• Bio

Lance Griffin

Lance’s passion for yoga sparked at age thirteen, in response to chronic depression. A love for personal fitness and a thirst for spiritual truth found their synthesis on the mat, where he discovered physical and mental well-being. He continued to explore the tradition under various teachers and trainings for the following ten years. Currently, Lance teaches and writes regularly in addition to pursuing a doctoral degree in exercise science. His scientific focus is on the benefit of yoga for athletes both physically and psychologically.

                We’re
always trying to get control of things; trying to know and master our
lives. We want to know, to plan, to have everything laid out. When we’re not
sure about something, we tend to hope, or to project our ideas of how something
should be. This often leads to anxiety.

                I’d
like to re-frame uncertainty as a friend. If you’re able to re-frame uncertainty
and not-knowing as an ally, you come to find what I define as faith.        

                To me,
faith is not believing in a thought in your mind, or a guess of what might be
and trying to believe in that guess. Being comfortable not knowing, and smiling
despite having no idea of what’s to come- that is faith. This is the type of
faith that allows the mountains to move, so to speak; it creates an openness
and a partnership with life that makes life more surprising and serendipitous.

                An
analogy that may be helpful are the two travelers. John has a packaged tour,
his reservations booked and his days planned to the hour.  Joe has a destination in mind, but isn’t
really sure what’s going to happen on the way there, or when he’s there- in
fact, Joe didn’t even buy a guide book. Imagine the difference between these
two trips. John is doing his best to make sure things go as planned, but life
happens, and nothing seems to be good enough. Everyone moves slower, and no one
is on time. He misses one of his tours, and spends the last two days of his trip on the phone trying to get a refund. The trip was a complete failure in his mind. Joe, on the other
hand, has no idea what to expect; he makes friends very quickly in order to get
his bearings. Those friends take him to the best beaches and dining spots. Joe
actually ends up in a different destination than he planned, a place that he
had never even heard of, but that happens to be even better.  

                Which
traveler would you prefer to be? Who leads a fuller and happier life? I believe
that falling in love is a snapshot of this. Before we etch our list of needs
into a stone tablet for our partner, we are taken up by the newness and
uncertainty of the situation. The romance is a fun suspension of not knowing
exactly what’s going to happen. It’s the same as looking into a starry sky, and
gazing in awe before we start naming constellations and picking out planets.

                That’s
my idea of faith- having a romance with life.