She reminded me of a cat. Not a skittish house cat, but a fierce African jungle cat – a cougar or leopard perhaps. Muscular and lithe, with nary a wasted movement, she wore what one might find on a Brazilian beach so that we could view the entirety of her perfectly formed body.

Lisa, our teacher, consistently brought students to tears, followed almost immediately by their falling deeply in love with her. It surprised me that there were so few men in class – she regularly pulled her top and micro shorts up or down to show us the workings of specific muscles – but perhaps the men were most afraid of her. She epitomized Durga – fierce, powerful and divinely feminine.

With a flick of her waist-length honey blonde hair, she would own your body and soul.

Lisa taught the most intense form of yoga I had ever encountered, even in my 10+ years of devout study. The method was designed to break the body – literally – so that it could be rebuilt – better, stronger, faster.

I was the most advanced of the students in our advanced teacher training. My body was supple and willing, and I fully surrendered to her teachings. She loved me, and I felt like the chosen one.

She would bring me more deeply into poses than I had ever imagined, sometimes laying her entire body on mine for leverage to ply my bones and muscles into the desired form. I did things I did not imagine were physically possible.

We were doing a cleanse of the physical body that day, with an exploration of the chakras. It was as grueling as it had ever been.

We were in a twisted lunge – legs splayed, thighs burning, torso wrung like a dishtowel, breath entering only in small sips. And we stayed. And we stayed.

“The real pose begins only when you want to get out of it,” she would say, a quote from one of her teachers, BKS Iyengar. That happened within 30 seconds, and here we were, minutes later, wanting to scream or cry or vomit.

I was at the front of the room, demonstrating while she spoke. I closed my eyes, which was strictly forbidden, but I needed something to calm myself, to collect myself, to sustain what felt impossible.

An ocean of purple filled my awareness. For a brief moment I thought maybe I had just had aneurysm. Would I die here, in front of everyone?

The overwhelming feeling of bliss countered my fears. I began to breathe into the body that was no longer in suburban New Jersey, but had somehow united with God.

I saw everything, and everyone, simultaneously as pulses of love-based energy.

Sounds disappeared, except for a ringing Om which filled me from the inside out.

I am not sure how long I floated there, in grace and love and infinite awareness, but was awoken by the call of my name – “Pascale! Pascale! You may come out of the pose now.”

My body moved in slow motion, as if my parts were just getting beamed back from wherever they had been transported. I could not stand up. My legs had not arrived yet. So I sat, and dropped into a bottomless meditation.

Lisa began to understand something had happened to me, and approached me with the gentleness of a sleep walker.

“Just stay there, OK?”

And she continued on with the rest of the class.

I began to find my way back to the present and eventually completed the class with the rest of the students.

No one noticed, so entangled in their own physical exertion and emotional battles.

I could not speak about what happened, and left quietly.

When I returned the next day, all appeared normal, whatever that meant. From that day on, however, my study of the science of yoga died and I began to understand what I was doing as nothing less than a personal path to ecstasy.

Each breath, each reach, each burn, began to both include and transcend my physical body. Whether the experience was primarily intellectual, emotional or physical, each practice burrowed into my soul, demonstrating to me the deep veil of my thoughts and illusions.

I think about all those in the yoga community who have not been guided to this vista of seeing, feeling and knowing. I think about ‘trendy’ yoga, ‘elitist’ yoga and ‘make me bleed’ yoga and I hope that all those roads eventually arrive at the wide, vast field of self-awareness and the tangible experience of our undeniable divinity. I hope that ecstasy, in whatever dosage serves our human journey, takes its place on the mat once again.

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