Don’t Worry, Be Happy: How Yoga Helps Off the Mat

Awhile ago I was exploring the yamas and niyamas of yoga, known as yoga’s ethical guidelines, and stumbled upon one nugget that’s helped me a fair amount in my daily life off the mat.  I was reading about Ahimsa, which translates into non-harming, of others and self.  Mahatma Gandhi described it as “not to injure any creature by thought, word or deed”.

            I inherited quite an active worry gene from my mother, especially when it comes to my kids.  My kids are now young adults, with their share of stresses and struggles, and at times I worry about them as if they were helpless little ones, usually keeping myself up in the middle of the night.  I came across an idea by Deborah Adele, who says that “worrying about others is a form of violence.” At first this left me shocked.  Didn’t I worry about them because I loved them so much?  How could this hurt them? Adele explains that when we worry about others, we rob them of their personal power to manage their own challenges.  Rather than worrying, she suggests offering support and encouragement. 

I’ve been turning this over in my mind and my practice and this is how it’s evolved for me.  When I catch myself worrying about someone, I turn the worry into a loving kindness message, and visualize the person in all these lovely states:

May my loved one be well.

May my loved one be peaceful and at ease.

May my loved one be happy.

May my loved one be full of loving kindness.

 I’ve read that there’s evidence of improved wellness for people when experienced mindfulness practitioners meditate on their well-being. Regardless, this practice helps me feel more at peace and more hopeful for my loved ones. I sleep better at night, and when I communicate with them, I’m able to convey genuine faith in their ability. It also helps if I sing myself a little Bobby McFerrin…Don’t Worry, Be Happy.

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One Year of Yoga

            This past September 2017, I began on the journey of training to become a yoga teacher. My reasons were in part searching for answers to questions I had, and another part being a potential avenue to a career change. My background is in engineering, yet my free time centers on learning herbalism, working with Reiki, among many other areas of personal growth. Yoga teacher training seemed like a logical next step. I liked yoga as a student, so why not take the leap and get the certification to teach yoga?

            When I signed up for teacher training, I expected the actual yoga poses/postures to be straight forward. I could perform most of the poses as a student decently enough, so teaching shouldn’t be that far of a stretch. What I discovered as the most difficult part was communicating how to do a pose to an audience. The communicating of instructions, the forming of sentences that made sense, the actual art of teaching. Performing the pose was no issue at all, but telling someone how to do the pose, now that was and still is very much a challenge.

            With signing up for this two year teacher trainer course, my interest mainly fell for the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of yoga. I was here to learn and experience all that I could. The philosophy class became what I looked forward to every month. The debates and discussions around yoga, around lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and other topics fueled my wanting and yearning to learn about the depths of yoga. These depths of yoga, these emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects, in my opinion give insight to the truth behind people, their actions, and their true nature, and more so, the truth about oneself. These debates raised more questions for me, more uncertainty regarding my plan for myself. More self-doubt as to who I really was. What defined me as me, and what I really and truly wanted for myself out of this life.

            I am still trying to figure a lot of that out, but yoga gave rise to that creative destruction of my perceptions. Yoga created the opportunity for personal growth in the way I wanted it to, not through the physical pose and posture part, but through the mindful, deeper, more meaningful part in my opinion, being that of self-reflection. This act of self-reflection while difficult, gave me the chance and insight to dive deep into much of what drives and makes me, me.

As I look back on the past 10 months, I see the transformation I went through. I see the knowledge I gained. I see my change. I don’t think any of my life questions have been answered as a result of this yoga journey so far, I think I have even more questions now that require answers. Maybe though, that is the point of yoga for me personally. Not a method or a way to finding solutions, but path to more questioning, a path of learning, a path of continual growth. A path of seeking.

Ryan Kologinski

June 2018

why i signed up for teacher training!

I had never planned to become a yoga teacher. I enjoy yoga, and have been doing it for many years but it never entered my mind to teach it. I had been following a Zen Buddhist path for many years when it became evident that I must step into a teaching role – which was not in my comfort zone! I had an intense discomfort of being watched, scrutinized, and the centre of attention. I have had many
inspired and wise teachers over the years and I wondered what I could offer.

Around the same time, yoga teacher training “came up” as a possibility and I knew it was the correct next step for me to take. My instincts were confirmed in my very first teacher training class by the approach and presence of our wise and knowledgeable teacher Shauna. I marvelled at her naturalness, grace, sense of effortlessness, and humour and by the words we read of B.K.S. Iyengar to “treat your students as though they are divinity”. This was in complete alignment with my spiritual path! I was in the right place. I would learn to teach and be comfortable in my skin doing it.

Starting a daily yoga practise with a deep exploration of poses surprised me by being a great joy. It wasn’t a chore or a drag like I thought it might sometimes be. For much of my life I was disconnected from my body and sometimes it behaved unpredictably and almost felt like an enemy. It was a gift to spend this time getting to know my body – it felt like falling in love.




Body, on the Zen path, is often conspicuously not mentioned. Body is relative and temporary, like ego, and not considered worth spending time on.

But we are embodied – our bodies are our only vehicles in this life and are sacred – they must be taken care of. Part of my path has been reintegration of splintered/disowned parts and yoga has been profoundly healing in reclaiming my body and moving me towards wholeness.