Not another one??

Today: Supta konasana.

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

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

That is all.

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 :)

Sadness passing through

I have these little mantras, just personal ones, they're not something I use all of the time but sometimes I really need to remember them. Before I even really go into yoga I thought of my first one: "I am here." I was dealing with a breakup and my mind would spin off into daydreams of what had been (and what might have been) and I would just keep reciting "I am here, I am here" to try and bring myself out of the hurtful dream. I added a new one this week (not actually invented by me) "I am not my thoughts" and then I threw in "this too shall pass" (again, I pinched this one). 

It's funny, I was just in the supermarket queue last night and I suddenly went into this major angst which is hard to describe. There was an older African guy with his grown-up son in front of me, the man was in more traditional clothes and I assume was visiting. He bought a few things in two transactions, and one set was for example 3 boxes of razor blades which were all quite expensive (the first purchase cost a lot too - over £30 for just a couple of things). As I watched him peel notes off a wad I went into this mindset of feeling desperately sorry for him, almost drowned by the sense of his vulnerability - but actually seeing him was just the trigger and straight away I experienced all of the same feelings for my parents. The feeling is a mishmash of massive guilt, feeling protective, and overwhelming sympathy and all I know is that the first time I had it I was about 9 years old, and it practically crippled me.

But what I did this time was tried very hard to talk myself down from it - in fact just to let it go, which I did relatively successfully (although just writing about it now is bringing me out in a hot sweaty panic). But before I'd had a chance to get my equilibrium back completely it was thrown up in the air again.

I have a new rule of thumb. Any sentence which begins "I am upset because..." and goes in to contain the words "...on facebook" is not a valid complaint. What is this world we live in where a "like" or a comment (or lack of one) can send us onto a major downer? The fact that I'm 32 years old means I should know better - it's embarrassing and pathetic. But former relationships and social networking are a BAD MIX and thanks to this I went into a major tailspin yesterday evening. I won't go into specifics, just to say that something was confirmed for me that I had suspected for a while, but it suddenly dredged up a lot of the feelings about the relationship - on a plate - BANG and here they were. My first instinct was to pick up my phone to text my friend and say what had happened. I picked it up - and then put it down. I unrolled my mat. I tried some floating up into headstand. I repeated my little mantras a few times (mainly "I am here/I am not my thoughts). I tried not to fixate. In essence, I did everything I could to allow the feelings of sadness, loss, or whatever they may have been to exist, but to feel that they were just passing through. This is something I have read in a book once and also heard recently on one of Kino's podcasts, that instead of saying "I'm so depressed!" you say to yourself "feelings are sadness are there" - in other words, don't become the thoughts that you are experiencing. I think I am coming to understand that this is what non-attachment really means.

Still, it doesn't make it that easy to clear the mind and get to sleep. Nor to get up and practice this morning ("I am here; I am here; I am here"). I was having a bit of a hard time on my mat, not disastrous but I was definitely feeling on a knife edge emotionally. I wasn't sure I'd get through my practice. But then the dreaded triang mukha passed without incident and I started to feel better, things were flowing. As I reached the end of my practice I went into my last pose kurmasana, deeper than before with the feeling that my shoulders were really under my legs, and my hands were there ready to easily bind. But as I went to clasp the hands assistance came, I wriggled my right foot over my left and hooked the feet and was lifted up into the dwi pada exit...but I had a hard time understanding what I was being told to do. "Keep the head down - no down! Keep the feet locked! Move the hands back, PUSH into them - feet locked head down!!" with ongoing encouragement to lift up into titibhasana and then jump back. "Again" she says (2 is normal, this is OK). Again I go into kurmasana, even deeper than before and this time I bind the hands myself then start wriggling the feet in (I find it's harder when the hand bind is more tentative), cross the feet and we go through the same instructions. This time I'm more tired, the feet uncross but C tries to get me to recross them and lift back up, I'm trying to ask questions while in bakasana and she says "NO talking! Jump back - JUMP!" and I think I might cry. And then she says "Now do it again".

On the third attempt it's not so much tremors in my right leg as a 7 on the Richter scale. There is no binding of the hands. I can't even attempt to lift up alone. I collapse panting onto my mat and do the only thing possible - I take child's pose. The tears come in padmasana and as I am putting away my mat C is there. I want to speak to her but don't know where to start. 

But something else I had realised between last night and today's practice is that of course yoga people have negative thoughts sometimes, of course they get into these downward spirals of regret, loss, guilt, whatever it may be. My first teachers J & H seemed like such amazing, peaceful people I felt like they represented all yoga people who must live this charmed life, where they never wake up in a shitty mood just for no reason, they could handle any situation thrown at them with grace and compassion, in short they were not much like me (or anybody else I ever met). Of course this is complete nonsense and my immersion in the world of ashtanga has taught me well enough that we are not angels. But what separates me as a yoga practitioner from the me of my past is self awareness. When these thoughts come, I don't allow them to swamp me - or at least, not for long. I try to do something else that will shift the feeling, I don't wallow in it, spending hours on the phone in a "he said/she said" moaning conversation. So I told C that today I was on the edge - misunderstanding, she thought I meant on the verge of getting this asana and said yes, that's why she was pushing me. I explained (without explaining in detail) that I meant I had some emotional stuff happening before I came to practice, and she started talking about how interesting it is that we have this thread, this continuous thread that binds us, and that people have all this stuff going on that she's not even aware of always, and still they turn up on their mat and keep with it. But as I said to her, what else can we do? If things are happening in our lives that aren't great, what better to do than to show up on our mat - we keep moving forward so that we can move forward. And every day is a new day.

Fear and loathing in triang mukha...

I know it’s called triang mukha ekapeda pashimottanasana really but isn’t that just to much of a mouthful?

As I may have mentioned before, I have some serious issues with this pose. Innocuous as it may seem to others, for as long as I can remember I have been experiencing overwhelming emotions when practicing it, mainly on the second side. I remember asking Noah about it when I was in India in January, at which point my issue was anger. Now I always preface this with “I’m not an angry person, but...” which I am beginning to realise is a false statement. Just because I don’t consider myself an angry person, we all get angry, it’s just what we do with the anger that makes a difference. Some shout and scream and swear or break things (of course nobody reading this blog would do any of those things I’m sure...) but I suppose I fall into the "burying it" category - so which is healthier? Unless I’m at work that is, where I seem to just explode momentarily and then get back to normal quickly (and I’m going to blame the office environment for that!). Anyway, a few months ago I wrote that I got a really really strong adjustment in the pose and got so angry I actually thought I was going to yell or hit my teacher. For such a long time afterwards I would dread the pose just in case I got adjusted, and was probably rushing my 5 breaths – after the first side I would always think “yes!! I got away with it!” knowing I was unlikely to get adjusted on the dreaded second side as nobody likes an un-even adjustment. 

And so this continued, right up until I went to Edinburgh to study with Kino. And while I was there, the anger changed to border-line tears, which then became the status quo. Just as I approached the fifth count I would almost reach the point where the breath would become the deep inhalation that precedes sobbing. But as this would hit just as I was about to come out of the pose I would breathe my way out, relieved to have dodged it for another day. I was even modifying the pose to make the feeling less extreme, and something my friend J said about Cary spotting that she wasn’t flexing her whole foot made me realise I was doing exactly the same, with my right leg outstretched I could minimise the depth of the discomfort in my right hip by easing off the stretch. So all the while I was half wishing that the tears would come, and that this thing would shift and be gone, I was also cheating and backing off. This wasn’t a huge feature of my practice, just one of those many little things that goes on every day but has peaks and troughs. Until last week that is...

I have been reading this amazing book called Awakening the Buddha Within (sorry to those who know me, I have been raving non-stop about this for weeks) which started opening my eyes to a lot of things. So there I was during practice last Thursday morning, and as I reached triang mukha and I slipped into my recent routine where as I experienced the pull in my hip I started my mental trick of telling myself that it was actually a lovely feeling. I think I was doing this on and off for a few weeks, just trying to play a game with my brain and make it believe that something unpleasant was actually pleasant – it should be possible shouldn’t it? Surely it’s just conditioning? So there I was, pretending it was OK, and as I got to about the count of 4 I had a profound thought. My own voice said very clearly: “You can’t hide from pain, you have to experience it.”  And BAM! There it was, the floodgates opened.

I stayed in the pose for a few more breaths, trying to fight the tears, but also remembering what I had been taught that when these things come up, you have to let them (it was Kino who really emphasised this, she talked about “letting your ego bleed” though that may have been in a different context!). I moved through the vinyasa struggling to keep the ujayi breath going, but it turns iut it is contraindicated by sobbing. I moved into janu sirsasana A on the first side, I caught my foot, I bent forward, I took a breath...I realised I couldn’t breathe and it would be ridiculous to keep going. So I did something I never ever do, I got up from my mat and I left the room. I walked into our open plan changing room and I stood with hands on my knees and I sobbed. Just for a minute or two, but I let it go. And there was nothing specific happening in my mind, I wasn’t thinking about anything, or anyone, or even a situation, I was just crying. Then I found a tissue, took the pack with me for good measure, and went and got back on my mat. And the rest of my practice was OKish, though I thought I was going to cry again in savasana, but the other thing that was strange was post-practice. In the past when I have had tears, I’ve felt OK afterwards.But last Thursday this wasn't the case at all - I felt wounded and vulnerable. I just wanted to curl up into a ball until the world went away. Later my colleague said that I looked like I was smiling because if I didn't I might cry - and she hit the nail on the head. as the day went on the mood shifted slightly, a trip to Starbucks for a mocha helped, and by home-time I was feeling fine again. But what about the fear of what would happen next time I had to do the asana? Well Friday is led primary, so feeling like I wasn't doing the pose my own, there was no issue – in fact I had a great practice.

Then on Friday afternoon I went to see my wonderful acupuncture/holistic Chinese medicine/ osteopath guy (I need to come up with a snappier title for him) and I spoke to him about it. He believes fully in the theory that the body holds “trauma” (to use a very generic coverall term) in specific areas of the body which could relate back as far as since birth. Through yoga we start to rub up against these kleshas (this from Kino) in a way that we don’t in normal life which is why sometimes bizarre emotions can come to us unbidden during a yoga practice – for me, extreme hamstring stretches can make me feel intensely bored, instantly! A very long time ago I was told that hips relate to family issues, so my feeling is that this lock in my hip is the huge can of worms I DO NOT WANT TO FACE for fear of having a complete mental unravelling....hence the fact I have been completely backing off from it and just hoping it will go away without a big drama. So he did lots and lots of work on my hips as I have been experiencing some knee pain and other hip issues, and practice on Sunday was madly open – I felt like I was wearing somebody else’s hips. But when it came to triang mukha I got a sweet, gentle assist, and I was absolutely fine. And the next day, the same thing happened. In fact today was the first day since the meltdown that I practiced the asana alone. Getting adjusted in it these past few days felt like I was a child having my hand held through a bad dream. I had the overwhelming feeling that I didn’t have to go though it on my own, that I was being looked after. And having had the monsters chased away from beneath my bed for a few days, I was less terrified to try it by myself today.

So I suppose the big question is, how did it feel today? The total genius of the situation is...it now seems to have moved to my left side. So I suppose I just have to keep breathing, keep working through it, and hope that this means something is shifting...and tomorrow is another day!