Life...On and Off the Mat

Briefly..

2012-02-07T04:02:00.000Z

Once in a while I am capable of brevity (apparently).

So I landed in Mysore late on Saturday after *that* car ride from Bangalore - four a half hours of the craziest driving, during which I went through every emotion on the planet, from pure joy to total despair, wondering why on earth I ever decided to make this trip, thinking I was going to die, realising that in the end there was no getting out of it and that I just had to suck it up and experience it (yeah yeah, it's all yoga, I know). My arrival and first morning were awash with tears as I wondered just how and why I ended up here, I cried through my first shower, I ran round the corner to my friend's apartment where she fed me while I cried some more, and then once I was done eating and crying she took me to my first conference with Sharath and the social whirlwind that is Gokulam began. That first day I was passed from one sweet friend to another, so as it turned out I was out from 8am to 7pm and had many adventures in the time in between. Yesterday I had my first practice in the shala and yet more social and culinary adventures to fill the day. There is so much to say about how I feel having arrived here, and so much to say about the past two weeks in Goa and how much I learned and experienced with the wonderful Tim and Kino, but somehow I just can't summon the energy to do any of that right now - hopefully as I feel myself growing more settled here the words will come.

But for now I just wanted to say a quick hello from Mysore, that'll I'm alive and well and figuring out how things work, and that I'm so so grateful for having so many wonderful friends here - some from home, some from retreats I have taken in the past, some friends I hadn't met yet, but on every corner I run into somebody I know. I have a feeling that this is going to be a big part of the whole experience. Speaking of which, I'm just waiting on Susan for breakfast before heading off on a moonday outing to Mysore palace and into the city, but first I need to run some beetroot and banana bread over to K's apartment in exchange for some home-made vegan chikoo ice-cream. Life is pretty tough, isn't it?

Never enough time

2012-01-24T07:20:00.002Z

So once more I find myself in Goa for my annual pilgrimage to Purple Valley, this being my 4^th trip in as many seasons (but my first visit was in year zero as it was here that I started ashtanga...so 4 trips equals three years of practice). I’m here with the same teachers as last year, Kino & Tim, but instead of heading straight home from here after two weeks this time I will head to Mysore for my first trip there. The other significant difference about this trip is that back in November I received an email from Tim asking if I would like to assist him and Kino in the shala here...so after leaping up and down and feeling like I’d won the lottery I replied that yes of course, I would be honoured to do so. I count myself especially lucky to be asked as this is my first experience of assisting, and despite my huge resistance (to the point of vehement opposition) to the idea of ever teaching it was a huge honour that Tim and Kino asked, which was apparently based on my having practiced with them both a number of times and them wanting to introduce me to a whole other dimension of the practice (plus of course needing all the hands they can get with our group of 50-ish students).

Three days in to the practice and assisting I am already finding some of those lessons. There are two of us assisting at the moment, me and my friend A who also works here. She completed a teacher training at the end of last year she can help a little more than I can. I assist first for around an hour (6.30-7.30), she practices first and then we switch, and I finish my practice around 9.30. On day one Tim gave me some whispered gems (which for the sake of discretion I can’t share) which made me giggle, and showed me how to assist downward dog. I did a lot of dogs that day. Then Kino told me to assist anyone in UHP who couldn’t get their chin to their leg. I stood looking mystified for a moment before she realised I didn’t know how to assist, so she showed me, and then I tried it on a few poor unsuspecting practitioners...and I totally buggered it up. The following afternoon A and I had a session with Tim where he talked us through a few different downward dog adjustments (and anyone who’s been lucky enough to practice with Tim knows that his version of this assist rocks...) with the main version being using my chest to work the hips up and back, in other words lying the whole body over the practitioner, holding the front of their knees to gently coax them straight. Then he talked us through the UHP assist, thank goodness, and we had to do the assists on him, then on each other, and by the next day I must have done about 10 of them to much better effect.

The interesting part for me is how assisting makes me feel, and how it affects my practice. I feel like in three days, even only assisting one or two poses, I have already learned so much. Tim said that by watching somebody’s sun salutations you can really learn everything you need to know about their practice. Through adjusting them you can feel those who resist you, those who struggle to find an even breath, those to whom their whole body seems alien (and of course those on the other end of the spectrum with smooth breath, strength and flexibility and who seem at home in their bodies). Immediately after finishing up as I unroll my mat in the middle of the busy room, I go straight into a very internal, focussed space. My breath is deep and even. There is a level of calmness I am unaccustomed to. I feel confident in my practice, and that (mostly) my fellow practitioners accept my help (as I have already had some lovely post-practice thank yous), but I also feel a humbleness. My body is warm and open. On previous visits I have worked myself up on the first day of practice, leaving the shala in tears because I’m so happy and overwhelmed to be here. But this time? No drama. My first practice was incredibly flexible and deep, heels popping up in kurmasana (which almost never happens), spying my feet in my backbends from the floor before being terrorised by Tim (yes, I did the death-rattle breathing just a little, but I also got the hug). Monday’s practice was a little stiff and sore, the pay-off for Sunday’s pixie-dust coated practice, and I had a day of awesome Kino-help, a lot more assists than on the previous day (when I assised until almost 8 and then practiced mostly unassisted until the end), culminating in backbending with her. As it was a moonday (but different rules apply on retreats, right?) she was going more gently with the assisted backbending, so I was hoping to have her rather than Tim, who I know always takes me to my edge and beyond. I dropped back by myself and she was helping my neighbour with something, and after doing a little rocking and giving up she told me to stay in the backbend, push right up onto my fingertips (making a sort of stand with my fingers and thumb) and then she gave me the slightest pull on the hips and I came to stand. I laughed, saying that it was less scary then I thought it was going to be, so she said let’s do that again – we did three like that, and I realised that this new technique of course means I need to transfer the weight into my legs to be able to try and go up on my fingertips, which Kino was having me do by myself. I love how you think you have heard it all and then somebody comes along and gives you a whole new technique...anyway I did backbending with Kino again today, and I tried as much as possible to do it by myself, I feel like I’m coming up by myself from about three quarters of the way up (according to Cary before I left I was coming up myself from about half-way down), but right now I’m scrunching up the muscles in my lower back and clenching my bum and thighs to try and move the weight forward. She says that’s OK for now as long as there is no pain, but that I need to focus on pushing my knees forward, and maybe taking my feet wider when I go back. Apparently I have proper duck feet and a super narrow stance, which makes it much harder (as I told her, I don’t like to make things easy for myself...). Having missed out on giving me the backbend treatment Tim instead decided to make me do chakrasana after uttana padasana about fifteen times (and I’m not even exaggerating!) despite me insisting that I really can’t do it...and yes, I got bad lady’d there, and elsewhere in my practice today.

Actually this wasn’t intended to be a practice report but look what just happened...what I was meaning to write more about was how the days are just so packed that I barely even have time to relax let alone to blog, or just to write for myself about how I’m processing my time here. I know this doesn’t exactly sound like the toughest schedule, but the days so far have gone like this...

Day 1:

6.30 – 7.45 – assisting

7.45 – 9.45 – practice

Breakfast

Shower

Half an hour of emailing

Lunch

Adjustment lesson with tim

Afternoon workshop

Dinner

Err – that was the whole day. The second day I had a massage between breakfast and lunch, and an hour’s nap instead of the adjustment lesson, but so far I haven’t even been down to the pool, left the compound to go to Villa Blanche, or even drunk any coffee yet (which could be why I spent to whole of Tim’s breath workshop painfully falling asleep whilst sitting up). I know woe is me and all that, but somehow I need to shoe-horn time in to write, to be by myself, and yet to enjoy socialising and being around people too. My room-mate said that at Yoga Plus in Crete (where she has been going for ten years) it’s called “sitting on a rock”, and that here there’s not really anywhere to do it. Apparently the other downside to it is that you’re the weirdo who sits on a rock, but still, I would like to be able to achieve some sort of balance. Mind you from what I hear of Mysore it can be even more difficult there to carve out some time. But I’m not talking about finding time for two hours meditation a day (though my ayurvedic doctor has prescribed me twenty minutes twice a day which I should probably at least start trying to do), I’m talking about managing to squeeze in a bit of sunbathing and maybe to email my mum and dad and let them know how I’m getting on (and to write of course). Talk about first world problems eh?

This pretty much sums it up...

Scheduling moans aside, I feel so grateful to be working with these amazing teachers once again, and to be given the opportunity to help out a little and learn so much more about myself and the practice in the process. Spending three hours in the shala each morning is definitely taking it out of me, my legs are aching and my right bicep is very sore (people really drop their weight into you in UHP don’t they?!) but I also feel strong and calm in my practice. I’m not stressing so much about what’s going on around me as I normally would, and with a few minor exceptions I am able to view my fellow practitioners with compassion and see that each of us have our own struggles, and our own take on the practice but we all can benefit from it to the degree that we offer our dedication and surrender. Now if I could just find the time for some outings for cake and ice-cream to retox, I think this trip would just about count as perfect so far J

p.s. I just sat writing this with my teachers sat beside me at the wifi table...which feels kind of weird ;)

New Year ritual

2012-01-01T22:23:00.001Z

This year at the age of 33, for the first time ever in my life, I spent the evening of 31st December alone and was very very happy to do so. It was enough really just to be home alone, contented and without any need for a big New Year hoop-la (although yes I was playing with my new kindle, and yes it might just possibly be the end of the civilised world as we know it, but also I think I am already in love with it), but then I read this and got a little inspired.

So here is what I am letting go of.

Happy 2012, and may we all let go of those things which do not serve us.

The role of my teacher

2011-12-18T13:30:00.000Z

This morning after backbending on the floor (and finding that for the first time since I first spotted my feet a few weeks ago, today they were just a vague glimpse of pink) I stood to prepare for dropbacks, and after a couple of half-hearted warm-up hangbacks, I sat down to take my forward bend.

The room was quiet, and unbeknownst to me C was watching me from her perch on the other side of the room. As I sat down she called out "MEL! get up!"

I tried to explain across the room (until she came over to my mat) that on Friday I went to see the osteopath, and after the adjustments he gave me (and the nauseating noises which accompanied them) he advised me to not practice for 2 or 3 days, and to very definitely back off the backbending for at least 3 or 4 days. "But did you have an injury when you went?" C asked.

When I gave her a head-wobble as my answer (i.e. I had a slight twinge in my lower back which bothered me only in shoulder-stand, halasana and any legs over-head poses - so not really an injury) she said "If you went with an injury that's one thing, but if you just went along on a whim because your job allows you to see an osteopath, then I don't go along with that advice." I giggled (a lot). Then I stood up.

By this stage I was giggling so much that I could barely control my first dropback. She had completely got the measure of me....so going straight to the top of the list today of the numerous roles of a mysore teacher is...

...calling you out on your bullshit.

Blogging dilemma

2011-12-08T12:06:00.000Z

So, just a petit post for a petit dilemma (which, incidentally, I prefer to spell with an n, but apparently is with a double m. Who knew?!).

As I may have mentioned ;) I will be heading off to India in the Spring for my fourth trip to Goa and my first trip to Mysore, a trip of just under three months. And (considering how shite I am at committing to regular blogging when I say this) I am debating what to do about writing whilst I am there. The matter of blog secrecy/openness has oft before been debated - and whilst it's obvious that my blog is not private, nor do I attempt to conceal my identity, nor do I openly discuss it's existence with my family or friends outside of the yoga world. I have once posted a link to it on facebook thanks to the new privacy features but it almost gave me palpitations to do so. But I can't help but feel that at least some of what I want to share from Mysore would be interesting to my family who will (I know) be hanging on any and every bit of news they can get out of me while I'm away. But letting them in on the blog secret now would mean admitting to having fibbed about it's existence in the past, not to mention an immediate censorship of what I post here (including going back and hiding old posts I'd prefer not to share). So do I create a whole new blog for my trip? What if people don't find it - or worse - mention the existence of this blog when they do?? The thought of two separate bogs - one more yoga related and one just about the trip has occurred to me but seriously, how likely is that to happen?

Thank god I don't have to live a double-life for real, I think the stress would kill me....Talk about first world problems.

p.s. am in backbending bootcamp. Had to do about ten dropbacks today and still no solo standing....le sigh.

Nothing's changed and everything's different

2011-12-02T12:26:00.000Z

It's maybe untrue to say that "nothing's changed" but given that the topic of my last post was hitting the two year mark with my teacher, this past week I've been noticing the extent to which my practice has changed. I am doing exactly the same asanas I was doing this time last year, but everything is completely different - I have started to experience the practice on an energetic level to some extent and it feels like it is starting to feel like it's been transformed, and that it's transforming me. True, I'm also in the midst of ayurvedic treatment, taking herbs and doing practices which are supposed to heal me and open my heart (and are in fact merrily fucking with my head) but I seem to be finding life a series of almost unbearably sweet days with the odd overwhelmingly disastrous tear-ridden thrown in for good measure. And I feel like when it comes to practice if these feelings continue, where I can find an immense sense of grounding with the energy WHOOSHING down and pinning me to the earth, whilst bouncing off itself and sending my flying with grace and ease, then I couldn't care less if I never get given another asana. I think the "secret" to this change is this: three years. My first year was all about figuring out the practice (and how to fit it into my life and find a teacher). My second year was about claiming the primary series, asana by asana, and my third year seems to have been about solidifying and beginning, in some small way, to understand what all of this craziness is really here for. I'm just scratching the surface, but I have greater respect for this system day by day.

And on the subject of unbearable sweetness, and inspired by Serene Flavor's occasional happy life lists (and memories of the weekly "What we Like" lists in Just Seventeen magazine...) these things are currently making me happy (in no particular order)...

Hearing Blue by Joni Mitchell over a lovely impromptu catch-up breakfast and coming home to download it and listen on repeat. Favourite tracks...A Case of You and California. Listening to it transports me to the imaginary life where I live in an attic in Paris and drink black coffee and smoke cigarettes (see also: Madeleine Peyroux).
Re-reading the copy of Chocolat by Joanne Harris that I bought second-hand (and last read) on my travels in Thailand in 2000 and still bears the 200baht price sticker....and trying to not picture the beautiful Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp as I read...)

My shiny new epilator. I am way too lazy and disorganised for any sort of leg hair removal that needs doing more than once a week.
Blowing the dust off my sewing machine to make dolls for my nieces for Christmas...crafty, satisfying AND saves money. Win win win.
Navigating my way through my ayurvedic treatment and coming up against some of the craziness that I've been burying for years...or decades. It's not always fun, but finding appreciation in each little change and gain that I can find.
The huge new shopping centre 1 tube stop from my house which it turns out is not the work of the devil (as I first thought) because it means I can stop off for porridge or a pastry and coffee on the way home from practice. On the days when I am less than happy it seems that my mental health can be tipped back into balance by one of these excursions...oh AND there is a Waitrose there. Fully stocked up on rye bread, mung beans and avocados after this morning's excursion....and wheat-free vegan chocolate-chip shortbread biscuits. Oops.
The sweet and possibly naive thrill of anticipation. Sometimes this is the best bit.
Going to work...no really. I'll have worked 39 hours by the end of this week and I am loving being there. Every time I go I end up getting therapy of some sort...whether I'm lying on a couch or not. Reflexology after a 9 hour shift that started at 5.30am on Monday, an impromptu dunno-what healing session in the office to cure my migraine on Wednesday night (and it really did), a conversation with the ayurvedic doctor which turned into therapy....I am so blessed to work in this environment. What's not to love??

On my break at work. I look pretty miserable don't I?

Knowing that my trip to Mysore is oh so close, but appreciating every moment of the here and now.

That should do for now.

Two years on

2011-11-22T14:03:00.002Z

And so much has changed. Two years ago today I rocked up atYoga Place and practiced for the first time with my teacher, and I claimed to know there and then that she was my teacher – I usually have notoriously appalling judgement based on first impressions, so I’m glad this time I was right! And one year ago today (coincidentally) I was given setu bandhasana, the last pose of primary.

Clearly in my first year of practice with C there were major changes – I arrived practicing up to bujapidasana, unable to stand on my head, with unreliable binds in Mari D and (more to the point) I was practicing a few times a week if that. By the end of year one I had gained a lot of strength and flexibility and a 6-day a week practice, the marichyasanas proved no problem, I was more than happy standing on my head, after many months of fretting and injury (and finally a letting go) I was able to bind supta kurmasana, rock around in garbha, get my knees grounded in baddha konasana, and satisfy my teacher that I was ready to get to the end of primary. Dropbacks were added in a few weeks later, around mid December if I remember rightly, so I am still just under the year for working on those. Of course thinking about today being my shala-versary I got to wondering what has changed in my practice in the last year, and whilst the changes don’t generally come as headline news, they are probably more profound for the fact that they are more subtle. Things that have changed that would be noticeable to an outsider are that I’ve added in some fancy party tricks: lotus jumpbacks after garbha and utupluthi, getting my legs behind my head from the floor in supta kurmasana, and of course my backbends have changed since a year ago when I was just doing three little urdhva dhanurasanas (and Susan would frequently comment that she’d never seen me do backbending, and thus deduced that I was rushing through them and would come to regret it later – and how right she was!!). More subtle changes, or at least one which has come about only very recently but feels like a complete game-changer, is working on getting my chin to my knee – from my teacher encouraging me to touch the chin (not the nose!) to knee in ardha baddha padmottanasana I found a whole new hinge for forward bending, and am now able to look up towards my toes in the janu sirsasanas and Mari A. My jumpthroughs are coming along, I am now working on Mari D with both hips down, and over the past year I have – of course – been working on dropping back.

And what a fucking journey that’s been. Excuse my French, but I think it’s warranted. After the pure joy of my first solo dropback on my last day in Goa in March this year, things took a turn back when I accepted that the heaviness of my landing was seriously hurting my wrists. A month or so later I came back to assisted dropbacks, only to injure my lower back on the right side in a poorly judged attempt at dwi pada to get into supta kurmasana, and again the dropbacks went out of the window. Many months later (I lose track...and wasn’t keeping notes) after patient daily work with my teacher, I started to drop back by myself while she worked on helping me stand up. The closest I came to standing so far was to rock up a few inches off a bolster while I was practicing with the very fabulous renegade teacher at shiny yoga HQ, but in my daily work with C we just keep going, no props or tricks, just daily effort.
Then about six weeks ago when my shala fees were due to be paid, I decided to take a little holiday from YP and practice at one of the shiny centres to save some money (as I work there I get almost free classes). At the point that I finished up at YP I felt that I was this close to standing up, and maybe this wasn’t the right time to go away, but I did it just the same. And whaddyaknow, the teacher I went to did very little backbending with me (just three totally assisted down and ups, doing the work for me), I got an attack of the lazy and stopped working on it, and two weeks later when I came back to C (having skipped more days that I was away than I had practiced) my backbends had completely regressed. I felt that the opening I’d gained in my back was lost, and I was once again overwhelmed with fear at the idea of dropping by myself. So C allowed me to work on completely assisted dropbacks, and as the time went on I realised that this enabled me to work more on the standing up – because by the time I got there I wasn’t already whacked out on the terror of having dropped to the floor. After a few weeks of me just loving the assist, she took on a new tactic and started, instead of holding my waist as I dropped, to guide my hands in closer to my feet to increase the backbend. The first day she did this I immediately lifted my heels which I had never done before – a sure sign that this was one of the deepest backbends I’d ever experienced. The desire to freak-out was IMMENSE. But the next day I noticed that my heels wanted to lift, but I didn’t let them. Each day it felt more challenging, but each day when I laid down for my first backbends from the floor I felt this whole new opening – I really felt like I was bending my back which felt new...it felt like it was only my arms and legs holding me back, that if a strap was around my waist suspending me from the ceiling I could hang in a perfect tall backbend. You know, a bit like this:

(photo credit here)

So as it went, I wasn’t working on my dropbacks, but I was very definitely working on my backbends. And in a different way it was hard work, but of course the one thing I shouldn’t have done was grown comfortable with it, because yesterday Cary came to the top of my mat and said: “you want to try on your own?”

I sort of whimpered and so she caught me as I dropped, but without taking my hands in, and after the whole routine had gone the same way, I was left feeling a bit disappointed in myself that I hadn’t really worked on either thing. So with the thought that today was a bit of a special day (even if only in my head), when she asked again today, I said yes. And I landed more gently, and with more control, than I was doing before I stopped dropping back 6 weeks ago. She offered to help me on the next one, but I said I was ok, so I dropped back all three times, and afterwards told her how much better they felt. She agreed that I seemed to have a kind of “bounce” to come back up. On the final dropback she assisted me, took my hands in, I felt the openness in my back, and after five breaths she brought me back up for me to (as usual) groan and creak my way through the squish in paschimottanasana.

And why do I feel the need to report of all this asana-asana-asana? I don’t know, sometimes it feels worthy of sharing, or maybe I just want to mark the day, or to come back out of blogging hibernation (again!!), but really I just want to remind myself that the whole point of this practice is that you can’t just expect huge changes every day, or that you can always do something which challenges you straight away just because you reeeeeally want to. For me the whole point of this practice is the fact that it is every day, and that 364 days a year you might feel nothing is changing until one day – BAM! You nail the thing you’ve need working on. But where does the work come from to have the breakthrough in the first place? Yep, of course, it’s the 364 days when “nothing” happened – the almost imperceptible gains that we make, even if we feel that nothing is ever changing. If you want overnight success then maybe this isn’t the practice for you. But if you are prepared to come up against your fears, your challenges and your limitations day in, day out; come rain, shine, snow, illness, redundancy, bereavement, and any other shit that comes your way, then your mat is ready and waiting for you.

Backbending with Tim in Antwerp this August

So for today, and every day, I am grateful to all of the teachers who set me on this path and to those friends, fellow-students and teachers who keep me inspired and motivated to stay on it. Peace out.

At last

2011-10-23T20:37:00.000+01:00

"Hi,

This is your final confirmation to study with sharath at KPJAYI, we have received your online registration form and it has been accepted by us. You can come according to your dates that you have mentioned in your online form.

For now it is sure that Sharath will be teaching until 6th april 2012, so you can study with him till then.

Do bring this Confirmation print out, you will have to show this on your arrival to register in person at KPJAYI, Mysore.

If you have any clarifications, please write or call.

Thank you,
KPJAYI,
Mysore."

This, after a month of waiting and *three* emails to chase. Mysore here I come!

My grown-up gap year: the view from the halfway point

2011-10-18T14:34:00.000+01:00

I can hardly believe it’s been six months since I found myself free-floating, without employment and in desperate search of a new direction. My solution at the stage, once the panic died down and a sort of clarity emerged, was to give myself some breathing space – and this is when the idea of a “year out” emerged. As I let go of grasping, a sketchy plan emerged: to find some sort of casual work until early Spring, and then to take some time to travel before I came back to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. The idea behind it all was that the “answer” would somehow come to me, or would come along thanks to whatever connections I made during the course of the year – this sounds a little simplistic, but I still believe that finding a new direction organically rather than searching, grasping and scratching around for something, anything, is the way to go, even if there is no such thing as one definitive answer. So six months in, how’s it going?

Well clearly having all of this extra time hasn’t allowed for much blogging. As ever the intention is there, the ideas and thoughts are there, but taking the step of translating it to text and sharing it is a bridge too far. The reality is that I have spent the past few months suffering from some sort of exhausting fatigue that can’t be diagnosed as anything in particular, but means that I seem to spend my time divided between practicing, working part-time at the yoga centre reception desk, travelling across London to do either or both of the above, and sleeping (though not necessarily at night-time). I spent many weeks incapable of staying awake throughout a full day, and this coming from the girl who never ever took naps during the day apart from in cases of proper full-on illness. When I finally went to the doctor to get it checked out I told her that my issue was that I was exhausted and had been for months: she asked if I had any idea what could be causing it and my genius answer was: “well, I don’t get enough sleep...” Given that more often than not I work closing shifts at work, finishing after 10pm, taking an hour (at least) to get home, needing a short while to unwind after I come through the door, and then trying to get up around 5 the following morning to practice I suppose it’s not really surprising that I’m bloody knackered all of the time. Plus there’s the lack of routine, as my shifts vary week to week, the fact that I got into a pattern of eating very little of any nutritional value for a few months (another round of toast anyone?? Or maybe a biscuit or TEN?!) and the fact that over the summer I had all-consuming houseguests for 6 weeks out of 8, oh AND I had my car stolen. So that’s the barrage of excuses as to my blog silence..

But all of this has raised some interesting – or to me, fascinating – mental processes. I have been having regular acupuncture sessions through this whole period, ad hoc to begin with and then for the past month or so I’ve been having them weekly and started to really really get the benefit. My energy levels are rising, people are telling me I look better – brighter, I am eating properly again (is this cause or effect?), my digestion has slowed to more of a normal pace, my breath has grown deeper, my mind has calmed down. But I didn’t get here just through the acupuncture, there is a whole heap of mental processing that's been going hand in hand with it (oh, and I stopped following a vegetarian diet too, but that's another story).

Part-way through the summer I had a random thought, or fear, about one of my close family members where I imagined that I had observed a mental-health condition in them. The fear took a grip on me, I collapsed into immediate non-stop tears, I couldn’t shake the thought, the massive fear, that even if this wasn’t true now, perhaps it would be in years to come. I tried to stop thinking about it and get on with my day. As the days passed the thought came and went, it drifted in and out of my conscious awareness, but I watched every interaction with the person concerned for disproof of it and, when none came, the fear dug it’s way into the fabric of my every thought. Was this before or after my car was stolen and along with it my sense of total independence? I think it was after. I was stunned how much the theft affected me: on discovery of my missing car I was surreally calm, I called my dad and said “my car. It’s gone.” But as time passed and I was reminded that my gap-year and working part-time option meant that I wasn’t in a financial position to replace the car (thank-you insurance company for really testing my equanimity) I felt increasingly vulnerable. Add this to the fear, the huge, looming fear and all that came along with it (the inevitability of those around us ageing, growing sick and eventually leaving us behind) and I found myself walking to the station towards the shala one day a few weeks ago thinking “what’s the point?”. Not just why do I get up at stupid o’clock to practice, that old familiar refrain, but what’s the point of ANY of this?

And then the thought struck me: this is why people have full-time jobs and families and relationships, to distract them from the fears, the HUGE looming fears of the really big stuff. Take away the underlying day-to-day stress of a 9-5 job, the inner chatter involved in maintaining a relationship, and what are we left with the fill the silence? The fears. The big ones.

As luck would have it I was going for acupuncture that same day. When I walked in S told me that I looked different. Different how, I asked? “Rested: grounded” was the answer. Funny that, I said, because my head has been all over the place. Pressed, I just about managed through tears to explain my new theory of why we keep our minds busy, to distract us from the fears (without going into what I was afraid of, feeling somehow that if I say it aloud it will make it true). And through his answer, and our conversation, things started to make a little bit more sense. S said, you know how people often get sick when they go on holiday? They’re all “go go go” and as soon as they stop their bodies crash. That’s like a microcosm of what you’re doing in taking this time out – and I realise, and say to him that I feel like this year should be all chilled and calm and enjoyable, not difficult and challenging and borderline depression-filled, but who says so? Between what he says next and how I respond, I realise then that maybe this is what has to happen, I have to let the world stop spinning in seven different directions at once to listen to the quiet fears that lay buried beneath, and that’s never going to be easy – it’s going to be hard, and messy, and filled with fear and tears and pain, but the end result is that it will come out and I will be better off for it. Sort of like a noisier, longer, vipassana retreat (which I always say I'm too scared of for fear of having to sit with my own insanity for ten days and becoming irrevocably unhinged). And as S so eloquently put it, when we take the time to stop and really listen to what our minds are saying: “We’re all fucking crazy”.

Well that’s the crazy brain stuff. Not the whole six months had been filled with this, though sometimes it feels like I have turned into some kind of invalid who needs to rest and I can’t remember ever not being this way, but at least now I can start to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I have started a massage course for a few weeks, just a taster really, in Ayurvedic yoga massage and am making my travel plans for January and really enjoying working in the yoga centre. And that seems enough for now, my practice has wobbled a little in recent weeks with some days taken off to sleep, and even the odd incomplete practice where my body seemed to be made of stone, but I am starting to realise more and more that these things hardly matter. I am getting on my mat, I am breathing, I am feeling. And what more can I ask of myself than just that?

I drank the kool-aid.

2011-08-23T21:22:00.001+01:00

This week (just in case you haven't heard) Sharath is in town. After feeling non-plussed when I took 1 led class with him two years ago (as an almost complete newbie) I was torn between utter terror and major excitement in the run-up to his arrival, but three days in I am absolutely 100% loving the experience, 4.30am alarms and all. In brief, here is why:

He just walks into the room and we all stand in silence. There is no fluff, no precursor, no bullshit. Just his presence, at which silence falls, his quiet removal of his jacket with his back to us, the feeling of anticipation as he faces us and we rise and come to front of our mats, waiting to hear him say "samasthiti" at which point absolute stillness falls. It is nothing short of magical.

The feeling of being surrounded by so many dedicated ashtangis, knowing that they have travelled from far and wide for the same reason is in itself something special.

The fact that I know or recognise so many of them makes it all the more special. My twitter friends, most of whom I've met previously, but one very special person who I hadn't, are making the week even greater than the sum of its' parts. Lovely ladies from Dublin who I practiced with at Peter Sanson's workshop, colleagues from shiny yoga HQ, my regular shala-mates, familiar faces from work and previous workshops, seeing all of these people here together in one room reminds me that London is not a big and faceless or lonely place. It also reminds me how we have managed to create an incredible, supportive and loving set of connections in this big and sometimes scary world by connecting through our breath and our intentions. And a very special friend gives the most incredible pre-practice hugs.

As we all move together, following Sharath's count (sometimes longer than we would wish, sometimes not long enough) I feel the power of moving to somebody else's instruction. It doesn't feel like giving over the power, as it sometimes can, it feels like blissful surrender.

The focus in the room is incredible. It is palpable. The gentle giggles when Sharath makes one of the jokes we all know he will make soften us and reminds us not to take things too seriously.

For the people who need him, he is magically there. For those who perhaps don't, to suggest that a week of adjustment-free led practice won't teach you anything would be utterly and completely missing the point. I am yet to feel the touch of his hand on me, but as he walks past and his eyes move over my practice without pausing, my confidence in my strength grows. I am learning so much, just through each breath I take in that room, surrounded by a hundred others who are also learning untold amounts each day.

With every count, every breath, every day, my intention to go to Mysore and practice with Sharath strengthens. He reminds me why I am here, why I turn up on my mat every day. The practice goes by so quickly even if sometimes the count does not.

Each day reminds me how far I have come. Each day I feel stronger, even though I also feel more tired. I am growing through this experience. I am sharing it with my friends. I am leaving the room a different person than the one I am when I arrive. I am filled with the feeling that the world is small, and friendly, and that loving connections are everywhere you look.

I keep the faith in difficult postures where I would usually count quickly and give up: navasana, uttana padasana, sirsasana, ardha sirsasana. In utipluthi, I have a little less faith ;)

The feeling of connectedness as we take our final vinyasa to the top of the mat to recite the closing chant is markedly different than at the opening of our practice. I feel my ankles and feet bonded together, utterly grounded and still. I find my breath to chant, and as I left today I kept Sharath's pronunciation of "lokah samastha" running around my head in a loop.

As we take a brief savasana the energy in the room is electric. I feel the energy radiating around me.

This is why he is the guru. In this room, in this way, he teaches with no westernised adaptations. Maybe this isn't for everyone, but I know without question that is is for me.

I think we can pretty much say I drank the kool-aid.

Been there, done that, got the tshirt.

The teacher student relationship, dropbacks and a grown-up gap year

2011-07-27T13:03:00.000+01:00

So much time, so little inclination to write here...

Actually that's not quite true; I have the inclination, it just rarely translates to action. There is quite a lot I want to share given that since I last wrote both my life and my practice have been somewhat transformed. I was ruminating on a post about the teacher student relationship last week, which could have been a good'un if I'd got around to it, but the opening of that post was to be this:

To the casual observer of this blog (and how could you be anything else, given the scarcity of my posts?) it may seem that I swing from workshop to workshop, gathering experiences and advice and slightly varying technique wherever I go. In actual fact, although I was perhaps guilty of this in my first year of practice (because I was so convinced that I wouldn't stick with this practice that I was keen to soak up as many experiences as I could before I threw in the towel), this is something I try to avoid. Having found a number of travelling or overseas teachers I gel with, I now try to stick with them. After two weeks with Kino and Tim in Goa this year (having twice previously taken weekend workshops with Kino) I am going to see Tim again in August (and possibly September), and then I will see both of them again next year. But actually, yoga holidays aside, I strongly believe in building a relationship with one teacher. There is something so special involved in finding somebody you can work with day in day out, through injury and stiffness, through bendy days and bereavements, through personal triumphs and professional disasters; finding somebody who knows your body, knows your practice, and (it turns out) seems to know your mind is completely invaluable on this path.

I had the perfect example of this last week. After months of working on backbending (including three months recovering from an injury which prevented me working on them at all) I made a mental connection one day last week which seemed to provide the missing jigsaw piece. I was on my way to work, walking along the road and the question popped into my head "What am I waiting for?" and immediately I answered my own question: I'm waiting for the floor to be closer when I hang back. Having spent a few weeks (maybe less) dropping back to the floor without assistance in February I knew that the further the "drop", the greater the likelihood of hurting my wrists - which was what led me to stop dropping back all those months ago. But I also immediately knew that the floor isn't going to come any closer via my back: I would have to bend my knees. So there and then I made the decision, that's what I will do tomorrow. Of course "tomorrow" came, and I was knackered - I dragged my body through my practice and was tempted to quit before I even got to seated. But finding renewed energy after the Maris (it's amazing how the marichyasana through to garbha section energises you!) I reached the end of my practice, and as I stood hanging back deeply, telling myself to bend my knees, my teacher called to me from the back of the room "Mel - when you get to that point, BEND your knees."

It was the first time she had ever called out to me to encourage me to try and drop back alone: on the very day I had made all of the mental and physical connections I needed to make to do just that.

So I dropped back. Not once, but three times, with C bringing me to standing after the third. And then we did assisted hangbacks before I again dropped back alone to hold for 5 breaths, walk in, and be brought back to standing again. Afterwards I spoke to her, and told her that she seemed to have read my mind, and she told me that when you build a relationship with a student over a length of time as we have, you get to be able to read just where they are. And I totally get this.

I think this is also the reason that sometimes the day you're given new poses is the day you were going to stay in bed. It's also the reason you sometimes get new poses the very day you had accepted your practice exactly where it was.

Backbending with Tim in Goa

Anyway, so that was something I wanted to write more about, but that'll do for now. My practice is in a really interested phase now, where dropping back has ceased to be surrounded by trauma or drama, I am just doing it (I'm now 4 days in with my solo drop-backs, so I fully expect the drama to return at some point but for now I'm happy it's gone!). I also seem to be gaining so much awareness in my practice, in all kinds of different areas. And of course that is the point of this whole endeavour, it's not the physical "achievement" of any given asana, but the way in which we approach it, and deal with the fear or discomfort or drama that is the real yoga. So I'm happy that I'm doing some good work at the moment. C and I discussed the approaches yesterday, and she said that for some people they jump into the dark first, and work out the details later, whereas I have worked it all out along the way. So in terms of backbending, when I first began I remember not doing anything - I just allowed myself to be moved in certain ways to do the assisted dropbacks, without finding any of the action in my own strength or engagement (it all just came from natural flexibility). For me the fear came quite a lot later, after I had connected with and opened my back and it started to seem like I should try and drop back on my own. But other phases I needed to go through included "finding" my legs in assisted dropbacks, then REALLY finding them in urdhva danurasana - using a block between my feet to stop them turning out has been utterly invaluable for this, and I credit Claire Missingham for doing this with me in a vinyasa class and making me realise why I was being told everyday "heels out Mel!". On an intellectual level I needed to get to the point of realising that when I released the fear and dropped to the floor I would actually be doing less work. And one day a few weeks ago laziness crept in, and I started to think that the sooner I could do it the better for that reason alone. So now I'm doing it, but trying to control it is difficult, and I said to C that I feel the same way as I did in the initial days of assisted dbs, that I am just "doing" but still need to find what exactly it is that I'm doing. But yesterday she uttered the immortal words "I'm proud of you" and today she told me that each one just gets better, so hopefully day by day I am finding a tiny degree more control. It's all a process.

Off the mat, life is pretty sweet at the moment too.Considering the state I was in back at the beginning of this year, I can scarcely believe how well things turned out. So in April I found myself out of work, and after a couple of months being a lady of leisure (month one: pure bliss! month two: pure boredom and loneliness) a combination of intriguing twists of fate brought me a part-time job working on reception in the largest yoga centre in London. I KNOW!!! It was pretty tough to begin with as there is a huge amount to learn, and being in the front-line as it were you need to be quick, friendly and extremely knowledgeable. I'm now a month and a bit in from my training, and as a general rule, I am absolutely loving it. On Saturday (the hours are pretty anti-social too...) when the next person arrived to relieve me from my shift I had that feeling of "owww, do I really have to go?" - how lucky am I??! The obvious drawback is that working shifts is tough (especially sometimes getting home from work at 11pm and getting up at 5ish to practice the next day - and next month I have a few 5.30am shifts, which mean leaving home at 4.30!), and there are a few challenging dynamics to work through, not to mention the financial aspect of doing a job like this, but the benefits completely outweigh them. And as I'm working only twenty hours a week, I have all this time to just do as I please...I have read so many books, been a lot more social than normal, visited my family, not to mention the extra yoga classes and treatments I can take advantage of at my place of work (half the time I'm there even when I'm not working!). The obvious answer of course would be to switch my mysore practice there as well (which would be far more cost effective) but aside from the fact that I'd have to travel twice as far to practice each day, how could I throw out the relationship I just wrote a whole post about?

So things are working out pretty well. I'm thrilled that my belief that "something would come up" seems to be working so far, and my loose plan at the moment is to take a whole year out from my previous 9-5 existence, and see where it takes me by April next year. But I have to say, given that I am sitting at home with a coffee writing this post before heading off for afternoon tea and cakes with my fellow new-trainee colleagues, and then possibly taking a class with a highly popular and slightly swoon-worthy teacher this evening: life is pretty sweet.

Peter Sanson in Dublin - part 2. Time to lighten up!

2011-06-14T10:41:00.000+01:00

This post continues from part one which you can find here.

Evening practice is all well and good, but the problem usually comes getting up and practicing again the next day. I was a little stiff, and given that I was in the 9.30am slot I decided to get up early enough to eat a little something before I headed to the shala (as it turned out, this was a good move and didn’t adversely affect my practice at all). Eating at 7am to practice at 9.30, (assuming you have healthy digestion ;) seemed to be A-OK (and for me, better than eating nothing at all until I finished practice after 11.30). I had a bit of a logistical issue on Saturday morning as I was due to meet my lovely friend afterwards, but without wanting to traipse all round Dublin carrying my mat and a bag full of wet clothes I decided to trek back to the B&B, then back down into town again. Incidentally, if anyone is planning to visit Ashtanga Yoga Dublin at any stage, the accommodation they recommend on their website isn’t on their doorstep as I had assumed, it’s actually a bus-ride away (or as I discovered soon enough, a 20 minute walk) and the shala itself is in Blackrock, half an hour out of the city. I was then a bit thrown when during my practice, David announced that Peter would be giving a talk at 12.30, causing me a little internal battle about meeting my friend (who was coming aaaaall the way from Belfast just to see me) as I’d have to let her know I’d be rather later than planned. But of course she understood, given that I was in Dublin in the first place for the yogas.

Having given a more detailed practice report in part one, rather than write a super-long blow by blow account of the four practices, I’d like to try and get across some of the experience of practicing with Peter. Of course, this is something you will have to experience for yourself, but if I can in any way pass on the feeling I was left with after studying with him, I hope to inspire others to seek him out (believe me: you SHOULD!).

So the practice was strong, unBELIEVABLY sweaty (more steamy ashtangis) and we were moved around quite a bit to accommodate the number of people coming and going – I think the maximum practicing over the weekend was just under 50, and the room holds half that, so we had the “One more!” system going on with people waiting out in the hall. The early group (not me, boo...I missed the chanting) were mostly practicing well into second series, and those coming latest were seemingly mostly new practitioners, but the vast majority of other practitioners were either doing full primary (or a bit less, or a bit more) with many Mari D and Supta K assists needed. In a situation like that it’s hard sometimes not to feel a sense of grasping; firstly, that you don’t want the practice, or the weekend to end. With a teacher as inspiring as Peter, who just happens to live on the other side of the world, there’s a feeling of regret that he could never be my regular teacher, coupled with wanting to get the absolute MOST out of the days I had with him (especially given the fact that I had travelled, and made financial sacrifices to be there). And that grasping might lead to the wish for more help, which in turn made me appreciate that although yes, I am working on backbending (and clearly need help and inspiration there), I don’t feel “stuck” anywhere in my practice, and I suppose the only way that I could hope for a complete transformation is if that were the case, and Peter could somehow unstick me. But having gone from beginner, to less-of-a-beginner, I started to realise when I was in Thailand that the learning does platea compared to at the beginning – but that doesn’t mean that you can’t take huge inspiration from a workshop. And when it came to backbending on Saturday, I stood up to start my hangbacks to warm the back, but as part of my faffing I had taken my hair down ready to tie it up again (for anyone who’s never practiced with me, my look at this stage was sweaty-birdsnest) when Peter appeared. I tried to explain that I usually do some work on my own before assisted dropbacks (I didn’t dare try and fix my hair too!!) which he misunderstood, and thought that I meant I was going to dropback on my own, so then we just went straight to assisted. And having had an injury however long ago that I’ve been working at the edge of for months, these were the most pain-free backbends EVER. Not a bad start thank you Mr Sanson.

So after practice, I dashed back to the B&B, dropped off my wet things, picked up my handbag and camera, and then had enough time to walk back to the shala ready for the talk. There was also a talk on the Sunday, and the two days have merged into one a little, so I’ll try and just share some of the essence of what was said.

Essentially it came down to this: this practice is comprised of breath, bandha and drishte (exactly like I said in my last post - ha! Go me!!). Through our practice we are reconnecting circuits and moving the energy around the body – in different ways in each asana – to release and clear the nadis. He defined drishte as looking without tension in the direction of the flow of energy. When Peter first studied with Guruji, he spent many months being taught first the sun salutations, and then the fundamental asana, but he was never shown the next asana until Guruji was satisfied that he had completely mastered the combination of breath, bandha and drishte. He was practicing upstairs in the old shala with one Indian lady while the senior students practiced downstairs, and for many weeks he was taught only surya namaskar, and he was told to repeat it over and over. He joked that somebody asked him recently if they should do 5 As and 5Bs or 5 and 3 – “I got up to 24 of each! I told him, you do 14, this is easy! With no books to check, or websites to look up, he had no idea what was coming next, and just humbly practiced according to what he was told each day. Then as the monsoon came and all of the other westerners left, Peter was moved downstairs to practice with the Indian practitioners, most of whom were therapy cases. He talked about how different the energy was with the Indians compared to the westerners, how clear it was that this was a devotional practice for them, like a puja (but also how when Guruji left the room to make coffee they would all chat, skip poses and generally play up!!). He also talked about some incredible therapy cases which seemed sort of unbelievable (we’re talking: the medical world has given up on someone, they’re wheelchair bound, and in the end they’re doing second series. Huh??) but I understood that if you were there, and saw these things with your own eyes, you would never have any reason to doubt this system, or this Guru.

This was the basis of Peter’s main message: 90% of westerners do too much. We get ahead of ourselves and we focus on the external practice, and in turn we withdraw our attention from what’s going on inside. By practicing mindfully, being completely in the moment, movement to movement, we can bring our focus back to the breath and observe where there is resistance – but this is mostly in our mindset. He talked a lot about finding the appropriate level or amount to do in your practice on any given day – rather than just showing up on your mat and doing the same thing every day, to learn over time to read your energy (which will be affected by the moon, your personal circumstances and health, and many other factors) and to develop a healthy relationship with the practice in this way. He talked about how he finds the practice gives him energy when he approaches it in this way (“every day I surprise myself on the mat; first I do surya namaskar A and then see how I feel, and then maybe I do B... “) and he can then do his work, look after his family, because he has been energised through his practice rather than exhausted by it – it should complement our everyday life, not compromise it. He explained that the main way we can practice in this way (as well as reading our energy) is through using the internal action of the bandhas – if we engage the bandhas throughout the practice we should be able to hold each posture for an infinite number of breaths, whereas if we try to do the same using the muscles of the body we will quickly becoming exhausted. (Reading this paragraph back I realised I have said “in this way” many times, but this is one of the things Peter says a lot: “and in this way, we practice the yoga” so it seemed appropriate to leave it in!)

This all makes sense in the context that Peter was taught; one on one with Guruji over many many years (21 years to be precise – though of course the numbers will have grown in later years). He said that Guruji was able to tell when he was exhausted, and he would just tell him to finish – and there was no arguing with him! He said that it took him many years to be able to discern for himself in the same way when he should finish his practice, and now (clearly) he is able to do the same for others – hence the fact that he stops people as much as he does. And I really appreciate how good this is for us, it’s just that unfortunately for most people I’m guessing it’s not going to happen very often. If a teacher is looking after 20 or 30 people in a mysore environment, they are not able to watch everyone closely enough to understand and know when their energy is gone. And from my own point of view, my biggest challenge is finding a balance between understanding that today I should do less, and just being lazy and backing off something I don’t want to do (i.e. backbends!). From what Peter was saying, it seems to be a skill acquired over a very long period of time to be able to authentically understand your own energy in this way, or perhaps you are very lucky and have a teacher who can do this for you. I did ask a question about this, but of course, questions asked to yoga teachers are never answered in a particularly specific way, so I am left to ponder this and work it out for myself.

In conference on the Sunday, Peter said that he could really see the difference in the practitioners who had been there on Saturday; and I really felt it too. Practice was strong, uber-hot (again) and focussed and I felt over these few days that I really came to find and engage uddiyana bandha. I think this is something which was just the right timing for me to find, and I am incredibly grateful that I was able to meet Peter at this stage where I have started to gain access to the deeper levels of the practice. Backbending on the second day (yes, I’m obsessed...) was utterly fuss-free. I’d been moved to the front row, and was beside someone doing a good chunk of second series who happened to reach back bending at the same time as I did. When we were both lying on our mats preparing for UD he came and stood over us. “That was so much better today you two, so much better. Now, you come up?” the girl beside me said yes, I laughed. He said he’d help me. So I pushed up into urdhva dhanurasana, and before I had much time to fuss, he’d stood me up.

I have to say, however I feel about dropping back, I ABSOLUTELY *LOVE* this!! Somehow being stood up from a backbend on the floor for some reason just feels like the most fun thing ever – and in that moment I realised that one day, if I really work at it, I may be able to do that by myself, and that this might be the carrot in working on my backbending (as opposed to the stick I use most days). And we went straight from the standing up to assisted hangbacks, and lastly one assisted dropback and stand-up, all of which was over in double-quick time. So Saturday was the most pain-free, Sunday was the most fuss-free....not bad so far.

After another wonderful talk on the Sunday I was feeling a bit lost. Not only was there just one Mysore practice left (and no talk), I had no plans for the day and the weather had turned grey and cold. I meandered around a bit, bought some lunch and walked back to my B&B with no plan as to what I was going to do next. I ate lunch in my room and then tried to pull myself out of the slump I had gone into, but all I really wanted to do was lie on my bed and cry. It’s funny, when I came back people asked me how my weekend was, and I was torn between saying it was AMAZING (because the practice and teaching really was) and being a bit more honest; it was kind of hard. Don’t get me wrong, I am usually very good at enjoying my own company, but somehow this weekend away was a bit rough on me. I don’t know if it was because it came at the end of a long period of time that I’ve spent largely by myself, feeling more and more isolated, or if it was partly to do with the practice bringing things up due to its intensity. I was attuned to do Reiki a few months ago, and I’ve started to notice that if I treat myself, especially around the hips, I can feel things moving – I did this before going to the Friday evening practice and it spun me out quite a lot, and this seems to be happening quite a lot recently. So I can only hope that this is a period of adjustment, that I am processing some of my “stuff” and that this too shall pass. But still, I found myself in Dublin (well, half an hour from Dublin..), cold and a bit sad and no idea of where to go or what to do. But I realised that I could either stay there until morning, or I could do something to try and shift my mood. So after attempting to do some research on my blackberry (which is totally shite for browsing the internet) I decided to go to the cinema, though I had no idea where in the city to local bus stopped, but I figured I could at least try. And off I went, feeling slightly better for having taken decisive action, and before I knew it I was in the centre of town. Jumping off at what I thought might be the right stop, I spun around and realised that I had stopped EXACTLY outside the cinema I was hoping to find. And the film started in 15 minutes.

And what does an ashtangi in the midst of a deeply intensive and inward-focussed weekend of practice go to see? Well, if she’s smart, The Hangover 2. It was so much fun!! And it was (of course), exactly what I needed – a bit of lightness to pull me out of myself and remind me that I shouldn’t take myself too seriously. A few hours later, feeling fabulous I tripped out of the cinema to find that the miserable weather had been replaced with beautiful evening sunshine, and I realised that even in a very small way, the Universe really is looking out for me.

Peter Sanson in Dublin

2011-06-13T13:29:00.001+01:00

Sometimes in life we get that call, the pull, of something we just have to do. At this stage in my life I am answering all of those calls, and going with whatever my instinct tells me. And sometimes this means think outside of the box a little.

On this occasion, that meant that (with a little help from ebay):

An anglo-concertina, bought when I was 15 and living in my parents loft for the past however-many years, plus:

Cherry red DM boots (also bought at about age 15, even though they weren't really my style, and languishing in my parents' loft ever since), plus:

Two tickets to see Take That, bought on a whim

Equalled this:

Dublin Bay. Specifically, four days of practice with Peter Sanson, who I was so bowled over by when I met him in May. After one practice with him I just knew that I had to find a way to practice with him again, so I got onto ebay, converted some of my belongings into cash, and booked my space. It’s been a week now since I was there, and having processed it I’m ready to share what I learned – with a little help from the notes I took while I was away.

Being in the first timeslot for the Friday evening practice meant that my Surya As and my first few Bs were accompanied by Peter chanting, and I never wanted it to end; his strong, resonant voice filled the room as we all began to practice. I think he explained in London that he chants the ashtanga yoga mantras he was taught by Guruji before he learned any asana, and takes about 15-20 minutes to complete (anyone know what this might be?). Nothing makes you slow your breathing and make every movement so deliberate as the sound of a strong and resonant voice chanting in Sanskrit, but I realised that it would have to end, and that that would be OK too. And when it did end, he told us to come to samasthiti when we finished our next salutation and we chanted the opening mantra together. Unlike often when you visit a teacher and the mantra is different this was just perfect to me, and I was surprised by the amount of sound produced. And for the first hour there were just 12 of us practicing with a certified teacher, and I knew I had made the right decision to come here.

Peter spent much of the first part of the practice with an older man who was breathing like a horse and clearly struggling, and next to him was teacher R (who had flown over to take part and assist for the weekend) and I tried hard not to be distracted by seeing the first teacher I connected with in London practice alongside me. As when I practiced with him in London, Peter teaches quite verbally and with a unique style, walking around the room referring to practitioners as Swami (“up, swami!”), making sure nobody skips over anything they are having trouble with “Ohh – trouble you two. You wait me”, all with the strange (but quite wonderful) mixture of Indian-inflexion and a strong Kiwi accent. After I dropped my leg in UHP he called to me to wait, then sent David (the owner of the shala) over, and despite being a head shorter than me the assist was strong and fantastic. Standing in front of me as I held my leg out for the final 5 breaths Peter reminded me to engage udiayana bandha to lift the leg and I really felt it.

Parsvotonasana was assisted too, Peter lifted my hips, telling me to engage mula bandha and I fiddled with the sensations trying to find it until he said “There! That’s it!” leaving me wondering how on earth he knew? The room started to fill up and was unbelievably hot, and as the number of practitioners grew we were packed in more and more tightly. Every inch of floor was either covered in a mat or soaking wet, every inch of my clothing was drenched. For the first time ever in a Mysore room I saw steam rising from the bare torso of the man in front of me and later, more disturbingly, saw it rise from my own body. I was assisted again in supta kurmasana – he called to me to wait for him when I was already in dwi pada to exit, and (this was a first!) I had to reverse it, go back down to the floor, undo the hands and go back to kurmasana. Reverse vinyasa! “Let’s take a look at this...I see what’s happening, this calf is trapped,” he says, rolling my left calf out and popping it behind my head. The extra treat is to be supported through bakasana and the jump-back to exit which is of course way less difficult than attempting it by myself!

I heard others being stopped at supta padangustasana and although I had come fully prepared to be stopped, having seen that he often stops people ealier than their normal practice would end, I went into ego-mode of “why should I get stopped?” whilst simultaneously trying to rush past supta pad to make sure I got past it undisturbed – bad lady! But after I finished the asana I heard “You wait me!” and he came over to do it again with me, and I got the same treatment I’d heard others getting. “Engage uddiyana, lift RIGHT up – don’t use your flexibility to come up” – as in, whole body off the floor if that’s the only way you can touch the head to the leg (needless to say, this is way more feasible when you have a person leaning on your straight leg than when attempting it alone). Then he got me to really relax the straight leg and to breathe super-slowly (“free breathing”) before telling me it was a great start, and we do more tomorrow, but backbending now. Which let me off the hook for dropping back (though I saw others doing assisted dropbacks who didn’t do full primary) but gave me more scope to spend time on urdhva dhanurasana without worrying about overdoing it. On my fifth or sixth one (he kept calling out to people to ask how many they’d done – in Peter’s room, it’s 3 minimum, but 5 or 6 is better) he came over and told me to take my hands slightly wider, but that it was good – and I felt like maybe my errant left foot was straight? Somehow it felt different, and much better, and I had the unwelcome realisation that doing MORE backbends is better than doing less.

I moved to the back of the packed-out room for closing and took it super-slow, ending with a looong savasana. But finding that my breath was catching in my throat (as it had been all practice) I took my hands to my throat to do some Reiki, and to my chest and stomach. Twenty minutes later I emerged, went to get changed and then stumbled out of the shala, making my way just around the corner to sit overlooking Dublin Bay whilst I ate an apple. And I can only describe the way I was feeling as totally trippy...it took me another 20 minutes just to eat the apple, slowing down every movement, feeling every sensation, and it almost felt like my head was about to blow apart - the sensation of mindful eating was so intense. In fact, it was exactly how I felt after I practiced with Peter in May, and I have no other way to describe it than it must be his energy in the room when he teaches which causes this feeling. Weird, but very very wonderful. Eventually I peeled myself off the bench and walked out to the main road to wait for the bus back to my B&B (another 20 minutes...there seemed to be a pattern emerging), getting back there a little before 10pm to get ready for bed, and more powerful practices in the morning.

Part two coming soon - no, really it is!

What are you looking at?

2011-05-29T15:56:00.000+01:00

When we first learn ashtanga, one of the things we are told is that this practice can be boiled down to these things: breath, bandhas and drishti.

The breathing can be difficult for some people to master at first. To find the strength of ujjayi breathing without forcing it; to always move with the breath. I was taught well as a beginner, so this was one of the foundations of my practice. Still, there are days when my breath is ragged, or it catches in my throat, or I feel myself having to "stop" and take a deep breath into my belly, but generally speaking I think I can say: breath? Tick.

Bandhas are a trickier one. I was told in my first weeks of practice that it takes seven years to learn to use them. Hurrah! I thought, that's me off the hook, I don't have to try! But of course that's not the case, we are supposed to diligently try try and try until one day this will start to make sense. It hasn't come as a lightbulb moment for me, or rather I should say not one lightbulb moment, but a sequence of them, but over maybe the past few months, two years into my ashtanga journey, I have started to find that activation , and to feel the effect it has on various places in my practice. The funny thing is that it seems to appear of it's own volition as I stand in tadasana preparing to take my hands into prayer and begin the chant. And sometimes it just doesn't appear, and that's OK too, but on the days when it floats in during tadasana, I know I can rely on it to be present in a patchy way at least throughout my practice. Anything where the pelvis is open it feels incredibly hard to engage, I suppose this is where it will be easier once I can learn to keep it engaged throughout, rather than having to remember once I am in the asana, and trying to find it again. But it's coming.

Drishti is an interesting one, because at first I thought it was simple - just look where you're told to look. In most asanas (with a few exceptions) remembering the drishti was a bigger challenge at first than actually doing it. But maintaining drishti actually within each asana is one thing (look at your hand, tip of the nose, over your shoulder - how hard can it be?), but what about through the vinyasas? And in surya namaskar A and B? When shalamate SY taught our led class shortly before Cary came back from maternity leave (and I should point out, it was the first time she'd ever done such a thing and she did a GREAT job!), before we began she spoke briefly about drishti. She talked about using nasagrai drishti in upward dog, and focussing on the moments of awareness where we are fully present in the moment, and asking us to notice those moments so that in time they could be expanded throughout the practice (I'm paraphrasing and probably getting that completely wrong). But her reminder helped me, in that it made me aware that I was already very diligent in keeping my focus on the tip of my nose as I came into upward dog. Gold star for Mel! But I said to her afterwards that for me, the point where it all goes hazy is going into downward dog. For me, my practice begins like this:

Ekam: Raise the arms overhead, look to the thumbs.

Dve: Fold forward on the exhale into standing forward bend.

Trini: raise the head, looking at the tip of the nose

Catvari: jump back into chaturanga, looking - slightly ahead? Never sure if that's correct

Panaca: up into upward dog, drishti fixed very firmly on the tip of the nose

Sat: ahhhh....this is where it all falls apart. For some reason, rolling over the toes and back into downward dog, my drishti goes a bit swimmy, I lose the focus, and as I go back into downdog with it's uncertain gaze-point I frequently take the opportunity (completely unconsciously, most of the time) to see who just came in the room, to glance at the clock, to see who the assistant is today.

In other words, a total drishti violation! Somebody call the ashtanga police!

Swimmy drishti...not that you can see it in the clip.

A few suryas from my trip to Yoga Thailand last October (that's me in the purple) with Clayton Horton. Vanity requires that I say I think my practice has changed a lot since then ;)

So one day this week, it occurred to me to try and hold nasagrai drishti from upward dog, right through the transition into downdog and see if I could manage it. I'll admit, the first few times I tried it, I felt literally sea-sick and thought "oh well, at least I tried." But then I carried on, and held the drishti through every surya, through every vinyasa, and found that the swimmy feeling was gone, as was the queasy feeling from my first few attempts. So the next day I did it again, and I managed to maintain my drishti through surya namaskar A and B (actually, B is a little trickier what with all of that lungey business, but I did my best), as well as through every vinyasa, and the results of this minor alteration to my practice have been quite incredible.

For starters, I realised just how much I glance around during my practice. Those who practice with me can vouch that I am not one of those people who constantly stops and looks round the room (right Susan?) but it's true I am generally aware of who's there. who got new poses, who fell on their head, who broke the rules...and this level of assessment and judgement of the room affects my practice, and it something I am working on getting over (or I WANT to work on it, but can't seem to figure out how); after all, yoga helps us to become more self-aware, meaning that we don't necessarily stop doing things that are wrong - it just means we notice them more! Keeping that firm focus through the sun salutations leads to a practice which is 100% more focussed than in the past - if not more so. The impact is nothing short of phenomenal.

I've also been surprised to realise that I haven't been keeping the vinyasa to one breath per movement until now. Somehow my transition back into downdog stretches out over a number of breaths, even in a vinyasa where I should inhale to up dog, exhale downward dog, inhale jump forward, this has been s-t-r-u-n-g out as I fiddle and faff with my feet, or kick my rumpled up towel flat, or - I don't even know how or why, but it's just something I noticed as I learned to maintain the drishti. And having becoming aware of it, I am now doing my best to maintain the rhythm of breath with movement.

An added fringe benefit which I'll admit surprises me is that it seems to be helping my jumping forwards. I am working on this as Kino teaches it, to jump as far through the hands as you can with legs crossed, then instead of giving up, sitting down or planting the feet, to keep your bum lifted off the mat whilst wriggling until the feet go right through to straight legs. Having accidentally engaged my bandhas before jumping forward the other week I felt like I'd found the magic key to get the feet further through the hands (i know, I know; I've read it/been told it a thousand times, but I had to experience it for myself to understand it) but when you add the drishti? Somehow it helps even more! I don't fully understand why, but there is no doubt in my mind that it does, and my feet are now landing further through my hands than ever before, and I'm actually getting one foot right through on the initial jump a few times each day.

So every day it becomes ever more clear to me how these three things work together: breath, bandhas and drishti.

The challenge comes for me when I get to surya B which I have some issues with that my teacher keeps picking up on (and hence my mind starts to wander too when I get here) but I could happily do surya A all day and all night with perfect drishti and disappear into some some of sense-withdrawal wormhole. And then of course after an ease-to-maintain-focus padangustasana comes trikonasana and all that follows which seem to allow for a bit of looking where you are going, realigning the hips and feet, checking who your mat neighbour is and general loss of focus, so I suppose this is where my work will be next: how to maintain drishti and focus during the transitions between asana until eventually, maybe, I can maintain focus throughout my practice and not be so concerned about what is going on around me. And there was me thinking I had to actively work on not being so judgemental and scattered in my attention, when in actual fact all I had to do was come back to those three things: breath, bandhas and drishti.

The life and works of daydreamingmel

2011-05-23T16:11:00.000+01:00

Once upon a time (not a million years ago) I worked in an office, and my days looked like this:

My very grey office of old.

Although working in fashion is supposed to be exciting, I was horribly bored a lot of the time. I wasn't being stretched, the work wasn't very fulfilling, and it was only liking my colleagues (and the lack of a suitable alternative) that kept me there for almost three years.

Then one day I found the perfect* job at a shiny happy company. I worked from home, and my new office looked like this:

*Note to self: there is no such thing as the perfect job: idolising anything without having tried it first is a BAD THING. But if you've been reading for a while, you'll already know this. Anyway, back to the story. My office looked like this...

My home office, it wasn't usually this tidy though!

Or some mornings THIS was my office:

A patch of sunshine in my favourite cafe

Or actually more like this:

Sunny Kensington High Street

The best time of day - a Winter sunset

Easily one of my favourite buildings in London

After years as a battery hen, I was free-range! I saw so many beautiful autumnal sunsets, I spent a night in Brighton and dropped in to a shala there, I fell in love with bits of London I'd never been to before, I learned not to be quite so terrified by driving my car as I watched the great British countryside roll by....

But it wasn't enough.

And at the end of March I found myself out of work (I've written a LOT more about this in earlier posts in case you want the full story...), having come to the realisation that I wanted something different out of my work. And now, at almost the end of May, I am even more free-range than ever before. Put simply, I haven't earned any money in a while. But a few interesting things have been happening.

The first is that I did NOT have a freakout. Of course, I had moments of "ohmygodwhatamigoingtodo??", it's only natural to have a few of those. But what didn't happen was a total panicked meltdown. I just had faith that something would come up. This was massively helped by the phonecall I got just hours after the meeting which terminated my contract, asking me to work on a freelance sales basis for a small childrenswear brand my friend used to work for. This took a while to set up, and whilst I am officially doing it now, it's a bit of an in-between time in terms of selling, so there's not a huge amount I can do. And as I work on a commission-only basis, there's nobody calling and demanding to know how many customers I saw this week (good job too, as the answer is: not that many!). But knowing that I at least had the prospect of something only hours after losing my job definitely helped me to keep the faith.

The most interesting thing I have found is that the open-minded approach I found in Goa (where I started to believe that if I wanted to, I really could do ANYTHING - and there's no such thing as a bad idea) has stayed with me. I have come up with some pretty mad-cap ideas (even by my standards) but I have allowed these ideas to flow without judgement, and I have understood that each of these ideas or thoughts is part of a larger process. Take this as an example: one day I heard a rumour that the lease was about to expire on our shala. After the initial panic that it was about to close down, my brain went into a total mad spin where I decided that I could take it on (I told you it was mad!) and I started to make a plan to try and find out the full story. Meanwhile, I decided that if I was going to try such a thing, I really should get some experience and offer to take on some of the volunteer shifts at the shala in exchange for classes. Meanwhile, I found out that the lease story was completely untrue, and was just told to somebody who was complaining about something with regards to the shala and was told it to keep them from moaning (but then they started talking to other people about it). It was just a red herring! But instead of being disappointed I decided to press on with my plan to volunteer, but to do it at a different yoga centre instead which offered more classes (and which I go to from time to time and fork out for said other classes - kirtan, namely!). And what should happen the very day I plan to seek out the contact details to send in my CV? The yoga centre in question advertises for new front of house staff, and I decide that I may as well apply to earn actual money instead of just free classes.

And guess what happened? Yep, I start in 2 weeks time. AND it fits in well with the kidswear sales job, which seems to be evolving into something of a (cough,cough - unpaid - for now at least) consultancy role, which is like the job I had for 5 years and LOVED (before the grey days of the fashion office) and is really getting my creative juices flowing. So my days unfold like this: I get up for practice, a little later than I would if I had to be somewhere, then I either head home afterwards for breakfast and chill out for the day, or I go and see some customers or potential customers after breakfast in my favourite cafe, before coming home to do some baking, sewing, blog-reading or - well, whatever I fancy doing really (which generally involves anything except cleaning the flat or writing this blog). It's a tough life :)

Another way that I'm following my gut (though maybe it's crazy) is that next weekend I am heading off to Dublin to practice with Peter Sanson who I met in London last month. When I met him I just had the strongest feeling that I HAD to go, so I put some things on ebay and bit the bullet and booked it. I'm not saying that I think my life will change as a consequence of going to Ireland, but I just had an strong feeling (stronger than just that I want to go!) that I should go, so I'm going. After all, my instincts seem to be pretty trustworthy at the moment.

I am also putting this into perspective. Two months without (much) work seems like an awfully long time on the one hand, but on the other hand it is an absolute luxury, and in years to come I'm sure I will look back on this time with great fondness and gratitude that it happened at all. And whilst I am still having the occasional moment where I wonder how I'm going to pay my car tax or my credit card bill, I have to just keep having faith that these things will work themselves out. Because afterall without faith, what have we got?

MIA and total inspiration.

2011-05-02T17:47:00.004+01:00

I know, I know...the bujapidasana bootcamp post I promised never came. And yes, I have pages of notes from my 2 weeks with tim & Kino (which when I read I think "wow! I'm so glad I wrote that down as I don't remember hearing it!"). And yes, my last post was all "woe is me I've got an in injury and feel like crap" but that feeling lasted half a day and lately I've been feeling pretty fabulous about my practice & life in general. But I have to just bash out an off-the-cuff as-it-happened post right now.

Bujapidasana bootcamp teaser...

Being a bank holiday weekend, and our teacher not really back from maternity leave, our shala was closed today, so several of my shala-mates were suggesting different options of where to practice (having a lie-in NOT being an option, especially as tomorrow is the moon day here). Although we are about to lose one of our 2 certified teachers in London and I've yet to visit the one who is leaving, I didn't feel a strong draw to go and try her out. Several reasons really; firstly I feel like I have had a LOT of different teachers lately. Tim and Kino, both fabulous, but both different to each-other, and to my normal teacher, then coming back to London we had two teachers covering C's maternity leave. The first I liked on a personal level but didn't click with the teaching at ALL, the second was returning having taught us all last summer and I lovelovelove. But with another few weeks until C returns fully we have a fabulous shalamate covering the next few weeks, and I already feel like I am entering the flip-out zone of needing to stick with people I know (the shalamate currently assists and is fabulous, so this isn't an issue). But going just for one day to visit yet another different teacher? Nah. Overkill says my brain.

Plus, I seem to have entered a new zone of practice. I don't know if this is because the lower back pain has temporarily suspended my work on dropbacks (I'm just seeing how I feel each day, but generally if I feel it in urdhva dhanurasana, then no dropping back that day), or if it's to do with having now been doing full primary for 5 months or so. But I have gone into this inward focused, deeeeep and amazing version of practice. On any given day I may become completely obsessed with my TOES. Imagine an alien (or a baby maybe) discovering toes for the first time - I notice them as I roll over them, I feel this amazing connection, I put the energy there and just trip out on it. Another day it was keeping my legs engaged and lifted in every posture, especially in upward dog and maintaining the lift in my thighs, and discovering the difference it made to jumping forward. Another day (actually, every day to an extent) it was finding the lift in mula bandha, realising that forward bends come from there and not the hamstrings at all. Point is, I feel like I am surrounded with AHA! moments and profound realisations of the connections my body is making with itself, with the mat, with my mind...and going deeper and deeper inwards, realising (most importantly) that whether or not I drop back, move on, or whatever it is matters not one bit. I have my whole life for this.

So it was with this in mind that I decided to go instead to my lovely former evening teacher R on my travelling ashtangi day - not a new teacher,I reasoned, and I love to get back to her if ever I can. Then yesterday I remembered that she was hosting a workshop which I had originally been incredibly excited about; Peter Sanson, an old-school certified teacher from New Zealand was going to be teaching 4 days of mysore practice in a very low-key venue over the long weekend. I had whooped with excitement when I heard he was coming, having heard amazing things about him from my Yoga Thailand roomie, but as the time grew closer (and my employment status being what it is - ie I still don't have a job) plus this clashing with C's planned return from maternity leave, I "sensibly" opted not to book a place. Fast forward to yesterday, and lovely friend J encouraged me to text the teacher and ask if she was teaching in the evening as usual. The reply came straight back: no, but there's space on the workshop if you want to come. So what could I say but yes please and I'll see you there?! She asked me to come at 10am, so even better, I got to sleep in, take a salt bath and do some bed-hanging before I set off across London.

So after a restful and relaxed start, I arrived, changed and walked into a very full room, hesitating as to where to lay my mat. As both Peter and R were busy I found a corner to tuck my bag in only to realise that the person I'd put it in front of was an old friend who I met in India last January! She flashed me a big smile, I blew her a kiss, and walked back to find somewhere to practice. Peter walked towards me, took my mat from me, loudly said to a guy in the front row "Swami! You move!" then sort of gave the girl to his right a little kick to get her to move over and unrolled my mat for me - the wrong way up. I was at this point more than a little daunted, I have to say. But there was my spot, right up front, so I got going. Feeling rather shaky I decided not to chant aloud (I always do, no matter what else is going on in the room) but stood with my hands in prayer so thrown that I couldn't even remember the chant. But the anxiety dissipated quickly enough. Peter commanded the room verbally, but not in a distracting way at all. No, it was in a way that made me feel that even if I received not one adjustment, a combination of his energy, the group energy, and the things he said would have led to a transformational practice. "Breathing, no straining; breathing" he said in his thick kiwi accent, tinged with the Indian lilt of one who has spent many many years in Mysore. "Swami, you wait for me", "See, it's easy, you make it so complicated, everybody does!" to the lady doing kapotasana, "oh so good - good! He is too good, no?" with the unaffected indian twang to R and then back to walking around the room, saying seemingly to us all "breathing, breathing, don't lose the connection with the breath, no straining". Meanwhile I was working my way through my surya namaskar with a huge smile on my face, trying not to allow the thought of "why didn't I do the whole weekend? this is amazing!" to take over my thoughts.

There was something seriously magical happening in that room that it isn't going to be possible to conjure up in words.

I can't remember where I was up to in my practice when he stood in front of me and just put his hand and my back and made some sort of affirmative comment, then the same thing again a little later. I love this, it's a bit like being patted on the head (a la Tim Feldman) but it tells you that they are here, and somehow from the right teacher even that small gesture of laying on hands does something for you. I got the beginning of my first adjustment in UHP, but he asked R to come and take over as he looked after a conveyer-belt of Marichyasana bindings, funnily enough he bossed her about in a forceful way "Here! this one! Now!" but the energy certainly wasn't bossy, or strict, it was just...oh I don't know, amaaaazing. This is probably getting a little tired, me just raving about him but unable to tell you why...

Anyhoo, having been asked to come and start at 10am when the start-time was 9, while I was still on my standing asanas I realised that many people seemed to be finishing (or close to it). Then somebody left, and was asked were they not staying for the talk? And I heard "Five minutes" and started to panic. It was just before 11am and on my usual schedule I had about another hour of my practice still to run, but were we finishing up in 5 minutes? But 11.00 came and went, and people were still practicing, though as I began my seated asanas I heard Peter telling several people who I knew (or sensed) usually practiced full primary to stop and go onto backbending even though they had only got to navasana (or maybe a little further). So then I had the fear that either he was going to tell me to stop, or that I was going to run out of time, but either way that I wouldn't finish my practice and get to do backbending. But then given my new "I've got my whole life" take on practice, the answer to that of course is "so what?". It was actually kind of funny though, after adjusting two girls to my right in Mari D he told them both to do backbending, One obliged, the other went in search of the water bottle and did garbha pindasana. As she was in kukkutasana he came and stood in front of her and said "What happened? I said backbending! nice try!" but make no mistake, the spirit in which he was stopping people, and calling them out was on the basis that as he said to these two girls "You ran out of steam. Whatever energy you have left, reserve it for your backbending". Why should it be seem as a judgement on your practice if somebody says that to you? I think we all have days like that, so maybe we'd do better to listen to them sometimes instead of forging on through come what may.

Inevitably as the room thinned out, and more and more people took savasana, I started to get more attention. In Mari D I took my wrist on each side and he came to me on the second side and said "You've really got that one, beautiful. Now, boat!". I carried on through my practice. As I reached kurmasana, I took a deep position, my legs squeezing the sides of my ribcage and chin on the floor, knowing that at R's shala, everyone gets adjusted in this pose. In the past I have rushed to put myself into supta k just to show that I can; today I knew not to. But here it started to get funny, he pulled my legs in, took one arm around and then I tried to get involved. No no, he says, wiggling my leg around, I'm trying to bend your leg, you trying to straighten it - so of course what I had to do was just surrender and be adjusted. My left leg was hooked behind my neck "Oh, you love this one here" he said - which, given that I have been trying to figure out how to hook my left leg behind my neck from the floor (though everyone tells me it's barely possible) was interesting. My right leg flipped on top, he told me to take the right arm around, and then he got onto me about tension in my hands, shoulders and breath. The thing is, when you try and try to get something like the bind in supta kurmasana (even though I've been doing it now since last summer, there is still effort involved) you may not even realise there is tension there. But he wiggled my arm, made me loosen up, then told me to breathe: "No: full DEEP breaths...breathing" and I became aware that my breath was a little shallow, and very shaky. I watched it, it deepened it, I smoothed it out. "Now hands to the front," and I brought my hands forward, trying desperately not to slip on the insanely ice-rink like floor (this is not a dedicated yoga room, and every inch of the floor was a skid-pan) and then with his support, I lifted up in dwi pada (first time in - err, practically forever), then went through tittibasana, bakasana and just about jumped back into chaturanga, finishing with my head between his legs. We had a giggle and then he told me to take lotus, so without vinyasa I went into garbha p, he stood in front of me as I sprayed my arms and got into it, super-deep with my hands firmly on my chin and my ears closed with my middle fingers before he walked away and left me to it.

In baddha konasana my head was wriggled about like a rag doll. "Too much tension! Let it go! What is this right shoulder doing? so tense here, let go, let go" (more head wiggling, right shoulder poking) - apparently the left shoulder was behaving, but the right one wasn't. I hung out there for a very long time, not really sure if I was being adjusted in A or B (it started as A and sort of became B I think) but it seems that my method of using the elbows to push the thigh down, which I think was as I was taught, was introducing too much tension on my right side. I can't remember now, but I think it was in supta k that the tension was also evident on my right side, so now he had started to notice a pattern. I was instructed to go to upavishta next despite the fact that nobody else in the room was still practicing now, and they were starting to file in and sit ready for the talk. Maximum last-one-left-practicing-anxiety captain!

After supta padangustasana he came to me and said "do backbending now - take chakrasana" and I thought uh-oh, here we go. Chakrasana FAIL! I go through phases with including or excluding chakrasana attempts in my practice. I know the theory, and I have been helped with it by lots of different teachers, but the fact remains that on my own I just don't get it. But with Peter standing at the top of my mat I put my hands back, took my legs over, and stopped. No no no he says, you're making this too complicated - move over and I'll show you. Take hands and legs over together - haven't you seen how a child does it? And he rocked back and forth a few times to show me, hands and legs going together and knees remaining bent ("while you learn"). My turn. Somehow I managed to bash my cheek-bone with my knee at one point, but he had me do it again and again without attempting to flip, just the action of hands and legs together. Then finally he came and helped me go over, and I landed able to see how you could hop straight into chaturanga from the landing. Replicating this will of course be another matter, but I am definitely going to practice that rolling action of both hands and legs together.

Part of my reservation about going to a different teacher today (initially) was that to feel I had my moneys-worth, I would want to be dropping back, whether my back was screaming at me in pain or not. I know, I know..but sometimes these thoughts are there and we have to acknowledge them. But the lovely thing about having run out of time to finish my practice today meant that this wasn't an option. And given that by now everybody was finished, I took all of the prescribed five (FIVE!) urdhva dhanurasana with absolute focus of one on one assistance from Peter and it was completely amazing. I have often been told by my normal teacher "Heels out mel!" and last month in a vinyasa class I experienced an assisted backbend with completely parallel feet and realised what a huge difference it makes. But I haven't managed to replicate it, and clearly haven't lost the habit - but with C on maternity leave, I haven't been reminded for two months. What Peter pointed out is that by turning my left heel out, my right shoulder is having to do all of the work. Lightbulb moment! Tension in my right shoulder all through my practice, and then in my backbends it is being put under extra strain because of my wonky feet! I should point out that I didn't make this connection myself, he did - but as he moved my left foot, and took my hands wider, I went up into UD and it felt completely different. He stayed with me, moving me further over my shoulders and watching my feet in all 5 backbends, then adjusted me in paschimatomasana, telling me again to watch the tension in my right shoulder, and actually not to hold my fingers at all (my approximation of taking the wrist) but to take the sides of the feet instead, and take the elbows out wide. Again, completely different!

Baddha padmasana in Goa

I was instructed to take a shortened closing (as now it was coming up for 11.30, the planned time for the talk) without headstand, and told to take lotus but not to hurry the closing three postures. So I took baddha padmasana, then a few breaths in padmasana and utipluthi, figuring I'd rather take a slightly longer savasana. As I prepared to jump back from lotus Peter came over and asked if I'd done padmasana yet, I said I'd done it quickly as I was worried about everyone waiting. He told me to take my time, no hurry, and then - and I've never had a teacher do this with me before - he sat in front of me, softened my arms and my hands in the mudra, and then talked me through taking full deep breaths. It was such a beautiful thing; by this stage my breath can be a bot wobbly and uneven, but there's nothing like having a teacher sit and breathe with you to make you aware that it is, and to smooth it out, not to mention the fact that he was taking this time with me while everyone else was already long since finished and done. Utipluthi again he sat in front of me, told me to lift from the bandhas not the arms, and to breathe a little more quickly - I got off lightly with 10 breaths as I'd heard him tell some of the guys to take 25 or even 50, telling them that if you lift from mula bandha (well, he said "here" and I couldn't see him, so I'm assuming) that any number of breaths is possible, telling me that it was beautiful, that I'd done really well, that he was so pleased with me, and now to take rest.

And then shortly afterwards he spoke, just for a short while, and I felt still, and calm, and utterly tranquil. Everything he said made perfect sense, and was mainly focussed on breathing. Meditation not necessary when you have this practice, he said. All limbs of yoga are contained in this practice, he said. Pranayama begins when you take your first breath each day, he said. And I sat, unmoving, and listened, taking his words as my savasana, feeling the spirit of Guruji trasmitted directly through this man who studied with him so long often one to one; from arriving in Mysore as a complete beginner, to gaining an advance B teaching certificate. The added lovely surprise of connecting with an old friend meant that I took up the offer to join Peter, R and some of the others over tea and cake (well, it was only me eating cake...) and spent a wonderful few hours sitting in a nearby cafe having the chance to chat to both teachers, some of the other practitioners, and my friend. And immediately that i got home, I started thinking about what I could sell so that I can go and join Peter on one of the other dates of his European tour.

I'll end this stream of conscience post with the words Peter finished with today, which he also quoted in the Guruji book:

"There is one thing that Guruji said that really stuck with me through the years. He pointed to his heart and said, 'There is a small box sitting here. It is Atman. Turn your attention here. That is yoga.' I will never forget that." And he repeated today, "God is right here, in your heart. Concentrate here. That is yoga."

Peace out. Workshop LOVE!!

Important things to remember.

2011-04-19T20:37:00.002+01:00

This is not a race. Nor is it a competition.

I don't need to gauge myself against anyone else, nor compare, nor wonder where I fit into some imaginary shala ranking system. I don't have to be jealous of somebody who can do the things that I can't.

I have the rest of my life to figure this asana stuff out. I don't need to have perfected it all by next week.

An injury needs to be rested, not pushed through and ignored.

Lastly, and most importantly, there is no spiritual benefit to be gained from bending further that the person on the mat next to you.

I know all of this stuff. So why is it so hard to remember sometimes? *Sigh*....yes, I am going through one of those phases. And yes, (surprise surprise), it coincides perfectly with my discussion this morning with our cover teacher that I should stop dropping back while I allow my newly paining SI joint to get better. And how did I hurt it? Oh, through my misadventures with eka pada/dwi pada to get into supta kurmasana, that's how. Hello ego!

The very long overdue post-Purple Valley report

2011-04-13T18:27:00.002+01:00

It seems so long ago now that I was in Goa, but thankfully I am a serial note-taker, so revisiting my notebooks gives me access to some of thoughts that came to mind and lessons I learned whilst in Goa last month. I am going to have to split this up into parts as it is an epic post – even after it’s split!!

So just before I left for India my thoughts, practice-wise, were mainly focussed on back-bending. I had hoped to drop-back alone with my teacher C (if that makes sense!) before leaving as she would go on maternity leave whilst we were away, plus I wanted to get over the hurdle and just get on with working on it. But I didn’t do it before I left, and so of course it became a major feature of my daily practice. More on that later.

Off the mat, my thoughts were the small matter of what I was going to do with my life (which I wrote about in my last post). Who is to say that the one thing didn’t affect the other (the on and off the mat stuff), let’s be honest we all know it does. But in addition to this question, I had some thoughts and expectations about the trip – here is a not-yet-posted start of a post I wrote about my “Goa goals”:

In a few days I am heading off for my third trip to Purple Valley in Goa to study with Kino and Tim - and I am so excited! Going as a repeat visitor takes away so much of the uncertainty I have felt before; I know the practical things which somehow takes away the anxiety of wondering how things work, or what I need to take. And for the first time I will be going with a friend, the lovely Susan, which will take away the other anxiety about getting along with people and making friends. Having made this trip twice before, once as a complete & clueless beginner, once as a lapsed but relative newbie ashtangi, I know that even a two week retreat can have a powerful effect on your life when you return home. I also know from my trip to Thailand in October that as I now have a daily practice, I won't necessarily notice earth-shattering changes in my asana practice. But there are a few things I would like to "achieve" while I am away...

Breaking addictions: Hitting the reset button:

To sugar...toast....the internet. I have been eating crap lately, and filling my brain with way too much social networking. Getting away from home is the perfect opportunity to reboot and refocus on the things that serve me better and make me happier (and although I may think that endless biscuit-eating makes me happy, in the long-run it doesn't).

Two weeks away from home is a chance to break ingrained patterns of behaviour (not just the "addictions" I mention above). Silly things which become habitual like standing under the shower slightly too long, sitting inert on the sofa intending to move but not being able to make myself, hitting snooze too many times on the 5.15am alarm. All of these things I have found changed after coming back from retreat before and hope that I can do the same again.

Remembering what I'm there for:

Going away on retreat is the perfect opportunity to take time out. But in the past I have been aware of my tendency not to want to "miss out" on anything - to always be surrounded by people and chatting instead of taking time to be alone or quiet. This is actually a tricky one, because on the one hand I think introspection is a good thing and part of being on the spiritual path, but for me and my lifestyle right now, perhaps it's the reverse of what I need. Afterall I spend most days all alone, and what I need is a bit more social input - but I think there should be a way of finding a balance so that's what I will be aiming for.

Finding time to sit:

After savasana every day I take a moment sitting with my eyes closed before I head off to the chatter of the changing room. Recently I have felt that I don't want to (even that I can't) open my eyes, and that what I want most of all is to just sit for a while. Of course on a work day this isn't possible, but on retreat it should be doable. Past experience tells me that (apart from an empty stomach) the main thing that gets me out of savasana and up to the terrace is the prospect of missing out on some good breakfast-time chat but this is a tendency I'd like to watch.

So against these “goals” how did I fare? Well, given the change in life circumstances since I came home, it’s really impossible to judge whether the trip chilled me out and got rid of some of my inertia. And I CERTAINLY didn’t do as I had hoped and take time to sit and be away from the constant socialising – if anything this was more pronounced this year than ever before. As Susan put it “to call it a retreat implies some sort of quiet reflection and contemplation...but we just spend all day chatting!!” As I responded – why do you think I like it here so much??! But as I mused in my blog draft, maybe this was what I needed after far too much time spent alone in the run-up to the trip. And I met some wonderful and lovely people – although we did decide that we were the Purple Valley Mean Girls (or the cool kids, we couldn’t quite decide...), not that we were mean of course ;) But being great friends with one of the two assistants had HUGE benefits – not least that you got extra attention, and the day that Zoe went around with the camera I think half the pictures were of Susan and I. Yay for practice pictures!

My girls at Anjuna market.Do they look mean to you?!

And what of the backbending? Well, having two teachers – Kino and Tim – meant that on any given day you may be working on this differently. Having been working with Cary on dropping back, and being told by everyone that I was this close to doing it alone, I assumed I would rock up in Goa and just do it. Not so. Day 1, I worked with Kino. With 60 people in the room, many working on later 2^nd series and with at least a few on 3^rd, there wasn’t a huge amount of time. And Kino seemed to be working me on standing up! Of course it is great to get exposed to different methods with something like backbending, because you are then gaining different skills for your armoury – and the more approaches you try (to a point) the more chance you have of connecting with what works for you. So with Kino she used a towel to drop me back (maybe because of my height? I’m a good 10 inches taller than her...), then she gets you to walk the hands in MORE than you think is possible, then to rock to come up (which was new to me although of course I know this is a widely used approach). So I did backbends with Kino the first two days, but the second day I cried – the first time I had such a strong emotional reaction to backbending. It was triggered slightly by having seen my friend K backbending with Tim and get “the hug” after coming up; I got a big lump of empathy in my throat which turned to tears when it came to be my turn. No hug with Kino, just “You ok?” and on we go – business-like and focussed. Good stuff J

Yeah that's me!

Then the next day I did backbends with Tim – and it was a completely different experience again. That first day with him, I said afterwards that I got the feeling of how backbending could be beautiful. You know when you see somebody with effortless looking backbends where they float down to the ground with great control? Tim somehow assists you to do this. His approach is hands in prayer (I am used to taking the arms up overhead on the inhale, go back on the exhale), lifting up through the chest, lift up again, go back as far as you can keeping the legs straight, then bending the legs but keeping the butt relaxed (which is HARD!). But on the first day with him, I don’t remember it being particularly hard work (he was saving that for later), just this feeling of grace. Day two with Tim: and then came the tears. I think it was the feeling of walking in more than seemed possible, my breath became ragged, I was panicking, I was drowning, I couldn’t escape...and this on only the second dropback (not the final one where you hold for 5). Coming up to standing the tears came, and I got the hug. And can I say it was worth the hard work? It’s not just a hug, he tells you to relax and lean right against him as he leans back, so it is actually a great stretch, as well as being sweet as anything, and just exactly what you need after a rush of emotion.

The following day though, as I came to the front of my mat for backbends, I felt major anxiety. Yesterday was so hard, and now I have to do it again? I felt my breath go into panic mode – and this before the work had even started. So when it was Tim who came to work with me again that day, I told him before we started that I was feeling anxious because of the emotional reaction the previous day. And here is what he told me...

You need to add just a little drop of *doubt* to the panic – so in a whole ocean of fear, there is just one droplet of doubt. The natural reaction when you can’t breathe is to panic, and then your airway collapses. So now you have two choices: you can react to the panic, or you can panic. Introduce a drop of doubt and know that even if you can’t breathe for 30 seconds you will be OK. It won’t be very nice, but even if you faint I am here and you’re not going to die. This is the worst case scenario...but you have to remember that you are bigger than this...you are an eagle...

For anyone who’s ever met Tim, they will know that he can get away with saying things like “you are an eagle”. Firstly, he’s Danish, so he has an accent and has a perfect excuse to say very quirky stuff and get away with it. Second, he is an amazing teacher with great insight, awesome adjustments, and the ability to say just the right thing to you (assisting Susan in durvasana one day he said: “And now you feel like God” – awesome!) whether that is esoteric, sweet and reassuring, or funny & just a little bit risqué. Great balance! But the fact is that this maxim – to introduce a tiny scrap of doubt OF the fear helped me so much. It helped that day with backbending, and it helped when I read these notes back on the train en route to meet my boss and get fired a few weeks later. Just reading the words “You are bigger than this, you are an eagle...” I felt this soaring sense of rising up above the day to day crap, finding the real self within the physical body and transcending the growing panic to feel a sense of serenity: pretty powerful stuff.

RELAX!!

Flipping back and forth between backbending with Kino and with Tim, and still having my own teacher’s (different again) method in my mind, meant that as the retreat went on I was learning a lot, but I still hadn’t dropped back on my own. Then the second Monday after walking in really really far in assisted backbends I pulled something in my shoulder. After a chat with Kino that afternoon we established it seemed to be muscular (actually my tricep I think), but as it was I couldn’t raise my arm to plait my hair in the morning, and was popping ibuprofen to get started with daily practice. The first surya as I raised my arms over my head was agony, but by the fourth and fifth the discomfort was easing though I was still very much aware of it through my practice. Coming to check on me mid-suryas Kino suggested that we would go easy on backbending today and I felt my heart sink. My thought was “well what’s the point of any of this then?” I had been so desperate not to become somebody who was fixated on backbending when I first started working on it, and here I was doing that very thing. I spent the rest of that day feeling sorry for myself and really weird. Susan repeatedly told me that I was too hard on myself, that I should cut myself some slack, but this was a day of intense self-criticism where nothing I did/said/thought was right, and whilst hearing Kino give technical second series help to my neighbour that day I just kept thinking “why do we even do any of this?”.

Megan gets "The Hug"

Reading this back now, I can see that taking a two week retreat where all you do is practice, eat, chat and sleep (when the crazy wild dogs allow) is just like condensing a year of practice into a holiday – or it seems it was for me. You have good days and bad. You have days when you are flying and nothing can go wrong, you have days where you are injured and have to back right off and allow your body time to recover. You have days where the thing you are told in a workshop just SUDDENLY clicks into place and you engage with a whole new part of your body that you seemingly never knew existed before, and you have days where it is just practice. Having wanted so desperately to take the plunge and drop back on my own, it was inevitable that this would form a large part of my focus on this trip, but when I got to the Wednesday and I still hadn’t done it, I let it go. So many days I intended to take myself off somewhere quiet in the afternoon and try some hangbacks and then to drop back onto cushions, but it never seemed to happen – I had always just eaten (no, really!) or was in the middle of a fascinating conversation (remember that intention mel?).

When the food is this good, can you blame me?

..though apparently we still needed to supplement it with extra-curricular Villa Blanche re-tox trips

So on Thursday, the last day of mysore practice before the retreat ended, my expectations were all gone. Arriving a little later that normal, Susan and I practiced side by side in the middle of the second row that day, and the atmosphere in the shala was just so precious (and I mean that in a good way). There was much giggling, a hilarious “adjustment” from Tim is parsvatonasana where he ran his finger all the way from the inside of my foot up my body and out the top of my head (did he really just do that??!), Susan calling me a bad lady when Tim asked how many times I had attempted buja that day (I was on special measures and supposed to do it twice, but I confessed I’d just done one...), then as we came to the end of our party-atmosphere practice Susan got a new pose (yay!). I stood to do hangbacks before my assisted dropbacks, and as I came back up from my second one, the beautiful Audra (our other practice assistant) said to me “you go back?” I said no. “You’re almost there. Just do it” she said, and she walked away. Now this isn’t the first time I had heard this, but it was the first time I had heard it during practice (several of my shala mates had been saying the same to me in the changing room for weeks). So what did I do?

Well I just did it of course. Taking the decision felt like nothing in the moment: an incredibly subtle movement, just millimetres separated me from staying or going. Then on landing, a soft and surprised “Oh!” followed by hands to my face and hysterical laughter, or was it tears, maybe a little of both – it was hard to tell but I couldn’t stop. Beside me in urdhva danurasana, susan tells the story that there she was in a backbend, and suddenly I was there beside her – I was so happy that we were neighbours that day! Then through my hysteria I hear my name, I thought Audra was asking if I was OK, but later found out that she was assisting K in post-backbend paschimo and the two of them were talking “did she do it? I think she did it!” with great excitement. Bounding up from practice to the terrace for breakfast I was just euphoric – nothing could take away that feeling or wipe the smile from my face all morning, and every time I saw Audra I just wanted to kiss her! The lovely K was waiting for me, I didn’t know that she knew what I had done, but she was excited to hear about it – and said that she absolutely KNEW I would do it that day as it was my last opportunity. Well I’m glad somebody did! But of course after the euphoria comes the hard work. What I didn’t realise was that several months of building up to go the extra millimetre would now have to be conquered every day once I was home. And whilst the landing on my first time was controlled and gentle, after coming home and not getting the same help every day, I started to find I was making heavier and heavier landings. Within a few weeks my wrists were starting to hurt through my practice and through the rest of the day too. So now, a month on, I am back to assisted dropbacks only...but that’s a story for another day (three steps forward, two steps back with this yoga...).

This post is epic, and I haven’t even opened my notebook with the workshop notes yet! So I think we’ll come back to those (hopefully) another day – I NEED to share my bujapidasana bootcamp story with you!

Blue skies

2011-04-09T13:53:00.000+01:00

Sometimes it's impossible to believe how beautiful a blue blue sky is.

Some days it feels like anything and everything is possible.

I'm getting a lot of this lately; I think not working really suits me.

Where have I been?

2011-04-05T17:10:00.001+01:00

On an email today Susan wrote "Mel are you ever going to blog again??" - I think she had a point judging by how long it's been since my last post. So where have I been? You may well ask...

First off: geographically. I've been to India - hurrah!

Second off: headspace wise. I've been EVERYWHERE. And then last week I lost my job - err, hurrah?

Maybe this goes some way to explaining my silence, given that I came back from 2 wonderful & fabulous weeks at Purple Valley with Tim & Kino to a whirlwind of job stress, which culminated last Wednesday in a rather unsurprising meeting terminating my contract.

Honestly, I don't even know where to begin in writing about any of this - but I know from previous experience that sometimes writing a mini-post will free me up to come back and write something proper later (I have no idea yet which way this one is going: mini or proper!).

The job thing wasn't really a shock, although I think I am still in shock (if that makes sense). The week before I went to India I was flown to Scandinavia for a meeting (I was flown all the way there to sit in a coffee shop in a shopping centre for 90 minutes...) where I was told that if I didn't meet a certain target in terms of the number of customers I went out to visit per week, starting the day I got back from India, that it was unlikely my probationary period would be turned into a permanent contract. I had been told this before, so it wasn't new news, but I had tried and couldn't seem to maintain the level they were looking for (and nor did I believe in the approach, but that's a different story). So there I was, India minus 1 day, with this overwhelming feeling of wanting to resign on the spot. Never mind the fact that I'd been given no time to prepare or book the appointments and would be coming back jet-lagged and having to hit the road in a big way, the major issue was that I didn't want to do this. But rather than make any snap decisions I remembered how spending time on retreat has a habit of making things seem clearer, so off I went, having faith that I would make a clearer decision once I was away from home.

And I think I got to day two before I had a thought: "Why didn't I do a proper job?". I was talking to K, a crazily-busy attorney with a kick-ass daily practice, and just had this feeling that I should have picked something real. You know: teacher, doctor, lawyer: something that can be described in one word. Instead I have found myself going down all of these no-through roads with funny jobs in funny little companies - or certainly nothing with an easily described or defined purpose. I let the thought settle, I left it where it was. Week one was mostly a process of not thinking too much about what was happening at home.

By week two I couldn't keep the thoughts down. Whereas on previous trips, my time in India has been consumed with thoughts of and conversations about specific elements of my asana practice, this time it was aaaall about "What am I going to do with my life?".

A conversation on Sunday evening led me to write the following in my notebook:

Feeling weird and sorry for myself today...Mental turmoil I've been trying to push down comes up now after practice. Last night's conversation with A who went to medical school at 38 and did a dual residency. Anything's possible? That's the feeling here, reality and finances and "being sensible" don't send these notions scurrying away....

Only Monday and already people are talking about the end of the week but it feels like we've been here forever, so we have that all still to come. But time marches on and reality comes more sharply into focus. What will I do?

Then on the flight home I wrote:

Allowing myself the luxury of a completely open mind - no such thing as a bad or impossible idea. I feel like I want to study, I don't know what, but to change direction, create a new path and more options - anything is possible?

Medicine kept coming up. I don't think that's the answer, I can't even really entertain the idea, but I allowed myself to. When money doesn't factor, hearing that A went to medical school at 38, P at 33, everything was blown open.

I went on to write my dream, to brainstorm ideas, but already on the plane I was editing and stopping myself writing down some of the thoughts.

In one of our workshops Tim spoke about one of his students who had a very high-powered job in finance, and was able to use the stability he gained through daily practice to stay calm during the worst of the financial crisis (unlike everyone else in his office who went into meltdown). He was using the example to show to new students how we balance our lives as householders with careers, families, kids, ex-wives, dogs (whatever the situation may be) with our practice. All I could think while he was talking was that I wanted to ask:
"But what about when starting ashtanga means you no longer give a shit about your job? What then?" because the fact is, since I started my practice I haven't been satisfied with my work.

Before ashtanga, work used to be my thing. I worked in a tiny company, working for a designer, and did one of those jobs where you do EVERYTHING as part of your remit (for no money). I was a total workaholic. I remember being on a week's holiday with some girlfriends during that time and by about day three lying by the pool I started to feel useless and frustrated. I needed that job to feel important and needed. Why hadn't they called me - surely everything was falling apart with me away? But then I fell out of love with that job, took another one doing something different, and didn't ever love it. After almost a year I left that job too, but three months later it all went wrong with job #3, and I found myself back at job #2 - which I didn't love but felt grateful and relieved to be taken back. It was around this time that I first travelled to India and started my ashtanga practice - and from that point on, yoga took the place of work as my main crush. Actually I jokingly asked Tim my question over dinner that night, and his answer was to laugh and say "well then it's time to do something new!". So maybe I didn't have to choose between my practice and having a job I can throw myself into as I had begun to think...

But reading V's very timely blog last night summed up exactly what I have arrived at: I am not defined by what I do for my work - I used to be, in my workaholic days. As V put it: "the practice stripped me bare". Now I think it's true that I define myself by my practice (maybe it's time to start weaning myself off that too!) and, like V, I may not know who I am, but I know who I'm not. And I am not a sales rep. Well, that's true enough now given my employment status! But in my first week after getting back I went through the mill - I was horribly jetlagged and running around all over the countryside to meet the target I had been set, but I could barely breathe all week. By the weekend I was in a horrible state of panic. So on the Saturday I took myself off to kirtan and, whaddyaknow, mid-chanting I came up with a big realisation, and a rather specific plan.
The big realisation was this: I don't give two hoots about being on some corporate (or other) wheel where I work my way up to the next thing, the next promotion, the next payrise. It's just not me.
What I want from my work is something which I like enough, and allows me the time and space (mentally and financially) to do what I love with the rest of my life. A job where I work from home and am expected to keep up with incoming messages and emails at all hours of the day or night is NOT it. The idea of studying and doing something completely new still appeals, but as no ideas are forthcoming for now, I'm looking into shorter term solutions to give me an income while I figure some things out. But happiness comes first - it might not buy me a shiny new car, or mean that I can finally stop renting out a room in my flat, but as long as it buys me the odd yoga retreat, and the possibility to practice every day without feeling guilty, then it will be enough.

Having decided all of this it was hard not to resign immediately - though as it turned out I didn't have too long to wait. With little more than 24 hours notice I had the meeting last week and was laid off with immediate effect. And you know what? In the immediate aftermath I was absolutely fine. For the first few days I was making a joke of it and enjoying telling people that I was unemployed. But since the weekend I have been absolutely exhausted - I have a heavy feeling in my lower back and hips, and it feels like I have weights tied to me dragging me down. My practice is stiff, my lower back is tight and refuses to feel open, my hips are tight, and the tiredness is overwhelming. I think this is my body's way of telling me that it has been through some trauma. And now I have noticed the last two days I get a lump in my throat when I tell people that I just lost my job - the laughing and joking seems to have gone. But I am consciously allowing myself some time out before I start frantically searching for new employment - I can keep going for a little while without too much trouble - although now I am beginning to wonder if this might be a mistake?

I should also mention that within four hours of being given the push I had a phonecall offering me work - so all is not completely bleak, though this would be a stop-gap rather than something concrete, but the thought of doing anything right now is just making me feel tired. Life eh?! Oh and I absolutely promise I will write about what happened in Goa (aside from my career worries) another day, I just had to get all of this out of my system first. Unless of course you've all read all about it on Susan's posts already (yep, lucky me, I got to go to Goa with the lovely Susan, we had such an amaaazing time!).

Super Susan (left) and me (far right) with Kino & Tim. Go us!

Dropbacks and Doublethink

2011-02-17T23:24:00.000Z

When I was walking around London this morning visiting shops (or trying to, I should say) I realised that I am guilty of so much doublethink. I spend half the time thinking I have the greatest job in the world; the freedom it gives me is incredible, I get to travel around and see different places all of the time and meet new people and I can pretty much write my own success story. On the other days it seems relentless and impossible. I can’t get appointments, nobody wants to see me, they reduce their orders rather than increasing them, everything’s a problem. Whilst travelling around and seeing different places I also find myself imagining living all kinds of different lives, whilst being incredibly contended with my own. I picture myself being happy with no money, whilst wishing I had more money to do all of the things I want to do. I long to live in a huge house in West London; I fall ever more in love with East London (where I actually live – not in a huge house!). I feel like this life I’m living, where no two days are the same, could just be the perfect lifestyle for someone like me who is fascinating with things around them. I’m getting to know London in a completely different way, I’m getting to really appreciate it, but I’m also getting out of London (and dare I say, becoming confident with driving!). My new favourite time of day is the hour before sunset, when the light is just *perfect* and everything I see is awash with beauty. And then I have days where nothing makes me happier than imagining resigning. I think I can sum up my current state of mind as unsettled with moments of unbelievable happiness. I think I need a holiday!

As for my practice, there’s a bit of doublethink going on there too. Though I absolutely swore I wasn’t going to become fixated with dropbacks, what do you think might have happened? Oh yes of course, I am utterly fixated. I have been working on dropping back now for almost exactly two months, though with over a week off at Christmas and another week off in January when I was staying away for work it’s not been an entirely consistent two months. What’s so interesting is how things change. I’ve written already about the different phases and levels that Cary has had me working at. This past week we have moved onto another new method, and with each new approach I have “found” new parts of my back or my body and been able to tap into them or move in a different way. The latest method is in assisted dropbacks; I go halfway back alone, inhale & exhale, then she places her hand between my ribs (pointing upwards – just on top of where the bra line would be if I wore one for practice!!) and (according to her) “grips with her fingertips to pull me forwards”), I inhale again then on the exhale I go back. To all intents and purposes I am “dropping” without assistance in terms of her taking me down gently, but there is a HUGE difference between this and me just dropping alone.

So here is the fixation: doing it alone. Last Saturday I did a rare practice at home (having missed a day in the week), the entire purpose of which was to attempt to dropback whilst not in a room full of people (and with padding!). It’s funny how much this motivated me to do self-practice! I used the audio of Sharath’s counted class up to the Maris, and it moves along at quite a clip – it was great! Really excellent to have that to practice to, I found my mind was completely on my mat, perhaps even more so than in mysore practice at the shala, whereas normally a home practice is an endless barrage of crazy-brain-itus. Then from bujapidasana onwards I videoed my practice (as IF I would video navasana!!) as I have seen the first half of my practice (you can see a clip here - from a led class in Thailand), but never the second. And very illuminating it was too... I became convinced that the reason I can’t do buja is that my bum is too high in the air – what do you think?

Also I get stuck once I’m down there, though this was a slightly-less-bad-than-most-days version!

Seeing myself in supta kurmasana was fun too. And yes with my giant ego I posted an album of pictures on facebook with screenshots from the video for all to see (not my sucky buja of course, only the good ones!!). I’m not sure why I did it, but I know I enjoy seeing other people’s asana photos so what the hell...

Anyway the main event that I wanted to video was backbending. Even though it was half out of shot it was good to see how my urdhva dhanurasana looks when I’m not just faffing about on a beach (which is the only way I have ever seen it before). Then of course the hangbacks – I have to say, they feel really super-deep, more so in the past few weeks, but when I saw the video I was almost disappointed – they feel a lot deeper than they look! The only reason I care about how they look is that in my mind I have become convinced that when I hang back I am so close to the floor I only need reach down and I will touch gently and with great control. Putting the sofa cushions down for safety I soon discovered that this isn’t quite the case – the floor is MUCH further away than I thought! Also having watched my first ever attempt to dropback solo I can deduce one major thing: I just DROPPED. This was not a backbend! It just reminds me of that line in Toy Story – “that’s not flying, it’s falling with style” – that was me!

(haha god that video's boring - and it goes on forever!! But it took too long to upload so I'm not editing it now ;)

So having tried this at home, not broken my head, but having become a little less confident in my readiness to do it, I went back to the shala on Sunday and we started working on this new hand-grippy pull-forward by invisible secret powers method. The first day with this method I think Cary also put her hand on my back as I landed so the landing was still very gentle and controlled. The next day she introduced the extra cycle of breath here and told me to really push into her hand, and bring the awareness there. The week has been up and down, and I have been feeling all sorts of niggley injuries since then, but today was OK. The thing that I am fixating on is that several of my lovely shalamates have said to me after practice that I am ready to do it alone, and that I should just do it and what am I waiting for? So I think yes of course I can do it! Tomorrow I’ll just dropback on my own! Then when I get to it, I just don’t. When S asks me what I am afraid of I say that I’m not, but in that moment when I am hanging back thinking “shall I go?” I don’t do it. It’s as simple as that: do, or don’t do. My brain can intellectualise it all I like, but in the moment something is stopping me. Primarily I think I am waiting to be told by Cary that I am ready, but for now there are so many other things at play in my head. Next week I am heading off to Goa, and of course I want to do it before I leave, especially as C will go on maternity leave while I am away. And I want to do it with her! And my ego is also wanting to learn it as quickly as possible – 2 months!! But on the flip side, think how great it would be to do my first dropbacks in Goa with Kino? And that will be super-fast in the grand scheme of things. But I have constructed this whole reasoning that I MUST do this before I go, which is ridiculous. But today I think I let that go. C was out of the room and S was assisting, and watching me hang back. I turned and laughed knowing that she was watching and willing me to drop to the ground, but then Cary came back in just as I was ready for assisted and we told her that I’d been talking about it. But instead of saying “Yes you’re ready, do it!” she showed S the new assist she’s been doing. And the first one was good, the second not so good, the third better, and the fourth I just fell with style. As she gave me the paschimo squish, Cary said that the only difference in her hand being there or not being there is awareness. Once I am used to it I will go back like a hinge from the hips (apparently) but for now I need to learn to separate the torso and bring the awareness to moving that part of my chest forwards. She said it’ll just take time. What she didn’t say was you’re ready, do it now – so I think for now at least, I’m going to let go of the idea of having done this before I leave for India. But of course in the land of doublethink, I’m already thinking this will be the secret to suddenly being able to do it...and saying it here jinxes any possibility that I will. Double-cross-doublethink!

Looking out for Spring

2011-02-13T22:28:00.000Z

My great aunt died two weeks ago, and this week I travelled to Norfolk for her funeral. I won't dwell on it too much, and I'm doing fine, but I wanted to share this poem from the service, which I thought was perfect...

Sorrow Has it's Season

Mourn not with a broken heart when friends and dear ones go.

For you the night of loneliness

For them the morning glow

For you the daily burden of the years that are to be

For them a new adventure in a world you cannot see

Sorrow has it's season. Nothing lasts,not even grief.

Every winter has it's ending - then the greening leaf

One day you will wake and say that time has eased the pain.

That is how God's mercy works

Spring always comes again.

(Anonymous)

I also found it so interesting that once again I was able to work through an experience like this thanks to my yoga practice (or maybe I should say "the perspective I have gained from my yoga practice"). No doubt it helps that, like with my grandmother last year, she had lived a long life (she was 92) and had reached the point where a recovery from a fall would have meant no longer being able to live at home. And afterall, this is the natural order of things.

But in the church I was struck by something; to get the joy (thinking specifically of my beautiful nieces), you have to have this too. Without one the other cannot happen; it's the circle of life (damn you Elton John for making that impossible to say without inducing an earworm!). I also found myself feeling again this spiritual sense, remembering the words in Surya Das's book (to explain to cynics about reincarnation, he asks how is it any more incomprehensable than the fact that we exist at all? I think this can be applied to all spiritual concepts) when the vicar said that Elsie had been called Home. I thought that was a pretty beautiful thing to say.

Just as an aside, my fabulous auntie, though living in Norfolk, was originally from the east end of London, and grew up and lived around my adopted home, and the place where I practice yoga every day which makes me feel more connected somehow. The church was absolutely beautiful, in her quiet seaside town and overlooking the duck pond - but a very long way from Bethnal Green as I said to my sister. I also discovered via her eulogy that she attended a spiritualist church (I knew that) and trained as a healer (news to me). So not only did she live through the Blitz in the east end (and was in Bethnal Green when the tube disaster happened - and talking to us about it one day she rubbished the claims that the lady blamed for starting the hysteria would have done such a thing, Else knew her well) but she lived a pretty fascinating life, being bombed, living in a pre-fab, moving out of London under some sort of council relocation program in the 1960s, I believe I was once told that she had an Indian spirit guide, and is best remembered for doing high kicks at her 70th birthday party and generally being a very funny, fabulous and glamorous lady right up until she was 90 and her health started to fail. I'm only sorry I didn't take more time to hear her living history and to visit her in the last couple of years, but it's too late for regrets now, so instead I shall just think of her with a smile. And it's hard to be sad when you do that, and think about the words of the poem :)

Meditation and cake

2011-02-05T21:55:00.000Z

I went to a meditation class today which runs once a month at our shala - after meaning to do it for ages (but always forgetting, or being busy the day it was on) a chance conversation over breakfast meant that I went along with two friends to the second class of the year.

I'm always a little scared of the idea of meditation classes, feeling like the urge to run screaming from the room is going to arise approximately six and a half minutes into a two hour class - but at the same time I have been feeling the desire for ages now to learn more techniques and to make the time and space to sit.

With mats arranged around the room facing into the centre (having come in late) I found myself beside the teacher, an older German (I think) lady with beautifully coloured hair, a white outfit accessorised with fabulously blingy heart-shaped earrings and a soft sing-song accent. Before we began she spoke a little about meditation, and I loved what she said (I'm paraphrasing...):

Don't let enlightenment be your goal. Sure, if you really want to then by all mean go for it, But for me, meditation is about learning to cope better with daily life without being thrown off course by the things that come our way. And also to be able to make other people's lives a little better by the way I interact with them.

She also spoke about just building in time throughout your day to sit, don't think about extended periods as finding several spots of time to sit for 5 or 10 minutes through the day can be really powerful. Something which made immediate sense to me was when she described her day as rushing here and there, teaching morning, lunchtime and evening classes meaning that she comes home a lot during the day - and immediately that she closes the door and feels relived to be home, she feels more demands on her time. Given my new work situation which means that I am working from home, going out to see people and coming and going quite a lot, I realised immediately that when I get home from a halfday trekking around and am exhausted, sitting straight down at my computer to catch up on all of the emails that have accumulated while I've been gone is maybe not the most productive approach. Instead, if I take the time to sit just for 5 minutes before I stick the kettle on and head for my desk, I'll most likely find I feel more refreshed and less pressured than I do right now. So far so good.

We then lay on our stomach, becoming aware of our breathing, before spending some time in childs pose, again putting awareness into our breath, and then moving through some gentle seated stretches to prepare us for sitting. All the while she spoke in her lovely soft way, encouraging us to concentrate on our breathing, and making everything seem incredibly accessible and taking away the mystery. Halfway through the 2 hours she suggested a bathroom or water break before we moved on to the sitting portion of the class, and even though I know I can do it I felt some anxiety when she said we would sit for 5 minutes at a time - it sounds like such a long time to just sit! But of course it is more than doable, I can sit happily for almost 15 minutes and do so every Friday after our Led class, so this is very much a case of my conscious mind trying to tell me I'm not capable of something which I absolutely am.

As we neared the end of the class I found myself feeling very sleepy, and when given the option to lie down I was there and wrapped in my blanket in no time at all. After a very heavy feeling savasana where I completely forgot where I was, the class ended with her suggesting we might like to stay for tea and cake. How much more perfect could this be!

Feeling very chilled and more than a little spacey, J, A and I shared green tea and cake before heading off for an early dinner at our favourite veggie cafe. It felt rather strange to emerge from Yoga Place into the darkness, instead of arriving in the dark and leaving in daylight, but seeing the sun set in the shala as opposed to seeing it rise was a lovely and welcome change. The next month's class will be when I am away but I'm definitely looking forward to attending more of these classes over the coming year, and am already feeling inspired to take time to sit on a regular basis. What a wonderful way to spend Saturday afternoon!

My bedroom windowsill (complete with gifts from Susananda and The reluctant ashtangi!)

Finding my edge? Or just making excuses?

2011-01-26T19:26:00.002Z

Predictably enough, after taking almost all of last week off practice due to working away, two days into this 6 day week C ramped up my backbending another notch. Actually Monday was just "one of those days" (or should I say practices) where my brain wouldn't switch off, I kept reminding myself of things I had said or done which were out of place, my chitta vritta was trying to beat me with all of my mistakes, and getting my brain to calm and quieten down was proving impossible. I kept thinking that it would ease off once I got into the seated postures (nope), then I hoped that maybe after supta kurmasana I'd be feeling calmer (nu-uh), so when I got to backbends and C told me "Today we're doing something new" I was barely even surprised. Also (just to add to the moans) my body was feeling so sore that day, but most noticeably my lower back, right on the waistline on the right hand side - a new twinge which started on Sunday. So after doing my urdhva dhanurasanas I discovered that last week's break has given me just enough time to unlearn the ability to breathe in a hangback - I'm sure it'll come back, but for now the solo hangback comprises of 5 scratchy attempts to get my breath while I ponder whether to REALLY push it and see how far I can go, countered with not being crazy and breaking myself, and remembering to keep the legs engaged...which is a lot to think about at once, no wonder I can't remember how to make the space in my ribcage to find an easy breath! Anyway, after this Cary appears and says it's time to add something new...THE WALL.

A sunnier (but probably less deep) backbend in Thailand

I am instantly none too happy about this. Partly because I really don't want to add anything new (of course I don't!), partly because I have seen a shala-mate panting their way down the wall in a crazed and innefectual manner and don't want to put myself through the same thing, and partly (I admit it) because Susan says she doesn't see the point (and she is the crowned queen of backbends, afterall!). But of course I go with C to the back wall, and she talks me through it; lean back with one hand so that you can judge the distance, you might need to move your feet out as you go down, then go back to the wall, walk all the way down (remembering to breathe), hands right on the floor as you reach the bottom, then walk all the way up again, still breathing!! Well of course the breath thing is tricky, because in the assisted dropbacks I have been really using the breathe...inhale raise the arms, exhale go back, inhale come up...but here I am breathing in-out-in-out all the way down, and all the way back up again. And while I have seen video of peopl bouncing off the wall, of course mine is more like a hectic clamber, hands at different levels, trying not to slip and fall right on my head. Anyway I do the first two, then on the third one (apparently, I don't remember) C says I did great because I dropped straight back to the wall which takes bravery and that's half the battle - so she says.

So right after my experiments at the wall I come back to my mat to go through the whole normal routine of assisted dropbacks, but I am FECKING exhausted. Each dropback is too fast and uncontrolled, I land on my hands more heavily than I'd like, and by the end I am shattered. A big lump comes up in my throat that I can't decide whether it's an asthmatic style wheeze or a huge sob waiting to happen. I just about manage to sit down for a paschimo squish but can barely even catch my feet in the first instance...

And day two is a repeat. The main difference is that on my third attempt at going down the wall (or rather, at coming back up again), shortly after lifting off from the floor I fall down onto my head. Ouch. Luckily it wasn't far to fall ;)

Today, day three, after leaving out every jumpback through the practice (stepping instead) as I felt like that's what's hurting my lower back, I feel like my first hangback is MEGA deep (again, that knife-edge of "can I go a bit further?" versus "Am I pushing this too far?". Going to the wall I struggle to get the angle of my feet right - we have very few available walls in our shala and the ones we do have are narrow and at funny angles (plus of course there are people practicing in front of them). Without a mat under my feet I feel insecure and slidey on the wooden floor, and the walls (ick) are slippery with condensation from all of the hot bodies on the room. None of this feels very good. And again when I'm done, I am exhausted.

So I decide to tell C that I'm not liking this (even though I sort of know what she will say). I manage not to use the word "hate" but as she comes up I say "I really don't like the wall." Luckily she's not in a mood today where she just wants me to be quiet and get on with it. First of all she says that she never used the wall, which instantly makes me wonder why teach it that way, and she also says that I don't have to do it - that I should only do it if I feel it's teaching me something. Inside my head the arguments for and against are along these lines:

...it's definitely helpful to experience the initial dropping back to the wall part on my own...

...but if I don't have to do it then why would I?

...but isn't that just giving up?

...Remember feeling this exact same way about every other stage of this process so far? (and in fact, a lot of the rest of primary...) And how did you get through to the other side of that - by giving up? I don't think so.

Meanwhile C says that it is exhausting, and pushing your limits of endurance is part of the practice. Ashtanga asks us to go further...she talks about junior doctors working 70 hour weeks to train themselves to work intensively and says that not everybody chooses to do this, some people will never do it and are happy just to work a regular week. But then she says that exhaustion is a real issue, when she used to do half of second she was exhausted but now she can do all of it "just like that" - which of course makes me feel that I should just suck this up and get to the point where I'm not fall-down exhausted by it. But then she also says that this is difficult, and her friend J says "you just have to let some things be difficult".

In other words by the end of the conversation I am none the wiser. My over-riding confusion is that first off, I think I should just do it because that's the only way it's going to get easier, but if she didn't learn it herself, and S has her doubts about it's validity in learning, then maybe I shouldn't wear myself out trying?

The dropbacks after the chat (and the little rest it allowed!) were more controlled than yesterday, but with more sound effects too (and more grabbing of C's arms as I come up instead of keeping my arms overhead) but again I staggered to the ground for paschimo like an old lady, actually even worse than yesterday, and the big throat-lump was there again. The first two days I did this I also had an instantaneous and massive headache at that point too, so I suppose it's progress that I didn't today even if I was stiffer in my body. But the finishing sequence followed the same pattern as the rest of today's practice; super-focused and inward looking, and I had time to lie in savasana until I felt like I was tripping out a bit (that's my favourite way of telling if I've been there long enough...if I start not knowing where I am, whether it's night or day or I'm awake or asleep then I know it's a good-un.), also incorporating lots of beautifully controlled dropback visualisations.

So now all that's left to do is to decide whether or not I head for the wall tomorrow? Or maybe I do it tomorrow, as it's the last Mysore practice of the week, and re-evaluate on Sunday. I think this is all about figuring out the difference between finding my edge, overdoing it, and just being lazy. But can't somebody else decide for me? It's just too hard to tell! Either way, I think the fact that in just over 4 weeks I will be heading out to Goa to study with Kino and Tim for 2 weeks could not be more perfectly timed, considering that she is considered by many (well, me!) to be the ashtanga world's high priestess of backbending!

If I only had a heart...

2011-01-22T19:27:00.001Z

It seems like forever since I blogged...and since I practiced...sigh. Life gets in the way sometimes. But not having active practice angst (I'm sure it'll be back tomorrow!) I'll return to a topic I keep meaning to discuss.

So here's my problem - I am beginning to wonder if I have even got a heart chakra.

Apparently backbends are emotional and all about heart opening (n'est-ce pas?) but thus far, no emotional content for me in the dropbacks - not that I can say the same about the history of my practice, there have been plenty of tears there. Witness my mad meltdowns in triang mukha (thankfully now behind me) and many other emotional outbursts in the past. No it's not that I'm concerned about lack of emotion (and frankly in my life off the mat, often it's more the case that I am too emotional). The issue is this - when I started learning the chakra meditation in Thailand, after a couple of days I could really feel those spinning discs, and the energy moving up the central energy channel and moving into each chakra - until we reached the heart. Maybe it's because it is a less specific or obvious physical area than the throat, or the third eye, but for some reason I would just lose it once we got to that point (only to regain it as we moved on up to the throat). Some days I could feel the heart chakra whilst being guided in the internal sunrise meditation but if the instruction was to sit afterwards allowing our focus to return to the heart - nope, it was gone.

Having tried this chakra meditation a lot since coming home from Thailand I continued to have the same issue - and any "heart openers" I tried left me with the same issue. Of course my brain went crazy over this - what could it mean?? Am I actually a heartless witch? Does it mean that I've got everything locked up inside and I'll never get through the stone walls I've built to protect my heart? Oh yes, full drama-queenitus comes out to support this idea whenever I think of it. In fact, the only time I have ever spontaneously felt anything going on around my heart chakra was in my new year chanting workshop, and again when I returned the following week. So at least I know it's possible, and perhaps this heart activity was responsible for feeling amazing for 3 days after the workshop? I don't know, but if it was, I really want to find a way to tap back into this. I feel a bit like I'm in a constant state of running up the down escalator at the moment, battling to figure out what is right for me in my lifestyle (and I think I'm probably getting it all wrong) and I need all the help I can get. So maybe heart openers are the key - any suggestions?

Meanwhile I'll keep worrying that my heart has turned to stone, and getting this song in my head every time I start to worry about it...

And yes I disapperead into an internet wormhole looking for a clip of this...and can I say I rather enjoyed the mix of appallingly bad and weird amateur productions, versions on ice and spoof videos of the Wizard of Oz (having established that a version from the original was impossible to find!). AND I discovered that the original tin man actor almost died from inhaling aluminimum powder, went to hospital for months of recuperation, and got replaced while he was there! Bastards!!

Down & up; up and down.

2011-01-09T21:52:00.001Z

It's been a funny old week one way and another (little reader's tip: if you're all asana-asana-asana and don't give a hoot about any other gubbins in my life, skip paragraph one. That's a little gift from me to you ;) Oh and yes I borrowed that tag from Evelyn!)

The first few days of the working year got off to a fabulous start. Thanks to my post-kirtan & meditation high I was on top of the world when I got back to work on Tuesday, and a moonday lie-in and 15 minutes sitting started the day off nicely. I realised as the next two days panned out how fantastic I was feeling - and I couldn't help but realise that this was a change. Sometimes until you've come back up again you don't actually realise you were down...

If I'm honest, the weeks before Christmas were difficult ones. I have been struggling to adjust to my new job. I knew I wasn't really doing what was required of me, but at the same time a kind of lethargy overtook me, and I wasn't able to JUST. DO. IT. I went into a bit of a downward spiral, finding every excuse and reason under the sun for why I wasn't being so much an on-the-road salesperson; in my case it was more of a hiding-at-home not-really-selling person. So the day before Christmas I got a bit of a talking-to, which was completely fair and I needed to hear it. The funny thing was, everything that was said to me could also have been related to my practice at some point or another (in essence: "Don't think, just do!" and definitely some "Why fearing?") and it turned into a bit of a life-coaching session. But it also left me incredibly scared that if I didn't pull my finger out I would be back on the job market again by the end of January, all of which overshadowed my planned calm attitude and approach to Christmas with the family.

The turning point was my fabulous kirtan experience last week, and the feeling I was able to emerge from it with - but it wasn't until I got out and started seeing customers this week that I realised how bad I had been feeling before, and how good I felt now. I was wary of blogging about it right away in case the feeling didn't last, I knew I wouldn't stay quite so high, but was hoping that the positivity would stick around. And I had an amazing practice on the Wednesday, a very early start to get home in time for a 9am conference call, and one of those days where the first chaturanga feels STRONG and supported, and the rest of the practice unfolded in much the same way. I started and finished that day at the same time as the lovely J, and when I came out she told me I looked really young -ha!! Who wouldn't want a friend like this? :) (sorry J, I'm still milking the compliment!).

Then Thursday and Friday were days spent, by necessity, working at home, and the same feeling I had before Christmas (when I was hiding out) started to come creeping back. Major lethargy, physical exhaustion (and a sore body from the return to practice no doubt) but feeling mentally wide awake and frustrated to be stuck at home all day (and all evening) on my own make endless phonecalls where I had to say the same thing to every single customer. Thursday was OK, Friday I had less pressure (as more of the work was already done) so I found myself losing focus, unable to concentrate, and my body was just sooooo tired....

Anyhoo, that's the ups and downs of work.

As for the downs of ups of practice (asana-asana-asana peeps, wake-up now!) I am of course referring to the dropping back. So what was my resolve about this? I will not make my whole practice about this; I will not obsess about it and endlessly research it. I will just do it. (ha - I should of course be using this lesson for my working life too!). But as I said in the first few weeks it didn't seem to really be about my back - oh now it's ALL about my back. The latest phase introduced this week came in two parts; last Sunday (my first day back after over a week off) I had to start going back with my arms overhead rather than in prayer. Two days later C had me try to keep the arms overhead as I came up too, instead of the instinctual movement that brings the arms around (like I'm about to give her a hug as she drags me upright!). And of course each of these little phases is WAY harder than the last.

After trying one day to raise the arms overhead and dropback I mentioned on twitter how much harder this was, and the lovely Sarah said that at this point I had to really engage my legs as I hang back and this would be the key. Up to this point I had been just hanging back and thinking of England (i.e. no body awareness or "effort" aside from the effort to not fall on my head) but after she said this, I gave it a try the next morning...and Cary, who rarely ever gives feedback (and certainly not just praise!) as I went back with my legs engaged said "Good, GREAT! It's really coming!" - HURRAH!!!

Coming back up with the arms out-stretched - I actually managed it the first two times I tried, and then lost it, and 50/50 seems to be the ratio now, but with all of these new actions I am starting to find that I have sensation in my back later on in the day, I hesitate to call it pain, but there's something happening. Some of the time it just has that feeling that it has been working, that deep muscular-heat that kind of feels good, but other times it is definitely uncomfortable.

I'm also finding it very difficult to breath in a hangback. The routine C has me do now is: inhale arms up; exhale hangback; inhale there; exhale dropback (assisted), come up on the inhale - we do this 3 times, then the 3 assisted hangbacks, then the final one as before but holding for 5 in UD (yes I'm probably repeating myself here!). Well this week I have also been at the tail end of a stinking cold, and hanging back and then finding a breath when the cold is on your chest (and the arms are newly out-stretched instead of happily in prayer) is HARD.

It doesn't seem to be getting much easier as the cold is getting better though - actually today I had a new weird thing happen too. When C brought me up from the last held backbend (which I think was deeper than normal) my breath caught in my throat and it felt like I was having an asthma attack: my throat just closed into the heavy wheeze where it is impossible to get any air in. Instant panic: I tried to breathe again and the same thing happened. I told myself not to panic and thankfully it worked, I didn't flip out, and struggled my way down to the floor for my forward bend - but it's just such hard work! I thought things are meant to get easier the more you practice them, not HARDER! Just before Christmas I said to C one day "it just feels like it's getting harder every day!" and her response was "no, it's getting easier every day" - in other words, I am doing more of the work, she is doing less - which I suppose is a good thing, but it just seems to highlight how fecking hard this is! My dilemma is that I don't really want to do any extra-curricular activities to hurry it along, because I feel like that goes against the answer you usually get if you ask a teacher "what can I do to improve this posture?" - the answer is always just "practice, all is coming...". But is it possible to learn to dropback by just doing what I am doing now? Or will I inevitably have to start working on it on my own time?

Meanwhile, I went to kirtan again last night and found myself visualising perfectly controlled dropbacks while I chanted...so maybe I just need to keep doing that and eventually it will happen...

Starting small

2011-01-03T17:39:00.000Z

Last night I went along to a kirtan workshop which was followed by (what was described as) an open meditation class. I have been to the kirtan classes at this studio before, though not for a little while, but my efforts with meditation have up until now been limited to segments of ashtanga workshops or retreats.

I had some doubts about going along for this class as it talked of bringing a notebook to set our intentions for the year, and the full write-up suggested to me that I might end up digging up some emotions I have been trying to avoid. Silly me, of course, in that any emotions I have been "trying to avoid" have already come to my attention, but that's another story. I love (love love) kirtan but have had some emotional responses to it in the past, and I suppose the truth is I was feeling a little too vulnerable for the full force of this at the moment. So I realised - what better time to face up to it?

I hadn't booked after calling in the afternoon to be told there was no need, but arrived (late) to discover that the room was already over capacity (it takes 35 people, they had already allowed 41 in) and there were three others waiting (and another lady arrived just after me). I tried to hide my disappointment but the manager was upstairs seeing what she could negotiate, and happily came down 5 minutes later saying it was OK, we were all in....so rather than having "too many" people there, we ended up with a fabulously well-attended roomful of like-minded souls ready to welcome in the new year :)

The bolsters and blankets were set up in a double horseshoe in the room facing the lovely teacher leading the chant (with harmonium and drummer standing by) with several rows of people behind on each side, and those on chairs lining each wall, but as I love to be surrounded by sound I was happy to spot a free space right in the middle of the second row and tip-toed in just as the first chant was about to begin. And of course I had nothing to fear...

The sound was incredible, on a usual Saturday class there are around 12 people, so with 4 times that many I couldn't hear my own (admittedly horse) voice; I was not a drop in the ocean, I was the ocean. And the experience was incredible too - and indescribable. Thoughts rose to the surface; vivid memories of walking with a former love in his home-town, instead of banishing the painful memory I allowed it to surface, I let it sit there, I let it rise up and float free. I felt my heart swell, I cracked it wide open. I made space for those I want to send loving energy to. I set my intention to send healing energy to the person in my life who needs it the most. I felt love. And then when the kirtan was over, the meditation class began (and my fear...). But again, there was nothing to fear; the teacher talked a little about our posture, about meditation techniques. He explained a meditation technique as "the car you drive to the temple - but you still have to get out of the car and enter the temple". He told us that we would be meditating with the mantra om namah shivaya.

He continued to speak for a little while after telling us to begin, and I found myself wishing he would stop talking so that I could really focus. He stopped talking. I repeated the mantra. I had an enormous coughing fit and had to take a drink of water, conscious of the disturbance to those around me. I put the bottle down, immediately regretting not drinking more and convinced that the tickle in my throat was so bad that I was going to throw up. I repeated the mantra. I noticed that people around me were beginning to fidget. I felt pride that I was sitting completely still. I repeated the mantra. I started to wonder how long this was going on for. Maybe I could sneak a look at the clock - but it was behind me. I repeated the mantra. I found some stillness and let the mantra slip away. My mind wandered, I brought back the mantra. I wondered again if we would be doing this for half the class and something else for the second half - we weren't really just going to sit for 45 minutes uninterrupted were we? I repeated the mantra. I wondered what sort of value for money it is to pay £12 for a class where you sit in silence? I repeated the mantra. I noticed the fidgeting around me again. I felt proud (again) for staying still. And then it was over.

And that was the whole class! I actually sat for 45 minutes - UNBELIEVABLE!! Considering my previous attempts have hit a maximum of about 10-15 minutes, this was quite a big difference. And when he suggested that we take a few moments to reflect on our experience, my overriding feeling was this: I sat and judged other people. "Listen to them fiddling and fidgeting while I sit here nice and still." Not exactly a great emotion (hello ego!) but at least I recognised that I was doing it. But as I walked out of the class and took the hour-long journey home, I felt still and calm with a clear head. Reading my very most favourite book on the way home (Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das - which I started reading again over Christmas) certainly helped keep my mind focussed, and getting up to practice this morning I still felt calm and centred - and practice today was deliciously focused. All of which made me realise that meditation is something I really really need to find the time for in my daily life. My plan? To cut down the (enormous) amount of time I spend online, and replace it with this much healthier activity. And over post-yoga breakfast today a plan was made to start attending monthly meditation workshops, which should give me the support and motivation to start sitting regularly.

So happy New Year everyone, here's to a calm and balanced 2011, whatever your intentions may be! :)

2010 and the Primary Series: my year of yoga

2011-01-01T22:30:00.000Z

Well well, it’s New Year’s Day so it must be time for a clichéd look back at last year...(well, if everyone else is doing it, why shouldn’t I?!)

This time last year I was at the airport preparing to fly off to Goa. It was to be my second trip to Purple Valley, this time to study with Noah Williams, and I was well aware that my practice had been shaky at best in the preceding weeks. It was only in November that I went back to a teacher after about three months break from my formal practice, and even then I was making it once or twice a week at best (and hadn’t practiced at all over Christmas). Arriving in Goa I found that around half of the group were beginners to ashtanga and so were taking a daily led class with Noah – leading them to believe that everyone in the early class was “advanced”. Not so, said I; true that I was confident to practice mysore style, but I was very definitely one of the beginner-est of the self-practitioners. It didn’t take long for me to get very dissatisfied and disillusioned with where I was at with my practice. I practiced up to bhujapidasana at that point, and was convinced that I was the ONLY person in the history of ashtanga EVER to be stuck at that point (oh yes, it was definitely “my special unique problem” – or one of them!). Trying to talk to Noah about it for some reassurance he basically said that I hadn’t been practicing for very long, and that given that I’d taken a three month break it was like going back to the beginning again. Which was really NOT what I wanted to hear (but was basically true). It was as impossible to balance in UHP as it had always been in my early days. I still couldn’t get into a headstand unaided. And needless to say, bhuja seemed impossible and I still wasn’t getting any new postures – despite the fact that others around me were. I kept a little notebook while I was there, much of which is filled with my frustrations. But towards the end of my stay something occurred to me. I was frustrated with my practice when I hadn’t actually been practicing. Duh!! And here I was, having practiced 6 days a week for 2 weeks (I even practiced the morning after spending the middle Saturday in bed having been very sick, India stylee), right at the start of the new year. I had a realisation that I couldn’t bitch about my practice until I actually made an effort to establish a regular practice. And having always been rather keen on that “fresh start” feeling of a new year, I couldn’t help but see it as my new challenge: 2010 and the Primary series. Somehow it just felt right, 2010 has a rounded feel to it, and to me it felt like the perfect opportunity to really give this thing my best shot.

Coming back to England I was determined to start getting to the shala more often. I documented my early attempts on this blog of course, but my plan was to build it up slowly so that it was sustainable, rather than coming back all guns blazing and reaching burnout after a few weeks. Starting with Sundays (that was the easiest day to get there for me) I started adding one more weekday at a time. By early February I reported having “made it” to practice on Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday (having skipped Monday and Tuesday because I’d almost had a mental breakdown being adjusted in triang mukha on the Sunday!!) and had started to make the connection that my body actually felt better (less sore) when I practiced than when I didn’t.

In March I travelled to Edinburgh for my first workshops with Kino, and had my first major breakthrough of the year: an unassisted headstand. It arrived magically at the end of a led class (possibly my third ever attempt at full led primary I think?), accompanied by full-on tears and violent shaking, but happily on returning home from the workshop it was mine to keep forever. On summarising the weekend with Kino I found that I had made peace with my practice exactly where it was, writing the post on a Saturday evening before bed. And so what happened the following day? Not twelve hours later I was with my teacher, who saw fit to give me the long-awaited next two poses: kurmasana and supta kurmasana. Talking to her afterwards she said that sometimes as a teacher you can just feel a “space that has opened up” – in other words, as soon as I let go of grasping for the next pose, it was right there waiting for me.

My journey with supta kurmasana was a painful one (both literally and figuratively). It involved a painful shoulder injury, visits to an osteopath, a long period of completely backing off, probably a lot of blogging, a HUGE amount of discussion, and finally the breakthrough I’d been waiting for came in July when I bound my hands all by myself for the first time. A quick review of my posts between March, when I was given supta k, and July (when I became able to get into it alone) reveal a huge amount – ha! I'm surprised myself by my level of honesty on this blog sometimes! But during these months I experience first hand how the practice can bolster you through difficult times when I lost my grandmother; I learned what happens when your teacher goes awaypermalink somewhere?!); and perhaps most significantly I ramped up my practice during this period to hit the elusive 6 day week – and immediately noticed the changes in my practice.

Then in August, all in the space of one week I was told that my company was probably going to fold (and I would be losing my job), I got two massive parking tickets, and I was given garbha pindasana. Wow thanks universe, anything else?! Garbha turned out to be a total bugger for me, and once the crazy bruising died down I had a good few months (in fact up until late November) of being able to get my arms right through but only being able to rock on the spot without getting beached. September brought baddha konasana (the day I was given it I wrote “I have a feeling this asana will bring both joy and pain” – oh how f’ing right I was!) which fast developed into my LEAST.FAVOURITE.ADJUSTMENT. EVER. But after only a few days of getting used to it, in early September came upavistha konasana. And at this pointi began to freak out that the end of primary was hurtling towards me like an unstoppable train. I was right, and the rest of primary was rolled out for me pose by pose until on the first anniversary of my first ever visit to my teacher, I was given setu bandhasana. A few weeks of getting used to this and then, a few weeks before Christmas, we started working on dropbacks. So in a sense, that was it: I set out to devote 2010 to the primary series, and in that time (completely unexpectedly), I reached the end of primary. Of course these are just the bare bones of the story, and I may now be practicing full primary on a daily basis, but the reality is that I still have so much to learn.

And perhaps the most important thing I have to learn is balance. Because in devoting my year to my ashtanga practice, I managed to neglect a whole lot of other stuff along the way. I didn’t go on a single date. I certainly didn’t throw myself into my work (even though I now have a shiny new job). I became appallingly bad at replying to messages from friends and became a whole lot more flaky (and likely to cancel plans with friends) than I ever was before. I definitely ended up sleep deprived. But would I change the past year? No, of course not, but what it makes me realise is this: choosing to devote yourself to one thing almost always means that other things get missed out. And I know for sure I want to experience this whole rich tapestry, not to look back on my life and think “well, at least I could bind supta kurmasana by myself”. This (once again) is certainly not the post I set out to write, but I now realise with perfect clarity that the challenge turned out not to be “establishing a daily practice” or “moving through the primary series”, oh no. The real challenge, now that I have achieved (horrible word) both of those things, is to integrate my practice into my real life, and to have a bit more of a life. And something tells me this is going to be my toughest challenge yet.

Happy shalaversary

2010-12-19T12:42:00.002Z

The alternative title of this post could be: for all the posts I haven't written.

I find myself entering again into one of those phases where it seems there is so much to say here that I end up getting overwhelmed and saying nothing. Some of these things are pretty landmark occurrences though so if for nothing more than my own benefit, I do want to mention them (even if I don't have time right now to elaborate). Outside of my yoga practice there is a huge amount going on too, perhaps mirrored on my mat, but discussing that will have to wait for another time.

1. I had my shala anniversary. Thanks to having written about it here, I was able to tell when it was exactly a year to the day since I first practiced with Cary and proclaimed that "I think I found my teacher". Funny to see now how right I was.

2. I was given setu bandhasana, the last pose of primary (wait for it) - ON MY SHALA ANNIVERSARY! I didn't actually realise until a few days later (when I checked the dates), but even though I try not to attach any great significance to this, it seems interesting to me. One year ago, I rocked up at Yoga Place with a very shaky practice, finishing at bujapidasana, not able to get into headstand, not able to jumpback (no change there then!), and certainly not willing/capable of the early mornings needed to enable a daily practice. At that point (just to recap) I had been practicing on and off for 8 months, but having not found a teacher that I gelled with AND could actually get to regularly (I loved the evening teacher, but never managed to get to more than one class a week) my practice had become more off than on.

I'll save the evaluation of the past year of practice for another time, but I like the fact that these two events coincided; it does seem to have some significance. When I had a moment to chat to Cary later that week (this all happened a few weeks ago now) and told her, she said that it is said that it should take a year to do primary (by which I assume she means a year of daily/almost daily practice, which discounted my on/off once a week period). And she finished by saying "and next week we're doing dropbacks!"

Aaagh!

So, the thing which I have heard and read so much about. The thing which I began to fear about 5 new poses ago. The thing which (if I am honest) a little tiny bit of my brain illogically thought "maybe you'll just be able to do them easily - even though that happens to NOBODY, maybe you'll be the first one ever!". It's easy to have these thoughts when you have never tried something. So I turned up to practice last Sunday fully prepared to start dropbacks, and I have to say I was filled with anxiety. But the shala was busy, C wasn't around when I was doing my backbends, so I hung about for a while lying on my mat and then did the vinyasa into my forward bend. But later she came and told me, "tomorrow after your backbends, stand at the top of your mat and catch my attention". So there was to be no escape!

My overriding emotion though, aside from anxiety, was not to make too big a deal of it. Easy to say before having started them I know, but I did not want my entire practice to become about this, just like when I was struggling with other asanas I didn't want to give disproportionate headspace to them. My practice is my practice, it is not about one asana. I may need reminding of this in a few months time however ;) One further disclaimer - as I am trying to bash this blog out in double quick time it IS just about dropbacks. Of course for every day mentioned, there was a whole practice attached...I just don't have time to talk about all of that now!

So day one - C teaches it this way: hands in prayer, inhale, exhale go back (as she holds), hands touch the ground, inhale she brings you back up. Repeat three times. No fuss, no screaming or grunting, and actually no fear. My overwhelming sensation was that this was very like another big "first time" (think about it) where prior to the event you have so much build-up, and people in your class are separated in your mind into those who have done it and those who haven't...and then when it happened all I could think was "Is this it? It just feels WEIRD!!".

Day two was much the same - it really didn't feel like it was about my back at all - at this stage it felt like it was purely about faith.

I should have known things were about to get more challenging...

Day three and we added in some extra tricks. Three dropbacks as before, then three supported hangbacks (arms across the chest), then a final dropback where you hold for 5 and walk the hands in. Coming up from there felt difficult, and for the first time this all started to become about my back.

Day four was the same physically, but mentally a lot more difficult. I was feeling strange, and I just wanted to skip the dropbacks - but I stood up and waited for C anyway. And the drill was the same, but I felt like she really had to haul me up. After the first three dropbacks I tried to ask a question but was silenced with a one-word answer and told to do the hangbacks. After it was all over I had to fight the overwhelming urge to walk out of the room, skipping closing. I felt irrationally irritated and angry. I cried in paschimotanasana. The only reason I stayed in the room was because I knew that there would be no more adjustments through the closing sequence - i couldn't bear the thought of any more.

And then on Friday, when I would normally have done the led class (and hence no dropbacks), I was in Brighton for work and so I took my practice to another shala. The teacher there was wonderful, and gave me some great help, but I very very nearly went straight from UD to forward bending, feeling again that I just didn't want to do it. She has a different style, and had me move my legs much closer together so that I squeezed her leg between my thighs - and oh my god it's a lot more difficult! By the time we got to the final dropback where I held for 5, she practically had to winch me up. As she brought me back up I staggered around and grabbed her, making a load of noise, then told her it had got harder every day, nearly losing it as I said it. She gave me some lovely feedback, told me my back was very open and that I was doing amazingly for only having been doing them for a week. I think I needed to hear this at that point.

So today I was back the the shala, and silly me for thinking that it would feel easier after the difficult Brighton leg-squeezing version! Today as C came to the top of my mat she said to me "now we are doing the next phase". So now I have to hangback as far as I can with my hands in prayer on the exhale, inhale there, and then she takes me down to the ground on the exhale, and inhale back up to standing. We do this three times before the assisted hangbacks, then the final dropback I have to do the same again before she takes me right down and I hold for 5, walking the hands in. All I can say is that it very literally felt like somebody took away the safety net as I tried to hangback without her holding me. There were a few false starts but I tried to just get on with it and not think too much, but that overwhelming sensation was of the missing safety net, and that I was trying to do something which was wrong (you know, like that urge to step onto live train tracks...or walk the wrong way up an escalator). So I think the lesson I am taking from my first week of dropbacks is this. Just as soon as there is anything approaching a comfort zone, it gets taken away, The honeymoon is over, the hard work starts here!

Why do we work?

2010-12-01T20:46:00.002Z

Why do we work?

Aaah, a good question you may think (and no doubt one which triggers all sorts of gut reactions) - it's a fairly loaded word, "work", isn't it?

The Sunday moonday last month allowed me to go back to my original yoga teacher, the one who really got me interested in yoga and it's more spiritual side - found, incongruously enough, at my local weight-lifting/circuit-training-obsessed local chain gym. The funny story is that this class is sivananda style hatha yoga, but up until a few days before I went to India to take an ashtanga course, inspired by my love for this class, I was utterly convinced that this was ashtanga. Anyway I digress...

For quite some time I was a regular at this Sunday afternoon class, without really having much conversation with the teacher (N - a wonderful guy who looks for all the world like he just landed from another planet and is still trying to figure out what this one is all about - he is that spiritual. But after coming back from my first trip to India, all full of the joys of ashtanga, I quit my gym membership to spend the money instead on yoga classes. As I now always practice at the shala on a Sunday, there isn't really a chance to go back to his class apart from on the odd ocassion, like last Sunday's moonday for example. Well now that I am an infrequent visitor, and a yoga devotee, every time I do go to his class I am treated to a seriously amazing conversation with N afterwards. I wish I could suruptitiously record what he says, as I can't take it all in, but he has said some things to me in these conversations which have had quite an impact.

So last week, I took the class, which was wonderful (and let me say, as it is mostly the same each time, it's a great marker to see how my flexibility and strength has changed in the months since I last tried it) and afterwards he stopped me for a chat. "You look so well," he said, taking my hand, "What's happened? Did you get married??"

Well, funny suggestion, but no - I told him that I had a new job (and in the most part my "looking wonderful" was probably down to a lie-in and a post-yoga glow). So then we got into a discussion about work - when I say discussion I mean him talking and me listening, hoping against hope that I could remember it all and apply it later - but the essence of it was something like this (though I' paraphrasing of course).

Through our work we face the meeting of past and future - of our memories and our imagination...so if something reminds us of a situation when we did the same thing before and it went badly (like chasing up money from a customer for example), then we remember the past experience and imagine it happening again in our future. To get the outcome we desire we need to remain completely in the present and not colour it with what has gone before or what we imagine might happen this time. Our work exsists to teach us an important lesson in our life - but if we are not careful, if we take our eye off the ball and sleepwalk through our hours spent at work, we risk missing the lesson, and "that is why we work, it's all about the lesson." And there was me thinking I just worked to pay for yoga ;)

He went on to talk about how people explain washing the dishes as a meditation, and how he watched an old film of Swami sivananda where he did everything with a reverance, a form of deliberate movement - tying this in with work, he decided to take a job (on top of teaching yoga presumably and - big surprise to me - writing film scripts) as a decorator, "because if I couldn't turn work into a meditation when I'm painting a wall white from one end to the other, then what could I?" Seriously - wow.

He said that this took him many years to understand, but once he realised it it held the key for him. He also spoke to me once in the past about how once you understand what life is (when we were discussing the yogic path) that it doesn't matter if you're sweeping the streets or having the corner office, because you can do either thing with a song in your heart, or a black cloud permenantly raining on you - the actual job is not important.

unpacking

I was reminded of all of this this week, especially yesterday, as I am in Denmark this week as part of my training for my new job. The company I work for as a sales rep/account manager is based here, and they get all new employees to spend a few days (or a week for those lucky people based in Denmark!) working in the warehouse - the idea being so that we understand how it all works and won't make unreasonable demands on them later, haha! As my colleague was delayed in arriving by a day due to bad weather, I spent day 1 on my own, and our first task was unpacking a shipment of baskets which had just arrived from Madagascar. Surrounded by Danish people who spoke little English, I stood alongside them with my knife, slitting open the old rice bags used to pack the baskets, and thinking of N's words. In all honesty that morning, lugging these heavy bags, carving up my already sore and dry hands, having no conversation with my neighbours, was the first thing I have done since starting this job at the end of October which felt like "work" - as in, a hardship, something which I wasn't actively enjoying doing - not that I was unhappy, as I had all of N's words running through my head as I did it, but it defiitely felt like work in the traditional sense.

And surely that can't be bad? Having come from almost three years doing a job where I did very little but watch the clock and surf the internet, this is something of a revelation. And thankfully the unpackig section was just a short interlude before I was trained how to pick orders - but here there was another lesson. I was taken by one of the (english-speaking) staff on a cart like the one in the photo to be shown how to pick orders (it is done manually, travelling around the warehouse on the cart with it's attached trolley and matching up the orders to a handheld scanner) and let me tell you, I was terrified. These things can MOVE! And being a passenger was really quite scary - as was the thought that I'd be let loose myself before too long. But after the morning coffee break I was off, and after a shaky (and very slow!) start I was zooming around like nbody's business by the end of the day. When my colleague arrived today, I was the one who trained her, and yes I may have had a few crashes but I quickly had to let the fear go yesterday, to notice when my shoulders were rising up towards my ears in tension, and just to go with it and relax. And I couldn't have been more proud when the warehouse manager told me at the end of today that I had done a really terrific job and not made any mistakes with my orders :) And how did I forget to mention how much FUN we had?! Zooming around on our little carts, my colleague and I giggled our way through today - with the odd bang and crash to send us on our way. We decided to ask the warehouse manager if we might be allowed to come and work for them during our holidays, a thought which had us doubled over laughing, as did the moment when I stepped off the MOVING cart we were both on to look at a cushion I'd spotted, whilst saying "Oooh, PRETTY!". So after the fear, the fun :)

So I'm not entirely sure what my overall message is, maybe I don't need one, but just to say that sometimes you need to keep your ears and eyes open for the lesson that is there in your work. And one thing's for certain, thanks to N and my lovely new company, I have been reminded that work isn't just a means to pay for yoga holidays - though it helps with that too.

More things I learned in Thailand - Part two

2010-11-25T22:12:00.001Z

This is continued from part one....

Asana specifics – these are all changes I have noticed in my practice since coming home. I'll say that of course not all changes or lessons become permanently ingrained, and even since I started drafting this post some of these things have changed...but let's go back in time and consider what I learned before I started unlearning it again!

Clayton explained the hip opening action in the janu sirsasanas – I’ve often heard these explained as hip openers, but until he talked about rolling the bent leg hip back and down, and came and adjusted me in it, I never really felt it. I also found a feeling of opening in the straight leg hip crease which I’d not experienced before, and in B I finally took the weight off my poor underneath foot (which has a scar to show for all the weight that’s been loaded onto it this past year) by working into my hips instead.
Mari A – I was left with some latent uncertainty about the foot position actually in all of the marichyasanas as this was tweaked in almost every practice by the assistant teacher. However one day she also talked me through pushing down into the bent leg hip to open the psoas – I have been taught in the past to push down into the foot, but pushing the hip down towards the floor seemed to produce a new feeling of opening there.
In teaching headstand to beginners, Clayton emphasised how important it is to keep the elbows close together and move the shoulders away from the ears. I didn’t realise that this had changed until shalamate Susan, covering the first mysore class after I came home, whispered whilst giving me my balasana massage “I really liked the way your elbows were close together”. Well I never had a compliment during child’s pose before! I have also found that my headstand feels a million times stronger than ever before through a combination of Clayton’s teaching and the conversation I had with Susan after that practice, where she said that pushing into the inside of the elbows (even if you can’t move them closer together) also really helps. So I tried it and you’re right – thanks Susan! And actually even in this past week I have been really working on the shoulders which introduces so much stability that I have even begun working on floating the legs up – up until now I have been tucking my knees to go up into sirsasana.

I videoed the last full practice of our retreat and through this I learned ALL sorts. One was that I massively hyperextend my elbows in downward dog, which is why my head is getting close to the mat, and also why I had a strange adjustment almost every day from Elonne, the assistant teacher. It wasn’t until I saw the video that I understood the adjustment itself, and why I had been getting it. And on returning home and trying to adjust myself to correct this what did I find? As if by magic, my heels were ~~able to reach the floor~~ much closer to the floor (somehow they have risen up again since I wrote the first draft)! A less fabulous thing I discovered from watching the film is that I am a million miles away from being able to jump back properly, somehow I am still launching off one foot, and my legs are kicking way up in the air. Having seen this I was really discouraged and it did actually make the process seem harder though my practice for a few days. But generally speaking seeing the video was a positive experience, especially as I got more adjustments that day than I got the whole of the rest of the week! It’s quite weird to watch yourself being adjusted and my mum was horrified by Clayton’s full-body downdog adjustment when I showed it to her (“but he’ll hurt you!”) – I just told her it feels great!

EDIT: I did originally post some of the video here but as it features other practitioners I can't decide if that's good blogging etiquette or not - any thoughts?

I learned that chakras aren’t a load of hippie claptrap. Sorry but that’s what I had always thought! I put them in the same camp as crystals and aura reading and fairies...you know, kind of weird bullshit. But as part of the daily breathwork as well as chanting the bija seed mantras (which we universally loved!) we did the internal sunrise meditation (which I misheard as ETERNAL and now can’t separate it from the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind...but anyway!), working through each chakra point, visualising the chakra as a disc and breathing at 4 points around it before moving up to the next point, and then sitting and breathing for a few minutes at the end. I think it was on Tuesday, so three days into the course (and a day that we had a led class) that I had a very powerful experience in this meditation. As we moved up to the third eye, and then the crown of the head, I felt something really moving upwards in a very powerful way. I needed to sit with it, which I was able to do for a few minutes, but then we were told to come to stand at the top of our mats to begin the class – but I really, really needed to stay where I was and sit with whatever this thing was. Of course it wasn’t possible, so I did stand up and practice, but after coming out of savasana I still felt that I wanted to sit quietly. I went to breakfast but really just wanted to be by myself, so I cancelled my plan to go out for the day with my roomie and took my lovely Argentinian friend’s advise (“Maybe today you need some lonely time...”) and I did just that. I walked along the beach with my camera, I lay on the sand, I swam and I read, and later I felt able to rejoin the group for dinner. I was a bit scared though that this shouldn’t have happened, and was apprehensive about doing the meditation again the next day. But I did it, and then after the class had finished I spoke to Clayton and explained what I had experienced. I said that I am vata, and recently went through an experience of having too much vata at which he said “Oh me too...” and he then went on to talk about feeling like there was nothing to anchor you to the earth, feeling like a balloon that could just float away, and needing a lead weight to be tied on to keep you here. Now this was strange in the extreme, because in my life before yoga I often had this feeling, that I needed to be anchored somehow and that it was only through the way other people saw me that I could be pinned to the earth (as in, being somebody’s girlfriend, somebody’s friend) – those were the things that stopped me from floating away, and without them I was so insubstantial it was like I barely existed (such were the existential crises of my pre-yoga life!!). It was just really odd that he used the exact same analogy that I had thought, but never vocalised, for years and years in my early twenties. As I walked away I couldn’t even remember the full extent of this conversation with Clayton, only that he hadn’t said “oh my goodness, how WEIRD... you probably shouldn’t do that again “ which was of course what I was afraid he would say. He talked about engaging mula bandha to give that feeling of being grounded, but I think the most useful part of the conversation was feeling that what I had experienced was OK, and that it was normal. And even that it had happened to him!

The last thing I feel I learned on this trip was something which came up in my very last few hours in Koh Samui. As I mentioned while I was away, I am not a very strong swimmer, but having ventured into the sea on my first day I was determined to make the most of the wonderful location and enjoy being in the water. I have always had a fear of deep water, so in a regular swimming pool I could never swim lengths because I wouldn’t go to the deep end – as soon as I know my feet won’t touch the bottom I start to panic and feel like my arms won’t come up high enough to swim. Likewise I was never particularly keen on being in the sea, not knowing how deep it would get, if anything was lurking on the bottom, and of course there are no edges to stay near to for safety. But just being in the water every day (if not really swimming much) was such a joy. Towards the end of the week my roommate and I cottoned on the fact that going swimming right after practice (on day 1 of this – IN our drenched practice clothes...though I took of my yoga pants and went in in my vest & knickers in full view of everyone, haha!) was where it was at, and often we would just go into the water and then hang about chatting. So it’s not like I can’t swim, or that I’m completely afraid of the water, but I don’t like going under, I don’t like getting water in my face, and I am definitely “on edge” when in the water. But there I was on my last day, my case was packed, and about an hour before I had to leave I decided to go for one last dip. Heading out into the clear calm water I lay on my back and just floated as I often do...but realised for the first time that in doing this you don’t have to keep moving your fingers to keep afloat. You don’t have to strive and struggle....you can just lie there, arms outstretched in a T shape and the water will support you. And the thought came into my head: If I can just float, what is there to be afraid of?

Doesn't exactly look scary, does it?

BAM! Amazing realisation...and (of course) this is not about swimming. Just think about it: every fear you can imagine, if you just hold in your heart that belief that you will be safe and supported, then there is nothing to be scared of. The moment shook me, it was a profound realisation, but also a completely calm and lovely one. So I lay there a little longer, then I headed up for one last outdoor shower before I headed off for the journey home. And all through my three flights and 30 hours travelling home, instead of thinking constantly that I was going to die (no really, this is what normally happens when I travel) and gripping onto the armrests for dear life during takeoff and landing, I thought back to lying on the water, safe and supported. And I wasn’t afraid.

Things I learned in Thailand - Part one

2010-11-23T22:24:00.002Z

This post is long overdue given that I came back from Thailand a month ago today....but that's mostly because it's been sitting as a half-written but still way too long draft for the past few weeks - oh and the fact that I have started a new job, turned my world upside down, been to Denmark - so that's lots of reasons! But I have new things I am dying to blog about, so I have to post this first - that's the rules!! So what did I learn in Thailand? I feel a Claudia style list coming on...

Going on a workshop or retreat and expecting to come away with a transformed practice is just not realistic. I decided it was a bit like when you see those weight loss shows, and people have to lose vast amounts of weight – they might lose 9 pounds the first week, 6 the second, but before too long it plateaus at 1 or 2 a week and they start to get disappointed. If you are starting from nothing (as I did on my first retreat) then of course you will see obvious progress. If you are returning to practice after a break (as I was on my second retreat!) then maybe what you’ll see is what you lost (that you could do before you took the break), but probably by the end you’ll be making clear progress. But going on a retreat when you already have a practice means, fundamentally, you have a lovely setting for your daily practice, a different voice counting the led class, and maybe some pointers that differ from the information you are usually given. I don’t mean this to be unnecessarily downplayed, of course there were things I learned, but I didn’t experience a 360 degree about turn in my practice – because ashtanga just doesn’t work like that. What does Kino say, there’s no pixie dust! It’s all about doing it every day.
Sometimes the things you need to learn are not all on your mat. I found the behaviour of some people I met on my trip really challenged me, and I don’t think I dealt with it in the best way (i.e. I let it really wind me up). I won’t say much else other than that as this is a public blog after all :)
Being taught the primary series with mostly beginners is a huge benefit – the fundamental asanas are clearly called that for a reason. Having a chance to go back and re-learn the early asanas in the series was a great help as when I first learnt them there is so much to take in that refining the poses has to come later. In a strict mysore environment you often get very little verbal guidance for these postures, even if (like me in trikonasana) you’re clearly not quite understanding something to the extent that every teacher I ever practiced with adjusted me in the pose. Finally with Clayton something clicked, the extra verbal explanation on a daily basis went in and now I am a lot closer to understanding trikonasana than I ever was before, and the same applies to a lot of the standing sequence.
Breathwork and chanting are hugely powerful – I’ve got more to say on this in part 2 of this post, but every day we spent half an hour before practice doing a breathwork sequence including some chanting, and this had some quite strong effects on me. Those of us on the course universally loved it and I would really love to adopt some of it into my daily practice – the only problem is how! I already get up not long after 5am, I just don’t see how I can fit any more into my morning schedule – but maybe I can keep trying to work this one out. Clayton loves music so he also incorporated a lot of guitar-playing and chanting into our afternoon sessions which was really really wonderful. We’re trying to talk him into recording a CD!! It’s funny to be around people for a week who all have “shiva shiva shiva shambho-oh-oh, shiva shiva shiva shambho..” as their earworm.
The first few days of a retreat are always tough. In the run-up to it I imagine that I will be transported to paradise and everything will be perfect. Then I arrive, exhausted from a long trip, and spend a couple of days making comparisons to trips I’ve made before and worrying that the people aren’t going to be very nice/that they don’t like me. It happened on my second trip to Goa (and probably my first, but I didn’t document it that time), and it happened in Thailand, so I should learn from this that it will probably always happen.

Thailand and Goa aren’t in competition. So after the inevitable comparisons on arrival, I decided that (for me at least) Purple Valley is personal, and Yoga Thailand is commercial. For what it’s worth here’s what I thought. Although YT is undoubtedly more comfortable, it feels somehow less authentic, and several factors give it less of a friendly vibe than PV. One is that not everybody who is staying there is taking the same course, which inevitably means that you don’t mix with the full group, and that sometimes people will talk LOUDLY outside the shala while your whole group is in savasana (see point 1!). Sorry did I say sometimes? What I meant was Every.Freaking.Day. Also not everybody there is an ashtangi, which of course is completely cool, but does mean that you can end up having those “What? You practice EVERY DAY? The same thing??” conversations (or worse the “well in MY yoga....” which often veils the “my yoga’s better than your yoga” sentiment) which make you feel like a freak. And the one place you really want to let yourself feel you’re not a freak is on an ashtanga retreat. Beautiful as the setup is at YT, I also found that the layout was less than ideal for this mixed group setting: the shala, pool and eating area are all on top of one another (adding to the gripes about noise!) whereas at PV there are all very separate. But then YT is right on the beach, and the location is stunning and perfect, the rooms are comfortable and air conditioned, the beds are fabulous, and my room even had an outdoor shower! After spending half the trip running through these thoughts I came to an important realisation: You don’t have to choose. One doesn’t have to be better or worse than the other, they are both wonderful in their own right. Coming out of the sea immediately after my morning practice on the penultimate day I found myself thinking “next time I’ll know to do this from day 1” (“this” being taking a swim right after practice) and it surprised me, as up until that point I hadn’t realised that I planned to go back again.

Having trust in a teacher and the system doesn’t come naturally to everybody – and maybe it’s the hardest thing for complete beginners. This was something I found myself discussing with my teacher since I’ve been home too, on the subject of who will cover while she is on maternity leave. I’ve always understood that if as cover teacher or retreat teacher differs from your daily teacher then you follow whatever instruction you are given – you respect the teacher you are practicing with on that given occasion. When I first started ashtanga I was so clueless that I didn’t think to question what my first teachers were telling me (and nor should I have done, they are wonderful traditional teachers), I just went along with what I was taught and accepted the system as explained to me. I was of course very fortunate to have such a great introduction to ashtanga (you can read about it here in one of my first posts). Coming back to London I first went to a teacher who I didn’t get along with at all, and who I really disagreed with in terms of her methods, but I did as she said, I tried to find a way to make it work, and then after a few months I switched to a different teacher. What I found interesting was that amongst my retreat group in Thailand, there was quite a lot of dissent in terms of the teaching methods which left me feeling rather uncomfortable. Having said this, the same thing happened amongst the complete beginners on my last trip to Goa. The general complaint was that it was too hard for the beginners. Funnily enough everybody who expressed concern said the same thing “It’s not me I’m worried about, but for some of the complete beginners I think it’s too much.” Those few of us with an established practice took to the programme (which was 50/50 mysore practices and half led primary on alternate days) with differing approaches. Whilst I missed my normal daily mysore practice a bit, and had a vague concern that it might be hard to get back to the later asanas after not doing them every day, I was mostly happy to take the teaching that was on offer. The other established practitioners had differing views at times, but one realised that asking to be allowed to finish the series after the beginners had finished the led class was indicative of striving for more progress and what was needed was a lighter attitude to the practice.

All of this comes down to one thing: you just have to suck it up. Listen to your teacher, do as they say, don’t question it too much. Now this may sounds like I’m brain-washed, and I want to write all sorts of disclaimers to go with it, (one of which is that of course, our teachers are only human and they can make mistakes - and sometimes we just won't click with a teacher) but the basic lesson is just as I said: suck it up. According to Cary learning to respect your teacher doesn’t come easily to a lot of people, it takes time for them to develop that trust, but from what I can see it is absolutely one of the most important points to reach if you are going to continue with a dedicated practice. Maybe this is why I look at other people on retreats happily having dinner with the teacher and speaking to them like they are just another of the guests, whereas I stumble over my words and don’t know what to say in normal conversation when my teacher is around...instead of this meaning I’m a loser maybe I can see it as a good thing!

I’ve got more but in the interests of not writing an encylopedia let’s call this part one – to be continued....and I’ll leave you with a video (clearly not Clayton!!) of one of the songs we managed to crowbar into a kirtan...not in Sanskrit. I tried to find a good version of one of my favourite chants from the week but nobody does them quite like Clayton..sigh.

Garbha information overload

2010-11-16T14:39:00.001Z

Since I started (trying) to do garbha pindasana and having all sorts of trouble with the rocking, I've heard lots of different advice. I can get my arms right through (thank you Mr water-spray), I can rock back and forth, but as soon as I attempt a circumnavigation of my mat: beaching. Humiliation. Bleurgh.

"Rock back with the exhale, forward with the inhale."

"Pump the thighs as if you were on a swing."

"Make sure you rock alternate sides of your spine to avoid bruising the bony bit of your back"

"keep the bandhas engaged and the neck sticking out like a turtle" (I am paraphrasing...)

"Rock back onto the left side and lead up with the right side"

And much more besides...but still the fact remains that I CAN'T. BLOODY. DO. IT. Every day as I approach it I start making deals with myself as to whether I'll try it "properly" (in a circle) or if I'll just rock on the spot. Most days I find a reason for the latter (I'm too close to my neighbour/the wall, I'm beside the teacher's station & it's putting me off/I don't have time/I don't have the energy) so I am no closer to being able to do it.

One day last week I just decided that there is only one way I am going to learn this. I have to actually try. So that day I tried and tried, and eventually with lots of stopping & getting stuck, I got around. So of course the next day - what happened? I was in a hurry so I didn't try. And the next day. And so it goes on...

But today, again with my teacher sitting right beside me, I did actually try. I was encouraged by yesterday's effort where (on the spot, granted) I had managed to maintain contact between my hands and my forehead the whole time, which was an absolute first. And the first rock was good, hands stayed on the forehead and I actually moved round to the right. Pausing before the second rock I started to believe I could do this. I suddenly remembered about bandhas...might as well give that a try I thought... ;) So in my slow way I made a few rocks, a few revolutions, was feeling rather pleased with myself, and then I got stuck.

"Do you want help?" C asked from her perch, but it turned out the help on offer (at first) was verbal.

"It's all in the tuck. As soon as you lose that tuck you've lost it - that's why I teach it with the hands on the forehead," she said. AHA! The most helpful piece of advice I think of hears on this one - oooor, maybe just what I needed to hear today. And yes, she did have to help me round on the last few (and to fling me into a lame kukkutasana), but this really gives me something to work on for tomorrow. Hurrah for daily practice - the last 2 days I have had the sensation on finishing that I just want to do it all over again...well, in 16 hours time I can have my wish!

p.s. yeah yeah, I know, I'll write about Thailand. One day.

Marichyasana D...do you or don't you?

2010-11-14T17:53:00.001Z

A(nother) speed post while I continue to process thoughts & reflections from my time in Thailand...(it is coming, really it is - the problem is there's just too much to say, and not all of it suitable for a public airing!!).

After practice today I asked C about Mari D. As I can now bind at the wrist (well, most days) I asked if I should be slackening off the wrist bind to try and get the bent leg hip to the ground - if I try to take the hip down with the deep bind I lose my balance, so what is the priority? It's only recently (like in the past week or so) that I noticed it feels slightly possible that the hip could come down to the ground so I have been wondering about this. C's answer was interesting; she said that she only teaches hip down when you have finished primary. So as she said, next year when you've finished primary, and been finished with it for a while - then yes, that's how I'd teach it, to slacken off the bind to allow the hip to come down (and then eventually of course we'd hope to get the wrist bind back again). She also said that it's probably because I have been doing my new postures (upavistha konasana, supta konasana) that I can feel the possibility of this happening, as there is some of the same action (I can't remember exactly what she said about this, and it doesn't make much sense to me at the moment...). I also asked her about getting the lotus leg hip to the ground in Mari B, saying that if my knee is up should I not be taking my head right down to the ground? Of course the answer is no, so she's going to take a look at it tomorrow (whoops, I hate asking a question that means I'll get pummelled for something on my next practice, but at least I will know then.)

In other news, a visit to my cranial osteopath on Friday (who also happens to practice & teach yoga) led to a demonstration of a new approach to baddha konasana which I got to try out in practice today. I have been really battling with this one, and every day as I come out of it,adjusted or not, I feel slightly like I'm walking away from the wreckage of a car accident (drama queen, moi?). There have been tears, ragged breath, panic, pain, injury...you name it, baddha k has it all for me. So he had me go into it (just the legs) and asked me where the tension is. Right in the hips/pelvic region was the answer, so he told me to roll the flesh away from the sitbones (oh yes, that favourite trick of all non-ashtanga yoga teachers...) and to lift up from the tailbone, and the pubic bone will lift with it. Then rather than trying to push the knees DOWN as I have been doing, he said to take them OUT in the direction they are pointing, and then engage uddiyana bandha to create the space before even thinking of going forward....and going forward lead with the chest, being aware of the space that's been created. Probably none of this is even approaching revolutionary, but as he reinforced each point to me as he added one more instruction at a time, and I sat in the posture all the while we were talking, he pointed out that my hips had opened even in that short time. And, more to the point, it felt SO different, and altogether more comfortable than my past experiences. Of course there's no room in a Mysore context for all of this fiddling about, but today I tried just to focus on some of these points (happily I wasn't adjusted) and again it felt so so different; it probably helped that I spent a long period sitting in baddha k last night but could it be that I am over my major traumas with this asana? As the osteo pointed out, hate is a very strong word to bring to your practice, so maybe I can kiss it good bye for now. Here's hoping anyway.

A total lack of routine

2010-11-03T22:23:00.000Z

So according to my last post I am mid-retreat in Thailand...in case anyone's wondering where I have got to, since my last post I have already been back to London, flown off to Denmark 20 hours later to start my new job, had a week without practice and then finally arrived home on Saturday night ready to get back to the shala last Sunday (where predictably enough I have battered my body for the past few days...Lesson learnt: NEVER take a week off, it hurts too much!!). As of Monday I am installed at home doing my new job, which currently consists of me being a little clueless and desperately wanting to be fully up to speed with it, and all the while I am trying to figure out how to conduct myself in this whole new lifestyle. So while I am dying to blog about all of my experiences I am just too overwhelmed at the moment with everything else going on, and have also got into that phase where there's so much to say that I feel like I've fallen behind and I can't write about the newer stuff until I've written about the older stuff. Meh. I'm hoping that doing a mini excuse-laden post for my absence might kick start me to write some more that might actually be interesting!

Just one little yogi thought for you today: Yesterday as I began my practice I had a little freak-out thought: "How can I just be doing sun salutations when I have no idea what is happening the rest of the day??" Whereas in my old life I knew I would be trotting off to the office after practice, and all was highly predictable, now (and especially during the settling in phase) I have NO idea what my days will hold. But an answer popped into my head as soon as the question came...

Of course you know what's coming next: just breathe.

Out-breath follows in-breath follows out-breath follows in-breath. And so I focused solely on the breath for the duration of my practice, and if at any point the fear of not knowing what's coming popped back up, I just reminded myself that if you can just concentrate on your breath you will ALWAYS know what's coming next....

Beginner's Mind

2010-10-18T14:45:00.000+01:00

So the retreat has begun and I have stopped blogging...

Well there’s just so much to fit into a day! Yesterday’s schedule looked like this: half an hour breathwork/meditation to begin a slow led class as a group, breakfast, pool-time, a little swim in the sea, lunch, pedicure , afternoon workshop, dinner, chatting with fellow retreaters, bed. See? Busy busy round here, no time for blogging!!

But in the interests of keeping a record of this trip I should say how it’s going so far. Let’s put it this way – our welcome meeting on Saturday afternoon included some gentle get-you-over-jetlag yoga (including some of deepest pigeon variations I ever came across!) and when we were in savasana Clayton did a little strum on his guitar to tune it. And then Mel realised she was in HEAVEN! We then chanted lokah samastha sukhino bhavantu accompanied by his guitar and his lovely mellow singing and I knew I’d come to the right course :)

In terms of who is here, the majority of people on the course are either beginners or people who haven’t practiced mysore style or ashtanga yoga before. This makes for an interesting dynamic on my part, as I am amongst one of only 3 or 4 people (out of 17 I think) with a regular mysore practice. Having been one of the closest to beginner level on retreats in the past this is a strange and unusual concept to me (and am trying to disengage any ego at this point). But also I am the least advanced of the regular practitioners, so that feels a bit more natural!! What’s funny is that my room-mate is as huge an ashtangageek as I am and we both confessed to having a fear of being paired up with a complete beginner and having to pretend to be normal, haha!! She’s from Melbourne and is laid back and lovely and practices up to the beginning of intermediate. And her teacher was on the same training course in mysore that my teacher, my original teachers and our retreat teacher were all on. Oh and she was on the same course at Purple Valley as a good friend of mine last year. Small world eh? And then we have another massive ashtangageek from Argentina, a lovely guy who urged me to give up my job as one of the first things he said to me and has described at length the perils of wearing a certain type of boy shorts to do garbha. We had a fabulous long chat last night (the three of us) where we realised that we are all insane, but at least we’re in it together! Isn’t that actually the point of going on a yoga retreat?

So anyway given the number of beginners my assumption was that we would be taking things very slowly to begin with, and yesterday that was the case. But I now completely understand the benefit of going back to basics – I learnt so much! I think often when you are a complete beginner there is SO much to take in that a lot of the finer detail goes over your head. Then with regular mysore practice, your teacher might pick up on some of these glitches during your practice but there will always be things that aren’t picked up on; going right back to the beginning and being taught as a complete beginner is a great opportunity to refine the practice. We began our morning with a half hour session of “breathwork and meditation”. We began with alternate nostril breathing then some other breathwork before going on to chakra meditation (no guitar!) as we chanted lam vam ram (and so on) for each chakra – all of which left me feeling very mellow and chilled. So practice began was an erratic sounding opening chant as we did it all together, and of course everyone has veeeery different versions depending on your teacher. Clayton’s is (of course) beautifully tuneful and rather lovely in a sing-song kind of way. He then handed out posture sheets and proceeded to demonstrate surya namaskar A before asking us to try, then the same with B, repeating a few times together before moving onto padangustasana and so on. Lots of explanation, modifications and variations (with demonstrations) for complete beginners, some adjustments as he walked round and we did the postures in a slightly less flowing way than usual because of the explanations, but I loved the way that he made everything accessible to all levels. And surely that’s the mark of a good teacher? Oh AND he was assisting the person beside me in utthita hasta padangusthasana and then just held his hand out and held my leg up too so he was assisting us both at once. Good skills!

I also have to say (just to get it out of the way...) I don’t think I ever saw a 6’2 man demonstrate ashtanga before (most of the male teachers I’ve come across tend to be shorter and have a different type of physique) but he looks pretty awesome when he demonstrates. And his abs are almost a little distracting!! What with that and lovely mellow timbre of his speech and singing voice I think maybe I have decided a new pre-requisite for a successful yoga retreat... haha, bad lady!!!

In yesterday’s afternoon class we then ran through the postures in more detail – in the morning we practiced up to Janu sirsasana A and then did full closing, in the afternoon we talked as far as the beginning of seated. And there were definitely a few things that I picked up from this first class which I was then able to take through my practice both yesterday and today. One of the major ones was from his lengthy explanation of the correct posture of chaturanga through into upward dog. On Friday when I practiced with Elonne she picked up on my legs rolling out in upward dog. I’ve been aware that I did this a little but something in the way Clayton explained this part of the vinyasa so slowly and clearly made the penny drop. Activate legs – ta-da! Oh also (this is slightly embarrassing) I think I was confusing lifting up the kneecaps/activating the legs with hyperextension. That feeling where the knees slightly roll was one I thought I had to avoid for fear of hyperextending, but now I find that’s actually what you need to do to activate the legs...and in case I didn’t explain this well I demonstrated it with my room-mate and she confirmed that my knees were NOT hyperextending when I did the pulling up thing. Ha! More fool me! But err – sometimes these things just take a while to click don’t they? We finished the class with more chanting, one in English that he said was a typical Californian hippie campfire song and then morphed into lokah samastha, and also the news that tomorrow morning (Monday) we would be doing a mysore style practice. Pretty scary news for the complete beginners I imagine but good news for me as I feel like I have missed lots of days (what with 2 days taken up with travel and the time difference and then the Saturday rest day).

But then weirdly before the mysore practice today I was feeling nervous and like I didn’t remember the sequence – part of which is to do with having new asanas and having taken a few days break I’m a bit confused as to where I actually practice up until – so I checked the sheet before I left my room, but actually when I did my last pose today (supta konasana) I had to ask Clayton afterwards what came next – and that gave me the answer that I had finished my practice!

Anyway we began the class again today with half an hour of breathwork, the same as yesterday, then we did the opening chant in call and response before kicking off with mysore practice. I had my roommate to my left and a particularly distracting beginner to my right (I tried not to be too distracted, really I did...). When the distracting one finally agreed to stop (after saying she was happy to do more 3 times when told to stop there) her savasana consisted of lying on her side with her legs up watching the room. When told she could leave when she was finished she said “no, I’m learning” and continued to watch. Okkkaaaaay.....

I noticed that at the very beginning of my practice I felt a bit like I was trying too hard and that my brain was everywhere. It’s hard sometimes I think to switch off and focus on your practice when there’s so much else going on around you, and the suryas felt like they went on forever. I don’t know if it was because I mentioned my trikonasana issues in conversation yesterday, by Clayton came and helped me with my alignment before I had even started on the posture, and I felt like I was better aligned today than ever before which was fantastic. It was ever so hot though and sweat was pouring off me (bear in mind we started at 8am, much hotter than 6.30!) and at one point I was really shaky and thought I’d never get through my whole practice. But once I got to seated it was OK, I was using a lot of the tips Clayton gave yesterday and it was all helping. Luckily nobody was around to assist in baddha konasana so my poor sore muscles have another day to recover, and apart from my mental block at the end of my practice it was all good. One last pointer was to bring my elbows closer together for headstand – which initially felt wrong but as I stayed there very strongly I realised that I was giving me greater stability in the posture. By the time I came out of savasana only two others were still in the room (my roomie and the lady who works here – the fabulous “we love our breasts” Qi gong teacher) and it was roasting hot. So what did we do but dive headlong into the breakfast extravaganza kicking off with coconut rice pudding with fresh papaya to steel ourselves for another day of sunbathing, swimming in the sea and – oh, getting sunburnt, but that’s not really recommended. Back to a slow led class to navasana tomorrow to help the beginners integrate what they learnt today, so knowing how much harder slow classes are than normal ones, I’m off to bed!

Finding my mojo

2010-10-15T17:03:00.001+01:00

Although it’s a little late to be up and writing, if I don’t do this now I never will! So this morning I had my first mysore practice, though not with my retreat teacher (the course only starts tomorrow with the first practice on Sunday). I slept really well (surprisingly!) clocking up almost 8 hours before I got up to have a leisurely cup of green tea and a shower before heading down for the very civilised 8am start time. One of the people I was talking to at dinner last night was already there, so I went into the shala and was laying out my mat when she started chatting to me – I wouldn’t ordinarily chat in a shala busy or not, as I feel like there is something about the room that needs to be honoured as a sacred space – but she has been here longer than me, maybe the rules are different, so I answered but without too much chat, and then laid down my mat and did some gentle stretches waiting for the teacher to arrive.

They have various teachers here when there is no retreat on, and today it was a young American teacher (who introduced herself but I didn’t quite catch her name...) who I later heard say she is a student of Richard Freeman’s. She came and spoke to me, asked if I was new to mysore, I said that I have a daily practice so she suggested that I started and we would “open up together soon”. So with three other people arranged in each corner of the room, I started my sun salutations. Apart from feeling a little creaky on the first couple, I was surprised that it just felt normal to begin my practice here, with large windows to my left and behind me revealing lush greenery and plants and the odd person walking by. When I was on my surya namaskar B the teacher brought us to the front of our mats to chant, and like in yesterday’s restorative class nobody else in the room made a sound much above a whisper, but the chant was call and response and in a very tuneful and lilting incarnation (not what I’m used to, but quite lovely). So I continued with my practice, noticing (but not attaching to) the fact that the person in front of me was new to the practice (and had a sweet conversation with the teacher “but what’s full primary?” “Don’t worry about that for now, you have what you have...” “Yes but how many more poses? What’s the whole thing?!” “Let’s just work on the marichyasanas and that’s plenty for now...”), the person to her right was obviously not new to yoga, but not familiar with mysore style, and the person to my right went through a standard full primary (no dropbacks). And the teacher picked up on many of the little things Cary picks up on regularly – my shoddy alignment in trikonasana, taking the foot slightly further out in Mari A, taking the body further away from the bent leg in surya B, a rescue mission when I beached myself in garbha (actually C doesn’t help with that, but I could do with it!) – and also some of the things I always think Cary might tell me off for but doesn’t (finding an inward rotation of the thighs and grounding the feet in pursvottanasana, not rolling the feet out in upward dog) but my overall realisation was this:

My practice was exactly like my normal practice. I have flown halfway across the world and done the same practice that I would have done half an hour from my house.

This is not a negative realisation – far from it! But what I came to understand through picking my practice up and moving it all the way here, is that what really counts in ashtanga is the daily practice. I’m not going to expect any miracles just because I am on a retreat, because that would be missing the point. Yes, perhaps once my course begins I will learn things which will cast new light on the things I do on a daily basis, but if not, it’s not the end of the world. The whole purpose of being here is the rounded experience, being away from home, having a break – and if I’m honest, this realisation (which I don’t think I have explained very well) was worth coming all this way for in itself. Because let’s face it, I am about to undertake a new job which means I will be highly unlikely to get to the shala on a daily basis anymore, and realising that I can pick it up and take it somewhere else (i.e. it’s not dependent on my regular shala, or my teacher, or the energy of the other practitioners) is HUGE. Home practice may be another matter, but this will do for starters :)

My new friend

Other good things about today – I met two people who are here for my retreat, and they are lovely (most of the people I’d already met are about to go home). I remember from my second trip to Goa the urge to make comparisons to the first time were inevitable. Here, the comparison to Purple Valley is never far from my mind – though I know this will fade. Also I remember the little struggle I had for two or three days in Goa in January of not being sure about the people I was with, if I fitted in or felt comfortable, and of course by the end of the course that was all long forgotten. So I know that it takes a little time, and whilst this morning and afternoon I spent a lot of time alone, this evening was far more sociable. Plus in my alone time I rested in my room for a while, I lay by the pool, met a family of kittens, had an iced mocha from the juice (!) bar and I swam in the sea! That’s quite a big deal for me as I am always a bit uncertain of water without an edge...but it’s flat calm here and not deep at all, so I felt brave enough and it was fun! Now I did it today I will definitely be in there a lot.

I'm going in...

Oh and this afternoon’s restorative class? Turned out to be Qi-Gong – in the open-fronted beach shala while the waves crashed and the rain arrived in a sudden downpour. I had a few reservations but kept an open mind, and so I was hugging the full moon, scooping up clouds, climbing the cliffs from the ocean of infinite wisdom to the thousand petalled lotus in the third eye with the very lovely & sincere teacher who made some slightly peculiar pleasurable moans as she exhaled. Open mind please people!! It was actually rather lovely, especially the visualisation she talked us through at the beginning, and I felt super spacey afterwards.

But tonight we saw Clayton arrive (haha, I got my new fellow-retreaters to turn round as I pointed him out and he happened to look up – busted! As they said, it’s like when you see a celebrity...!) so tomorrow we begin. And it looks like I may have found my mojo just in the nick of time.

Gratuitous generic beach-shot. Lovely though isn't it?

And when I say I am here...

2010-10-15T08:25:00.001+01:00

...I really should have included a picture shouldn't I? So let's put that right...I am HERE! :)

I am here: Here I am.

2010-10-14T16:05:00.001+01:00

In the month of so before I discovered ashtanga yoga I was going through a rough time (lost my “dream” job, broke up with the one I thought was the one, yada yada) and some of the time I was struggling to hold it together. But without even realising what I was doing I developed a personal mantra that helped me stop from falling apart (at least in public). Many was the day I spent my journey to work on the tube repeating under my breath “I am here. I am here,” as I attempted to keep flashbacks at bay and stop tormenting myself with thoughts of happier times. It’s stood me in good stead as I remember it often now, and when an asana is challenging, or life is, I can sometimes keep connected enough to remind myself of it: I am here. I had a moment in the early hours of this morning standing on the tarmac of Mumbai airport boarding a flight bound for Bangkok where I felt this so strongly but in a new way – as I zipped across the globe I felt almost like I was sending off a signal into the night sky, like a flashing map pin..."HERE! I’m here! But not for long...".

So for today when I say I am here, actually I am in Thailand!! Just in case I didn’t mention that I was coming here ;) (oh, I think I may have done...once or twice) the lowdown is I’m in Koh Samui for 10 days, 7 of which is going to be a retreat with authorised teacher Clayton Horton. I added on a couple of days at the beginning to allow myself to get over the LONG journey and goodness me am I glad that I did? My travels began with a 4.45am alarm call (tough even for this morning mysore person...), a 90 minute train journey across London, an easy peasy check-in, then flight #1: London > Mumbai. I had opted to fly with Indian airline Jet as I was so impressed with them on my last trip to Goa, plus the price was good, and despite the extra part of the journey the overall transit time didn’t work out that much longer than more direct options. What was lovely was getting the DELICIOUS Indian vegetarian food on board...no really!! The 2 meals served within my flight (a rather early lunch and a “snack”) were so so good! Lunch was paneer masala with rice and something lentilly, the snack was some sort of dark green patties (spinach?) with things that looked like new potatoes but actually contained all sorts of things including corn. I have no idea what I ate, only that it was great. I had a very friendly neighbour too, a young british asian guy from up north who told me that he was going on a boys’ trip to Hong Kong to get away from the missus “who was soon to become the ex”. Anyhoo he was telling me that Mumbai is his favourite city in the world (compared to New York, London, Paris...he was obviously well travelled) describing it as like the west end of London put through an Indian washing machine. Maybe I will have to try it when I get the chance :)

The other notable things about the flight which are hilarious and happened on my last Jet flights too are that they played BAD bad piano music versions of popular songs while you take off and land (“Bright Eyes” being a prime example...) – does anyone know who Richard Clayderman is? (I'm so sure it's actually him having just looked him up on Youtube!!) And also they have all these coloured lights, it’s too funny – when I went to Goa they actually did a crazy light show as we took off, the lights are under the overhead lockers and they cycled through all the colours (to the bad piano music) – with no explanation! We were spared the light show this time, but there were some episodes of the blue cabin...and purple....where they just brought in these coloured lights for a short while. I would love to know why they do it!

The flight went quickly, I watched 2 movies: Bad Ass (not something I’d normally watch and with a very high body count, but really fun!) and Entre les Murs (English name – The Class) which was interesting too (I love French films...). Anyway despite my major paranoia that my three leg journey would be problematic, changing at Mumbai was simple, the only drawback being no ATMs between International arrivals and International transfers. Good job I had 80 leftover rupees which was enough to buy some water and the precious cardamom tea I have been craving since I discovered it at the airport in January! It’s black tea with milk (which I never normally drink) but comes out of some cruddy cappuccino type machine so is frothy, and sweet and cardamomy...yum, and a complete bargain at 20Rs.

I used the flight from Mumbai to Bangkok (4.5 hours) to listen to a couple of Kino podcasts and try to sleep. Interestingly enough one of the podcasts ties in with my “I am here” notion. It’s ostensibly about the challenges of beginning meditation, but she talks about how the practices of meditation and ashtanga is all about staying with the body, understanding that the spiritual path asks you to stay in difficult places and just sit there, which was kind of like being on a plane for me, especially when I can’t quite believe my luck that I am going on this trip.

A crazy part of my brain kicks in and says “this seems too good to be true. But it’s happening, so what does that mean? It means something is going to go wrong. SERIOUSLY wrong...” and I spend 18 hours with a thoroughly morbid full-on death wish. But despite this feeling being pretty strong, I was able to not freak out, I felt more relaxed in my body (I can feel if I am holding tension in my hips and just let it go – but at least I am aware of it!) and alongside these fears I had some moments of complete acceptance. OK, I told myself, let’s say the plane turns into a thunderball and it’s game over – then I accept it. I found some grace to accept whatever unfolds, and although it didn’t make the fears go away (though they were soon replaced with "OMG will my luggage have made the transfer??" fears) I certainly felt better. So after listening to the podcast I popped on another which is a guided meditation, and having the a seat spare beside me I had space to cross my legs, so I could join in with the meditation. Predictably enough I kept falling asleep, and slept/meditated for a while after it finished which was great until the person behind me got out of their seat clumsily and clomped me on the head and shoulder. Bit of a shock when you are in a deeply relaxed state!

Arriving in Bangkok was strange – I was here ten years ago at the age of 22 and I’d forgotten the vibe, the signs in another script (with English when you’re lucky), the anjuli mudra given by everyone who sells you a bottle of water :) Thankfully my luggage did arrive OK (though with a hole in – and the bag is brand new! So that was something else to be paranoid about..."will the hole get bigger on the next flight? should I get it shrink-wrapped?? Or does that look a bit...well, y’know..." . But having checked in (without shrink-wrap) I made my way to the lounge for free coffee and pastries. I have to say between these flights I never felt so well fed whilst travelling, I’m not even sure how I crammed the pastries in – but they were small! After a quick internet check where I looked up BBC news to see that the miners they had begun to rescue when I left London were all now freed and I cried standing at the terminal, I decided I needed me a little yoga. My hips were so stiff and my body was just crying out to stretch. So I found a quiet corner, took off my shoes, hung out in downdog for a bit and then went into headstand. I think there were a few people around but they didn’t bother me and I didn’t bother them ;) So a bit of sirsasana, then some stretching, a bit of pigeon (OUCH my hips!!!) some very gentle baddha konasana sitting against the wall, and it was time to go check in for my last flight.

I hadn’t really meant to write a blow by blow account of my journey (how many of my posts end with a sentence beginning “I didn’t really mean to write about this...”??) So consider it a diary for my own benefit. If anyone else is reading then it’s an unexpected bonus ;) But now I’ve written too much and I haven’t even arrived yet! Time to hit fast forward...

Suffice it to say I arrived safely in Samui, so did my bag, and although I tried to fight it I slept for half of 45minute taxi journey from the airport to Yoga Thailand so I have no idea if anything looked familiar from my trip a decade ago. After checking in to my lovely room I took a shower (outdoors!! But fully private...) then climbed into bed and slept for 2 hours, cursing the AC which I couldn’t seem to switch off and actually made it rather chilly. I was awake in time to get to the 5pm restorative class conducted in the small open-fronted teaching space that faces onto the sea and my body appreciated the chance to stretch and breathe, but funnily enough the thing I enjoyed the most was the last posture: a different version of my current nemesis! We took supta baddha konasana with arms outstretched, palms facing down, as the teacher explained that this is also known as the goddess posture and allows us to be fully connected to the earth...and laying there listening to the sound of the sea and the gentle breeze I didn’t even have to remind myself...I am here.

Not another one??

2010-10-06T14:22:00.000+01:00

Today: Supta konasana.

I'm not counting how many asanas stand between me and the end of primary...I just refuse. I'm trying to remember that just like the freak-out I have started having about my new job, I just need to stay present and stop looking ahead to the unknown that lies in my future (and making up stories of how much I'm going to hate it all). Also trying to ignore the little voice telling me that I'm only getting these new asanas so fast because my teacher knows I'm going away soon....

Full tears in assisted baddha konasana today, but I can feel so much opening up happening in my hips (not to mention some very loud clunks and clicks!) that it almost seems worth the agony (I said almost!).

That is all.

Moving swiftly on...

2010-10-04T22:18:00.001+01:00

I seem to have always written a post the day I get given a new asana, which if nothing else serves as a good bookmark for me to look back on. But when I posted last Monday that I was given baddha konasana that day, I definitely didn’t expect to be new asana blogging again so soon! Actually it was yesterday that I was given upavishta konasana, so forgive me for the slight time delay...but it has brought up some interesting thoughts.

First thing I’ll say is that yes, I follow the traditional practice of being “given” each asana in turn. However I now have a far greater understanding than I ever did before that other approaches are no less traditional – in fact having read in Guruji the method used to teach the first generation western practitioners, actually the reverse is true! But the point is I don’t discount whichever method works for anybody else, but the way I am learning ashtanga is one pose at a time from my authorised teacher, and I am really happy that this method does work for me.

I have written previously about the learning process that seems to accompany each new asana, or for me at least. Back in the seemingly endless days when I was languishing at bujapidasana (actually 8 months from August ‘09 to April ‘10, during which time I had at least 5 months of sporadic or completely AWOL practice!) I desperately wanted to be moved on, but couldn’t see how I would EVER be able to do buja. As it turned out, I still don’t think I can do it even now, but I do have a damn good try at it every day. I spoke to my teacher the day that she gave me kurmasana and supta kurmasana, and she explained that sometimes you feel an energetic space open up and decide that the student is ready for something else. And it’s true that the night before that move-on happened I wrote a post saying that I had made peace with my practice as it was. And as soon as I let go of the grasping – TA-DA!! It happened!

Moving through the supta kurmasana learning process was another difficult journey (as evidenced by the number of posts where it is tagged!). I went through deeply uncomfortable adjustments, a shoulder injury, weeks of backing off completely and then one day I nearly bound it. In fact I had managed to catch my own fingers together a few times – not regularly and reliably, but enough to know that it wasn’t a fluke by any means – when I was moved on to garbha pindasana, and that at a time when my whole life seemed to have gone into a spin. I’d gone from getting kurmasana in April to garbha in August, which felt pretty speedy. I won’t talk again about the lessons which came with supta kurmasana but I think this was a really crucial one for me in understanding that the yoga is the process, not the “achievement” of the asana. What was also interesting was that in moving me forward (although I felt like I still hadn’t full mastered Supta k), somehow the space opened up for me to be able to really get it. And now kurmasana feels like a different pose, it is so much deeper, the bind is securely there every day with my feet touching, and I have even progressed this past week to securely locking my right foot over my left after a good few weeks struggling to try.

Getting baddha konasana last week was strange, because as far as I was concerned I haven’t cracked garbha AT ALL. Yes I can get my arms through my legs, yes I can (mostly) get my hands under my chin, and I can rock, and I can get up into kukkutasana every day now (eventually – after a few times hurling myself at it!) but I am still struggling to rock in a circle. I feel like I write about this every day between twitter & my comments on other blogs so I won’t go on, but I will say that I feel like this will NEVER be easy – let along fun as so many other seem to find it! But the bruising has subsided, the pose no longer feels quite so completely impossible, and somehow after only 1 and a half months (mid-August to September) I was given baddha konasana.

The immediate impact that it had was (again) to take the heat off the previous asana. I love how this works! Garbha did become less of a work-up knowing that I couldn’t fully indulge in it as I still had some work to do. Also my backbends seemed to benefit (as they have done ever since supta k stopped being my last pose – that is one hard transition, straight from an assisted bind there into backbending) and within a day my hips felt different in the rest of my practice. But baddha k came with a warning: I have heard and read so much about the meltdowns that come with it I couldn’t help but feel a little apprehensive. One friend of mine told how she almost begged a teacher on an intensive course to keep on adjusting her for longer and longer so that she would cry as she was gutted that she hadn’t cracked in it yet. Ha!!

Having been given the asana last Monday I was shown it that day but not adjusted. On Tuesday I was adjusted by the new assistant, he’s just learning the assists so although I was nervous that he might not known that I only just got it (“Yoga is letting go of your story” – fat chance!!) it was a bit tough, but generally OK. But then on Wednesday, day 3, I had the first Cary assist. I was fully holding on for dear life as C kept up the pressure to get me down towards the floor. I felt my knees touch the ground and by breath number 4 I let out a whimper and gripped on to my tension like I didn’t ever want to let it go! “It’s OK,” says C, which is quite unlike her, I know she is different with different people but for me, we rarely speak during assists. One more breath after she reassured me and I came up for air, but as I did so and then went into B all I could do was cry gently. It was HORRIBLE!! Susan heard this from the next door mat and offered sweet reassurances on our daily emailed practice reports, and in a way I was glad that I’d felt the power of the asana so quickly, somehow believing that this would mean I will move more quickly into a time when it feels good!

So the week went on and on Sunday I had the hardcore adjustment again, only this time C successfully managed to get my chin to the ground and both knees fully open. And yowzers - it WAS.NOT.FUN. Then something flicked in my brain and I thought “she’s going to give me the next one” – even though I didn’t believe it was possible after a week, I seem to be able to sense when it’s about to happen. And lo and behold, having walked away while I did the vinyasa after baddha k, Cary came beside me and talked me through upavistha konasana. And do you know what popped straight into my head?

“Nonononononoooooo!!! it’s TOO FAST! That means the end of primary is looming with the horror of BACKBENDS!” So much for being present eh?! Again, the spectre of other people’s difficulties is looming, and all I can think of is that whereas a few months ago I didn’t think I’d ever finish primary, now it seems that I am gaining momentum a little faster than I would like. Mind you saying that makes some assumption that I am going to figure out just how to catch my feet in mid-air whilst balancing on the edge of my bum WITHOUT bending my legs! But still, compared to postures like supta kurmasana, I can see that what comes next in the series is likely to move a long a little faster than what has come before.

I had actually intended for this post to be a bit more a discussion about the different ways in which we might become ready for the next asana, and I suppose in a roundabout anecdotal way maybe I’ve done that, but I guess what it comes down to is this: there is no one size fits all approach.

Sometimes a teacher moves us on because we have fully “mastered” a pose.
Sometimes it’s because they know that giving us the next posture will make the preceding one a little easier. Sometimes it’s because we showed up on our mat every bloody day for months and tried to do the impossible - TWICE.
Sometimes it’s because we stopped wishing we could get the next one.
Maybe it’s sometimes even because we are about to go away and the teacher wants to give us something to work on before we will have a chance to be taught by them again.
Maybe it’s all or none of these reasons.

Maybe it doesn’t even matter what the reason is – because as in life, in ashtanga we can’t always control the way and speed that things happen at. All that we can do is to show up and deal with whatever gets thrown at us however best we can on any given day.

Falling into place

2010-09-27T22:34:00.001+01:00

Over the past couple of weeks I feel like some of the pieces of the puzzle have been falling into place. I’m talking specifically about asana practice here, and the fact that if my practice were a puzzle, I think I might have just found some of the edges. Or, you know, the few bits you find that make the expanse of blue and green suddenly make sense as being a part of a bigger picture...maybe my weak analogy is beginning to fail me now!

Exhibit A (because it’s the most significant): jumping back. A few weeks ago I was out on a Friday night with Susan talking about the led class that morning where we had practiced side by side. I was talking about how my jumpbacks seem to be the same as my friend who was practising to my right, using this as an explanation that it must be the way we learn (i.e. I’m not flaking out and just not trying, I’m just at a different stage of learning how to do it). Having been really lazy with jumping back for months and months I had finally got back into the habit thanks to some friendly prodding from susan (conducted via email, not during practice I should add!). So I was feeling chuffed that I had reinstated my (attempts at) jumpbacks and brought this up with S. But the conversation went like this:

Me: “So my jumpbacks today...”

S: “You don’t jump, you step.”

Me: “I don’t, I jump”

S: “No, you step!”

Me: “No, I jump!” (making the point as I was proud of myself because I didn’t even skip any that day)

S: “Do you jump off two feet and land on two feet?”

Me: totally confused. Sitting in a barstool and feeling indignant. “Err – I don’t know, I think I sort of spring off the side of one foot – BUT I LAND ON TWO!” I began to realise that she had a point.

So as of that Sunday I started to try and do as Susan said – to jump off both feet and land on both. God it was hard work!! Suddenly I started to understand why whole blogs have been devoted to the jumpback, and there was me up until now blithely unaware that I wasn’t even doing it properly! Actually that’s not true, I knew that I wasn’t, I just didn’t really care. I had chosen to take on board the advice of teachers who suggested that it didn’t really matter and that it was just circus tricks to do all this floating business. No doubt I listened to that advice because it suited me...

So that was day one (Sunday) and on the Monday I continued to attempt jumping off both and landing on both feet. Panting and sweating my way through practice I admit I was cursing Susan a bit...surely this was too much to attempt before work? But I stuck with it through the week (and I think it was generally speaking a pretty bad week as far as practice went) and by the second week of attempting to jumpback, I started to notice something: STRENGTH. My practice felt extra strong and bendy. I noticed the shape of my arms changing too (pathetically I told my colleague “I just noticed my arms in the bathroom mirror and I’ve got a touch of the Madonna arms!” realising as I said it how ridiculous it was. “Careful,” she humoured me “You don’t want to go too far, look what happened to her!”...some chance!). I also experimented with trying to find some bandha strength (this is still a huge challenge to me – I’m really not sure that I can locate the bandhas except at the easiest of points in the practice) and discovered what a light landing it was possible to have if I could manage to find that point and engage the locks.

After a good few days of practices where I noticed this newfound strength I said to Susan “I don’t suppose this is connected to starting to jump-back is it?”

“OF COURSE!!!” comes the reply (or sweeter, less” I told you so” words to that effect!). It didn’t make sense, I thought that in started to learn I would feel weaker from the extra effort, and the reason I wasn’t trying to learn was that I didn’t have enough strength. But Susan’s point, and one she says she makes frequently in her classes is that you only gain the strength by trying to learn – it’s totally chicken and egg! So although for now it’s still a lot of hard work, and I am still moving my hands forward before trying to jump off both feet (the lifting up and through will be a LONG way off yet), finally I get why it’s important – and at least I’m trying now. And that seems to be the main thing.

Exhibit B: Surya B. Earlier posts on this blog will attest to the fact I’ve never been a huge fan of surya B – though in recent months, in fact since I started to have more of a regular practice and got it up from 3 Bs to 5 (ALWAYS!) I don’t really mind it so much. But one day last week Cary came and shook everything up and made it HARD. I was always taught (or so I thought) to step the back foot in as you turn it – I seem to recall being told to move your foot to where your toes were in downward dog (though I may have borrowed that instruction from a flow class where it was perfectly valid!). But Cary came and worked really hard on me to turn the back foot in keeping it right at the back of the mat, and moreover to lift up out of the hip without unbending the knee – in other words, I’ve been doing it wrong all this time. Since she did this with me Surya B has become very difficult, a great challenge (on the first couple today my bent leg couldn’t seem to get far enough forward with the back foot planted at the back of the mat), it’s hard to keep the outer edge of the back foot grounded, it’s hard to lift up out of the hip as she demonstrated, it’s all quite a lot of new instructions to remember so early on the practice, but I suppose the best part is that it’s taken Surya B off auto-pilot (and it will never be the same again). The same principle applies of course to the dreaded Vira 1 which continues to be a favourite (yuck).

Exhibit C: Upward dog. Call me slow but...I just realised on Friday that I lazily allow my thighs to make contact with the ground in updog, and that actually keeping the full length of the leg lifted is probably correct. Somebody please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I just discovered and fixed my very lazy habit. Something else which will never feel quite the same again...(it‘s much harder work now!).

Exhibit D: Something’s happened to my hips. I no longer have to baby my right hip/knee before attempting half-lotus (I used to have to cradle and rock it for 5 breaths first) and I can feel a huge difference in various postures especially upavistha konasana A in Friday’s led (as this is further than I usually practice, apart from in the Led class where I stay for the whole series). The weird knee thing seems to have gone away as inexplicably as it arrived. I can also feel a huge difference in my hips in kurmasana.

Exhibit E: (this is getting lame now): Supta Kurmasana. I hate to write this down in case I curse it, but as of last week this posture has rocked. As in, my few weeks worth of veeeery tentative finger bind and feet which will touch but that I could only cross with assistance seems to have changed to a good secure hand bind and an effortful solo crossing of the feet. Not just once, but two days in a row – including in Led with minimal time spent in kurmasana first! And then it worked again today after a weekend off – so maybe, just maybe, it’s here to stay. The key here seems to have been seeing the Kino video that has been posted on various blogs – it was actually of bhuja, but it was seeing Kino get the action of moving the shoulders under the knees that I was then able to start doing before going into both bhuja and kurmasana. It’s a bit of extra faffing yes, but for the extra depth in kurmasana I think it’s worth it J

So where are we up to? New jumping back attempts, extra superwoman Madonna-armed strength, new approaches to surya B and Vira 1, a non-lazy upward dog, newly more open hips, a comfortably bound supta kurmasana...what’s left? Well garbha continues to be a challenge, the bruises come and go (currently they are not too bad at all), my arms are getting more comfortably through and under my chin (no more weird one-arm-further-forward action where I had to hook my thumbs together to keep the hands in place!) but the rocking in a circle still seems like a impossibility. I have at least been trying (a bit) but after many beachings I am avoiding it for the time being as it makes me panic and feel stupid (all at once).

Ooh I know what else – headstand! So it’s been a good few months now since my headstand magically appeared in a Kino Led class, and I have been practicing it daily, but in the past week it suddenly got STRONG. I now feel secure in it, to the extent I popped up into it a few times while visiting my family this weekend (to show my 3 yr old niece who always wants to do yoga with auntie Mel) and had a conversation with my mum when she then came into the room. Something moved, I have always known that the weight is supposed to be in your arms, but suddenly in the past couple of weeks I felt the strength transfer into my shoulders and arms and I found this whole new level of security in the posture and have been gradually increasing from about 15 breaths, adding on 5 a day until I am now up to about 30-35. Next step – trying again to learn to float into it (currently I tuck up into it) which Cary is bound to get on to me about again at some stage.

I’m not listing all of these things to show off, or because this is “progress” as such, or certainly not on a physical level. It just seems amazing to me that in a time when my life off the mat is actually feeling rather angst-ridden (yes, the prospect of my new job is very exciting but also utterly terrifying – especially as I still know very few details and my anxiety is filling in the gaps!) my practice is consolidating in all of these ways, and simultaneously. I love the science experiment we conduct on our mats everyday! I should also point out that the week before last (when some of these changes kicked in) my practice felt laboured and difficult every day, it’s not like I am having stellar practices every day (though last week that seemed to be the case) but these little pieces of the puzzle seem to keep popping into place, making it all make a bit more sense to me.

Oh and today? Today I got given baddha konasana. I get the feeling this new asana is going to bring joy and pain...but no expectations, I will try to form my own opinions based on my own experience rather than freaking out because I know everybody else does. So it’s onwards and upwards - and sidewards, and backwards, and any-which-way-wards – after all, progress is never linear in this practice is it?

Work life balance

2010-09-19T17:18:00.001+01:00

So it’s time to confess as to what’s been going on off-the-mat.

In August I started talking about some “uncertainty” which had cropped up in my life. At that point my boss had told a colleague and I that in all likelihood that our company would cease to exist within the next couple of months (or in the very least, our division of it). I won’t go into huge detail because it’s not very interesting, but I work for a clothing supplier – we are the intermediary between high street stores and factories in India, Turkey, Bangladesh and Hong Kong (or more accurately, we deal with agents in those countries, who then deal with the factories). So there are a lot of people in the loop! If you stop and think about what an average garment costs in a high street store, consider that the retailer puts between a 50% and 85% markup on the price THEY pay us for it (and that figure’s a lot more for designer clothing, I’m talking about cheap high street stores), and then consider that everybody in the chain needs a piece of the pie...you can imagine how little the factories earn. Anyway I digress, the fact is, times are tough out there and the stores want cheaper prices. So it’s starting to make sense for them to work directly with agents in the countries producing the goods. I suppose eventually they will cut that out too and deal directly with factories, but what it means is that even if things pick up in our company soon, the industry has fundamentally changed and it would only be a short reprieve.

The upshot of this was that my boss quietly suggested we go away and “see what’s out there”. It was kind of him to forewarn us, I for one had no idea the situation was that bad until he took us for coffee and came out with it, and this is when I went into my “intrigue” stage where I felt sure that something would come up. And guess what?

Scouting around on the internet looking for vacancies (and this complicated by the fact I was looking to change the field I work in), a seemingly random chain of thought led me to the website for a brand I remembered from the trade shows I used to work at in my previous job. And what do you know? They were advertising a job that looked right up my street. So I applied, and then found it impossible to apply for anything else, as nothing else hit the mark like this one did. But it turned out that the person managing the recruitment was away on annual leave, so I had to try and be patient (can you guess that I failed?!). A few weeks ticked by, and then I was invited for an interview. All seemed to go very well, there was lots of laughter, I thought I detected that they liked me, and was thrilled when one of the interviewers told me that I had “good energy”. I did however discover that the job involved a lot more travel that I had understood, and would mean driving to visit customers probably 4 days in every week. Did I mention I am kind of afraid of driving? Also it goes without saying, a heavy travel schedule would seriously affect my ability to get to the shala every day to practice. Add to this the fact that although I worked in sales for a designer for 5 years, the sales part of my role was almost a sideline alongside running the office and doing a million and one other things. I have never been a straight-forward sales rep (in fact the idea of it used to make me cringe!), I have no idea whether I’ll be any good at it...though I like to think I will be. They suggested I think very carefully about whether I would be prepared to make the changes in my life that the job would involve. I nodded and smiled but I really wasn’t sure.

And then I stepped out into the sunshine, got straight on the phone to my Mum and filled her in on what it would involve. “Oh no, you wouldn’t want to be doing that,” she said. But before I realised I meant it, I started to say that maybe I could...that how can you ever get over the fear of something if you never try it? I was using direct experience from my yoga practice to understand that I have gone from being someone who said “I will NEVER stand on my head. NEVER!” to being someone who does it every day, has found peace there, and actually enjoys it. Surely is this applies to a seemingly impossible yoga posture, it applies to everything else too? So after thinking about it for a few more days I emailed my interviewers and told them that I had given it careful thought, and while the prospect would certainly be a challenge, it was one that I was very excited about. And as for my mum’s concern of “But you wouldn’t be able to go to your yoga!” I quickly realised that not going ahead with a job application because it might interfere with my shala practice would be COMPLETELY missing the point. At that point I let go of my attachment to going to the shala every day, and it was only in doing that that I was able to write the email as I did.

I won’t bore you with all the details but I waited a few weeks, took a psychometric test, read the emailed results with great interest, watched and waited as my current role shrank away to almost nothing, and then with great relief last week attended a second interview, which began with me being told that I was being offered the job. Ha! We then proceeded to spend several hours going through the results of the psychometric test so that they could ascertain “how best to work with me, because everybody is different.” My new boss also suggested that as it seemed a lot of my good qualities come from my yoga, that it was very important that I schedule my appointments AROUND MY YOGA!! Now, although she’s said this, I still have in mind that my daily routine will cease to exist, and my shala attendance may become more sporadic. But that’s OK, I have come to terms with that (at least in theory), but how amazing is to have an employer who fully supports your pursuit of a daily yoga practice?

Having been given a contract on the spot I was able to go straight back to work and hand in my resignation. As I explained to my boss the lovely eco/ethical credentials of my new employer, he nodded as if he’d seen it coming. He explained that he has realised months ago that it “wasn’t very good karma” for me to go to yoga every morning and then come in to work and shout at Indian factories all day (because sadly that is the reality of my current role...). Instead I am to work for a splendidly lovely Scandanavian company who have a large section on their website dedicated to corporate social responsibility – in fact, it seems to be the thread running through the whole company. They are involved in several specific projects including building and completely supporting a school in Burma, working with former streetkids in Delhi and say on their website:

We do not think we can save the whole world. But we are proud of this project, and we believe that no one can help everyone but everyone can help someone.

This makes me happy. It helps that I really believe in the products I’m going to be selling too, and that business is booming, even in these tough times! I am still waiting for a lot of the details to understand what I will be doing, which areas I will be covering and how the job actually works, but I do know this: In three weeks time I leave my job. I have a few days off to prepare and then I am off to Yoga Thailand for a retreat which, happily, I booked and paid for before I knew that my job was hanging in the balance. When I get home from Thailand I will start my new job. Exciting times! But - can you sense a “but” coming on?

BUT – all of this is making it incredibly difficult to BE in the present moment. I just want to finish my crappy boring job and move on. I want to be in Thailand! I want to know more details about my exciting new job! And whaddya know? My practice has gone nuts on me too. I had a mini meltdown over garbha today (another one!) and came out of the mysore room whining to my teacher that “I hate it!”. I feel kind of crazed half the time, I am getting irritable and angry more than normal, my temper is frayed. I spent all last week feeling dizzy and like I was about the float away – self diagnosing that I had too much Vata I spent the week eating heavy and warm things, lots of Indian food, and now I feel heavy and lethargic (I think I took it too far!). I know, I know, that this time will zip by and that all the things I want will come to pass sooner rather than later. But my impatience is getting the better of me! And I think this was the problem with garbha today...I recognised from what Kino taught in her workshop that I think I should be able to do it NOW just because I want to. But we all know it doesn’t work like that! If a friend was telling me all of this I would be saying that three weeks is nothing, this time will pass, and just to breathe and take each moment as it comes. Funny how easy it is to be wise on someone else’s behalf, and so impossible on your own, isn’t it? But at least this is true: I trusted that the universe would provide, and it did. Now I just need to accept that the universe is spinning this out on it’s own schedule, that this is not something I can control, and I just need to let things move along at normal speed.

P.s. I’ll tell you who the company are once I’m actually there (or when they’ve taken the ad for my job down off the website!!)

Kino in London - part 3

2010-09-17T09:57:00.002+01:00

Continued from part 2...

My post weekend reflections included the thought – interesting how we spend so long looking forward to something, and then while it’s gone wishing it was over. Now this isn’t true to say for everything, but the second half of the Saturday workshop was a big struggle. The first half was great! I was feeling strong and capable and I understood what she was driving at in a way I hadn’t in Edinburgh. I was able to remember doing some of the same exercises as we did last time, going onto hands and knees, building a solid foundation in the body – and I remember having found it all too difficult, and like I didn’t really understand the first part of the exercise, let alone when we went on to build it up two, three, four different ways. Well the same thing did happen again in London, but at least the confusion kicked in halfway through instead of right at the start! We spent some of the time working on bujapidasana - one of my nemeses. Kino offered some great insights (despite the guy who just kept asking her how you jump into it...she insisted that until you are so bored in bhuja that you can call your mum on the speakerphone, then you DON’T jump into it. “So can you show us then?” he asked again....Grrr!). Her teaching included:

· You need to keep a sense of roundedness in the back – throughout!

· If we feel our butt is travelling down, don’t think up, think forward.

· Step onto the hands – this helps to turn feet and knees out

· Bend the elbows to create a seat for the thighs

· Maintain the structured foundation (that we had been building up – including rounded back)

· To get feet up think forward.

· To come back out of it, think CHEST FORWARD, and press the feet into the foundation to come back up.

· Bakasana exit – lean right, take right leg back, lean left, take left leg back.

· Don’t correct and do “pretty bakasana”!!

None of this is new information really, but something about following the instructions (especially stepping on the hands, which I hadn’t tried before, and rounding the back, which I’d never thought of) has seemed to help. Whilst I still land on my head with quite a clonk most days, I am at least managing something vaguely approaching a bakasana exit in the post-Kino practices, something I have never been able to even try before. My only possible exit from the pose in the past was to fling myself out of it and land on my bum with a crash!

Watching the buja demo

As we moved on I started to struggle. I can’t even remember at what point it was, but I began to feel utterly defeated. We started working on an exercise where I couldn’t compute stage 1, and then we moved on to stages 2 and 3. I just wanted to throw in the towel. Partnering with J was wonderful but I was determined not to tell her that I was having a hard time, not to put it “out there” though I was sure it was written all over my face. But eventually I did say it. I spent the second half of the workshop residing in doubt and fear. And then the very last thing we did in the workshop was an assisted handstand from prasarita position and somehow, completely by magic, I LOVED it!! I normally have a huge freakout in anything handstand-related but this just felt right, with jen holding my waist I floated my legs out to the sides and up into handstand and it felt AMAZING! I was so happy to finish on such a high!

You think I'd remember all of this without taking notes??!

Maybe part of the reason I has anxiety in this workshop was that I was already thinking ahead. I had intentionally not booked the Sunday afternoon workshop, Introduction to 2^nd Series, because I thought it wasn’t really right for me. But I already knew that two of my friends, although they had booked it, were planning not to go. Which meant that there were a few spaces available – and all I knew was that I didn’t want my time with Kino to be over yet. But I didn’t want to do the scary second series workshop either when I don’t even do full primary! And I am such a traditionalist! So what did I do...well, I waited until after the class and had a chat with her. Aside from name-dropping Cary (“Cary is AWESOME! I love Cary, please say hi”) and saying how lucky I was also to practice with (and be offered advice by) my friend Susan (“Susan is awesome too! You really are lucky!”) I chatted to her about my crazy garbha bruises (she suggested lifting the left knee...I have tried it but can’t quite work it out) and about the 2^nd series class. She completely reassured me, and said that some of what we worked on would help my primary series postures, and it’s OK to try postures in a workshop that you teacher hasn’t given you. So as I left, I sent S a text asking if it might be OK to take his space...and the answer was yes. So there was a little more Kino-time to come! On Sunday morning I went to Cary as usual for my Mysore practice (which was lovely, I was able to assimilate some of what I had learned, but also to bring my practice back to reality in the midst of the workshop excitement) and then after lunch it was back over to Triyoga.

Sweetly as Kino walked into the workshop on Sunday afternoon, almost tripping over me (my mat was right in front of the door) she smiled and said “Oh you were brave! You came! Great!” which of course pleased me no end!

· Kino began by explaining that the function of the Primary Series is partly in understanding that when fear arises you can keep stillness and steadiness of mind. It is also about building a base level of health in the body.

Once these things are established through proficiency in the asanas then you are ready for the intermediate series.
So a certain level of proficiency in the primary series, but also a strong, clear mind and a base level of strength, flexibility and health are essential before beginning second series.
Intermediate will test your faith and belief in yoga and will possibly make you want to give it up completely at some stages! She said “You have to have already drunk the kool aid” i.e. to already be on the yoga path, otherwise you’ll never be able to deal with all the crazy that second series brings out!
Initiating movement from bandhas – from the mythological place of Kundalini (root) chakra is essential for intermediate. The series then forcefully pushes kundalini energy up through the body to awaken the crown chakra
Legs behind head – ida and pingala nadis (which need to awaken to get the energy flowing up through the body) originate in the hip joints, so LBH stuff initiates this energy flow.
Ask yourself “If I never get another posture, do I still want to do this practice?” if the answer is yes then you know you are involved in the spiritual journey. (I read this brilliant post this week which reminded me of this point too...)

I loved that last point. She talked a little about people who she knew who’d been stuck on the same asana for seven years. I mean really – SEVEN YEARS??!! It makes me August-April wait to move on from Bhuja pale into insignificance. I also really liked the way she spoke about intermediate, I think people can be fixated on the idea that you’re ready when you can stand up from backbends, but it was clear to me that sometimes you could still not be ready at this point, but all that’s going to happen is you might have some sort of meltdown. And is that really what anybody wants? I just don’t understand the rush myself...but then maybe I can safely say this from my not-yet-full-primary position where pasasana isn’t even on my radar.

I’ll tell you what though – I can do it! I used a block under my heels, but I happily bound both sides. And when I say happily, I was honestly thrilled I’d taken the workshop JUST so that I could discover that I could do it! Of course I liked what I could do, and wasn’t so happy with the stuff I couldn’t do, but I took it very much as a playtime whereas my partner in this workshop was Helen, who the following day was given three new intermediate asanas and was split! I also got my legs behind my head (which I knew I’d be able to do) but had a giant freakout in ustrasana (again, no surprises here!). But all in all I was just happy to have more time with Kino, and to be there at the close of the workshop (having been there when it opened). All in all it was a fantastic weekend, and although Kino is keen on saying “there’s no magic pixie dust!” I think I did get a little sprinkling of it over the course of the two days. Over and out.

Bad sweaty picture (me, not her!) with Kino at the end of the weekend.
I'd run out of decent yoga clothes by this stage ;)

Kino in London - part 2

2010-09-17T09:46:00.003+01:00

You can almost see me in this...I'm behind my friend in the white!

At long last! I knew that writing just half of my thoughts up was a mistake, I should have written the whole thing and posted it in parts (seeing as I can’t seem to edit to shorter posts... Later edit - this post is now broken up into two parts which follow immediately on from one another). Anyway I luckily had the foresight to scribble down some overall impressions on the tube journey home at the end of the weekend, so hopefully everything will come flooding back to me as I write. So here goes...

Saturday morning began with a led full primary. As it was kicking off at 10am and scheduled to last until 12.30, I decided to get up early enough to eat before I left home. I wouldn’t normally ever eat before practice, but having had hotel porridge at 8am when I practiced with Kino in Edinburgh with no obvious ill effects, I decided to do the same at home (though I think it was 7am!). And it’s a good job I did really, these full workshops days really leave no time where it’s feasible to eat...

I arrived and immediately saw my friends S and A (who were there Friday night) and although the Mysore room was already packed, they had sweetly saved me a spot beside them – right at the front where I like it! And by luck they were immediately next to my twitter friend from Brighton & his girlfriend. Friends Jen & Helen were in my line of sight in the back row, so in downward dog I could see them, all of which made me happy. Kino arrived and, although I had expected her to open with some sort of chanting, or introductory conversation, she instead walked to the front of the room and simply said “Samisthiti” before opening the chant. I had begun the day feeling anxious, for no good reason, but as we chanted and began surya namaskar A there was good energy in the room (with around 75 people practicing). As we moved onto B I found that with bent legs I was having a huge attack of the shakes – which has never before happened right at the start of my practice. What a good start, I thought!! But generally the class was excellent – strong, challenging yes but it was amazing to feel the difference from the last time with her, when I had only ever taken led full primary 4 or 5 times. Now, despite finishing my self-practice at garbha pindasana, I do led full primary once a week so it doesn’t feel like such a terrific challenge. After my shakes in surya B, unsurprisingly the warrior sequence was a huge challenge. In utkatasana the shakes were pretty severe, as was the mental battle, and after the first few breaths of Vira 1 I was really struggling. In vira 2 I had to straighten the bent leg and completely back off the pose (on/off, on/off) as Kino’s relentless count went on, and my brain played crazy crazy games. But generally I felt like I could keep up without any trouble, and reaching supta kurmasana I was able to bind my hands securely (which happens somedays, but it’s certainly not a given) and I was even able to cross my feet, keeping my hands together – which I have NEVER done on my own before! I don’t know whether to put it down to the bath I had in the morning, the extra hours of being awake before practice, the longer kurmasana hold, Kino’s magical presence, or a combination of all of these! Garbha was mentally tough as I was going through my backing off phase due to my by-now ludicrous arm bruises, and in the space of those 5 breaths holding my hands around my lotus instead of through, my chitta vritta were SCREAMING at me (“you cheater! Look at you, hanging out here in the easy version! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU???”) but I sat with it, let the voices scream (I’m not schizophrenic, really I’m not) and got on with it. Supta padangusthasana was fun as S and I pulled faces at each other (yoga can be silly too!) and there were plenty of giggles in the room, especially in the second half of the practice which was obviously not familiar to everyone in the room (I include myself in this!). But the really exciting stuff happened when we got to backbends. Now I knew this was coming, I had even warned my mat neighbour that she does loads of backbending...and in Edinburgh my main memory of it was that there was too much, and I couldn’t do it, so I just lay on my mat. Well, what a difference 6 months and a newly daily practice makes! We warmed up with some little bridges, but as Kino encouraged us to walk the feet in until we could clasp them I realised that I could bring my legs in much closer, even at this stage. Then we did 3 urdhva dhanurasana, with Kino warning that we were doing lots, and to take it easy. But as she talked us through a second set of three, offering explanation and anatomical focus, something magical happened. I found the connection between backbending and my legs. As we neared the end (but we still weren’t finished, she warned us), we came up onto our heads to walk our hands in as close as we possibly could. Now I have tried walking my hands in the past, but all that happened was I’d walk them in a little, then as soon as I pushed up they effectively slid back to where they’d started. But somehow this time it was different. Inhaling up onto my head, my hands walked in, and not just a few millimetres, and we pushed up in a final effort...I have no doubt that I made some noise about it, but the difference was UNBELIEVABLE. I’ll add here that since then, my backbends have felt utterly transformed. Whereas before they were just something to do quickly as I felt I didn’t have much energy or strength left for them (I go through phases...), since Kino’s workshop I have found and maintained that connection with the legs. And I feel the hips pushing up towards the ceiling (I don’t think I EVER noticed them before!), and the hands can come in...I can’t exaggerate how much this posture has changed for me since that workshop, it’s really incredible.

Chanting to open the space - that's me in blue!

After an all too brief break for lunch (I had some raisin bread and a coffee...good job I’d had that porridge!) it was back for the afternoon’s workshop which focused on arm balances and inversions. Expecting the same workshop I’d done in Edinburgh I wasn’t hugely looking forward to it, but this was actually a different one. And although I’d been dreading doing partner-work, having Jen there meant at least I had one I liked & trusted! I scribbled down some notes at the start of this workshop, so here’s what Kino had to say...

· Strength: first it comes from within. The first thing that gives up is usually our mind which means we often don’t reach the physical limit of our strength before our brain tells us that we’ve had enough.

· Doubt – there are two kinds. First: reason and rational based doubt – this comes from our super ego, we can come up with ten reasons why this posture will never be possible for us to do. Second: emotional. Kino said this is characterised by a noise (which I can’t spell...) like “Owwwwww!”. Fundamentally, whining!

The latter is slightly easier to deal with as we have less belief in the reliability of our emotions. But for the former...

· Talking ourselves out of this doubt takes a strong mind. “I will do whatever it takes” to whittle away the treatise of emotional doubt so that we can learn to control our lives from a place of peace. You have to find that strength and steadiness of mind to cross the bridge from doubt to a place of certainty.

· The ego says “it should be immediately available to me just because I want it” (talking about difficult asana, but also this point cane be generalised!). Follow the 4 steps (see part 1) and don’t try to achieve something so far from where we are now in reality. Aim for a 1-2% change. Say to yourself, I am humbly willing to stay with the body no matter how long it takes, 2% by 2%.

· If you never touch your physical limit you’re never get 2% stronger. The perfect demonstration of this is in utupluthi. When do we really ever stick with this until we reach our physical limit? I know I don’t...my brain links my limit to the count. “Oh maybe just ten today” or “Wow 14, I feel OK but I can probably stop at 15”. Sound familiar?

· Bandhas: not physical places – they are energetic expressions – but when things connect on a deep level there is the ability to access muscles over which we normally have no conscious control. Bringing consciousness into the pelvic region, beginning to wake up the pelvis, eventually one day you will have access to the Tan tien centre. This comes from a sense of total integration in the body – solid structural foundation.

· I asked her a question about shaking (as I was experiencing even more earth-moving shakes in this workshop than I did in the morning!) and said that in an exercise class for example, shaking muscles mean you have overworked them. It seems wrong to be shaking in yoga...But she explained what I have actually heard somewhere before, that the shaking indicates samskaras leaving your body. I’d like to believe this is true, because if it is, I did some wicked cleansing through the course of Kino’s workshops!

Continued in Part 3....