Summer

Beginning

I am just sitting in the coffee shop and a couple asked another couple to be their witnesses at the registry down the road. They do not know each other, just decided now and here.

I feel that the yoga world has been kind of similar. Sudden, unexpected, prompt, instantaneous decisions. Getting into serious business of a long term commitment at a cup of coffee.

I admire it and a bit envy it. I know, it is not yogic to envy, but I am still on my inward journey, not reached the final goal yet.

For me, it has all started in a bit more unfortunate set of circumstances than this one, sitting on a sunny side of a hipster coffee place in an affluent part of London.

It was the year 1991, the country I was born in, being rapturously torn apart, wounded, bleeding, bombed day and night.

A young 20-year-old Croatian journalist having two life-changing interviews on the same day.

One with a beautiful 82-year-old lady, a founder of a hospice movement and another with a group of young and enthusiastic practitioners of yoga.

Although these two encounters and the following articles deeply influenced the way I feel and think, my editors were not impressed at all.

Why would anyone think of caring for old and dying, while the snipers' shots, grenades, and bombs daily kill the youngest amongst us?! Why adopting foreign religious rituals like yoga when the newborn nation needs to redefine its identity?!

It was almost 30 years ago that this spiritual light has been rekindled.