#208 The Many Shades of Devotion in Yoga

Join Kino MacGregor, Tim Feldmann, Wade Oakley and Chandana Bhowmick as they discuss what devotion means for each of them. Finding the fuel of devotion in their practice is more sustainable than the fuel of ambition. Hear how they each found the student's heart of love in their relationship with their teachers and how they carry the flame of the practice forward today.

In the yogic path, we often associate devotion with sweetness—offering flowers, singing mantras, lighting candles. But true devotion is forged in longing. Longing is love stretched out across time. It is the ache that refuses to settle for surface answers. It is the pull of the soul toward something it remembers but has not yet fully touched.

This longing—this burning yearning—is not a problem. It is a sign of awakening.

Many of us come to yoga not because life is perfect, but because it hurts. We come to the mat with broken hearts, old questions, unseen grief. And often, we feel that unless we are calm or wise, we cannot be truly devotional.

Longing is already devotion.

When you show up to practice with no guarantees, that is devotion. 

When you breathe through uncertainty and stay anyway, that is devotion. 

When your practice becomes the place where you cry, or break, or ask life's hardest questions—that is holy.

It is not the polish of your practice that sanctifies it. It is the depth of your yearning.

As students, let your questions live inside you. Don't rush to fix them. Let them ripen you. Ask not only "What can I master?" but "What do I truly seek?"

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