‘Yoga saved me FROM SELF-DESTRUCTION’

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In Hong Kong for the Asia Yoga Conference, Sianna Sherman walks into the room exuding confidence, ease in her own skin, happiness – no, perhaps more, perhaps bliss. This yoga

teacher, who really is the embodiment of her teachings, stepped off the conventional path just before she went to medical school and ever since has followed a fearless journey of self-discovery.

“It’s a long story that really began when I was around six years old and culminated with my extraordinary difficulty in handling my teenage years,” she says. “By the time I was 19, I was filled with self-loathing and fear. I had eating disorders and severe depression, and I was drinking lots of alcohol to numb both my fears and emotional pain. I didn’t want to live like that anymore. It reached a point where all that was left inside my mind was the thought of suicide to free myself. I had reached the end of my rope. I prayed for guidance. I asked for real help. At this point, yoga appeared in my life and essentially saved me from self-destruction. Yoga showed me the way to real self-love.”

Following a life-long wish to be a doctor, Sherman enrolled in medical school but at the last minute decided to defer. “I wasn’t happy. I knew inside myself that there had to be another way; I just didn’t know what it looked like. I was living in a codified box, the way I thought my life had to go. But I had to break free. I was yearning to love myself and know myself. The soul’s yearning is so big. It shows up in different ways. For me it was that I wanted true discovery of who I was.”

Escaping to IndiaShe escaped the west for the east, travelling to the birthplace of yoga. “It was like jumping off a cliff, jumping into a big unknown territory. Like flying off a trapeze bar, you trust there’s a net somewhere to catch you. I just kept exploring and deepening. I had no idea what my life would be like, but it opened up in ways I never could have foreseen or dreamed of, because I fully trusted the Universe.”

While living in India, Sherman celebrated a birthday in, what would be for most people, a relatively unusual way. “I was in Rishikesh and I went out to the Ganges to pray all day. I got up at

three in the morning, walked way up the river, into the water and sat on a boulder. ‘I’ll sit here until I hear what my birthday message is,’ I decided. And the reply was, ‘You have to follow your heart.’ I thought that’s so cliché, but it was so loud and clear. And it was exactly what I needed to do.

“So I opened up and I thought, ‘Ok, I’ll trust.’ My whole life had become a path of trusting the spirit, trusting the Universe, even when a lot of the time it didn’t make sense from an outside point of view. It was huge. It was a defining moment. And I did find self-love. Every human being has archetypal energies that change at different times. We tell a story and it circumvents the rational, logical linear way, moving you in a circular, creative sphere. You have insights and you recognise yourself suddenly. You feel something – a way in to understand yourself.”

As a student, Sianna Sherman left the path of medicine for the unknown and mysterious path of yoga. It took her on multiple sojourns and pilgrimages around the world, including

those to India and the heart of the rich culture of the Native Americans. Today, Sianna is well respected as a teacher of teachers, with her teachings being a true convergence of

science, mysticism, art and yoga. She speaks to YogaLife’s Kish and Catharine Nicol

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Returning to native waysReturning to the US with a completely new take on life, Sherman found herself at odds with the modern western lifestyle and instead sought out her country’s ancient ways of living. “I studied the wild craft of plant medicine with shsamans and spent a lot of time with Native Americans. I initiated as a priestess into a tradition of women and I learned how to heal through the power and grace of ceremony and ritual. I attended kids’ coming of age ceremonies, helped pregnant women give birth and sat by people’s side when they were dying, singing them into the next world.”

Alongside her incredible journey into the rich culture of the Native Americans and their healing rituals, she was delighted to deepen her understanding of their most significant beliefs; those of the natural world and our absolutely necessary connection with it. “I learned their deep appreciation of nature and the spirits of nature; how we’re all connected and, in fact, one eco system. Let’s not forget the primary meaning of yoga is ‘union’. We are all one; one eco system. I’m not just talking about human beings but we are all one; plants, trees, earth, animals. In the modern world we are so highly divorced and disconnected with

nature. We carry a lot of burdens, which I believe we could shed if we could just let ourselves get back to nature.”

She was also privileged to participate in and learn about the spiritual elements that are so entwined in their culture, their relationships, every part of their daily lives. “I learned too about plants, not just their healing properties but their spirit medicine too. Native Americans are the indigenous people of my country. They were thrown out and discarded. It’s a huge distortion as their knowledge base is so deep. They move through their ancestry with a deep relationship with Earth, which you can’t get unless you spend time in nature, songs, prayer, in a sweat lodge, participating in ceremonies; sweating, playing, chanting, releasing.”

At almost every turn she was reminded of the synergy between the beliefs of her Native American hosts and the philosophy of yoga. “We will be forced into remembering we are all connected,” she believes. “There will be a movement of consciousness. Yoga is growing so fast, I think it is a very relevant and obvious mirror. Things want to move and shift this current. The more the evolutionary force of the Shakti is waking up in enough people, the more we will have change. We could move from a system and politics of

I walked way up the river, into the water and sat on a boulder. ‘I’ll sit here until I hear what my birthday message is,’ I decided.

And the reply was, ‘You have to follow your heart’

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greed to one of collaboration. When huge disasters happen people do come together and help each other, that’s when something about the human heart breaks open.”

And so to yoga. . .The yoga Sherman teaches marries the traditional with the contemporary and follows specific sequences in order to facilitate transformation in her students. With a background in biology and nutrition, years spent as a body worker and a life-long storyteller, she has numerous healing sources to help her. “Through a sequence of teachings I work with an energy presence, not just in the physical body but in the pranic and subtle.”

As in everything she is bringing together

seemingly opposite and yet deeply linked philosophies in a blissful union. “I love science, I love the mystical. They are not polar opposites. The fusion of the practical and the mysterious, for me it’s a given that it all goes together. I can reach different people this way. On one hand I don’t want anyone getting hurt, but on the other the spirit can be charged and people can experience freedom. The paradox is that these can dance together. For me the full picture is integrated consciousness.”

Tantra is also part of what she teaches, bringing in the all-important and powerful energy healing to her classes and affecting her students’ experiences not simply on the mat, but in their lives too, in a positive and purposeful way. “The core of the self is ananda, bliss. Bliss has no opposite.

SIANNA’S LIFE ADVICE FOR TOUGH TIMES• Don’t push it away. Even

if it hurts just keep breathing into it and find the most radical acceptance possible. If you push it away it will get buried and come back out stronger. Be with it, breathe into it, and all the while have enormous compassion for yourself.

• Find people you are safe with and who will hold space for you to go through what you need to go through; people who will let you be as raw as you need to be, as real as you need to be; people who wont judge you for being a mess; people who simply love you.

• Find refuge in some form of practice. Something as simple as taking a 20-minute walk every day, breathing deeply. Or putting your back up against a tree – trees are powerful transmitters of human emotion, helping us ground and connect and re-establish homeostasis.

• Completely offer yourself up at the feet of the Universe. Jump into the unknown. It’s ok not to know anything. Offer up your fears, sadness, anger and pain. Even if you have no idea what to do, just ask. “Please give me guidance and the courage to hear your guidance,” and follow it. Complete surrender.

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Happiness has an opposite. But Tantra and yoga offer blissful loving permission to give your heart its full consent to whatever is happening. You are giving your full acceptance and loving permission to whatever is happening. You meet the Universe and your life, however it has been presented to you. The magic is you’re no longer a victim of your life and

circumstances; you’re a co-creator. The moment a human being chooses to be a co-creator

and steps in and willingly participates, happiness rises from the inside.”

While life’s difficulties, stresses and depressions can take various

forms, she is convinced that yoga can help you overcome

unhappiness and fear. “Your inner state may be that

you feel pain. But be fully in this moment.

Give yourself love and presence and when you start to do that the heart breaks open. Shield after shield, armour after

armour, wall after wall… You have to make a heroic choice. Tell yourself, ‘I am not a victim, I am the co-creator of my life’. Happiness comes strictly from inside ourselves. We can love no matter how much adversity we suffer. The treasure we seek is right inside. You have to be fearless and bold. Be greater than your fear. Then you’ll rise up and be your own hero, fearlessly living your life. I think that ‘It is always darkest right before the dawn’ is a great teaching. Whenever you’re in the intensity and depth of it, you’re also at the point of a possible breakthrough, the more the pressure squeezes.”

What’s seductive about Sherman’s philosophy for life is that it is available to anyone, and anyone can identify with it, whether they buy into yoga or not. “I think the greatest form of yoga is loving kindness – and helping people, like Mother Theresa. This is why there is no peace in the world. We have forgotten we all belong to each other. If people can feel a little brighter inside of themselves, then we can be in a deeper conversation with each other about what truly matters. True conversation from the heart is a golden connection that brings us closer together. When we connect our creative power together in the way of love, there’s no limit to the positive change we can bring to the world collectively.”

You have to make a heroic choice. Tell yourself,

‘I am not a victim, I am the co-creator

of my life’

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