A Story About Beginning Again That Will Inspire Your Yoga Practice

A tree grows in Brooklyn on January 30, 2023. Nature's annual "beginning again" ritual continues as this tree sprouts new shoots.

Navy Veteran Mark Frerichs was an American contractor working in Afghanistan when he was captured by the Taliban and held captive for two and a half years. He was interviewed by PBS NewsHour co-anchor, Amna Nawaz, earlier this month. (View Part 1 and Part 2) As I watched him speak, I was mesmerized by his story of survival, and at times I thought this is a true master yogi. He was chained by his ankles and wrists, only given a dirt floor to sleep on, fed stale bread and dirty water, and beaten and threatened with execution on numerous occasions. He was finally freed in a prisoner exchange last September, and seems to be on his way to a remarkable recovery.

How did he survive? By meditating, doing body scans. Here’s how he describes his practice:

You just have to be able to totally relax your body. … from your toes to your head and just imagine your muscles relaxing from your toes, your ankles, up your shins, your knees. You just talk yourself through your body. By the time it gets to your head, you can't feel your body, for me, anyway. I can't feel my body. My body is like it's you're sleeping. So you're sleeping, but you're awake. Your brain is totally aware of what's going on in a room. And you can do whatever you want.

I can’t attest to ever having experienced samadhi – the highest state of yoga practice – myself, but this description by Mark sounds like he was well on his way to achieving it. Two of the earliest instructions in the Yoga Sutras is yogash chitta vritti nirodhah and tada drashtuh svarupe avasthanam. Yoga is the practice of quieting down the movements of the mind. Then the Seer abides in Itself, resting in its own True Nature, which is called Self-realization. Under extraordinary circumstances, Mark seems to have achieved some higher level of awareness and realization through his practice of sitting still.

Later in the interview, Amna asks Mark: how are you doing? Part of his response is:

… I'm having intermittent sleep issues. Sometimes, I will just have this — these feelings come across me, of, like, impending danger. But they pass.

This speaks to the Buddha’s teachings about the impermanence of all phenomena. In yoga, we train to be present and still so that we can recognize the transitory nature of everything.

Finally, Amna asks Mark if he holds anger toward his captors, to which Mark says:

If I harbor resentment or carry on continual feelings of anger, then they have won. Resentment for the past is a waste of spirit. If I don't let this thing go, it's going to just keep festering and festering. I got to just let it out, let it go.

And this is both a main objective of yoga practice as well as a main feature of the practice itself – to practice letting go, over and over again. Mark’s story is an extraordinary example of this important aspect of yoga practice, and an inspiration to us all of us as to what we can become if we do practice this over and over again, no matter the circumstances of our life.

Buddhist mediation teacher, Sharon Salzberg, writes in her book, Real Happiness:

When we put our attention on the feeling of our breath, “almost immediately we feel the healing power of being able to begin again. … This is the practice. This ability to let go and begin again is the kind of fruit that we take into our ordinary life. We might stray from our chosen course, but realize we can begin again. We might lose sight of our aspiration, but realize we can begin again. We might make a mistake, but realize we can begin again.”

I have no doubt that Mark is no different than you or I in that over the course of his two-and-a-half-years ordeal he lost sight of his aspirations. And while he was forced to stray from his desired course by his captors, he is now fully aware that he can nonetheless begin again. And what is no doubt helping him begin again is the constant daily practice of letting go.

In the words of Maria Robinson:

Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.

Mark Frerichs certainly seems to creating a new ending to his story, one that he probably couldn’t imagine just 6 months ago. I hope that Mark’s story inspires you to be still in the midst of chaos, practice letting go of resentments, practice seeing the dark clouds come and go, and script incredible endings to each of your remaining days on this Earth. May the work you do on yourself through yoga and meditation somehow benefit someone near to you, and ultimately reach all beings everywhere in a positive way.

May you be happy, …
May you be healthy, …
May you not waste your spirit and begin again to let go of old resentments, …
May you see the passing nature of reality, …
May you realize just a bit more of your True Nature,
May you create incredible new endings daily, … for the benefit of ALL Beings everywhere.

Aloha and Metta, Ease and Tranquility,
Paul Keoni Chun

Fall reds give way to winter browns on January 30, 2023. Nature's color palette is beautiful to behold no matter the time of the year.