15 Truths I learned from Sri Dharma Mittra

By Sorsha Anderson

Picture by Natasha Phillips

1. To make progress you must learn to do three things: Fast, keep silent and wait...
2. Breathe as slowly as possible for an hour and watch your cravings disappear. 
3. See yourself in the practice you are not able to access right now.  Imagine yourself in it.   
4. Do the work.  Not because you expect results, but because it’s work that needs to be done.  
5. In the beginning, do the poses any way you can. 
6. You can become king of the gods by watching…
7. Cultivate compassion--the rest will come. 
8. Expect nothing.  Do it because it has to be done. 
9. Avoiding discipline is a trick of the mind.  It enjoys its pleasures.  The mind will throw you down.  It is powerful. 
10. There is no ‘mine’.  Where there is ‘mine’, there is bondage.
11. Be kind to all beings.  Everyone passes through the same obstacles.
12. You can reach higher states with drugs, but there is a blackness behind it.  You despair because you know you cannot get there without the help.  When you achieve higher states with meditation, you feel bliss because you realize no one can take it from you.
13. Yoga is…perfect obedience to the teacher.
14. Drop the elbows. Don’t think!  Forearm stand!
15. After enlightenment, there are plenty of exciting jobs for you to do! 

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Sorsha Anderson is a certified Dharma Yoga Teacher who lives and teaches in Vermont.  She has been practicing since 1991 and worked with very gentle and restorative yoga until her 30's when she wandered into a hot and sweaty, but meditative vinyasa studio.  Neither a dancer nor gymnast as a child, and after having had two children, she surprised herself by balancing in crow for the first time at 36.  She never looked back.  Sorsha approaches each new pose with a sense of optimism and adventure and delights in encouraging others to try what only seems impossible at first glance.  She particularly enjoys teaching older women who are trying to find their way back to their bodies after a sometimes very long absence.  Sorsha is thankful to have found her way to the Dharma Yoga Center and makes the trip from Vermont as often as she can.  She offers gratitude for the beautiful physical and spiritual teachings of Sri Dharma Mittra.