I close my eyes as I walk into the forest. The air is crisp and clean tonight as my feet walk the well known path with ease. It is almost total darkness in the woods, but I know if I keep my eyes closed for just a few more seconds, they’ll adjust. It’s those last moments that get me. I’m with the dog, but suddenly I’m scared. What if I trip on a root or walk into a tree? What if someone comes up from behind me? Unknown fears creep up too, from a dark place deep inside. What if I stay lost here forever?

Meditation used to scare me in the same way. The stillness was so foreign, the emptiness, the void. It was as if my eyes were closed in the dark forest of my own mind. What if I got lost there, or worse, what if I never came back out? So I would immediately stop. I’d regain “control” of my thoughts and forbid the mind to go back to that dangerous place. Little did I know that my thoughts were actually controlling me?

And then one day my eyes opened.

I was at the Ashram in the Bahamas. I can’t remember if it was day or night but I was sitting in one of our twice daily hour-long meditations, and something happened: I wasn’t scared anymore. Waves of peace washed through me. I wasn’t thinking. I was just breathing. It was more like the breath was breathing me. My body was there, my mind was there, but I was not the body, I was not the mind. I was so much more. And in that moment, I found what I had been frantically looking for, running for, working so hard to achieve: oneness.

This concept of oneness is what yoga is all about. The asanas (or poses) were created to help us sit for long periods of meditation. So we work hard in class, moving and stretching to the rhythm of the music or the rhythm of our hearts. And then it’s time to rest, integrating the effects of our practice and refilling the oxygen debt so our muscles don’t hurt. We can feel the prana, life-force energy, moving through our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies healing everything it touches. And then comes the stillness: Sivasana, the corpse pose. With eyes closed in deep conscious relaxation, it's the easiest of all poses, yet the hardest to achieve.

And I lie here with eyes closed, watching my body twitch like before I fall asleep. And now my body breathes itself and my mind is free. Movement in the stillness…

That’s when the magic happens.

When we can live from this stillness, we can be present. And when we are present—we are connected, we are free.
Deepak Chopra talks about this in his book Creating Affluence. “The Vedic seer says, ‘I do not worry about the past and I am not fearful of the future because my life is supremely concentrated in the present, and the right response comes to me, to every situation as it occurs.’” And he goes on to say, “This is also the state of bliss. The self is not in the realm of thought. It’s in the gap between our thoughts.”

Being able to move from this stillness, from the gap between our thoughts, is what propels the world’s greatest athletes, performers, artists, scientists, and leaders. I am talking about this with a Life Coaching client of mine. I ask him, when does he feel most alive, most “himself”? He says it’s when he is moving, like downhill skiing, when he is fully present but not thinking, but most especially with dancing. It’s both this connection with another human being and with himself, he says, when he’s leading and she’s following, but he’s not thinking about the next step, because he’s not thinking at all. There’s only the music, his heartbeat, the smell of her skin, the shadows of the other dancers, and there he is in the middle of it all, completely whole, completely connected. Present. Free.

I’m walking in the forest tonight, in the dark, with my eyes closed. And the moment I open them, I can clearly see. I feel so present, so alive, as my body walks the well-known path, tingling now with the energy of the woods. My mind is quiet, my thoughts still, and I am suddenly reminded of my last dramatic pause, and a two-month sickness I’m slowly recovering from. It strikes a cord within me. With eyes closed on the couch for so long, that pause was like an unaccustomed act of meditation. It was, perhaps, a preparation for this moment, to walk a trail in the dark, fully present, fully alive, unafraid and able to see.

Cara Forte, RYT is professional Life Coach and a registered Yoga Instructor. She received her Yoga certification from the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre and her Life Coaching certification from The University of Southern Maine. Her eclectic style is derived from almost 15 years of study with international spiritual leaders, including three years at the Omega Institute, the largest holistic retreat center in the US. She lives from a deep spiritual connection and believes that we all possess an inner wisdom that can bring us optimum wellness and joy. For yoga class schedules or for a free Life Coaching consultation, Cara can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or (207) 553-0303.