More things I learned in Thailand - Part two

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.

Beginner's Mind

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!