Kino MacGregor

How Yoga, Practice, and Community Carry Us Forward When Everything Falls Apart

This year has been rough in ways I could not have imagined. The overarching theme has been one of grief, loss, and sorrow, a kind of ache that spread through every part of my life.

The tragic death of my teacher did not remain a single event. It rippled outward until it touched everything. Other losses arrived in the wake of his passing. Some were directly connected to the vacuum of his absence. Others had nothing to do with him at all, yet they braided themselves into the same thread of heartbreak.

In this same season, the illusion of friendship shattered before my eyes. People I once cared for looked at me without softness and told me they had never considered me a friend. They used words I would rather forget, and strangers echoed similar judgments. The very ground beneath my feet shifted. The principles and relationships I had held dear suddenly felt unstable and uncertain, as though the internal architecture of my world had been shaken loose.

During this tumultuous year, a few things remained solid.

My practice never wavered.

Each morning I returned to my mat, not to achieve anything and not to perform anything. My practice is and has always been a spiritual act. It is the way I connect with God. It is the place where my ego dissolves and humility rises in its place.

It is the steady thread that holds me when everything else feels broken.

My effort becomes a quiet offering.
My breath becomes a prayer.

This is the ground that holds me upright when the world feels unsteady.

Joy remained too. Even in sadness, meaning continued to appear. Sometimes it came as a small flicker in an ordinary moment. Sometimes it felt like a pulse of grace moving through the day.

I have been criticized for smiling. I have been called fake for speaking about the luminosity that comes from spiritual connection. Still, I cannot hide that joy. It rises from a place beyond circumstance, beyond judgment, beyond the opinions that others hold.

It does not erase the grief.
It simply reminds me that sorrow and devotion can live side by side.

Somewhere in the haze of disappointment, moments of clarity filtered in.

I used to believe we could all find common ground and get along. I am not sure I believe that anymore. It feels like some people will dislike you simply because you are happy. Your joy unsettles something in them. Your smile irritates what remains unexamined in their own heart.

No amount of calm conversation or compassionate outreach can shift their perspective once they have decided that your presence is somehow a problem.

When someone needs you to dim your light so they can feel comfortable in their own shadow, there is nothing you can offer that will satisfy them.

What you can do is release the need to win them over.

Their reaction belongs to them.
Your peace and your happiness belong to you.

Instead of trying to bring out the goodness in people who are committed to hating you, it may be wiser to live and let live. When people show you who they are, we learn to believe them. Contrast can help us become clear about who we are and who we are not, while comparison only breeds jealousy or unworthiness.

There are people who use words like knives, whose intention in speaking is to cut and tear down, perhaps in an effort to feel a momentary rush of power.

Real power is not about harming others.
Real power is about lifting others up.

Hate and judgment are easy. The human mind lapses into divisive thinking, fueled by negativity bias and amplified by algorithms that reward outrage. Hate justifies anger, and the cycle continues.

In some ways, hate is an act of cowardice. We turn someone we fear into an “other” so we do not have to sit with the discomfort they awaken in us. Separation and division may appear powerful, but sowing seeds of destruction for personal gain is a form of weakness.

Compassion and kindness are often the more difficult choice.

In the face of pain, forgiveness is an act of courage and strength. Hate has never healed anything, including injustice and harm. If justice becomes only an eye for an eye, we are trapped in an endless struggle to extract the next punishment.

We are instead offered the possibility of ending the cycle by choosing togetherness and committing to build on the foundation of love.

Each brick in the house of the heart is formed by our thoughts, actions, and behaviors, not only toward ourselves but toward others.

When someone has decided to hate you, there is, unfortunately, nothing you can do to change their mind. Once you become the villain in someone’s story, everything you do will be interpreted through that lens, regardless of the truth.

We cannot change anyone’s mind for them.

Each of us is responsible for our own thoughts, beliefs, speech, and actions. The only thing we can truly tend is the garden of our own heart.

The hardest thing to do is to love someone who hates us. At the very least, we can try not to hate them in return. That alone may be enough to break the cycle.

They may continue hating us, but we can become free of that hatred.

I am writing this because I am still processing some very difficult conversations from the past year. It is not easy to be hated, directly or indirectly.

Hate spread through gossip and rumor can feel like a knife in the back.
Hate spoken directly can feel like a knife in the throat.

I am not sure which is worse. Perhaps neither.

A friend recently told me I am like Marmite. I have never even tasted it, but apparently you either love it or hate it. Someone else once said that whatever I bring into the world would be met the same way, half embraced and half rejected.

Maybe they are both right.

I want to believe in my own goodness. I also want to believe in the goodness of others. Yet the volume of hate, judgment, and personal attacks aimed at me lately has made me question everything.

Am I really so bad.
Would the world be better off without me.
Should I give up what I am doing and begin an entirely different life.

I do my best to welcome honest feedback, to remain open to learning and growth. But there is a point when criticism crosses into cruelty.

Sometimes people are not offering truth.
They are pouring out their own pain.

Even if there is a grain of insight hidden within, it can be so saturated in venom that letting it in feels like drowning.

Not long ago, I sat down with someone I believed was a friend. I went in hoping for peace. Instead, I sat through an hour-long monologue that left me in tears.

At one point, they looked me directly in the eyes and said, “We were never friends. I never liked you. When you smile, it is all fake.”

I was not smiling then. All I wanted was understanding.

In hindsight, I see that I was being spoken to in a manipulative and abusive way.

For years, I believed that a compassionate heart and sincere listening could reach anyone. I am beginning to understand that this is not always true.

From now on, I will take people at their word.

If you tell me you hate me, I will believe you.
If you say you are not my friend, I will believe you.

And then there is social media.

It amplifies everything, especially outrage. Harsh words travel faster than kindness. Algorithms reward judgment more than gentleness. The online storm can feel like the only reality, but it is not.

Real life unfolds in conversations, relationships, and quiet daily moments.

At the same time, social media holds real power. It can spread awareness, spark movements, educate, and connect people across the globe. It is not inherently bad.

Like any tool, it can be used to build or to destroy.

The key is discipline. How we use it, what we consume, and what we allow to enter our hearts.

This is where practice becomes essential.

On the mat, there are no likes, no comments, no algorithms. There is only breath, body, and mind. There is the quiet discipline of returning, again and again, to presence.

Reality lives there, not in the noise of the feed, but in the steady rhythm of practice.

In my own practice, I fall often, especially in handstands. I fall, I fail, I wobble, and I crash. I hear voices of doubt telling me I will never get it, that I am too old, too weak, too slow.

Years ago, someone even told me my legs were too thick to ever float up. That comment did not come from my teachers, but from a female colleague, and it cut deeply.

Still, I get back up.

Again and again, I try.

Each fall teaches me something. Each rise builds strength. What begins as physical effort slowly becomes inner resilience, the kind you rely on when life itself tries to knock you down.

Yoga teaches that the true practitioner is not disturbed by praise or blame. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna describes the yogi as steady in honor and dishonor, the same in friend and foe.

This is the ideal I aspire to, to be rooted enough in practice that neither applause nor attack destabilizes my inner ground.

I am not there yet. The words still sting. The hatred still gets in. But I am getting stronger.

My teachers always told me I needed to be stronger. Perhaps this is what they meant.

True strength is not closing the heart, but keeping it open and learning to stand steady anyway.

Maybe this is the deeper lesson.

We all fall and rise, on the mat and in life. We stumble. We fail. We hear voices of doubt, from others and from within. The practice teaches us to keep going, to stand back up, to meet the next breath with courage.

Along the way, we learn forgiveness, for ourselves and for others. We learn that strength also means helping one another back up when we can.

Life may be less about being universally loved and more about being authentic, kind, forgiving, and steady in the face of whatever comes.

One place this truth becomes especially clear is in the power of speech.

Our words reveal the contents of the mind. Yoga teaches that speech should not be used to harm, to wound, or to distort the truth. Yet the work does not end with restraint.

A yogi’s speech becomes a vehicle for upliftment. It places the teachings at the center. It becomes a form of seva arising from clarity rather than impulse.

The tradition reminds us that sound is not only expressive but formative. What we say shapes the inner landscape we inhabit.

When we listen carefully to our own words and deeply to the words of others, the mind begins to reveal itself. Purification does not arrive all at once. It unfolds quietly through steady attention to truth and inner light.

Amid all this unraveling, there were also astonishing moments of connection and beauty.

In the middle of loss, unexpected kindness appeared. People stepped forward with such grace that it moved me to my core. When everything falls apart, you discover who is truly there.

I found people who offered care that was humbling and profound. I found strength in true friends and in students who walked beside me with sincerity. I found steadiness in colleagues who remained compassionate.

I felt the unwavering presence of my family and the quiet constancy of my husband, without whom I could not have made it through this year.

Their kindness did not erase the grief.
It illuminated the darkness.

It reminded me that even when life fractures, love still appears. Grace rises in unlikely places. The heart can be held by the hands of others when it feels too heavy to carry alone.

All of this brings me back to community.

People come to yoga for many reasons. Some feel a spiritual calling. Others seek healing or belonging. Some stand within a lineage. Others are stepping onto a mat for the first time.

Motivations shift and evolve. What matters is not why someone begins, but that they begin at all.

In this year of division and uncertainty within the Ashtanga community, I keep remembering something Sharath said again and again.

Yoga is one big family.

Not a perfect family and not an unbroken family, but a family bound together by breath and devotion rather than agreement or uniformity.

Every sincere step onto the mat becomes part of that family. Every humble breath contributes to the living continuity of the lineage.

It is not teachers alone who preserve this method. It is the students who rise before dawn, who show up day after day, who allow the practice to transform them.

They are the ones who carry yoga forward.

When I hold this truth, something softens. Rivalries lose their sharpness. Conflicts loosen their grip. Personal narratives fade.

What remains is the simple fact that yoga is still being practiced.

The tradition lives in every bow of the head, every pause between breaths, every heart touched by this path.

Even when the community feels fractured, the practice is unbroken.

As long as one person steps onto the mat with sincerity, the essence of Ashtanga continues.

And when students and teachers around the world move through their practice with devotion, the lineage shines with a brilliance far greater than any single individual could ever offer.

So I return to what remains steady.

I celebrate the practice wherever it lives.
I honor every student who shows up.
I trust that the heart of yoga knows how to move through us, across generations and beyond personalities.

Even in seasons of sorrow, the teachings continue.

Even when everything feels uncertain, the path endures.

Hope rises from the simple truth that yoga still lives in the hearts of those who practice.

As long as breath flows through sincere students, the lineage has a future.

And within that future, there is light.

Listen to the full episode of my year in review here.

Start 2026 with our January 30 Day Flexibility Journey! Only on Omstars!