I recently traveled to the Tree of Life Sustainability Project & Retreat Centre with its co-founder, Meranda Squires. She had asked me to record a couple of yoga classes for her and to take some yoga pose portraits for her business – The Lotus Centre in St. John’s.

This turned into some nature photo/video play which, once back home, turned into the 11:11-minute video above – “Portrait of a Yogi – Meranda Squires Shares Her Personal Practice to Freedom”.

Having witnessed the love & beauty manifested through Meranda, I wanted to know even more.

In this interview, Meranda shares even more. Enjoy!

Yoga is a state of consciousness where you don’t see division – you don’t see others as separate from your yourself. The physical poses are only the tip of the iceberg of what yoga is.

The whole practice of yoga is to dissolve the duality and the illusion of separateness so that the truth that is already there – unity consciousness – gets to be experienced by us and through us.

There’s nothing to protect anymore. There’s nothing to save or attack. So we can relax inside.

That’s the side effect of unity consciousness. There’s nothing that your ego needs to defend.

My practices may look physical, but from the inside, it’s not physical at all.

Divine has chosen the physical world to express itself, so we make up yoga poses. As we do the poses and the pranayama (breathing), channels get opened up.

Stuckness and tightness start to release. Everything starts to flow and move because these exercise are designed for that purpose.

When I do poses and others start to do them, they get that effect. The meditation exercises and practices all help.

Eventually, there’s a dissolution of the physical, and you’re in the divine realm of oneness.

But you do need to start on a physical level and let the physical transform the body – so the pranayama and the stretching & holding of poses strengthens and opens you. There’s a transformation that happens over years.

There are two effects of yoga poses. There’s the immediate effect and the long term practice effect. After years of practice, something starts to open that you probably didn’t even know would get opened.

Different poses are part of the creativity of yoga. Nobody has to be perfect in all of their poses.

The yogis have decided to become a master in their field of practice. It’s not so that a person, on an ego level, can look good in a pose in a picture.

By practicing those poses, there’s a training of concentration and one-pointedness and a massaging of the ability to hold breath – and all of this is needed for the transformation of the energy.

It’s not superficial – in fact, if you decide to master these things, that’s where transformation takes place.

Yoga must have come from a previous incarnation because the drive for freedom was very strong from a young age.

That’s probably why I had the parents that I had and grew up where I did, at the Ferryland Lighthouse.

That gave me the experience on a physical and family structure level of what freedom can be like. It opened my soul, my inner eye towards what the ultimate potential of freedom can be.

I have naturally been drawn to yoga and meditation since I was very young. My mother was a meditator. I was inspired by her.

When we moved to Toronto, I started investigating yoga. My first class was in the basement of a church in 1980.

From that point on, I met some people who had a guru and lived in India. They had an ashram in Toronto.

The first time I went to their yoga class, the teacher asked us to listen to the sound of silence. At first, I didn’t know what he meant – that there’s an OM sound and it’s always there. And so I finally had to let go of all the external noises. When I heard the OM, I had this epiphany, like “Ahhhhhhhh Wow!”

These little insights kept me inspired . “Oh my God, there’s so much more.”

I saw there was a lot to do with the body – I was already involved in dance, so yoga was natural for me.

I left for India when I was 20 in 1983. I stayed there for 17 years.

It became my new lifestyle. I felt I had come home to myself to be growing and interacting with other like minds, all devoted to personal transformation through meditation and yoga philosophy.

I had a teacher that I could access when needed. Truly, it’s so special to have this type of guidance.

I lived in a small apartment I rented from an Indian family. I went to Satsang, our daily gathering, twice daily.

My teacher spoke knowledge, we asked questions, we learned to public speak.

We sang chants, learned the scriptures, had beautiful walks in the mountains, had potlucks with my spiritual friends, and meditated a lot; hours and hours a day.

After 17 years of personal work , I knew it was time for me to teach.

So I returned to Newfoundland and set up the Lotus Centre in 2000. I have been teaching and learning ever since, and now I’m training others in this deep spiritual work.

I would say I’m living the essence of yoga most of the time now.

But I still have karma and things that I’m working out.

Living the lifestyle that I live and teach, I’m still learning  lessons in all of that.

But I’ve made some choices that have made my life a whole lot easier to live. My state of consciousness is able to maintain that level that I want to live in. I’m getting better and better at it as I get older.

I feel that I’m opening up to a potential that all human beings have. The yoga lifestyle has been my key. I decided that I was going for it.

That freedom, that access to unity consciousness is all there,  all accessible. Yoga helped me improve the condition of my personal life, so I can live that state.

I remember when I came back from living in an ashram in Montreal, my mother here in Newfoundland asked me “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I said, “enlightened”. She replied “Oh! that’s a different kind of profession!”

Yoga is my lifestyle and my profession – living the enlightened state and being an example for others.

Everyone has the potential. They just have to set themselves up to make that condition work for them.

That’s why I want to share it. Because in the same way I was lit up, I love watching other people get lit up – with this practice, with dedication.

I’m emotional thinking of how it can be passed on to others; how others’ hearts can experience a freedom that can not be experienced living in their normal everyday life.

People can live a normal everyday life, but yoga is the addition that is the freedom while living in an everyday life.

There’s nothing more beautiful than sharing something that is so meaningful and valuable to me (spoken with tears in her eyes).

To be inspired by the Light, by divinity and to share that.

Thank you.