Dropbacks and Doublethink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunshine & Supta Kurmasana

I had a great practice this morning, haven’t had one like that in ages where everything just seems to fall into place. I arrived in time for the chant which I always try to do on a Sunday but usually fail  and it’s my only chance (on weekdays it’s at 6.30, I have no chance of getting there that early). But I had just rolled out my mat when Cary walked to the front of the room, so it was perfect timing, I don’t like to start my practice without chanting but it seems silly if the teacher is about to do it shortly afterwards. As an aside – Susan if you’re reading, I kept meaning to say to you – last Sunday I arrived after half 8 and thought I’d missed it so chanted myself, then did it again when you led it 10 minutes later...so my practice should have been double-good last week after 2 chants!!

In the past week or two I have developed a few issues, as well as having hurt my left shoulder (scapula?) again from supta kurmasana my right knee started talking to me last week – and I have NEVER had knee issues!! This came the day after I proudly announced on facebook that I could now get the wrist bind in Mari B & D, having managed it two days in a row, and of course the next day – knee pain, no bind. I should learn my lesson really, no boasting...Anyway then after a few days the pain went up into my hip – I was at my gospel class on Monday night rehearsing for a concert so we were dancing (more like stepping from side to side) when suddenly my right hip completely locked up. All I could think was “I can do an ashtanga practice but my hip goes when I’m STEPPING??”. I’m a big believer in a little knowledge being a dangerous thing, so I’m loathed to do too much anatomy swotting, but when I pointed out where the pain was to my friend today she said it was the dreaded psoas, but all I know was this it was bloody painful.

But I had to practice on Tuesday as it was Guruji’s anniversary, and actually my hip was completely fine during practice. I had to back off my knee, the sharpest pain was in inverted padmasana so I just crossed my legs instead, but I was happy that I practiced – the shala was packed, I counted 32 in the book plus one observer, it was definitely the busiest I’ve ever seen it. But after practice my knee and hip were really hurting again, it’s actually straightening my leg that is the problem, I just want to keep it bent which doesn’t make walking normally that easy. I had an Epsom salt bath and tried massaging in castor oil (and then covering my knee in clingfilm overnight) on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and I took Wednesday off. Back to practice on Thursday, I had to take out all lotus and half lotus on the right side, and I suddenly started to understand why people say that the knees represent ego. It’s really hard to hold yourself back from full lotus when you can normally do it, even if it hurts like hell, and Mari D was super frustrating knowing that a week ago I was getting the deepest bind I’ve ever had but this week I couldn’t bind at all. The thing that was strange though was that my usually unstable solo UHP was really strong on the right side (usually my wobbliest) and as I took my leg out to the side I could actually extend it with the leg straight and felt a huge change in my right hip which made me wonder if it’s true when people say that every injury is an opening (it was crappy again today though!). The other thing that’s disappeared lately is my headstand, ever since I crashed out of it at home and landed on a crate of books. What’s odd about this is that when I was struggling with headstand initially, I was never as scared of hurting myself as I have been since trying to get it back. I’ve been able to do it at the wall but I don’t want it to become a big thing after I spent a year getting it, so am wary of getting hooked on the wall again.

So back to today, the shala was normal for a Sunday, fairly quiet, but hot and really really bright. We have these opaque sliding glass shades that completely cover the windows, and I was right at the front this morning facing the wall of windows. It was really hard to keep my focus in UHP as all I could see was my own (very wobbly) reflection, it must be because the sunshine was so bright. But given what beautiful weather it’s been all weekend I am NOT complaining!! Aside from wanting to cheer when the person behind me got given pasasana I had a fairly focussed practice but it was also just generally good, the warrior sequence didn’t stress me out too much, even triang mukha was OK on my angry hips, and I was able to get into half lotus when I needed to. When I got to Mari D, I was almost in the wrist bind on the first side and Cary came and helped my fingers round, then took the fingers of the right wrist (the grabbed one – I had to just try it to work it out!) and took them onto my shin, telling me that when you’re in really deep you can grab your shin...which is all very well in theory, but as she was helping me my little finger was getting stuck so it made me giggle – not that I could articulate what the problem was all twisted up and Ujayi breathing! The second side I could barely even bind, just got the finger-tips, and even then my knee was hurting so I probably shouldn’t have gone even that far.

The other thing that I’ve noticed (which I almost definitely shouldn’t say here for fear of cursing it) is that bujapidasana finally seems to be changing. Little by little, but change is change, I’m not asking for miracles overnight. On Thursday I felt a little more control as I dropped my head and for the first time I felt like I could squeeze my legs in tighter once I was down there – coming up was still a mammoth effort though. But today I felt I completely controlled the movement of taking my head to the floor, so that it was placed further back and without my full weight on it, and again I could squeeze the legs in, so the whole thing felt markedly better. Again I struggled to come up but at least the days of landing on my bum with a smack are definitely behind me, though a graceful transition into bakasana feels like it’s a very long way off.
Kurmasana started to feel different a few weeks ago too, my right leg is still not straight but I can feel that I’m pushing down from my hip now to work it towards the ground, so I went through into supta kurmasana by myself knowing that Cary would come and assist me on my second attempt. I waited quite a long time in kurmasana, it’s good to get the smackdown in that pose first (that’s sometimes what it feels like – WHAM! and you’re flat on the floor) but it wasn’t to be, so I brought my left arm in, my left foot, then my right arm before I started working my foot in. But rather than an assist into it C called across the room that I was almost there, told me to drop my hands a bit lower down, then told me I was about an inch away before heading over and helping me. Usually if I have tried to get into it by myself first, she brings the fingers together, then as soon as she goes to bring my feet in I lose the precarious grip. But today my fingers were locked tight, she brought my left foot over my head  and it’s at this point I start making sound effects as I can really feel the weight of that foot bearing down on my left shoulder. Then it’s right foot over the top, lock the right foot over the left and she lifts the feet, telling me to keep my head down, keep the feet locked, bring my arms around and really push down into them (we’re in sound-effect-City by this point) and here’s where my left shoulder really struggles. I get the theory, but for some reason just bringing the hands back around (even when I’m not lifted up in the assist) is where the pain really kicks in. Anyway my feet did unlock sooner than they should, and it took a bit of gearing up but I pushed up into what felt like a good tittibhasana and then successfully brought my right leg around to bakasana, and was trying so hard to stay up there and bring the left one around before I fell that Cary had to remind me to breathe! I almost made it then did a comedy fall & roll out of it right off the side of my mat but it was the closest I have come, so I was still happy.

Then it was into backbends (and yes K, I’m pushing the shit out of it!), my new routine of one little bridge, then three full UD with 100% effort, holding the last one for as long as I can. It’s funny but I’m finding myself newly completely obsessed with backbends – up until a couple of weeks ago I hated them and wanted to skip them, but since getting a few tips from friends and starting to put some effort in, I’m finding that I just want to do them more and more. We’re into hanging back in the bathroom at work territory here, which is clearly a whole new level of obsession and not something I ever thought I’d end up being like! Then to round off my very lovely practice, I managed to get up into headstand in the middle of the room for the first time since my crash – so all in all, I was a happy bunny.

It’s been a lovely weekend socially too – completely glorious sunshine all weekend long, Cary’s party yesterday and the chance for lots of chat with fellow shala-goers whilst stuffing ourselves silly with amazing homemade cakes, then a very beautiful post-practice brunch today with the lovely A who I know from Goa in idyllic Regents Park which was picture-postcard-perfect. But I am currently sunburnt like a bugger from today, having sat on a bench by the river putting the world to rights for a few hours after breakfast completely sans suncream, which is going to make me look highly irresponsible when I go to the Doctors tomorrow to get a dodgy mole checked...anyway here are some photos of Cary’s party borrowed from friends as I didn’t get my camera out (thanks to Jen and Kevin).

 nice arty shot from Jen

Me talking (to make a change) with P & Jen (I'm in the middle)

Ch-ch-changes...

Funny, if I’d written last week as I planned to then this post would be nothing but excitement and positivity - this blog tends to polarise my life & practice into great or terrible, when of course most of it is made up of a lot of days which are neither perfect nor dreadful. But I suppose the desire to write is greater when there’s something really significant to say, so perhaps you should just assume that in the days and weeks I write nothing what I’m actually saying is “everything is fine”.

Anyway I digress (before I’ve even begun) but maybe I should start with last week’s positive stuff. So last week was great, practice-wise. After being given kurmasana and supta kurmasana on Sunday, I went to the shala Monday, Wednesday and Thursday – a huge improvement from the days of once a week. Despite the fact I felt completely destroyed on Monday after two days in a row (that’s two days of 2 or 3 attempts at bujapidasana and 2 kurmasana/supta k, 1 lone, 1 assisted), resting on Tuesday I felt better than I felt beforehand in terms of my body. I expect (and usually find) the next day to be when you’re most sore, so it was a pleasant surprise to feel like I had a new body instead. Wednesday and Thursday it felt good to practice two days in a row again, I really think it makes a difference, and instead of the usual grand decision the night before, on Thursday I turned up at the shala by default: it just seemed easier than making a decision whether to go or not. I sort of came-to on the tube and wondered how on earth I got there and still felt a bit puzzled when I arrived but it felt like progress that going to practice was the default option. I went out at lunchtime on Thursday and made some notes over coffee about the changes I have started to notice

•  I’m amazed that my body doesn’t feel sore – I know I’ve worked, but nothing feels unmanageable. On Tuesday when I expected to feel really sore I felt amazing, like the day after a terrible hangover when you wake up expecting to feel ill but instead feel back to normal. 
•  I have been feeling totally blissed out after savasana. I normally sit quietly for a moment or two  afterwards, but this period has lengthened as I stay and lap up the waves of whatever this amazing feeling is. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence but it happened three times in a row so hopefully it’s here to stay.
• On Monday night at my choir rehearsal, I was knackered and being told we were going to sing a difficult new song through from the top again I had the familiar feeling of I can’t do it! But my mind went to the brutal effort of buja & kurmasana that morning and I thought if I can do that, I can surely sing a bit more too. 
•  My stomach has been reacting weirdly though I don’t know if it’s connected (think India!). I felt so terrible on Monday I went and got some rehydration salts and took them before my singing class, remembering how much better they made me feel when I was exhausted in Goa. It seemed to work – though I don’t remember accompanying them with a bar of Dairy Milk when I was at Purple Valley! 
• So the week went like this: Monday – wrecked, no energy, body felt broken. Tuesday – rest, felt great. Wednesday & Thursday – cut down to 3 surya B’s to conserve energy. Mad sweating & high energy but Thursday felt like real progress in the exit – I got a real lift up in the arm balance and straightened my legs before lowering gently down. Almost got the bind in supta kurmasana but got so excited (I giggled) that I lost it. Right foot came in over left as C helped me with the bind but I couldn’t quite work the heel up onto my left foot (and yes, I’m sorry but I now make involuntary sound effects while being adjusted) and then she had me hold it for ten breaths – every one of them panted.
•  I feel like buja is making no real progress, some days its better and other days much worse again – definitely no linear progress with this one. But according to Noah this asana is about hip flexors and stamina plus a bit of arm strength, so surely the more I practice the easier this will become?
•  I think getting new poses has changed my attitude to the whole practice because before I felt like I was just going there to get on with it, and getting the odd adjustment, now I feel like I am really working on something and I can start to see a future where my practice will progress. I can understand now why people get hooked on the physical progress and it’s hard not to but I don’t want to become asana-centric. I’m not sure what the answer is but I know that what’s driving me now is that I want to keep practicing more just to make it all come more easily.

But that was last week. So what of this week? I went to practice on Sunday, a tough one as I’d been out late on Saturday night and then the clocks went forward, so I only had 5 hours sleep. There were only 6 of us there and Cary didn’t arrive until 8.45 having been let down by her phone not auto-updating when the time changed. With the shala that quiet I had quite a lot of adjustments, but practice felt like a real slog on that little sleep (after a week of 5-6 hours sleep I really need to catch up on a weekend). For my last three poses the routine was the same: two attempts at buja (actually three, I fell out of the arm balance on the first try and went straight into the second without taking vinyasa), followed by kurmasana & supta solo, and then assisted. After practice my collar bone was feeling really sore on the left side and over the last two days it hasn’t gone away: it feels really badly like it needs to click but won’t. I woke up on Monday at 5.30 and even though my bag was packed for the shala I decided to go back to sleep, and today was a moon day, so I haven’t tried to practice, but it hurts just to have a small bag on my left shoulder. So I went to the osteopath tonight, expecting a lecture about the demon ashtanga and lots of painful adjustments, but actually it was quite good. She explained that my right side is much tighter than my left, so my left side is working harder to compensate. Also my right hip is a bit misaligned which will be affecting my left shoulder/collarbone – it’s true that in supta k on Sunday I felt really tipped over to the left side, and I have definitely been feeling the kurmasana adjustment in my hips all week. She did some huge clicks of my lumbar spine, which made me giggle, and of my neck which made me feel sick, but weirdly nothing on the desperate-to-click collar bone. And although I was determined to go to the shala tomorrow she made me promise that I will practice at home and work on gentle stretching and opening up the hips and shoulders. So this is where the ego kicks in and starts counting how many practices I’ve made it to this week...this inconsistency is driving me mad. I suppose the answer is to just let it go and breathe...

Suddenly it all makes sense.

So what happens when you write about making peace with your practice being just where it is? You get given the next two poses the very next morning.

I’m not saying that I have mastered bujapidasana by any means, but Cary saw fit to show me kurmasana and supta kurmasana today. And when I spoke to her after practice I told her “Noah said in Goa that the role of your yoga teacher is to always leave you feeling slightly overwhelmed. So you’re doing a good job.” I went on to tell her about the very unattractive character trait I developed in Goa which I can only liken to a foot-stomping 5 year-old, mid-tantrum. The chitta vritti went something like this…

Why is she getting that new pose today? She only just started practicing a few months ago. I’ve been going up to buja since August and I still didn’t get Kurmasana…So what about me? WHAT ABOUT MEEEEE?

See? 5 years old. Not exactly my finest hour, but as I wrote last night, at the end of two weeks I did finally start to make peace with where I was at, and this feeling has definitely deepened over the past couple of weeks. When I told Cary about this she said that it’s funny but as a teacher, even if you don’t know that that’s what it is, you can feel that sort of energy, and it tells you that the person still has a lot of work to do. So she and Kino are completely on the same wavelength here – the work to be done is not about the form of the asana, but the inner work. Hence the fact that last night I wrote that I had let the inner-tantrums go, and today, despite a still (very) imperfect rendition of bujapidasana, I was finally moved on. After EIGHT months! Footnote: that’s 8 months of mostly absent practice. But still.

So what now, onwards and upwards? Not exactly. Just practice practice, and hopefully at some stage, all is coming.

Breakthroughs on and off the mat: a weekend with Kino

A couple of weekends ago I went up to Union Yoga in Edinburgh to take a weekend workshop with Kino MacGregor. Having been obsessed with studying with her since I first came across this video last year (recorded at Purple Valley) I had pretty high expectations – and I have to say I wasn’t disappointed.

Though I confess, the night before I went I was looking at a load of photos on her facebook page and suddenly experienced this overwhelming sense that I was really not going to like her, with her perfect practice, her wonderful husband, her great success…I think that’s called straight-forward jealousy! I also have this in-built defence mechanism when it comes to looking forward to something too much: if I think it’s going to be amazing, something in me wants to lower all expectations so that I don’t end up disappointed if it doesn’t turn out to be great. But as soon as Kino started speaking on the Friday night I just loved everything that came out of her mouth, the way she had of explaining everything, and I knew that the weekend wasn’t going to be a let-down. I also loved that during her asana demo, she was not robotically perfect. There were slight wobbles, there was a bind she couldn’t quite get (probably Marichyasana E or something similarly crazy!) but it all showed that despite being awesome and amazing, she is still human.

It’s hard to sum up a lot of what Kino talked about on the Friday evening and over the course of the other workshops, as she speaks in such a way that it’s impossible to take notes without missing what comes next. I’m really hoping that the weekend will be released as part of her podcast series though as I got so much out of it. Even where there were things I‘d heard her say before on other podcasts, I still learnt more from hearing her speak at length. Here are just a few of the things I managed to note down from what she said:

Yoga doesn’t ask you to be peaceful until you are peaceful. Experience the anger, the jealousy, the ego, and work through it – if you back off from it when the emotion arises, you won’t ever be able to work through it and come out the other side.

This is really interesting for me because for a long time I have experienced overwhelming anger during triang mukha. When it peaked a few months ago I almost yelled during an adjustment, and avoided practice for a few days afterwards. I definitely always dread the pose but just recently the emotion has moved on from feeling angry into crying – thankfully in the space of 5 breaths the tears don’t actually start, but I find myself starting to shake as I almost hit the point where they do. So according to Kino, if I stick with it, soon (I hope!) or at some point, the emotion will be dealt with and I won’t experience it there anymore.

The depth of an asana is not represented by the form itself, but by the inner work that is going on…The benchmark of your practice is not the depth of the asana, but by how you behave in your interactions with other people, and how you go about your daily life.

This was something she talked about a lot over the course of the weekend, that the yoga is not found within the achievement of an asana, but by the journey you go on to achieve it. This was music to my ears, as I do feel like I have such struggles with certain poses that I wonder if I will ever understand them – are you listening, bujapidasana? Funnily enough while she was helping me with buja this week, Cary mentioned “the journey you are having with this pose” so I guess she and Kino are singing from the same song-sheet on this point. It also helps a little with my frustrations and paranoia about the way I am going about learning the primary series – though this is a whole other topic by itself! Maybe I should expand on it later, but I spent much of my time in Goa feeling annoyed and paranoid about the fact that I only practice up to buja whilst many other people I see do full primary, having learnt it all in one chunk. I made peace with this before I came home from Noah’s retreat (in his last conference he said “as long as you are being challenged and are finishing on an asana that you can’t really do, then you are doing the right thing for you”) but felt it again a little in Edinburgh, surrounded by people who certainly couldn’t achieve every pose but were doing full primary regardless. I just feel sometimes like maybe I am wasting my time, having been practicing just to buja since August last year (with very sporadic practice until this year, I admit) waiting to be given the next pose, when others around me sail through primary despite not being able to achieve the poses either. This point of Kino’s made me feel a lot better about this, that by going through the learning process of struggling to achieve the asanas I have difficulty with means that I am experiencing a whole lot of the real yoga!

To strengthen the point, she came back to this during one of the later workshops, where she said:

If we try to achieve anything in one go we deny ourselves the journey and she then quoted a saying that “there is no happy ending without a happy journey”.

The thing I really love about Kino is that (although you don’t believe it to look at her) she says that none of this came naturally to her, that it took her a year to be able to push up into a headstand, five years to be able to do handstands, and that everything that you see today in these very impressive demonstrations has come about simply by practice, practice and more practice over the course of ten years.

She also suggested that we use Guruji’s dedication to teaching as our inspiration to keep trying to achieve what at first seems impossible. Before the first Westerners came in the 1970’s, Pattabhi Jois taught for many many years with only a handful of students. She told the story that people would ask him why he continued during that time, and he said “I only need one student to be a teacher.” The suggestion was that if he could remain that dedicated to keep teaching through those decades with only a few disinterested students, we could keep trying every day until eventually we would be able to lift up off the ground in utpluthih.

Aside from all of the talking, the weekend consisted of 5 classes: the demonstration and talk on Friday evening, a full led primary and inversions workshop on Saturday, and a Mysore class and backbend workshop on the Sunday.

I was nervous about the led class as I have only ever done full primary a handful of times. I even had my friend help me work out how to get into kurmasana on our hotel carpet before we left for the class! But I needn’t have worried, I’m sure there were plenty of people in the group who had less experience of the full series than I do, and Kino gives very good explanations during each pose.

What was funny was that during the led class, the first one I’ve taken since Noah’s in Goa, I could hear not one but three teachers: Kino, Noah and Cary. Kino told us to find enough trust to transfer the weight forward into the pelvis in prasarita padottanasana, bringing my head much nearer to the ground and changing the feeling of it completely. Cary was there with the adjustment she keeps making to me in trikonasana which I have never understood but seemed to be able to replicate without her being there. Noah told me to push into my foot in Marichyasana and it completely opened up the hip and changed the feeling of the pose…

And as for the headstand, I can’t even begin to explain. Since I started ashtanga I have been struggling with it, and more often than not at the shala I don’t practice it at all. I can go up against the wall, sometimes not even touching the wall, and if there is a teacher helping me I can stay up in the middle of the room, but there’s always been something preventing me lifting up by myself when there is no support. People always say it is fear, but all I know is that I can walk my feet in but can’t work out how to lift them unless I am being supported. I asked Noah about it and he said “Now that is called a mental crutch”. Thanks, Noahji, but tell me something I don’t know - I was hoping for a solution!! I hadn’t even asked Cary for help with it, for fear that I’d actually have to do it. So when we arrived at the led class and the staff took our mats to lay out, I was pleased when they put me beside the wall, thinking that I could go up against it if Kino didn’t come round to help me. And when we got to the pose, I walked my legs in, up onto tippy-toes like normal, then I just thought let’s give it a go…only to find that instead of being stapled to the floor as usual, my toes came up and I tucked my bent knees in and off the ground! Next step, I raised my legs, wobbly as anything, and was shocked to find that instead of rolling right over my head, breaking my neck & meeting a sticky end I stayed upright! Not for long as it turned out, as I was so massively overwhelmed I was crying and violently shaking to the extent that I came down after the count of 10. Because the mats were so close I was really worried that my tears were going to be affecting my friend who was right beside me (though she later said she had no idea) so instead of letting it all out I tried to keep my emotions a bit in check.

How weird that this should happen in Edinburgh of all places. I was a bit weirded out about coming here in the first place as the city holds such strong memories for me; my ex-boyfriend lives here and the only times I had been previously were to visit him. When I booked the weekend (saying that “only Kino could get me to go back”) I had crazy dreams that night and was so worried that being back there would re-open the wounds. But the fact of the matter is, my life has changed extraordinarily since I was last there.

Lying in savasana I realised that this weekend in Edinburgh was like the closing of the circle: 1 year ago exactly I was just starting ashtanga at Purple Valley with Jeff & Harmony, arriving there with a broken heart and a crushed spirit, and wanting desperately to be happy again. Now here I was, voluntarily back in the city I couldn’t even bear to hear the name of back then, realising that I am probably happier now than I’ve ever been in my life.