Onwards.

One of the most frequently asked questions from guests here is about how amazing it is to practice with every single teacher on the schedule - 6 months of back to back (to back...) workshops. And yes it *is* amazing, and an incredible opportunity that I am enormously grateful for, but stop and imagine for a moment that this is what happens with your practice....

You meet a new teacher. You get two weeks of pretty intensive practice with them, meet a whole new group of people who you have a few days to settle in with and then grow used to sharing a practice space with, you hang out and chat together, share meals, sometimes go to the beach or out and about together, you take afternoon technique workshops and start getting in the groove with the teacher, the group, the assistant...and then after two weeks of practice you take Friday led primary together and then it's over. Everybody starts talking about what time their flight leaves, where they go next, the places they might visit, their plans for next year, and then they get their traveling outfits on and they are gone - and you are the one helping to organise their departure. Meanwhile a whole new group begins arriving, often crossing over in the middle, and your emotional response to the departing group, teachers and the sangha you have all spent two weeks building up has to be put aside to offer a big sincere welcome to the people climbing wearily up the stairs having travelled half-way across the world to begin a big adventure. And you spend the day helping them settle in, you shake hands with the newly arrived teacher, you have a few hours to rest and make your weekly skype call to your sweetheart who is waiting for you back at home, then you head back to the retreat and try not to completely mess up the welcome speech thanks to your nerves, and afterwards you try to calm down and eat some palak paneer while fielding questions and any late arrivals before you head to bed...ready for the yoga alarm to go off the next morning when you head down to the shala, so familiar and yet once again unfamiliar; a apace awaiting a whole new group energy, a new teacher, a new feeling.

Imagine it. 

No, really imagine it. A little bit challenging, non?

And yet (and yet) right at this moment, in the midst of the busiest handover day of the season, I feel nothing but calm and happy to be here. Yes there is a small degree of tiredness, and this morning I woke up longing for a cuddle with my 3 and 5 year old nieces, and now I sit writing this and waiting for my boyfriend to wake up back in London so that we can speak, but I am so outrageously grateful in this moment that any tiredness is worth it. 

Of course it goes without saying that in a period of intense practice like this that there will be ups and downs, peaks and troughs, and as one of my co-workers said the other day in some ways we practice here in spite of all of the teachers passing through the shala. But after going through a period where I felt frustrated, exhausted and generally a little bored with my practice I am now in a period of profound calmness and clarity. I just got to spend two weeks with my teachers Kino & Tim, so having spent the past 2 years coming here as a guest for their retreat, this time around I got to take part in exchange for the time spent looking after the guests and my teachers themselves, and it was a pretty  experience for me. I could sit here now and tell you all about how my backbends are, how kapotasana is going, or what either of them taught me in terms of my physical practice over the past two weeks, but it's more a case of what I was able to gain from further deepening my experience with them both, with the profound (or utterly banal) recognition of my own patterns (both healthy and unhealthy, mental and physical). And within this time there were a few important things I came to realise...

One was that I remembered what it means to find your teachers. Before their arrival I felt that I had a hundred questions I needed to have answered, whether I should be moving forward with my practice more, or taking less postures, or splitting off from primary, or giving up completely, but on day one in the shala with Kino every question just fell away. And then over the time they were here I started to feel desperately that I needed to have a conversation about my practice, just to be completely sure about where I was at, and when I asked then were incredibly generous with their time and gave me far far more than I ever could have hoped for. And after sitting down to talk and being told by Tim, very kindly, that in fact my practice is not actually that long, and that he can see now reason whatsoever to split me right now, I accepted 100% that he is right, and I stopped feeling sorry for myself about it. And when Kino explained that being able to jump into bakasana B or not is almost irrelevant in terms of moving forward, but the fact that I'm having a nervous system response to trying it is, I accepted that I am at exactly the right place in my asana practice. 

And then I explained to Tim that after having a huge emotional response (read: in-shala sobbing) to his kapo assist one day, and deciding that I was too stiff to be assisted the following day, that I had discovered that in fact I was able to make a choice to NOT freak out when he helped me with backbends. In the moment that he instructed me to bend my knees deeply in assisted half-backs and he took my head to the floor, and then he had me walk in deeply on my last dropback as he straightened out my feet and then pushed on my hips for me to push back against him, I suddenly recognised that the hysterical (noisy & uncontrollable) breathing patterns I usually settled into when he was assisting me were a choice. And I can choose not to start them, I just had to trust him, and relax into it, and to engage in my core (of course!) and my legs, and just fucking surrender...and then it was all OK. And as I told him this Tim smiled, fist-bumped me and told me that that was the whole point of second series. That we learn to control our emotional responses, our nervous system responses, on our mat so that when we come up against difficult situations in life we learn to surrender, breathe, and work though them without becoming a shaking wreck. This was in fact exactly what Kino told me when I spoke to her about kapotsana back in London back in September, but at that point I was still consumed by the hysteria and couldn't see a way to control it, so the concept was nothing but abstract at that stage. 

After this conversation with Kino and Tim I felt incredibly settled and calm, and that once again all of my questions had fallen away. They have each given me so much, so generously in terms of teaching and input, that I am left inspired to get back on my mat tomorrow morning and to continue to recognise the insights that my asana practice brings to my mental processes off the mat, and although it is very sad to say goodbye to them and the lovely group I shared the last two weeks with (and of course there were a few tears) I feel nothing but happy and peaceful as we welcome a new group to the shala to begin again tomorrow.

What are you looking at?

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. 

 

MIA and total inspiration.

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!!

The very long overdue post-Purple Valley report

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!

2010 and the Primary Series: my year of yoga

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.

Falling into place

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?

Bumps in the road.

I've been having an interesting time over the past few weeks. I can't go into detail here (yet) but I have come up against a situation in my life that has shown me great uncertainty - as of now it could go either way. For somebody who likes to know all the answers and to plot and plan around them, uncertainty isn't easy. But maybe I am describing my pre-yoga self, I have less of a need to know the complete road-map these days - which as it turns out might be just as well!

Last week started in a challenging way, as I left my house to head to the shala at 6.20am I saw a traffic warden photographing my car, having just written me a ticket. About a month ago they decided to paint some white boxes on my street indicating parking spaces, and aside from the inconvenience of having to move my car to a neighbouring road while they did the painting, I thought nothing of it. Little did I know that parking where I did (overhanging a box) would lead to not one but TWO fines of £120 each - one ticket was written at 4.45pm on a Sunday, the other 6.20am on the Monday (during which time I hadn't left my house). If I hadn't seen her taking the photo as I left for yoga would I have returned to find 7 more parking tickets I wonder? Anyway I reacted in a classic way - I reasoned with her, I begged, I pleaded, I may have shouted a little, and then I cried (because she said "if you'd only come out a minute earlier you could have stopped me..." I mean seriously - what help is it to say that???) and finally I snatched the ticket off the windscreen and stormed off up the road, slightly concerned what effect this contretemps would have on my practice. 

Oh, you mean I have to park inside the lines??

When I reached the end of my road two young neighbours who'd seen the debate going on mentioned that they'd seen I had a ticket last night, so realising that I had two already I had to go back and move the car for fear of getting more. So I stomped BACK down my road, slightly hysterical about how late I was for practice by this point, got in the car, moved it back into the bloody bay, locked up, back up the road and went to get my phone out to photograph the measly sign (which doesn't mention fines, it just says "park in marked bays"). No phone. So I stomp back down the road, unlock the car, find my phone on the passenger seat, lock the car again, back up the road...and finally on my way to yoga. I wasn't very proud of the way I reacted when confronted with this situation (especially the shouting and crying) and with all the up-and-down the road action I had started to get myself into a panic that I would have to miss practice, or that it would be ruined. So I kept breathing, and told myself that I would let it go, and wouldn't allow it to affect my practice, and headed to the shala where (despite lots of changing-room chat about it both before and after) I did not let it get the better of me. Chatting about it I decided that it was OK that I got angry, as it was a stressful situation and the anger was short-lived - the key is that I did not let it eat away at me, or to ruin my day. Although if I don't manage to triumph in my appeal against the fines I might be slightly less relaxed about it....

Anyway the following day was when I received news of the "uncertainty". And my first reaction was actually very positive: "OK," I thought to myself "Let's see what happens here." No panic, no dramatising, just a straight-forward realisation that without all of the information there was little I could do, but I was confident that things would be alright. Sorry I realise this is all a bit mysterious but it does need to be for the time being!

The following day, Wednesday, was a red letter day for different reasons as I was given the next pose in the primary series: garbha pindasana. I had a feeling it was coming after I started binding supta kurmasana (and got put through bootcamp to "nail the exit") a few weeks ago, and had almost expected it to come on Monday (knowing that it wouldn't on Tuesday!). So I was thrilled, I love the low-key way Cary comes and gives you a new pose, she just comes to you on your mat, says "Now come into lotus..." and begins to talk you through it, no run-up to it, no whistles and bells, just simple explanation and help. Susan was practicing in front of me that day and was doing her 2nd series twists and it was all I could do not to give her a big grin but I concentrated on the job in hand as Cary wrestled and prised my arms through the non-existent gaps in my lotus, sitting at one point with her foot on my knee to give her some leverage while I worried that the new practitioner on the mat beside me (who according to Susan's email had stopped practicing and was "frankly GAWPING") would never come back again after witnessing the man-handling it took to get my arms through! I think I said to C at one point "this is a lot harder than it looks!" but eventually my arms were through, hands under my chin, I breathed there (panted) and then she helped me to rock. I have been doing a version of this in the led class every week (without trying to get my hands through) where I roll right back onto my head as I thought was correct, but having Cary help me rock the movement was slight in comparison - I asked her about it, and she said that this is essential so that you can keep your hands in contact with your head, and to keep your back rounded and your bandhas locked. "As soon as you lose that contact you lose your bandhas" she says and I think BANDHAS?? Are you KIDDING me???!! After the first very assisted attempt she says "And now do it again by yourself" and then walks away to the sound of me laughing my head off. Of course I give it a go, I go and get the water bottle and try and TRY to wrestle my arms through, they try to rock around, beaching myself and calling out to her for help, and eventually she helps me to rock around (saying all the while "I'm not doing anything, you're doing it all, I'm just holding your knees") and then I'm done. Ecstatic I head to work, the first bruises already showing on my hands (I think from where C gripped them to pull them through) and struggle not to spend the entire day telling my colleagues what I just got given. Of course they are not in the slightest bit interested, and if they saw what I was trying to do they would probably think I had completely lost the plot.

Having had a fairly eventful three days I began to wonder what would come next. And what came next? Irritability, restlessness, snapping at my Mum on the phone, wishing I was anywhere but where I was at any given moment, that was what characterised Thursday. On Friday I decided to do my little photo project to cheer me up (and very successful it was too), but then the weekend was an odd one.

After my initial positive reaction, by the weekend I had descended a bit into panic. And the weekend consisted of: a very late night on Friday leading to me sleeping most of the day Saturday and then feeling I'd wasted the whole day; then an evening and night disturbed by neighbours 4 houses away having the world's loudest ever party (after trying for an hour to call the council I eventually moved a mattress into the study at the front of my flat and slept there, being woken again at 5am to find it still in full swing - African beats pounding, the garden floodlit and men in no shirts dancing and singing...); a very tough practice on Sunday; tears over brunch...and finally a decision to start looking after myself. On the way home from brunch I went via the garden centre and bought a load of plants which I spent three hours installing in the garden (which my body didn't thank me for the next day...) and felt so much happier once I had done that. Then on Monday night I went to a singing class with some friends, another positive and helpful step towards a happier me, and on Tuesday had dinner with a wonderful friend who said all the right things about my situation and made feel even better still.

So now having moved through positivity, restlessness and panic, I have arrived at a place of intrigue. Uncertainty means that life could go in many different directions, and what is that if it's not a huge gift? One of the things which helped me to arrive in this place was reading this in Gregor Maehle's book:

"A peasant once spoke to the sage Ranakrishna thus:

 'I am a simple villager. Please give me in one sentence a method by which I can obtain happiness.' Ramakrishna's answer was: 'Totally accept that you are a machine operated on by God."

Reading this helped me to gain a bit of perspective and was the beginning of my "intrigue" phase. You can interpret this as you will, but I have faith that "something will come up" / "the universe will provide" or however you want to put it, that something larger than me is in charge of what happens next, and frankly I am intrigued to discover what this will be. So watch this space...

And I fully intended this post to be all about garbha pindasana and coming to terms with learning new asanas...but I will have to save that for another day!

***********Edit - parking update!! *******************
I have to pay the fines, my appeal was rejected. But it's OK! All things in perspective, this is certainly not the end of the world. And maybe it's karma for all the times I drove over the speed limit and never got caught :)