My spiritual journey – indeed, my life – will always be divided into two phases, pre-psychosis and post-psychosis.
Yes, in 2004, almost ten years into my yoga practice and spiritual seeking, I experienced two episodes of psychosis and ended up in Lion’s Gate Acute Psych Ward in Vancouver.
At the time, it seemed to come out of no-where. In retrospect, it was clear why it had happened.
My first inkling of the power of yoga happened in 1999, three or four years after I’d done my first handful of classes. I signed up for a ten-week block of Vinyasa at the local rec center in Whistler, Canada.
Something very strange happened in the middle of the second class, although I didn’t even notice that my behavior was odd at the time. We were coming up into Warrior I – possibly the first time I had ever experienced this posture (that first handful of classes in 1995 had been Iyengar). Right in the middle of the pose, in the middle of class, I stopped what I was doing, didn’t say a word to the teacher, gathered my belongings, and left. And, I never went back – not for a single one of those pre-paid classes – at a time when money was scarce and certainly not to be wasted on classes one didn’t attend!
Many years later, looking back, I could see that something in my unconscious had started to move – something I was afraid of and unwilling to face.
Yet yoga continued to call to me – in part because I was experiencing chronic back issues. I’d had a spinal fusion at L4/5 when I was 16 years old, and now, at age 25, I was experiencing sciatic pain once more. The doctors were warning me of possible future operations, but after reading Carolyn Myss’s book Anatomy of the Spirit, I was sure I could heal myself through yoga and understanding the underlying emotional and mental causes of my back pain.
And, I did. After dabbling in another short course – this time Ashtanga – I moved on to Bikram Yoga. It turned out to be perfect for my limited mobility. The daily back pain I was experiencing began to ease. Over time, regular yoga completely healed my chronic back pain. I went from walking with a limp, because my right foot was half-numb, unable to touch my knees let alone my toes, to leading international yoga retreats.
But I’m getting ahead of the story. The consistent yoga practice was impacting more than my physical body. I was beginning to have some other interesting experiences as well, in part exacerbated by the recreational drugs I was also taking on a regular basis.
Always fascinated by the psyche and the nature of reality, I was supplementing my reading of spiritual texts and the practice of yoga with all kinds of drugs including marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine, Special K (ketamine), acid and mushrooms.
This kind of recreational use was common – the norm – in the circles I moved in. We were mostly a mix of young backpackers far from home, hospitality staff and spiritual seekers. This lifestyle formed the backdrop for my increasing commitment to my yoga practice. I had no idea of the risks of indulging in this manner.
The first incident of note featured some Australian friends and a bunch of mushrooms. While everybody else was having the uproariously good time that usually marked our mushroom trips, I was having profound emotional realizations about my parents’ divorce, which had happened some 13 years earlier. My long suppressed emotional reality was beginning to surface. I spent the evening in tears, yet feeling like something profound and important was taking place.
These kinds of emotional breakthroughs were becoming more and more common on my mat too. My nickname at high school had been The Ice Queen and I believed that nothing affected me emotionally – I rationalized everything away. Now, those tightly wound ego defenses were beginning to crack. My psyche was breaking open.
In Bikram class, we would get to Dancer’s Pose and I would begin to sob, and sob, and sob – for the entire rest of the class. It was like clockwork – huge emotional releases, almost every single time I practiced. And, it didn’t seem to be happening to other students.
By 2004, about five years into semi-regular yoga practice, I was beginning to consciously cut down on my drug use. I edged myself away from the scene as much as I could, but would still go to events like Full Moon parties, sober, as I loved the sense of tribe, and I loved the dance.
I was also in a long-term relationship with a man I loved deeply, yet intuitively knew wasn’t right for me. My long-standing pattern of compromising myself – not speaking up – in relationship was severely impacting me psychologically. I didn’t dare let go of us, and that rock-hard attachment pushed me to the edge.
We went to a four-day music festival – my first festival – with the usual crew. And, in the midst of severe emotional trauma, I got into the spirit of the festival in a desperate attempt to escape from my angst. Ecstasy, marijuana, acid and probably mushrooms.
It blew me out, completely. I began going into a trance and not knowing it. I saw the future – accurately as it turned out – and had a series of “spiritual experiences”. We drove home from the festival and over the next three or four days I spiraled further and further out from “normality”. By the time my fiancé and two friends made the call to drive me down to Lion’s Gate Hospital’s Acute Psych Ward I was speaking in a strange, hissing language, doing prostrations and enacting kriyas I had never been taught.
The doctor who saw me dubbed it “spiritual burglary”. I’d opened doors of perception I wasn’t yet able to handle. They added a diagnosis of bi-polar for good measure, based on my presenting symptoms and a family history of mental illness. I was given a prescription and sent on my way after three days.
Four weeks later, my fiancé broke up with me and the emotional trauma triggered another five day trance-like experience where I ended up playing Fear Factor on the back of a moving logging truck. It was back to the psych ward, this time in the back of a police car and then an ambulance. I was committed for ten days, and not allowed to leave until I proved myself sufficiently sane to cope with the outside world.
Fortunately, while committed, I had enough presence to refrain from sharing with the doctors and nurses the visions and guidance I was receiving in those mixed-up trance states. I knew that there was more going on than psychosis, and I knew that sharing it with anyone would be counter-productive. I kept my mouth shut, did what I was told and, on release, flew home to New Zealand to heal and integrate my experience.
It took a few years before I fully understand the scope of what I had experienced – there were so many threads interwoven. All through those years, it was my, now-daily, home yoga practice that kept me grounded and allowed me to slowly make sense and integrate everything that had happened to me.
A chance encounter with a Swami in about 2006 confirmed what I’d begun to suspect – that my experience was likely some kind of Kundalini Awakening. My foolish mix of drugs with yoga, combined with my unexamined psychological patterns, had created the perfect storm for psychosis.
By 2006, I’d been invited to teach yoga, despite having no formal training. My responsibility to students weighed heavily and I threw myself ever deeper into the study and practice of yoga, both on and off the mat. I began to understand how my experience of psychosis and the subsequent unraveling and integration of my experience had given me deep insight into the workings of the unconscious and our shadows.
In 2015, I led my first retreat, and discovered my passion. My own shadow work meant that I was capable of holding and guiding other people through intense emotional experiences from a place of grounded and clear presence. I was afraid of nothing that the psyche could through up – in either myself or others. I could see through the defenses and the patterns to the truth that always lies beneath. And I knew of the strong necessity for progressing at a pace suitable for the student’s psychological state, erring on the side of grounding and integration at all times.
Those two experiences of psychosis at age 29 will forever shape my life into before and after. Nothing was ever, nor will ever be, the same. It was the most precious gift, and the most intense trial. I shall remain always grateful that my path ventured this particular way.
Kara-Leah Grant