People speak of yoga as devotional, ritualistic, even disciplinary. People come to yoga for various reasons, some for physical and/or emotional healing, some for social reasons and some come just to mellow out. But they keep coming...why? My mind constantly draws parallels between ballet and yoga because these are the two things I know best in life. I will shamelessly call myself an expert in both fields. Historically ballets were enacted in the court of kings for their appeasement. Yoga too is a devotional practice but it doesn't strive to appease a higher authority...or does it? Is it possible to become addicted to the practice of yoga in the same way one becomes addicted to cigarettes? How many arm balances is too many? How many high intensity vinyasa classes in one week before the phrase "I think you have a problem" becomes appropriate? Four, five, six, seven...? Where do you draw the line between ritualistic and habit? We see the "yoga junkies" in classes (yea, you know who I'm talkin' about) every day, rain or shine (guilty as charged). Yoga first appealed to me because of its similarity to ballet in terms of the flow. I couldn't get enough but now that I returned to dancing professionally several years ago it's difficult to dedicate the same amount of physical devotion to both artistic practices. It's taking some time for me to accept that my yoga practice is morphing into something different than it was two years ago, even a year ago. The quality of my practice is slower and I find myself drawn to quieter and more restorative class styles.

At this stage in my journey I am caught in a sort of purgatory between the all inviting and non-judgmental, non-harmful world of yoga and the psychosomatically destructive world of ballet. Ballet is an absolutely a ritualistic practice. The discipline and dedication involved would scare any ascetic back into mainstream society in a minute. Countless hours of physical self-maintenance including stretching, physical rehabilitation, sewing pointe shoes, oh and not to mention picking up and relocating to a foreign city is surely a sign of devotion. Some say obsession is what drives dancers but I disagree. It's devotion and there's no question about that. That's not to say that the some lose sight of the devotional quality and replace it with compulsion towards achieving perfection. But personally, yoga is what keeps me from "going to the other side" if you know what I mean. It brings me down from the dangerous clouds above and back to planet Earth. Often I wonder, do these two disciplines cancel each other out or are they indeed complimentary? It never ceases to boggle my mind that yoga isn't more prevalent in the dance community. In many ways yoga is the cousin of ballet; ritualistic, yet not compulsive or obsessive, physical yet not abusive, physically and mentally demanding yet not exclusionary and always rewarding. Following these two parallels over the last couple years and documenting their impact on my own life has been nothing short of intriguing. In some strange way, I'm ahead of the curve.