This week, I thought I might give you a break from the present moment to take this story back to its beginning. An origin story of sorts, if you'll allow me the brief fantasy of painting myself as a comic book hero (not sure what my superpower would be. Awkwardness? Operational excellence? Having killer outfits but being otherwise useless in battle?). Incidentally, if you ask anyone at the Himalayan Institute how they came to live here, they inevitably respond with a rich, colorful tale full of unlikely coincidences and fateful encounters, the sort that belongs in a coming-of-age movie or a Salman Rushdie novel. It is often said (and I repeat here with no judgement) that the Institute has a way of attracting exactly the person it needs at the right time. Like some kind of great dharma magnet (which would also make an excellent comic book world-domination-device).

My story begins in August 2015. I was the Chief Financial Officer of a hedge fund in Berkeley, CA, living the San Francisco dream in a South of Market loft, performing feats of accounting and operational wizardry by day and dancing to techno by night. Through a series of events random enough to deserve their own origin story, I decided to attend my first yoga teacher training with Rusty Wells (with whom I had never practiced before the first day of training). Those 10 days broke my heart open and changed my life in more ways than I can adequately express here, but critical to this story is a guest lecturer Rusty had invited to teach us about proper breathing, relaxation, and pranayama (breath/energy control) techniques. I'd been a dedicated yoga practitioner for about 8 years at that point, but the way this man (Luke Ketterhagen) talked about the diaphragm gave me the sort of fluttery chills you only get when you discover a vast new category of knowledge you're truly passionate about. Like finding out there's a parallel universe and being given the key to the door between that world and your own. Luke talked about a place, a school, an ashram, where everyone was as nerdy about this stuff as he was, and he exuded equal parts giddy, infectious excitement and profound, grounded kindness. The bell in the back of my mind (you know, the one that tells you to sit up and listen because a major plot point is coming in the story of your life) tinkled to indicate some gear had just fallen into place. Naturally, I shoved that bell back in its box and told it, "not now, it's not convenient". And to be fair, there were still important things to do where I was: I kept practicing and started teaching yoga, I helped my company grow and flourish, I implemented a yoga program at work.

But the next year, I did another training with Rusty, and there was Luke again. The bell jangled louder. Back in the box it went. Work got stressful, conflict increased, initiatives were met with seemingly inexplicable roadblocks. I found myself wondering what my path was supposed to look like, and whether I was still on the right track. That December, I took a trip to Mauritius (fun fact: Mauritius is the antipod of San Francisco on a globe -- I literally could not get any farther away from home than where I went. Telling of my mental state at the time?) and decided to bring the Bhagavad Gita along as my beach reading. In case you're not familiar, the Gita is a seminal piece of Hindu scripture that focuses on the themes of duty (dharma), devotion, and the practice of yoga. There are literally dozens of high-quality English translations of this text, but for whatever reason and through the magic of the Amazon recommendation engine, the first one I happened to read was Swami Satchidananda's The Living Gita. Near the end, in the commentary accompanying verse 18.47, which reads:

It is better to do your own dharma imperfectly than to excel at another's dharma. Whoever accepts the duties of his own nature is free from sin.

I found a most curious passage, one that seemed to be written directly to me. Below is a picture of that passage:

At this point I'm pretty sure I threw down the book, grabbed my friend's arm, and started babbling incoherently about burning bushes.

Nevertheless, I returned home, went back to work, and a couple of months passed. By this time, a cascade of issues at the office came to a head with me at the center. Whether or not they were actually a big deal in the grand scheme of things isn't as relevant as the fact that it served as a major wake-up call for me to make some changes in my management style and the ways I handled stress. Around that time, I was idly browsing the Himalayan Institute website and came across an opening for a residential staff role: Bookkeeper.

Okay, Universe, I thought. You win.

Nearly a year after that, after two visits to HI, much wringing of hands and many two-columned lists, and a lot of transition planning, I arrived. And the rest is yet to unfold.