If I could offer you only one piece of advice for the future...sunscreen would be it.

You know those days where you have a plan that you literally could not be any more excited about? And I’m not talking about the life-changing wedding-day/trip of a lifetime/buying a house stuff (because actually for me all of that stuff would equal anxiety in at least equal measure to excitement) I just mean the plans you make with friends where you know you are going to have a fantastic day, there will be no hidden agenda, no dark side, nothing said or done that gets your back up. Well yesterday was one of those days for me. What seems like months ago, my oldest friend and I had booked the day that I was going to go and visit her and her family in Worthing. So despite having had a very long day on Friday (leaving home at 6.15am and getting back at 11pm) I was up early on Saturday to cross London and catch the train out of town. And it was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, all of my public transport options worked out perfectly and despite leaving home really behind schedule I arrived in time to catch the train I wanted and grab a coffee and pastry before I jumped on the train. Maybe I was kicking off major good vibe smiles because the lovely man at Cafe Nero decided to give me 5 loyalty-card stamps instead of one (I only need to buy one more coffee now and I get a FREE ONE! I know...I’m a complete loyalty-scheme sucker) which just made me even happier. Getting on the train and settling down with my book (Awakening the Buddha Within – I’ll have to blog about it when I’m finished reading it, it’s changing my world!) I got that familiar old feeling of I’m just too happy, something has to go wrong. All of which was quickly chased by the morbid fears which are usually hot on the tail of boundless optimism for me. So I confronted my own logic, there was no reason for something bad to happen just because I was feeling excited, I talked myself down, got back to my book, got back to my smiles. As soon as the train pulled out of London and the town was replaced by green rolling countryside I remembered how important it is to get out of the city every once in a while, and how much better I feel the instant that I do. It helps to be reminded that there is more to life than London too. So the journey was good, but with lots of confusion for almost everybody on the train because it would split half-way and go in two different directions, so you had to travel in the right portion of the train, all of which meant that we were less British than usual and lots of people spoke to one another (I knew where I needed to be!). In this climate the lady in front of me peered through between the seats and asked if I could make a phone-call for her if she gave me a pound! Of course I refused any money, telling her it was free, she eventually agreed to use it without paying so I dialled the number for her and handed it over (she was an older lady and insisted she “can’t use them”). After she had finished her call she peered through again and passed me a sweet, and I got back to reading about karma :)

The friend I was en route to visit is the only friend from school I am still in contact with. Although we were at the same school from the age of 11, it wasn’t until we were in the sixth form and all of the classes were mixed up that she and I became friends (so from the age of 16). And from that point we spent an inordinate amount of time sitting on the very disgusting sofa in our sixth form common room, eating creme eggs and talking about the weekend (either the one that just went, or the one to come, or both...). Every weekend we went to the same bar with the same people, Friday and Saturday nights, and god only knows what we all found to talk about given that we spent all of our time together. But 13 years later, after years spent in different towns at different universities, with boyfriends, jobs and families changing in between, we are still in touch and although we haven’t seen each-other very frequently in recent years there is something unique and very special about this friendship for me. It always makes me think of that Baz Luhrman song Sunscreen – there’s a line in it about staying friends with people you knew when you were young which of course I just googled...     


Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get,
the more you need the people you knew when you were young

And how right it is! There’s something about being around somebody who has a shared history with you that can’t be beaten. Although we may not have spent much time in the same city for the last 12 years, we have followed each-other’s histories. She is the only person who knows the full story of all of my relationships. She knows my family history inside-out. She knows about most of the frogs I kissed when I was 17. She knows I wore nothing but mens’ 501 jeans, tshirts from Gap kids and a terrible cardigan for most of my sixth form. And I know all of this about her too. So although she has been married for 6 years (I think?) and has a two year old son now, the bond and the shared history is there and it’s really amazing. Add to this she is one of the loveliest, most caring people you could ever hope to meet and you can understand why I was so looking forward to the visit.

The day itself can be summed up mostly in pictures. We headed to the beach, a short walk from their house (where the Mr was holed up working) where we found ourselves a patch of sand, spread out the picnic blanket and stayed most of the day. We lunched on baguette with brie and grapes, drank apple juice, buried everyone’s legs in the sand (“again, again!”), paddled in the sea (that was just me), took photos and talked. And talked, and talked, and talked. And then once we’d done an awful lot of talking, I talked about yoga a bit and she egged me on to do some sandy asanas. So here they are.

The beach!

Making sandcastles with my new buddy

Headstand prep - at which point I was saying "I don't think I can get up!"

She asked to see my old party-trick...not really yoga!

I really hope my hands are a bit closer together than this when I do it for real...

Back at the homestead I handed over belated birthday presents to mother & son, and then helped with the new jungle animal puzzle until it was time for dinner, and then it was his bathtime and bedtime. Considering I only met him twice as a tiny baby, thanks to shared photos I felt like I knew him already (plus he is the absolute image of his dad) and we got on like a house on fire. I had a very sweet email from my friend this morning saying that when he woke up this morning, her little boy was saying “where is Mel sleeping?” and when she explained that I’d gone home he asked if he could play with his puzzle. So hopefully I have got myself another friend for life there :)

Anyway as the song was partly what inspired this post, I’ll leave you with the video. If you ignore the fact that it's a little cheesy, there's some good stuff in there...some of the better bits are towards the end... Oh and just to make for an interesting coincidence, when I looked this up I discovered that it went at number 1 in the UK charts exactly 11 years ago today. How weird is that? And the other piece of advice contained in this song that I really really should have followed yesterday? Wear sunscreen. It might not have seemed that hot but when I came home I was burnt like a bugger in a VERY silly shape on my back. So here it is....  

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)

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.