th, 2011
Marco Rojas says during the most excruciating yoga postures: “Observe your emotions. Your emotions are important but they are temporary.”
And then yesterday he added, “Love is not just an emotion.” That is also when I collapsed out of this pose.
Today I go back to find out what that means, integrally, not just intellectually.
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January 2, 2011
“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.”
Right then and there—despite not having done any yoga in 6 months*—the past two years of practice where Marco, my favorite yoga instructor, would repeatedly say to the packed class, “We all want the freedom to BE,” finally made sense beyond the realm of my body twisting and sweating further and farther than imagined limits. He would usually say this just when our strength was to give way to collapse.
Once we begin to gather pieces of that which is indestructible about us we float in an unparalleled freedom.
A freedom begotten from the knowledge that we are at once nothing and more than what we think we are. The freedom to essentially just Be while we Become into that Being we have always been which serves as a steadfast zephyr despite perpetual transitions.
A freedom borne out of settling with the responsibility of choices we make. It matters not if the choice is more or less noble/dignified/courageous as compared with another, better or worse in hindsight, right or wrong despite insight, but to have the courage to sit with that choice regardless for whom (yourself or another) you do what you do. Ultimately, to recognize, that you exercised choice where you could.
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December 19th, 2010
Marco Rojas says during the most excruciatingly complex yoga poses where breathing feels like a phenomenon, “Be a kid so you can be a better adult.”
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December 12, 2010
According to Marco Rojas, truth can only be felt in the moment, otherwise we are caught in dreams, memories, a future based on projections from the past. Moreover, the intention behind telling a truth should never be to cause suffering which is not to say that truth doesn’t hurt.
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December 5th, 2010
Marco Rojas says in yoga, as does my diverse upbringing, ‘intention is everything’.
Thanks to Marco Rojas, my yoga instructor, and V.G., a mentor, teacher, and friend, I am not afraid to take the “power and might and honor and glory from the unseen, from the unknown” and firebreathe exhale into the stillness of now.
If you are still enough, there is not much to fear in the now.
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November 21, 2010
To state that Marco Roja’s yoga class this past Wednesday was intense would be an egregious understatement. Unlike most yoga teachers, Marco Rojas doesn’t do any yoga sequences or postures in front of us to impress or teach. He walks around the class, instructing and adjusting—sometimes with a slight touch of one finger tip, sometimes with his entire knee, other times with his foot, and then there are times with his shoulder.
Marco Rojas does not have a prescribed yoga sequence before class begins. He comes in, power and humility personified, breathes in our collective energy, and offers what we need as we continue from beginning to end. One never really knows what will happen.
This Wednesday, as soon as I saw “rock star yogis”—dressed in their expensive “yoga gear,” dolled up and decked out for an imaginary photo-shoot, chattering prepubescently —I knew we were in trouble. Our egos were going to get handed to us, stripped out all the way from our deepest core to our periosteum, the membrane covering our bones.
I was mostly immobile on Thursday. The hip flexors—a group of ten skeletal muscles that act to flex the thigh bone onto the lumbo-pelvic complex, i.e., pull the knee upward—are said to be the “seat of emotions” in yoga. And that is about all I know. My knowledge is limited on “chakras” or “force centers” which are considered whorls of energy permeating from a point on the physical body. I just step into yoga class and follow Marco’s directions in his beautiful accent and soothing voice and explore deepest integration given where my body and I are at that time.
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September 26th, 2010
Friday night after Marco Roja’s yoga class I was levitating in air. I waited for my cross-town bus and there sat a man also waiting for same. He was dressed nicely and carried a shopping bag and a handbag. I looked at him and looked away, strumming an imaginary pianodrum as the music from my headphones dispersed through my nerves in my arms to fingertips. It wasn’t late at night. This man then took a lighter and lit something inside his nose. Some concoction of drugs. At first I thought he was setting his nose on fire. He wasn’t. He looked away embarrassed. I stared at him right on as if he was a homeless bum who couldn’t see me. He did it a few more times and put away the lighter. A few minutes later he asked me, “You ever been high?”
I answered the only way I knew then, “I am extremely high right now and you just killed my buzz.”
I was angry and sad. I worked my ass off—in this instance literally—to get high and here he was with his quick-fix.
Could he please come to Marco’s yoga with me? Marco says Ashtanga yoga—which is not what Marco’s classes are but Marco’s original training was in Ashtanga—six times a week for six weeks can rid any dependency.
I have this pathological belief that all people want to be happy, free, and desire to evolve.
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September 12, 2010
Stillness, then, can’t be found by seeking lack of movement or stopping momentum but by dissolving in buoyancy. The perpetual to and fro which accompanies being alive.
I am constantly reminded of the above in Marco Rojas’s yoga classes. I am constantly reminded of the above because I am alert to the opposing dynamics I observe around me in New York and within myself.
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September 5th, 2010
Marco Rojas.
The one for whom I have yet to find apt words to articulate the experience he creates during his classes.
I have no choice but attempt after what happened Friday night.
My mind spilled outside myself on Friday night.
I am prepared for clarity, alignment, integration and a delicious euphoria after Marco Rojas’s yoga classes. I have experienced physical strength that I never thought myself capable due to his classes and that can be quite empowering on its own. I have known Marco since 2007 when I first explored yoga. Technically I have returned to a consistent practice only for a month—3 to 5 days a week. I first felt the blissful rush of endorphins we dub as “yoga high” after two excruciating weeks. I now comprehend one cannot sip that nectar without committed devotion.
What happened Friday night was the utmost unusual for me. During class Marco even called out my name from the other end of the room and said, “THAT is IT, Annie.” And he hardly ever draws attention to people unless he just can’t help it, a quick spontaneous utterance echoing belief and disbelief. I don’t know what he had meant. It was a pose, although challenging, not outside my abilities. I had done it before. There was no time to analyze, we were already onto the next posture. Marco has never repeated a sequence of postures in the four years I have experienced his classes. Never. His practice entails a blend of Hatha—holding poses for an extended period, Vinayasa—a flow linked with breathing, Ashtanga—a series of challenging postures, Iyengar—meticulous focus on alignment.
So after class I was giddy with joy—I could have danced in public without music. Maybe I did. I don’t recall. I canceled plans for the night; I just wanted to “be” in this divine state of peace. I came home, heated left-overs, placed laundry in the washer, ate, for a change even turned the T.V. on (then quickly off) and then like a deck of cards out of nowhere crashed. It was the utmost bizarre experience. I would have embraced the bizarre had I known what was to follow. Things are—gratefully—as “right” as can be in my life. It is a welcome change. So this undertow was a new experience. I knew two things with certainty: I had never experienced this before and I was terrified.
I don’t use any stimulants and hallucinogenics. I have always known and felt I could “get there” without them. No one has yet convinced me that I need any aid to “experience” what they experience given how I think, feel, see, and am already without any narcotics.
I am incapable of explaining my petrifying emotions that left my senses in a vertigo on Friday night, suffice it to say I felt falling off the edge. The following morning I spoke to my mother and discussed perhaps I need to get on some medication or something. This was not normal. This was not safe. This was not somewhere I wanted to go again. She recommended I get my thyroid checked again. I do have thyroid issues and perhaps it was worse now and my mother informed me that imbalance there can trigger feelings of anxiety. I tried to place an emotion on what I had felt: anxiety? no. aloneness? maybe. But certainly not loneliness and I am not afraid of being alone whatsoever, so what was this new aloneness? Fear? Yes. Immense fear. I was a ball that got tossed into a galaxy without stars at an unfamiliar speed.
So I did the only thing I thought would make sense: I went back to the source that pushed me there. Prior to the beginning of Saturday’s class I tried to explain to Marco what had happened but was unable lest I open the floodgates to tears that my tear ducts could no longer produce.
I said the only thing that made sense: I think I am losing it.
Marco laughed and burst open with a huge smile: “No, you are finding it.”
“I am so scared. I don’t ever want to be that scared again. What happened last night?”
Marco replied matter-of-factly, “You know how unnerving transformation is? Well, transcendence is frightening. Don’t resist. Welcome to freedom.”
I began the class with others. I set my intention. I dedicated the practice. And.I.was.on.fire. I was no longer a spec of dust tossed in a dark galaxy but a fireball lighting the path.
I was not going to be fine, I was fine. Friday night was normal.
We rush to medications and tranquilizers and everything possible outside of ourselves because we are so unfamiliar with feeling deeply, especially new feelings. We read content online and in magazines about how to feel this and that. We want quick answers—in jolly rancher platitudes that serve no spiritual nourishment—without going to the depth required to the source where the answers come from.
Saturday night, as if guided by a memory, I picked up The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a book I first discovered in 9th grade and flipped to the essay “Over-Soul.” I didn’t want a quote online, I didn’t want a summary, I wanted the whole damn thing. I knew I was not alone after Marco’s comforting words. I was more centered than I had ever felt. I hadn’t read Emerson since high school.
Without a single tear I read the entire chapter.
I share excerpts:
“I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine. As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I watch that flowing river, which, out of regions I see not, pours for a season its streams into me, I see that I am a pensioner; not a cause but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water; that I desire and look up and put myself in the attitude of reception, but from some alien energy the visions come.
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and article is equally related; the eternal ONE.
If we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, in times of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of dreams, wherein often we see ourselves in masquerade—the droll disguises only magnifying and enhancing a real element and forcing in on our distant notice—we shall catch many hints that will broaden and lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature. All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie—an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed.
Of this pure nature every man is at some time sensible. Language cannot paint it with his colors. It is too subtle. It is undefinable, unmeasurable; but we know that it pervades and contains us. We know that all spiritual being is in man…
The walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to the deeps off spiritual nature, to the attributes of God.
The sovereignty of this nature whereof we speak is made known by its independency of those limitations which circumscribe us on every hand. The soul circumscribes all things. As I have said, it contradicts all experience. In like manner it abolishes time and space. The influence of the senses has in most men overpowered the mind to that degree that the walls of time and space have come to look real and insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits is, in this world, the sign of insanity. Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the force of the soul.
The soul’s advances are not made by gradation, such as can be represented by motion in a straight line, but rather by ascension of state, such as can be represented by metamorphosis—from the egg to the worm, from the worm to the fly…With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air…This is the law of the moral and of mental gain. The simple rise as by specific levity not into a particular virtue, but into the region of all the virtues.
Those whose words are timeless are so for a reason. Their words still save us again and again.
I am not afraid.
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