The Shala Daily

Two accounts from the Bondi Beach tragedy offer yoga practitioners a profound meditation on what our practice prepares us for—and what we can never truly prepare for. The first tells of lifeguards and strangers rushing toward danger; the second describes those locked inside a yoga studio, waiting in terror while the world exploded outside. Together, they illuminate the many faces of Karma Yoga: action and stillness, rescue and refuge, the courage to move and the courage to remain.

🕯️ “Church” Becomes Fortress

Nadine J Cohen calls her Sunday double yoga class “church”—a ritual of movement followed by lying down, leaving “high on Zen and vibes.” On this particular Sunday, the first night of Hanukkah, she was walking toward family, doughnuts, and celebration when gunfire shattered everything.

Running back to the studio, falling and skidding across the courtyard, she was pulled inside by an angel—her yoga teacher, who “remained calm and comforting in crisis.”

This detail deserves our attention. The qualities of an exemplary teacher—wisdom, presence, empathy, the ability to adapt to unique circumstances—are not abstract virtues. They are capacities cultivated through years of practice that emerge, unbidden, when most needed. On this day, that grounded presence became a lifeline for a motley crew: women from yoga, women not from yoga, a mother and her teens, four food delivery drivers, a young man with a toddler whose wife was locked in the supermarket below.

⚡ The Nervous System Under Siege

Inside the studio—a space with no phone reception, which “isn’t a problem until you’re hiding from shooters”—the stress response activated in every body present. The sympathetic nervous system kicked into gear: hearts racing, breath shallow, muscles tense. One woman kept repeating through panicking breaths, “This doesn’t happen here.”

Cohen describes the moment she learned the shooting targeted a Jewish gathering while her 15-year-old niece was missing: “Did you know you can actually feel your brain rupture the moment your world explodes?”

This is the freeze response yoga philosophy acknowledges—when neither fight nor flight is possible, when we become immobilized by overwhelming stress. The natural cycle of stress responses can be disrupted, leading to unresolved psychological issues if not addressed.

🏃 The Rush Toward Danger

While some sheltered in place, others rushed toward the chaos. Volunteer lifeguards in yellow and red, Christmas elves performing CPR, Ahmed el-Ahmed disarming a gunman with his bare hands, Jackson Doolan sprinting barefoot a mile with a heavy medical bag.

Matias Bengolea, a carpenter from Argentina who became a volunteer lifesaver, grabbed “oxygen and defibrillators and boards to carry people, because they didn’t have enough stretchers.” This is Karma Yoga in its purest form—selfless action detached from outcomes, responding to the present moment’s demand without calculation.

The Bhagavad Gita teaches that we have the right to our actions but never to their fruits. In those chaotic moments, no one was thinking about recognition or reward. They were simply responding to what was needed.

✨ The Festival of Lights

Cohen’s account weaves through the tragedy a thread of ancient meaning. It was Hanukkah—the Jewish festival of lights, celebrating survival against destruction. “The story of Hanukkah is one of hatred and destruction,” she writes, “but ultimately one of survival and hope.”

The teaching resonates with yoga’s understanding of seasonal cycles and the interplay of light and darkness. The Wheel of the Year teaches us that “within every shadow lies light, and every peak contains a hint of dark.” The Winter Solstice—occurring just days after Hanukkah this year—represents the return of light as the days begin to lengthen.

Hanukkah holds that a candle lit with only a day’s supply of oil burned for eight days. “While basic maths, ardent secularity and my fancy oil burner indicate this is improbable at best,” Cohen writes, “I choose to embrace the miracle on this one. I need to believe in hope.”

💚 The Heart That Holds Everything

Perhaps the most striking teaching in Cohen’s account is her insistence on complexity—the capacity to hold contradictions, to resist the reduction of reality into simple categories. This reflects the mature practitioner’s mind. Meditation helps individuals break free from divisive categorizations like “us vs. them.”

The Heart Chakra (Anahata) represents unconditional love that transcends boundaries. When balanced, it fosters compassion, kindness, and emotional empowerment, enabling unconditional love and connection. The Sanskrit name means “unstruck”—whole and unbroken, even amidst brokenness.

Two phrases anchor these accounts. From Bengolea, through tears: “There’s still hope. I think that’s the point. People rushed to help.” From Cohen: “Happy Hanukkah, namaste and Amen.”

These are not contradictions but completions. The Sanskrit greeting Namaste—”the light within me acknowledges the light within you”—joins Jewish blessing and Christian affirmation in a single breath. In Cohen’s yoga studio, in Bengolea’s surf club, in the gathering at Bondi where strangers became family, that light emerged from the darkest moment.

This is what our practice prepares us for. Not to prevent tragedy—we cannot—but to respond to it with presence, with grounded calm, with the courage to act and the wisdom to shelter, with hearts broken open rather than hardened closed.