meditate in a train station

Yesterday I took a class from Jennifer Ellen Mueller at Prana yoga in trolley square slc ut. It was really fun taking a class from JE, she was my first main teacher from whom I learned so much and did my first teacher training with at flow yoga/sonic yoga. Anyways at the end of the class in savasana she mentioned something that I had heard her say many times before (but was something I needed to here in that moment), that she learned to meditate on the subway in NY. In the subway there are people talking, laughing, yelling, alarms going off, phones ringing, trains passing… She compared this to the constant activity that is always going on in the mind, there are always thoughts coming and going, alarms going off…. She also mentioned how it feels to go to the top of a mountain experiencing silence, solitude, and peace. We need have the ability to create that same silence within the hussel and bussel of life.
The idea of being secluded in the mountains, in a cave, in an ashram is very much that of a renunciate like the yogis in ancient traditions who left behind their worldly possessions and the metaphorical train station to live in silence, and solitude to practice pranayama, meditation and asana..

One think I love about tantric yoga is that it is the yoga of house holders who work, have families, pay bills. This is the yoga I try to practice but lately I have been isolating myself like a renunciate. JE reminded me that when we face challenges, and when life seems so overwhelming. That IS the invitation of yoga.

May I view the challenges and chaos in my life as opportunities and invitations to drop into my heart, into the moment, and find peace, clarity and stillness. May I find the eye of the storm the place of stillness in any tornado I find myself in.

"A true yogi may remain dutifully in the world; there he is like butter on water, and not like the easily-diluted milk of unchurned and undisciplined humanity. To fulfill one's earthly responsibilities is indeed the higher path, provided the yogi, maintaining a mental uninvolvement with egotistical desires, plays his part as a willing instrument of God." (Yogananda, Autobigraphy of a yogi,p. 222)