So what happens when you write about making peace with your practice being just where it is? You get given the next two poses the very next morning.
I’m not saying that I have mastered bujapidasana by any means, but Cary saw fit to show me kurmasana and supta kurmasana today. And when I spoke to her after practice I told her “Noah said in Goa that the role of your yoga teacher is to always leave you feeling slightly overwhelmed. So you’re doing a good job.” I went on to tell her about the very unattractive character trait I developed in Goa which I can only liken to a foot-stomping 5 year-old, mid-tantrum. The chitta vritti went something like this…
Why is she getting that new pose today? She only just started practicing a few months ago. I’ve been going up to buja since August and I still didn’t get Kurmasana…So what about me? WHAT ABOUT MEEEEE?
See? 5 years old. Not exactly my finest hour, but as I wrote last night, at the end of two weeks I did finally start to make peace with where I was at, and this feeling has definitely deepened over the past couple of weeks. When I told Cary about this she said that it’s funny but as a teacher, even if you don’t know that that’s what it is, you can feel that sort of energy, and it tells you that the person still has a lot of work to do. So she and Kino are completely on the same wavelength here – the work to be done is not about the form of the asana, but the inner work. Hence the fact that last night I wrote that I had let the inner-tantrums go, and today, despite a still (very) imperfect rendition of bujapidasana, I was finally moved on. After EIGHT months! Footnote: that’s 8 months of mostly absent practice. But still.
So what now, onwards and upwards? Not exactly. Just practice practice, and hopefully at some stage, all is coming.
Congratulations on being given the poses Mel, I hope you grow to enjoy Supta K like I do, I always see it as "playtime", I get an inane satisfaction from doing it. It is all coming..
ReplyDeleteWhat an honest account of your vritti... and yes, ironic that once you let go completely you get two new poses, great!
ReplyDeleteI have to say Claudia, I happily told the friend who I was benchmarking myself against what I was feeling at the time, so if you're reading VM, this will hopefully be no surprise to hear!!
ReplyDeleteCary said she can feel when somebody has the space for something new - I suppose even though I had mentally let this go over the course of a few weeks it wasn't until I wrote it down that that space opened up wide enough for her to see :)
Oh and after a full-on assault at the new poses again today it's becoming a case of "be careful what you wish for" - it's soooo hard!