Alumni of the Month: Paul Mitchell Wilder

My first class with Sonic Yoga was in November of 2015, when I’d already started working as a front desk karmi, and I’ve been a karmi in some capacity ever since.    

If you were to ask when was my first yoga experience ever, I’m tempted to say itwas in a gym, as “physical exercise.” Having some experience with dance, I loved how satisfied I felt after a yoga class.

But, in truth, I first began learning about yoga in college, when I took a World Literature course and read excerpts from the Bhagavad Gita. That semester, something in my mind and my heart was awakened. I scribbled all over the margins of that incredible text, and of course have since read it in its entirety multiple times.

Patanjali writes in the Yoga Sutras, “Yogas Chitta Vrtti Nirodhah,” which loosely translates that yoga is the stilling of the modifications of the mind.

Yoga seems to be calling me into myself, toward a shared Awareness, not as a means to an end, but as a journey of continual self-discovery. And one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is how much I don’t know, and how that’s okay. I began my 300 hour training because I felt I needed to know much, much more before I felt comfortable enough to teach anything to anyone. But the deeper I dive, I find that the “need to feel comfortable” is itself a modification of the mind – one to which I need not listen. I am capable, because I am. And I’m grateful for the teachers I’ve had and friends and fellow trainees I’ve met that have helped me move toward this realization.

The spirit in me honors and bows to the spirit in you… recognizing that we are the same Spirit. Namaste.