Karma Yoga and the Power to Change a Life

For virtual yoga class today, I read a passage from “All in This Together” by Jack Kornfield about the power of sacred bread.

On page 72, Kornfield shares a story from a BBC special about the Siege of Leningrad with an interview of an elderly woman recalling her childhood during the war. At seven years old, this lady stood in line for her weekly ration of bread. Snow and ice covered the ground. The little girl slipped on the ice. And her bread fell in a mudpuddle.

She was crying at the loss of food, but also crying out of desperation of where she was in that moment at 7-years old – the desperation of hunger and foundational loss. A lady came behind her, helped her up, and gave her half of her weekly rationed bread.

Decades later, the then 7-year old, now old lady, being interviewed walked the BBC journalist down her hallway and opened a small dish in a cabinet. Inside was a carefully wrapped piece of that bread, preserved all those years. A relic of survival. A reminder of selfless love and sacrafice.

This is a touching story, I tried to quickly find the footage of the interview and wasn’t able to locate tonight. But I did see that another described bread as “gold” during that time.

Our neighborhood book club met last week to discuss, the Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah, which also navigates the desperation and self-sacrifice of so many to survive during the Siege of Leningrad.

In both the book and this BBC interview, we see ordinary people making impossible choices. Sharing what little they have. Acting without certainty of tomorrow. Acting without knowing the ripples of impact they will have—potentially for generations.

This spirit of selfless action echoes one of the central teachings of the Bhagavad Gita 2:47-49. We are told that we have a right to our actions, but not to the fruits of those actions. We are invited to act with humility—without attachment to reward, recognition, success, or even outcome. We act because it is the right thing to do, being open to success or failure.

(There is a similar teaching in the Gospel of Matthew (6:1-6, 16-21), which encourages acting humbly, not seeking reward or praise. The act itself becomes the offering. Yoga came before organized Christianity; thus, there are many parallels, but no direct proven correlations that I have found—yet.)

I doubt the woman who gave that child half her bread paused to consider the long-term impact of her choice. She likely didn’t imagine that, decades later, that small act would still be cherished and remembered. She simply responded to suffering with compassion.

This is karma yoga in its purest form.

Not grand gestures.
Not performative generosity.
Not kindness for applause.
Not self-imposed instant gratification.
Not acting to share on social media for likes and comments or to show others how great you are.

It is volunteering to do what is needed in the moment, selflessly giving back.

We often underestimate the power of small acts. We may never know how deeply they land, how long they are carried, how this can literally change the life of a child. It only takes one person to change the life of a child. One.

In yoga asana, we move, breathe, and sit together. Yoga does not end on the mat. It continues in the quiet choices we make throughout the day. We practice yoga on the mat to be the best version of ourselves off the mat, working on all eight limbs of yoga.

Let me ask: Who might need half your bread this week? What gratitude do you recognize from others impacting your life last week?

Yoga helps us to be still and to go within to recognize and gift these moments.