by Brad Willis
My mind blocked it out for so long because I had to heal my back and overcome cancer. And there’s more to it. Deeper things. I’ve been apprehensive about what it might mean for me socially and financially. Most importantly, I’ve held a deep fear over how it might affect Morgan. But Pamela and I have gone too far in different directions, with too much painful history behind us, to ever reconcile our differences.
Now, it’s time. I breathe deeply and finally accept the truth, stare my fear straight in the face, and peer over the edge of the abyss. I visualize myself opening my arms wide, leaning forward, and finally letting go. I immediately fall into the darkness with terrifying speed. As I expected, the visualization terrifies me. Then I find my wings, make a mighty effort, and eventually soar out of the abyss and into the clear, blue sky.
As the summer of 2002 comes to a close, Morgan lives with me half the time. Pamela has moved to another home on the island, and we have ended our marriage. We gave counseling our best try but just couldn’t put things back together. It has been traumatic for both of us. We have faced fear, anger, uncertainty, guilt, indecision, and all the other emotions that go with separation. We also have had to face ourselves. Build new lives. Make sure the impact on Morgan is as minimal as possible. Always let him know it’s our fault and how deeply he is loved.
I feel a natural sense of sadness and pain the days I’m without my son. To help me cope, and to be with like-minded community, I attend a meditation north of San Diego one night a week. It’s held at a large, serene facility where men and women sit on opposite sides of the room, chant Sanskrit mantras, then sit in silent contemplation. Tonight, November 1, 2002, I’ve brought two Yoga students from the Coronado studio with me for their first visit to the center. After the meditation, they want to go down the corridor to a small cafe that serves light vegetarian meals. I’ve always preferred to skip this part of the evening and head home for some final practices in my cave before bed. This time, I agree to join them at a table where they’ve met two people they find intriguing.
One is a man named Eros who engages my friends with captivating tales of his retreats in the tropics, where he swims with wild dolphins. The other is a woman named Laura who, like me, remains quiet and reserved. I’ve hardly glanced at her to notice how extraordinarily beautiful she is, yet I’m mesmerized by her presence. We barely speak to one another, but deep within, each of us feels a sense of destiny unfolding.
After college, Laura lived in Europe and was general manager of The Discovery Channel Europe. Along with running the channel, she produced documentaries on science, culture, and spiritual topics such as vignettes on the Dalai Lama. Like me, Laura endured her own dark night of the Soul and found her way out of her own abyss through turning toward a more spiritual life. But we are both in emotionally tender places. Neither of us is looking for a relationship. Isn’t this when it always happens?
January 2004. I’ve remained in the same home where Morgan was born. Laura and I have married and embraced a life together that is centered on aligning our lives with Vedic wisdom. We’ve developed a style of daily practice that’s based on my experiences and studies in my cave, with spirituality and self-awareness as the foremost principles. I sleep in these days, arising between 4:30 and 5:30 A.M. for my Sadhana instead of 3:00 A.M. I rarely attend a class at the Coronado studio, preferring instead to continue developing my own practice.
Laura and I periodically travel to Yoga conferences or attend trainings to study with great teachers. This month, as a pilgrimage, we journey together to Esalen. It’s an institute in Big Sur, on the northern coast of California, dedicated to holistic studies and human development. Esalen is a stunning place. Sitting on a steep mountainside surrounded by lush forest, it towers just above the Pacific Ocean and offers staggering views of the rocky cliffs forming the coastline. A fresh canyon stream runs through its spacious gardens and walkways. Its natural mineral baths are nurturing and healing. The pervasive silence is only broken by the song of the mighty waves below.
We’ve come for a weekend workshop called “Imagery, Deep Relaxation, Movement, and Music,” with Dr. Emmett Miller. I’ve long wanted to meet the man whose voice transfixed me in Biofeedback, and whose work helped transform my life. Although I feel like I already know him from listening to his audiotapes for so many months during my healing journey, I’m taken by his presence. Dr. Miller is well over six feet tall, lean and sinewy, with thick, black hair slightly graying at the temples. A full beard, neatly trimmed, covers his strong jaw. His chocolate-brown eyes are soft and glowing. His voice is even richer and deeper in person, and just hearing him speak feels remarkably healing.
The workshop is like a celebration of mind-body medicine as Dr. Miller guides us into rediscovering peak moments of healing, empowerment, love, and joy. He leads us through techniques of selective awareness, meditation, and guided imagery as we explore the healing force within us. His presence is simultaneously soft and powerful, reminding me of principles in the Yoga Sutras that advocate standing in steadiness and strength while remaining soft, open, and supple.
During the weekend, Laura and I establish a personal relationship with Dr. Miller. “Call me Em,” he says gently after I share my story and thank him for the incredible healing I experienced as a result of hearing his words in Biofeedback, reading his book, and exploring his practices while I was at the Pain Center. “Your experience is a profound illustration of the power of mind-body medicine and self-healing,” he says, placing a hand on my shoulder and gazing into my eyes. “One day you must share it with the world.” I take this as advice from a modern-day sage as I humbly bow my head and answer, “I will. When the time is right, I will.”
February 2008. Laura and I have founded Deep Yoga, a Vedic school devoted to teaching the fullness of the ancient wisdom of Yoga. For me, this is an expression of the new person that I have become. When I lost my journalism career, I lost my identity. I found it in Yoga, and now with this new venture, I feel a renewed sense of worth and accomplishment, like I am contributing something to the world.
We call our trainings “Mastery of Life.” Our intention is to guide our students into owning the power and living their truth. Through applying the deepest principles of Yoga, we help them develop greater harmony and balance, find their true calling in life, and express themselves to their fullest potential. Through our Mastery Programs, we train Yoga teachers and Vedic healers, offer classes, workshops, and retreats, and continue to see a wide variety of private clients in our practice.
It’s a profound privilege to serve those seeking to heal, grow, and transform their lives. Part of our mission is to remind our students that their greatest guide, their true guru, lies within them. That each of them possesses the capacity to recreate themselves and live in greater authenticity, contentment, and self-expression. We’ve seen so many wonderful people make incredible strides in healing, transforming their lives, and living to their fullest potential, and several of our graduates have gone on to serve others as powerful healing guides.
Morgan joins us periodically as we teach a Yoga class, and occasionally sits in on portions of some of our trainings. He already displays a deep understanding of the primary principles of Ayurveda and has memorized several complex Sanskrit mantras. Yet he is following his own path, becoming a junior black belt in karate, surfing, and designing amazingly elaborate creations with his Lego blocks. We let him know that Yoga is always here for him, but we never require it or even try to nudge him in this direction. He is perfect and whole just as he is, and we are confident he will chose his own path in life with discernment and commitment when the time arrives.
As part of my own journey, which in many ways has been a rebirth from the person I once was, I have taken the spiritual name of Bhava Ram. Such names often embody something that it is important to aspire to. This particular name means several things that I will always seek to embrace. Bhava means the essence or experience of an emotion, and Ram is the name of the central characte
r in the spiritual epic The Ramayana, a man who stayed devoted to Yoga and lived his truth in the face of great odds. Ram also signifies the sun, the light of the heart, and the fire of self-discipline. Together, a great Sanskrit scholar has told me, the name can be translated as “Pure State of Being in the Heart.”
Traditionally, such names are given by a disciple’s guru. Because I have no formal guru and am not seeking such a relationship, Bhava Ram is a name I’ve chosen as a way of reminding myself that I’m only alive because of devotion to my new path and that I must continue to follow it to the best of my abilities, as imperfect as I might be. After deciding upon this name, my primary teachers agree it’s the right choice and give it their blessings.
One of these teachers, Dr. David Frawley, has invited Laura and me to be his guests at a retreat on the Ganges River in the foothills of the Himalayas. Also known as Vamadeva Shastri, Dr. Frawley has written dozens of books on Vedic wisdom and, although American by birth, is viewed in India as a great master of Sanskrit, Yoga, Ayurveda, and the history of ancient India. Laura and I have long wanted to make our first pilgrimage to the country that is the source of the practice that has transformed our lives, and we readily accept this generous offer.
Following a fascinating retreat with Dr. Frawley, Laura and I travel to nearby Rishikesh, known as the home of Yoga, for the International Yoga Festival at an ashram called Parmarth Niketan. Ashrams are centers for live-in spiritual studies, and like many other ashrams in Rishikesh, Parmarth sits on the banks of the Ganges, with sublime views of the river and the mountains rising toward the Himalayas. The ashram’s spiritual leader, fondly known as Swamiji, uses funds from the festival to house and educate orphaned children and raise them in the ancient traditions of Yoga.
Each evening, everyone gathers on the banks of the Ganges at sunset, facing a towering marble statue of Shiva, the archetype of transformation, sitting on a platform over the river, for what Swamiji calls “the best happy hour in the world.” The orphan boys, clad in saffron robes, surround Swamiji on the wide steps facing the river as he leads us in traditional chants to the Divine. There is a musician playing tablas, which are small Indian drums similar to bongos, only with deeper bass notes that sound ethereal. Another musician plays a harmonium, a small wooden box with piano keys and a bellows pump that sounds like an accordion. Swamiji’s voice is angelic as he sings ancient Vedic chants celebrating spirit and divinity. It sounds like a celestial choir as the orphan children lift their voices with him.
Swamiji, radiant in his orange robes, flowing black hair, and full beard, is internationally known as a servant of peace. He often meets with heads of state around the world while collaborating with other spiritual leaders such as the Dalai Lama. Thousands travel from America, Europe, Australia, and throughout India simply to be near him, to receive what is called Darshan—sitting in the presence of a master teacher, a true guru. Swamiji wants no control over anyone’s life. He simply offers his heart to all and serves as a living embodiment of the human capacity to be a fully self-realized being.
During the Yoga Festival, Laura and I are given the great honor of being asked to join the Parmarth Niketan teaching staff and return to India each year to share Deep Yoga with students from around the world. Then we’re invited to sit in Darshan with Swamiji. We’re guided to a reception area behind the ashram office that looks like a small, intimate park with a grassy lawn, lush flowers, and bougainvillea flowing over a plaster wall painted deep gold. A roofed bamboo frame covers the reception area, with an altar at one end and Swamiji’s cushion in the middle.
A few minutes after Laura and I are seated, Swamiji enters and sits in silence. His presence alone overwhelms us with a pure sense of loving kindness, grace, and the experience of being with a great sage. After a few minutes of meditative silence, Swamiji invites us to open our eyes, places one hand over his heart, embraces us with his peaceful and knowing gaze, then softly whispers, “Welcome home.”
Afterword
I faintly recall my wide-eyed daze watching Tom Brokaw query a prominent war correspondent named Brad Willis during the Persian Gulf War. The NBC News reporter flashed across the TV screen with images of an inferno foreign to my unblemished mind. That was in 1990, when Willis was a fiercely impassioned and intrepid reporter crossing enemy lines into a bomb-struck Iraq, navigating through twisted, torqued bodies on a chemical battlefield, and delivering stories no one else was reporting.
As a communication major at UC San Diego, I longed to one day do what Willis exemplified: cover the world’s momentous events, peel back layers of illusion to unveil the truth and, finally, deliver the power of knowledge to the masses in prepackaged media nuggets. There was no sign back then that this tough, hard-edged reporter would become my dear teacher and mentor—not in a journalism class or “J-school” as it’s often called but in “Y-school,” as in Yoga. As in “why” love and inner strength matter more than all the victories of war or worldly riches one could garner.
Fast-forward the tape sixteen years: It was a sunshiny day in 2006 when a man with deep pipes and an uncommon serenity strode into my favorite Yoga studio and began to teach. His was no ordinary Yoga class, where bodies performed athletic postures while eyes wandered the room. His voice commanded pure presence, and as we moved on our mats the clock stopped ticking. In moments, a roomful of strangers breathed as one. The idea that we were exercising melted away as it became a completely sacred experience, a Yoga studio transformed instantly into a temple.
“Reach up to the heavens, drink in light and love, and now bow down to Mother Earth,” Bhava Ram invited. “Take healing light into your palms and send it down through the vessel of your Soul. Feel the radiance inside your heart and know you are a Sacred Being,” he beckoned us over and over again.
I didn’t know what he was doing with this highly unusual, spiritual approach to Yoga, but I was instantly hooked. I was now a television news reporter myself and my brain was busy with the endless news stream, yet every single class from Bhava Ram brought my otherwise stressed and occupied mind into deeper stillness, focus, and harmony.
People of all ages, shapes, and shades quickly filled his classes. Bhava and his wife, Laura Plumb, lovingly cultivated a community of modern-day Yogis through their Deep Yoga teacher training school and inspiring workshops, which soon drew seekers from around the country. There was no bottom to their giving. From an urban oasis near downtown San Diego called Ginseng Yoga Studio, I learned there was nothing newfangled about Bhava at all. He was reviving the ancient spiritual practice of healing and self-realization otherwise being overlooked as mere exercise in an overly stimulated Western world.
And why not? Through his personal catastrophes, Brad Willis had essentially been reborn as Bhava Ram. The foreign correspondent had covered unthinkable atrocities—Kuwaiti torture victims piled into morgues, Kurdish mothers clinging to dead babies in squalid encampments, child prostitutes enslaved in Thailand’s red light district—but ultimately, he had to slay more penetrating, private demons than any he covered as a journalist. First, a miserably broken back and doctors diagnosing him as “permanently disabled,” and next, late-stage cancer his physicians deemed terminal.
I’d heard that this man, spurred on by indomitable love for his infant son, had recovered—not through conventional cancer treatments, but through Yoga. But, how? Ever the journalist, I was curious about the details.
Even after years of studying with this master, I didn’t know how he actually overcame these seemingly insurmountable ailments. This book, at long last, answers that question and tells his extraordinary story with the lucid detail of an esteemed journalist. Whoever you are, whatever your challenges, this text is a treasure that can lead you into a new understanding about your life and how to live it fully.
This is what Bhava has gifted me. As fate would have it, I was an accomplished journalist with PBS in my mid-thirties when I fell ill with a chronic disease that mystified the medical establishment. There was no
known cure, doctors said. Debilitating symptoms forced me to quit my career and retreat into a world of stillness. In my darkest, most dreaded moments, Bhava gave me what I had lost entirely: hope, faith, belief in myself, and something beyond the scared little me curled up in bed. I knew if this man could crawl out of the doorway of disability and death, certainly I could heal, too. He taught me tools to resuscitate myself—the same basic protocol that filled his broken, cancer-ridden body with strength and well-being. Through years of diligent practice inspired by Bhava, I feel healthier than I have in a decade and happier than I ever was before the illness.
Something about him inspires one to greatness. Bhava routinely produces miracles in his students. A sixty-year-old woman riddled with cancer tumors went into full remission, another student with fibromyalgia bid farewell to all pain medications and the pain itself, an older man immobilized for decades by depression started doing handstands and climbing mountains.
As a journalist, Brad Willis reported what mattered in the news with courage and devotion. As a teacher, Bhava Ram shares what’s truly important in life with even greater devotion and a sense of humility and compassion that is palpable and inspiring. He is living proof of how courage triumphs over all rational prognosis and odds, how deep and abiding love for a child can conquer all, and how we each harbor unseen capacity to heal from whatever wounds life inflicts.