The Bunion Sutra
There comes a time in life, perhaps only for a moment in the middle of an ordinary day, when something good from the past quietly returns, not to reclaim you but to remind you how much has already been learned, lived, and integrated. An old teacher appears in a dream. A forgotten conversation resurfaces. A familiar person crosses your path again. In such moments, we realize that what we once sought outside ourselves has gradually become part of who we are. Perhaps this is what soul truly is: not something acquired, but something patiently inhabited.
Years ago, yoga was a place I went. There were studio practices, teachers, demanding classes, and the invigorating discipline of learning to inhabit my body with greater awareness. Like many worthwhile practices, it began as something external, something I intentionally entered in hopes of becoming a little more awake.
Then recently I had a dream.
A yoga teacher from years past and I sat together in easy conversation. She asked whether I would ever return to practice at her studio. I smiled and told her I no longer practiced in groups. There was no defensiveness in my reply, nor any disappointment in hers. She simply looked at me with quiet recognition and said, “You have found your own practice. You have become your practice.”
As we continued talking, both of us noticed a slight inflammation in the bunion on my left foot. It was hardly dramatic, nothing requiring medical attention, only enough tenderness to make us aware of it. When I awoke, I realized that the bunion had offered the dream's deepest teaching.
Even wisdom limps.
The older I become, the less interested I am in the illusion of mastery. At seventy-three, I find myself increasingly wary of anyone who speaks as if they have finally arrived, whether spiritually, psychologically, politically, or philosophically. The soul has an uncanny way of placing a small stone in our shoe just as we begin to imagine we have outgrown this or that and “have arrived.” That slight tenderness in my foot felt less like a defect than a quiet reminder that becoming one's own way of tending soul is never a finished achievement. It remains a living discipline that requires continual attentiveness, humility, and a willingness to keep listening.
As I reflected on the dream, voices from many traditions began gathering around that simple image, not arguing with one another but enriching the conversation. Jesus' words, “The Kingdom of God is within you,” came immediately to mind. He continually redirected attention away from religious performance toward the inward life where compassion, forgiveness, and truth quietly take root. The Buddha likewise left every school because awakening could not be inherited from another. The Upanishads whisper their ancient insight, Tat Tvam Asi—Thou art That—suggesting that what we seek has never truly been elsewhere.
Jung understood that individuation eventually requires us to loosen our identification with collective expectations so we can discover the deeper pattern of our own lives. Hillman would likely caution me against explaining the inflamed foot too quickly, urging me instead to remain faithful to the image until it revealed how it wished to teach me to walk. Henry Corbin might see the yoga teacher not merely as a remembered instructor but as another appearance of the Angel of Light, recognizing rather than instructing, quietly affirming that the practice had become incarnate. Depth psychologist and mystic Michael Eigen would hear the body's subtle murmur as Life itself speaking through flesh, reminding us that psyche and body are never separate conversations but one continuous unfolding.
Even science has begun to speak in unexpectedly poetic ways. Einstein revealed that relationship belongs to the very fabric of reality, while quantum theory continues to suggest that the observer and the observed participate in one another in ways that challenge our ordinary assumptions. Mark Twain, with characteristic humor, might remind us that progress usually consists of taking the next honest step without pretending to understand the whole journey. Allen Ginsberg would probably laugh and insist that everything is holy, including the aching foot that refuses to let us imagine ourselves beyond vulnerability. Hermes, ever the guide across thresholds, would recognize that there comes a time when the deepest journey is no longer toward another teacher, another method, or another community, but toward a more faithful inhabiting of one's own life.
Perhaps that is what yoga has become for me. It is no longer primarily a sequence of postures or a place where I gather with others. It has become the way I listen to my body, my patients, Kate, my family, my dreams, and the subtle movements of the soul that so easily go unnoticed amid the noise of daily life. The practice is no longer something I perform. It is the way I find myself inhabiting each moment with a little more awareness, a little more kindness, and a little more honesty.
The bunion remains an apt teacher. It reminds me that truth is always a sensitive thing. The moment I imagine I have arrived, understood, or somehow outgrown the need for humility, the soul gently directs my attention downward. “Notice how you are walking,” it seems to say. “Remain tender. Keep listening.”
Perhaps every life is eventually given its own sutra. Mine, at least for now, is written in the language of a dream, an old yoga teacher, and an inflamed bunion. Strange scripture, perhaps, but the soul has never seemed especially interested in respectability. It has always preferred whatever quietly keeps us awake.