I am in Mysore now, a place that has been the home of yoga for me for the last twenty-six years of my life.
Being here in this moment, neither as student nor teacher, feels like something between a dream and a memory, as though time folds in on itself and the past and present weave together, offering a glimpse of a possible future.
The power of place, and the sacred dimension of pilgrimage, will always remain profound. Some spaces hold practice the way a vessel holds water. They remind us, without words, of who we have been, what we have devoted ourselves to, what continues, and what we hope may one day be.
Pilgrimage is never only about geography.
It is about returning to the living current of meaning. We travel outward only to rediscover the inner ground from which practice first arose.
We are all students of yoga. We are all practitioners and fellow seekers on the path. No matter where we are in the journey, no matter how far we feel we have come, we remain students. There is no teacher who stands apart from the human circle. We support one another, we grow together, and together we become stronger. Community is not an accessory to the path. It is one of the ways the path sustains itself across time.
And yet now I am a student without a teacher.
This threshold feels scary to cross, but perhaps it is not an ending. Perhaps it is a kind of maturation. The lineage does not disappear when a teacher is gone. Maybe it is asking to be embodied more deeply. It can feel confusing, even unsettling. Yet it is a path that every student who becomes a teacher must eventually walk. It is the moment when knowledge must be lived, not merely received, when learning continues without the shelter of constant guidance, and when practice itself becomes the teacher.
Both of my teachers continued practicing and sharing even after their own teachers passed away.
I find myself reflecting on this, especially now. How did they sustain the spark? How did they preserve the inspiration to practice and carry the knowledge forward? Where did they return to the source for continued nourishment? What allowed the living flame of the tradition to remain bright even in the absence of the one who first lit it?
The answer, it seems, is that none of us walks alone. The lineage is not contained in one person, nor limited to one voice. It lives in relationship, in shared effort, in remembrance, and in the continuity of sincere practice. We are held by the practice, and by one another. This shared journey gives rise to courage, to hope, and to faith that the practice can continue beyond any single individual. What is passed from heart to heart does not disappear. It lives wherever it is practiced, remembered, protected, and shared.
The outer forms may change. Teachers arrive and depart. Roles shift. Places evolve. Yet the source does not vanish, because the source is not outside us. The true pilgrimage leads inward, to the space where practice, memory, and devotion converge. There, the lineage is not something we inherit passively but something we participate in consciously, through every breath, every return, every act of sincerity.
The source is always within.
