Crazy Sexy Life

By Tatiana Forero Puerta

About five years ago, in a winter almost as cold as this one, I fell head-over-heels in love. I found “the one.” A few months, a couple of rings and a small, private ceremony later, we were married. I swore on my “happily ever after.” Three years later I found myself standing at city hall on a rainy April morning with signed divorce papers in my hands, thinking how did this happen? Whatever happened to unconditional love? How can I ever allow myself to love again?

Divorce was easily one of the most challenging experiences of my life. Closing my heart was the most painful. I felt alone in many ways. But I wasn’t alone. Every time I read statistics on marriage, divorce rates are on the rise. The biggest news in magazine is some breakup or another. For some reason, many of us are having a difficult time sustaining long-term, committed partnerships that can withstand the test of time, regardless of married or not.

I don’t think I could have gotten through my divorce without yoga. I’d been practicing yoga for several years and teaching for a couple, but it was during this time that my practice truly intensified and became my ally. My practice listened to me when I needed to vent and I tried to heed its advice…to breathe into places of tightness and pain…to stay present and conscious. I immersed myself in the Yoga Sutras, the primary text of yoga philosophy. Yoga became a key player in my healing from a state of separateness. Through this process, I came to learn about love—love as a powerful practice and sacred union, strong enough to teach a broken heart to open again.

On Practice

Not long ago, I caught a segment on Oprah where a couple who had been together for many years were on the verge of divorce. Both were extremely stressed out and ready to call it quits. They were given the homework assignment to have sex every day for a year. After a year, they came back on the show happier than ever. At first, this didn’t feel right to me. One of the observances of yoga practice is Brahmacharya, which is often translated as continence or abstinence. The teaching is not that we should strive to be celibate monks, but rather that we be conscientious of our sexual energy and practice awareness and moderation. Daily sex for the sake of sex wasn’t necessarily up this yogi’s ally—not the definition of moderation.

Then, the couple started to talk more intimately about their journey. After time, it wasn’t about sex anymore. The assignment forced them to create at least 20 minutes a day with each other and nothing else—no TV, no cell phones, no work, no computer—just them in their truest element. Over the course of the year, bonding took precedence over sex: conversation, staring into each others’ eyes, touching one another, and laughing became a daily practice. The couple found that the forced time to have sex led the desire to simply be with each other.

It was the couples’ decision to turn their marriage into a practice that saved their marriage, not the sex. As I continued my studies of yoga, I came to see that just like yoga, love flourishes when it becomes a practice. One of the ways the Sutras define the term “practice” is that a “practice must be well attended to without break.” This is to say that we grow in our yoga as we delve into a routine practice and as we carry lessons off the mat and into our lives.

To be in the practice of a loving relationship means “off the mat” practice and practice as practice. Off the mat, it means to hold our partner in mind and heart, even when we’re not around them, by thinking positive, loving thoughts in their absence or balancing criticism with an affirmation.

Second is practice as practice. The practice of time together needs to be just that– just like our practice on the mat is just us on the mat, allowing ourselves to be with our partner in a loving and caring context. No plans, no activities, even no sex, just one another. This is an integral aspect of relationship practice, one of the practices most missing in our relationships today. The degree of stimulation around us make it difficult to sit and be in our beloved’s presence. Taking time out away from stimulation—television, Facebook, magazines—is an important way to reconnect.

On Union

In Sanskrit, the term yoga is used to signify a sacred union. The term yoga does not exclusively denote physical postures, but rather, these asanas are one way of creating the greater, deeper union. A union of the self, a dynamic singularity beyond the mind/body complex, where you simply exist—open and complete.

As I explored the notion of such a union and experienced moments of it in my yoga practice, moments where my practice and I became one, I thought about my ex husband. I thought about the times we had been in union. I recognized that I’d experienced this at the beginning of my relationship, like many of us do, when we are first in love. We tend to meld into one another, two entities coming together in a dance of held hands, tender moments, and sexual cohesion. But as time passes memories dwindle, less time is spent together or desire for time together, less touch, less laughter. The honeymoon period ends and the words “in love” become a catchphrase rather than a state of being.

What I came to understand through my yoga practice was that relationships take consistent commitment and work from both partners. This is where the union happens. A union that is more than just its parts—in this union two become one, boundaries are blurred, and something greater is born, something sacred is created.

This past year I met someone special again. This time around, my partner and I do our work together. It has been the most challenging and holistic relationship of my life, and I never would have found it had I not realized the need for my relationship to become a dedicated and committed practice. We share other practices together–writing, yoga, meditation, prayer–making sure we practice at least one of these together daily. We work as a team, towards something greater. I now believe that when couples exist together toward a common goal, whatever that may be—something as simple as fighting together against animal cruelty or creating a community garden, or as expansive as cultivating a cohesive prayer, meditation or devotion to God—a sacred union is created. And what is sexier and more romantic than a partnership where work and play become unified.

As it turns out, unconditional and romantic love are both daily practices that require dedication. And so it was through my yoga practice, and with a lot of patience, that my heart began mend and ultimately open, allowing love back in.

Tatiana Forero Puerta is a Yoga and Yoga Philosophy instructor in New York City. She holds degrees in Philosophy and Comparative Religion from Stanford University and New York University. She is the Founder and Director of OmWellness.org, a spiritual holistic nutrition program in Manhattan. Tatiana’s pieces have appeared in Assisi Literary Journal, New York Spirit Magazine, and JOY: The Journal of Yoga. Tatiana is currently working on her first full manuscript.

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