Hellooooo…

Tags

Healing, Simon Borg-Olivier, toute de suite, workshop, Yoga

So I totally meant to draw the winner for my give-away this weekend. I even planned on making a little movie to show you the drawing.

BUT I failed to realise the yoga workshop I’m doing this weekend would take over my life quite as much as it has! It’s my second Simon Borg Olivier workshop for the year and I’m feeling… overwhelmed, amazed, excited, grateful and blown away.

Since the first workshop I did with him in May, I’ve been doing classes with one of his senior students here in Melbourne (Simon is Sydney-based). Also since then, I’ve gotten very sick and made something of a rebound (still working on it!).

I’m pretty sure that switching to Simon’s style of yoga has played a role in my recovery to-date because it’s quite simply amazing.

Simultaneously, this yoga builds strength and yet is both graceful and beautiful. Instead of being exhausted after a class, I usually feel like a jumping bean – full of energy. And today I’ve just finished up six hours of workshop with another six still to come tomorrow.

My teacher (who is assisting Simon) hugged me at the end of today and complimented my pink cheeks (showing excellent circulation), while reminding me how well I did to get through the entire day. And actually, I feel really good. I need of a sleep, yeah. But otherwise really, really good.

Dear readers, I have so much to tell you about this workshop and the classes I’ve been doing.

What Simon teaches is profound – most yoga teachers come away from his workshops re-thinking the way they teach asana completely. So hopefully soon, I’ll be ready to write up a few bits and pieces for you about what I’ve been learning.

For now,  I just want to state a few things that are probably self-evident to most yoga teachers, and perhaps some students, too. This is more my observations in recent times rather than anything I’ve been taught explicitly.

Are you ready?

Okay, so some of us are prone to saying things like: “Yoga is not about doing sick arm balances”, and this is VERY true.

But to expand on that, yoga is not about how a pose looks or even about achieving/mastering various poses. I mean hey, it’s not a bad thing to have mastered a pose but one’s practice should never be about the goal of mastering a pose. Yeah?

In other words, yoga isn’t about looking good and showing off what you can do. That means nothing whatsoever. It’s possible to use brute strength/force/gravity to maneuver your body into a yoga pose. What does that prove? More importantly, what does it do or not do? Is the pose “dead” or “alive”? Does it help keep your circulation functioning well or do you over-heat/get cold fingers and toes? Are you relaxed in your practice or do you try so hard to do various poses that you hurt yourself?

But what if instead, your yoga practice could improve your blood pressure, or your immune system? How would you feel if learning to breathe properly changed the acidity levels of your body? What if you could learn to do a back bend that didn’t squash your lower back? Or if by doing a very simple practice and without any forcing, you discovered access to more “advanced” poses without doing them obsessively?

Wouldn’t all of that be amazing?

This is some of the essence of what Simon teaches. But there’s more. So. Much. More.

I think I’m ready to try to craft a couple of posts on it all. And I promise, once the weekend is over I’ll draw the giveaway toute de suite.

In the meantime I’m pretty absorbed in everything I’m learning. And thankful for being fortunate enough to receive these teachings.

And very soon it’ll be time for bed.

More soon, y’all!

~Svasti xx

Manifestations of Devi – from Sw. Satyananda

Tags

goddess, Ma, manifestations, maya, Swami Satyananda, Tantra, Yoga, yogic philosophy

“…Devi is the great power behind this creation. She is called Maya because out of creation has appeared maya in the form of this world. Being the ruler of maya, she is Mahamaya…”

“…In her prakriti aspect, Devi is the source of Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara; she has the male as well as the female form…”

“…Human beings also have within them all the elements found within the universe. This body is a universe in miniature form. The creative power of the universe is lying latent in the human body also…”

These excerpts are from a short but sweet satsang (spiritual discourse) by Swami Satyananda.

From a yogic perspective, everything is the Mother, or Goddess in various forms and this satsang explains this eloquently.

If you want to read the whole thing, head over to the Satyananda blog. You’ll have to scroll down to get past the announcements that seem to sit before every post.

Every single sentence in this piece can be unpacked in greater detail if that’s your thing.

Personally I think it is a very beautiful summary of everything I know and love about yoga.

Enjoy!

~Svasti

Review: yogAttitude cards

Tags

affirmation, attitude, bhava, Emotions, Feelings, intuitive, Nadine Fawell, review, spontaneity, Yoga, yoga in my pocket, yogAttitude cards

You guys! The brave and delightful Nadine Fawell has created something truly awesome: yogAttitude cards!!

And I feel like a total lucky duck for having the opportunity to test drive and review them for y’all.

Full disclosure: I was given a pre-release copy of the cards and workbook.

But holy-moly, I totally LOVE them and would buy them in a heart beat!

I’ve got a bunch of things to tell you about Nadine’s yogAttitude cards, so get ready for a walk-through of my test drive…

So what are yogAttitude cards anyway?

Well, there’s two kinds of cards in the box – those that show Nadine doing a yoga pose, and then all those Attitudes! All up, there’s 50 cards in the box – 25 poses and 25 Attitudes.

Adorably, they’re elegantly compact and come in a very cute wee box, so you can take them with you anywhere, including on holidays!

The cards are accompanied by a digital workbook (PDF format) which has bigger photos of all of the poses as well as beautiful descriptions of each Attitude (things like: accepting, nurturing, passionate, faithful etc).

How do you use them?

It doesn’t matter how experienced/inexperienced a yogi you are, yogAttitude cards can add a little magic to your practice!

In the workbook, Nadine lists some suggestions around how to use the cards. This is actually where the fun comes in!

Here’s a screen grab from the workbook of just a couple of Nadine’s suggestions:

Personally, I use them a bit like affirmation cards. As in, I make a pile of the pose cards and another one with the Attitudes. Then I intuitively choose an Attitude to go with 1-4 pose cards. Or however many I feel like.

Once I’ve gotten over the synchronicity (doh!) of whatever has turned up, I rearrange the cards into a sequence I like.

Then I repeat the process, so there are maybe three or four sets of cards, creating a group of sequences for me to practice.

I read what the workbook says about the Attitude and start practicing, all the while generating that bhava (feeling/attitude) towards myself and the particular pose I’m doing.

Why do I like them so much?

• I downright LOVE the idea of intuitively choosing a yoga pose in the way I might do with an affirmation or tarot card. It really speaks to the sense of “what do I need in my practice today”?
• People take yoga too seriously! In the classes I teach, I pay attention to the faces of my students. I’m always asking them to relax their face, to smile, to laugh… because too often their expression looks like they’re constipated! 😉
  Y’all, this is just NOT what we’re meant to be doing with yoga! Getting in touch with various attitudes and generating that feeling while in various poses is fantastic. Especially if it’s a pose you normally associate more closely with torture or swear words than say, kindness or wisdom.
• Because the selection of poses is so random, I might find myself practicing a sequence I don’t do often/wouldn’t have thought of myself.
  We all get stuck a bit in the way we’ve been trained or taught, right?
  For example: placing half-moon pose after triangle pose isn’t something I do all the time. So the cards are freeing up my idea of sequencing, yeah!
• Besides how easy it is to pop them in your bag, I love the size of the cards for another reason. In some cases, they only show parts of the pose Nadine is doing.
  So instead of very strict instructions about what a pose should/shouldn’t be, it’s left up to you to figure it out, all the while bringing FEELING into your practice.
• yogAttitude cards provide you with suggestions, but overall leave your practice up to you. Personally I sometimes find using yoga DVDs a little overwhelming. They aren’t working to my pace unless I get the remote out and hit pause. Plus, I don’t always want to follow the same sequence and the cards allow me to tailor my practice to suit how I’m feeling.
• I can choose to do a short practice or a longer one – it all depends on the number of cards I select.
• Change your mood and change your day – that’s basically it, isn’t it? I read something once that said simply the act of putting a smile on your face can affect your mood and brain chemistry. So, try practicing a little calmness or groundedness and see what happens…
• I don’t ever want my yoga practice to ever be something I do by rote, like a chore. Nadine’s cards are a light-handed reminder to keep life, feeling and spontaneity in my yoga. Hooray!

Yay, a discount!

yogAttitude cards are pretty darn affordable, but for a limited time, Nadine is offering a 10% discount.

Because she’s generous like that.

Just head over to her shop and use the code LAUNCHPARTY at checkout to get your very own inspirational pocket yoga practice.

It comes with peacock feathers on the box! 😉

Thank you

Oh, wise and gorgeous Nadine, many thanks for allowing me to review your yogAttitude cards.

I really and truly think they’re brilliant and I’ll probably end up buying them as a gift for a few people. In fact, they’d make an awesome Christmas/Yule or birthday present.

Now I can truly say I’ve got yoga in my pocket. Yay!

~ Svasti

xxx

Soften. Relax. Surrender.

Tags

Anger, autoimmune disorder, completely heart-centred life, fire personality type, Hashimoto’s, Heart, hridaya, inflammation, Inspiration, letting go, Mark Whitwell, observations from the mat, Relax, relaxation, soften, Surrender, tension, vira, Yoga

King Crankypants needs to relax!

Yoga starts from the heart, spreads through your whole body, then to your loved ones, then to the whole world.
~Mark Whitwell

I don’t enjoy writing posts like my last one. Really. But sometimes I feel like they’re necessary.

I just read the above quote from the delightful Mark Whitwell and I realised that pretty much everything comes down to the heart – crappy Funny or Die videos don’t come from the heart. Those who actually think those crappy videos are funny? That sense of humour is not heart-centred. Being abusive towards someone who makes a stand and says what they think, is also not heart-centred behaviour. Getting stroppy with perpetrators of said abusive behaviour? Nope, not quite heart-centred either.

Increasingly, I know that what I want for myself is a completely from-the-heart life. Where everything I do, every action I take and every word that comes out of my mouth is coming from the heart. That DOES NOT mean that everything will always all sunshine and puppy dogs. I’ll still have healthy boundaries, be ferocious when required, and speak out about stuff I think of as wrong. But maybe not quite in the same way.

All of this is challenging for me as a vira/fire personality type. Like many people, anger has been the default response to things I don’t like for most of my life. I’ve done a fantastic job thus far at tempering that fire but there’s more to do. I mean heck, getting an autoimmune disorder is a clear sign there’s too much fire and inflammation in my system, right?

As such, I get the point of doing things like having a negative media fast. Still, I’ve got the heart of a protester and I aint afraid to call it like I see it when needed.

But reading quotes like Mark’s help me to remember to keep a balance. I reckon it’s okay to be angry about something when it’s needed. But letting go is important, too.

So as always, it’s back to practicing yoga for me

The best things I learn from my yoga practice aren’t about how to work my way into a more advanced version of some asana or other. Don’t get me wrong – that’s lots of fun but it’s not what keeps me coming back.

What I value most are the moments of inspiration in how I deal with myself, my body/mind and/or with other people.

Monday was day one of a new term – the second for me at this yoga school – and the bearer of new realisations, too.

Given that I spent most of the winter term rather unwell (with Hashimoto’s) and injured (torn right calf muscle), I was surprised last week to discover that despite all of this and despite doing a very basic kind of practice for the last couple of months, I’ve gained strength. It’s pretty amazing actually – every inversion I do feels stronger, more balanced and stable. Every balance is steadier.

In other words, a gentle and steady practice caused an increase in strength.

So I was excited to come back to day one of classes for the term, now that my energy levels have lifted a little and that after two long months, and I’m no longer limping.

One of the themes of Monday night’s class was the difference between tension and relaxation.

Without meaning to, I found myself sharing this:

What I learned from last term’s classes is that even when we think we’re relaxed, we can still be holding a lot of tension. It wasn’t until my teacher suggested a slightly different arm or leg position, that I noticed my previous one wasn’t exactly comfortable. We just sort of get used to holding our tension, to the point that we simply don’t feel it until someone shows us an easier way.

This is actually true for many things – yoga, our lives, or looking at our own behaviours and actions. We sometimes don’t see our own tensions, or limitations. We don’t get the easier way until someone else reflects it back for us.

Then we have a choice – we can keep doing what we were doing all along, and possibly do ourselves an injury in the process. Our rigidity might even hurt someone else. Or we can adapt to another way of being that flows better and requires less energy to maintain.

It’s up to us, isn’t it?

Like most westerners who spend too much time n front of a computer, I hold a lot of tension in my shoulders. So in my practice I have to constantly find ways to soften and release through my shoulders and upper back. I’ve also been learning the difference a 10 degree angle can make in the positioning of my arms over my head. If one position jams my neck, why do I persist in holding my arms up higher when I don’t have to?

Soften. Relax. Surrender.

Until we learn to treat ourselves this way, it’s impossible to show others kindness as a day-to-day 24/7 way of being. We need to let go of our anger and frustration (they’re actually the same thing) and soften the way we treat ourselves, first. Then, we can expand that out to others.

This is yoga, and this is life.

Here’s to keeping our hridaya (heart) centre in mind as we practice and move through our days.

It’s a process I’m in. What about you?

~ Svasti

Chronic Yogi interview: Rachel Hawes

Tags

brainfog, cake, CFS, chronic pain, Dave Grohl, Desikachar, empathetic, exhaustion, fairy dust sprinkler, Fibromyalgia, glitter, Insomnia, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, kittens, light/sound sensitivity, massage therapist, migraines, myalgic encephalomyelitis, pilates, pranayama, pugs, Punk rock yogini, Rachel Hawes, Suburban Yogini, Tara Fraser, unbendy yoga teachers

Name: Rachel (aka Suburban Yogini)

Bio: Punk rock yogini, teacher, writer, massage therapist, sprinkler of fairy dust + lover of all things glitter, cake, kittens, pugs and Dave Grohl.

How long have you been a student of yoga? And how long have you been teaching?

I went to my first yoga class as a child alongside my mum and I’ve been hooked on and off ever since. I went to a weekly class right through college and university (I’d been a dance student in college and it really helped my posture and flexibility), but it wasn’t really until my mid-twenties that I started to see it as anything other than a physical practice.

I’ve been teaching since 2005.

What sort of yoga do you teach?

Rachel Yoga 🙂

My background is very mixed. It was very Astanga Vinyasa based up until about 2004/2005 when I met Tara Fraser of Yoga Junction who practiced and taught in the style of TKV Desikachar. My teaching probably lies very much in that tradition, although when I’m lesson planning all kinds of things can come in as warm-ups and counterposes – stuff from my dance training, stuff from my Pilates training (I’m training to teach Pilates at the moment), just stuff that feels right, you know?

On the flyers it says Hatha though – it’s simpler that way!

Which form of chronic illness do you live with? When were you first diagnosed?

I was first diagnosed with M.E. (myalgic encephalomyelitis) when I was 17 and I’ve lived with it on and off (and through various name changes – CFS/Fibromyalgia) ever since. There are good periods and bad periods. More good than bad most of the time I’m happy to say.

What sort of symptoms do you experience? Is there a known cure for your condition?

The symptoms are manifold and no sufferer seems to have the same set of symptoms which is why the medical profession find it so hard to pin down and why some still think it’s all in the mind (it’s not, I can assure you).

For me the symptoms have been as diverse as migraines and Irritable Bowel Syndrome, chronic pain and light/sound sensitivity, chronic sore throats and just plain old bone aching exhaustion.

But the worst of them all is the brainfog. The brainfog leaves you incapable of remembering your keys or the previous chapter of your book and there have been times I’ve stopped mid-yoga lesson not really sure what I’m meant to be teaching next. Never be without a class plan, that’s my motto! (Ed: Me too!)

There is no known cure. There isn’t even any agreement as to what causes it although my money is on it being neurological rather than auto-immune.

I also have a C-shaped congenital upper thoracic scoliosis. This wasn’t discovered until adulthood, so again there is no treatment other than osteopathy/chiropractic.

Did you start teaching yoga before or after you got sick?

After – long after!

If you got sick THEN started teaching yoga, what was going through your mind when you applied for yoga teacher training? Was your YTT impacted by your illness?

YTT in the UK is a massive commitment. You do a year’s foundation course first followed by the full YTT which is equivalent to Yoga Alliance’s 200 and 500 hours put together I believe and takes another 2-3 years. I thought long and hard about it to be honest. I didn’t see how someone this sick and tired, with a spine that just did not bend could possibly commit to the training.

It was Tara Fraser again who encouraged me, saying the world needed more empathetic unbendy yoga teachers bless her! So I did it.

On the first day of YTT I met L, who had had surgery for two herniated discs. The sick and the lame sort of stuck together on my YTT and we’ve been inseparable ever since!

Half-way through my YTT I did have a really bad patch. I’d just moved across London away from Tara’s studio and also Tara had gone on maternity leave so I found myself teacherless. I was working full time in law too then (yeah, I have no idea how I did it to be honest!) and I just needed a break. I took a six month hiatus from YTT and then joined again to take my final exams.

Have you ever shared your health condition with your students? If so, what happened? Has anyone ever reacted negatively?

I don’t share it with everyone, just if it seems relevant – more with private clients than group classes, although I do talk about the scoliosis a lot more than the ME. It’s more relevant to most people.

That said, it’s all up there on my website so anyone who’s read that will already know and that’s fine with me.

The only negativity I’ve had towards my health, sadly, has been from other teachers who seem to think it makes me “not good enough” (Ed: wtf!!) rather than from students, who all seem to quite like me!

Does your health ever affect they way you sequence your yoga classes?

Not that I’m aware of no, but I did learn at a very early stage in my career to teach without demonstration – partly not to wear myself out and partly because well, no –one needs to see my backbends!! When it comes to backbends for example I will use a student who I know well to do them. Himself (Ed: Rachel’s partner) has a very bendy back so I use him sometimes!

Chronic illnesses can be very frustrating. Do/did you ever feel angry about your diagnosis? How does it impact your own yoga practice and your life in general?

I get frustrated a lot, especially with the brainfog and the dropping things and the pain (pain is exhausting and yes, I take painkillers, I’m not ashamed to admit it). But here’s the thing. I was so young when I got diagnosed that sometimes I don’t remember anything else. And actually, in hindsight, I wonder if I haven’t had this since I was a kid.

Somehow having always had it seems less frustrating because I never knew adult life without it, so I never had to give anything up, if that makes sense. Everything I’ve done I’ve done with M.E. and as a kick in the face for M.E., rather than thinking “Oh I used to do this before I got sick”. I consider myself lucky because of that.

Have you experienced any “dark night of the soul” moments/hours/days in dealing with your illness? What got you through?

One of the most annoying symptoms is insomnia. I go through some really bad periods when I hardly sleep at all and 3am is a bad time for everyone when it comes to “dark nights of the soul”! I get though it with a mixture of good books, camomile tea, chocolate, pranayama and legs up the wall pose (Viparita Karani).

From your yoga practice and studies, what sort of outlook do you have regarding your health?

Despite the frustration and the bad bad days (and the brainfog, when I don’t really have the capacity for an outlook at all), I have a pretty live-and-let-live outlook to it. After all, there is very little I can do to change it other than what I am already doing. There is no point whining about “why me” because really “why not me?”. When I was being diagnosed I had tests for a lot of very very scary things, so I’m pretty grateful not to have any of them really.

Giving up the 9-5 grind to teach yoga and massage really helped. I’m lucky enough to have a very supportive partner for that one, and appreciate that not everyone is in a position they can give up work. But I really think that I’m lucky to have never known a different life to this.

My regular yoga practice and continuing studies keep me grounded which I think is really important to help prevent me getting too caught up in my symptoms and pranayama is a god-send, seriously!

How do you manage your health? With western medicine, eastern medicine, alternative therapies or a combination of them all? What one thing helps you the most?

Yoga, Pilates (I always say yoga helps my soul, pilates helps my spine!), massage, reiki, cranial osteopathy and chiropractic. I don’t know if one helps more than the other or not, it’s a perfect combination! I have played around with my diet as well although when I find something that works it only seems to for a little while. I’m currently experimenting with gluten free. Western medicine gives me painkillers, which isn’t ideal of course but is sometimes very necessary to carry on with my life.

Do you have any questions for Rachel? If so, ask away in the comments section!

Where you can find Rachel

Blog: Suburban Yogini		Business website: Fusion Massage & Movement
Social media:

~ / \ ~

HUGE thanks to Rachel for stepping up as my very first interviewee! I hear you on the brainfog, the light/sound sensitivities and the exhaustion.

I think we all owe Tara Fraser a debt of gratitude for encouraging Rachel to complete her YTT. And I don’t know how she did such a rigorous training while working full-time, either!

Kudos to you, lovely!! And once again, thank you for sharing with us all! xx

Read other Chronic Yogi interviews

Get some more goodness from other inspiring yoga teachers.

They’re indexed right here.

Are you a Chronic Yogi?

If you are and you’d like to participate in this interview series read my criteria, and email me and/or let me know in the comments. Your voice is more than welcome!

~ Svasti

Chronic Yogi – an interview series

Tags

chronic illness, Chronic Yogi, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Health, imperfect yogi, interview, oms, perfect yoga teacher myth, sutras

Don’t you just love Cora Wen’s Yogi Imperfect talk? It dovetails very nicely with this post…

Yoga teachers. We’re a funny breed. Many of us teach for love, not money. But when teaching for money (i.e. doing it full time), then the love usually still comes first.

However, just because we teach yoga does not mean that we’re perfect. We might (or might not) be bendy, we’ve probably done endless downward dogs, sounded off with more oms than you can count and possibly read dozens of sutras and other yoga books. But that doesn’t mean we’ll always have impeccable health.

In fact some of us are Chronic Yogis – yoga teachers who live with a chronic illness of some kind. We’re more common that you might imagine.

This interview series is inspired by my own recent diagnosis of an autoimmune condition called “Hashimoto’s thyroiditis”. Sometimes I feel like crap, but I still love teaching yoga.

I’m undergoing a process of learning to be cool with my health issues, all the while being clear that it mostly doesn’t affect my ability to teach yoga.

So I’m featuring Chronic Yogis from all over the world in an effort to kick those “perfect yoga teacher” pedestals down…

We might not be perfect or perfectly healthy, but we can still teach yoga and hopefully our imperfections will help our own students be more accepting of themselves, too.

As each interview is published, I’ll include a link here so they’re all indexed together.

Chronic Yogi interviews

• Rachel Hawes
• Christine Claire Reed
• (more to come soon!)

Are you a Chronic Yogi? Wanna be a part of this series?

I’ve sent out a bunch of emails to yoga teacher friends and fellow bloggers. But I’m sure there’s more of us out there than I know!

So if you’re a yoga teacher with a chronic health problem and you’d like to be involved, then I want to interview you, too!

Criteria

A chronic health problem is generally any disorder that persists over a long period and affects physical, emotional, intellectual, vocational, social, or spiritual functioning.

This can include all sorts of conditions such as depression, mental health imbalances, diabetes, epilepsy, ME/chronic fatigue, auto-immune disorders and many more.

If this is you, and you also work as a yoga teacher, I’d be honoured if you would consider participating in my interview series.

Just get in touch at: svasti108[at]gmail[dot]com

~Svasti

Grassroots seva

There’s a handful of things that I think all children should be taught while growing up: yoga (of course); how to dance; how to sing; how to grow food; that showing kindness towards other people is the best thing out; and the importance of service work (seva).

Really, wouldn’t the world be a much better place if kids everywhere grew up with the knowledge those things provide?

Monday night I accepted a meal for the third time from my wonderful neighbour who tells me that it must my karma to accept her help. She tells me this and I thank her, and I offer her a bottle of wine to show my appreciation (I almost have to insist that she accepts).

Each time I’ve eaten one of her delicious meals, I offer my gratitude and I get a little teary because I honestly think it’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.

But I’m not just thinking of myself. Instead, I’m inspired by how powerful and amazing it is when one person does a little something for another out of the kindness of their heart.

I think about being a yoga teacher, and how it’d be awesome if part of my Yoga Australia membership requirements included not just keeping up my professional development, but doing some kind of seva every year. Not that I don’t do it anyway, but shouldn’t the heart-opening work of being a yoga teacher also include seva?

Then I think of all the yoga communities out there, generally made up of good-hearted people. Wouldn’t it be cool if every yoga studio/school had a seva program of some sort? Something dedicated to the local community?

It could start with students offering assistance to each other. Need a lift? A meal? Would you like help shopping or moving or cleaning or babysitting?

Perhaps it could then be extended to next door neighbours. Take a look around, the local yoga studio might suggest. Talk to your neighbours and keep an eye out for them. Find out if there’s anything you can do for them.

I know that in some tiny pockets of the world, there are places and people who live this way already.

But it doesn’t happen nearly enough. There are LOTS of people out there in the world without support, and the simplest of actions could change their world.

The thing is we never know unless we ask because some people are too damn proud to confess they could really use a hand. My neighbour only found out what was going on with me by asking more questions than usual.

We all need help from time to time, and it can be hard to admit. I have to almost force myself to say yes whenever my neighbour offers me a meal because there’s a part of my brain that tells me that I shouldn’t take advantage too much.

Of course, there are charities out there doing good work. But often they’re doing stuff for people who are in more extreme need than someone like me.

So yeah, this idea of grassroots seva on a wide-spread basis really appeals to me. I hope I get the chance one day to put it into action with a community of yogis. That’s the dream/plan/wish, anyway.

~ Svasti

Gettin’ down with chaturanga

Tags

ah-ha, anti-chaturanga attitude, bakasana, balancing, chaturanga, force, headstands, lightning strike, Natarajasana, resistance, Shazam, upper body strength, vrksasana, wobble, Yoga, yogi

From the Daily Doodle: http://mydailydoodle.blogspot.com/2011/05/chaturanga-dandasana.html

Monday night’s yoga class included one of those “ah-ha” moments every yogi has from time to time. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been doing yoga – your body still has things to show you about how to use it best. Two, twelve or twenty years later, it doesn’t matter.

My wee lightning strike was to do with one of my least favourite poses – chaturanga.

Of course, I can’t be sure whether or not I received this instruction once upon a time. Perhaps one of my teachers gave me this tip but if they did, I was too busy focusing on something else to take it in. Or maybe not. I don’t think I’ve noticed too many teachers giving this particular piece of advice.

Who knows? But this insight was an internal moment of oh-my-goddess how come I didn’t get that until now?

Let’s talk about chaturanga a little. It’s a polarising pose, isn’t it?

People can either do it or they can’t. It requires upper body and core strength, and a truckload of patience for those who don’t find it easy.

Men do chaturanga with pride because it’s often a pose they can do well, having spent their teenage years doing push ups and generally having more upper body strength than women.

We gals on the other hand often find it to be one of the most challenging and frustrating poses ever. The upper body and head are heavy parts of the body and I think women have quite a bit of fear attached to hovering their body over the floor.

I suspect the fear is part of the problem. When I took my first beginner’s yoga course, I aced all the poses requiring flexibility but I was “no good” at the ones that needed upper body strength. It’s an attitude I’ve carried with me for years!

Then in some Iyengar classes I did once upon a time, the teacher was obsessed with helping us improve our chaturanga. Which meant that a small section of every class was dedicated to trying and failing. Or trying and falling. More anti-chaturanga attitude!

I blamed my busty-ness. How was I ever supposed to hold my body off the floor with massive… yeah, you know what I mean. I blamed my arms – despite years of kick boxing and swimming and generally being taller and stronger than most women, they were still too weak! I also blamed my (many) left-shoulder injuries.

Whatever. The upshot is that I’ve never been very good at this pose or had a teacher successfully explain how to do it. Yep, I’ve had the cues about making sure your shoulders/head are in front of your arms, not parallel with them. And keeping your elbows tucked into your sides.

But at most, I’ve been able to hold it for a few seconds only. Until now.

The yoga classes I currently attend include a lot of vinyasa-style movement through chaturanga/down-dog and all that jazz. So I’ve been determined to improve my access to this pose, and have been paying particular attention to how I use my body parts.

Which is why I noticed that I’ve been putting too much pressure on my shoulders and not spreading my body weight through my wrists, hands and feet properly. That’s not the insight, but it did help me get there.

Putting too much pressure on your shoulders when one of them is still weak… forces a yogi to look harder. Consider alternatives. Dig deeper. So I did.

Suddenly I’m thinking to myself:

Wait a minute! That opposite forces thing. Heh. Like, how to gain balance in tree pose it isn’t just about standing on one leg, but pressing back up away from the ground. That! Yep, it applies here too. Shazam!!

Okay, that mightn’t make sense if you don’t do a lot of yoga. To translate – in yoga, we work with opposites. So, if there’s force in one direction, then there’s also force in the other. For some poses this comes naturally.

But balancing is generally more challenging. Often, people are so busy trying not to fall over that technique goes out the window. And chaturanga IS a balance pose.

For many years I found tree (vrksasana) a little impossible. It wasn’t until I realised that I wasn’t *just* balancing all of my weight on one leg, that I was able to get it.

From: http://ookaboo.com/o/pictures/picture/25109758/A_group_of_women_demonstrating_Vrksasana

To get the wobble out of my tree, I had to use the ground to reach UP through my standing leg, and all the way up my spine. Every part of your body is involved in balancing, not just the appendage(s) you’re balancing on. Pressing my non-standing leg foot more firmly into my thigh, and reaching with my spine upwards (instead of collapsing downwards) was the answer. It blew my mind.

Monday night, it was blown again when I realised that DOH!, the same thing applies to chaturanga! It’s not just that your body is hovering above the ground. You’re using your body to push back AWAY from the ground, too. It’s a little something called resistance.

Specifically, using your fingers and toes to press down like you’re trying to dig them into the earth, and not just resting them against the ground like lumps of concrete. By pressing down we’re actually pushing back up, if that makes sense. Combine that with tucking your pelvis to engage your core and protect your lower back, and suddenly chaturanga is a VERY different pose.

When I explained this to my own students last night (it really helped them, too), I also asked them to think about how headstand or handstand works. Neither pose is held by simply letting your body weight collapse into the ground. You need to send force/energy in the other direction to maintain them, right?

RIGHT! So all this time I’ve been doing headstands, natarajasana, vrksasana, bakasana and other balances… perhaps it was my mental block/fear around chaturanga, but I hadn’t translated this learning across. Silly girly!

Or rather, “ah-ha”! 😀

~ Svasti

**UPDATE** Y’all should also read Linda’s & Rachel’s comments below about how “yoga is all in the bones”. That is also important when figuring out how to make any pose work for you!

Non-attachment or advancing vs simplicity

Tags

achievement, advancing, Awareness, bakasana, Injuries, progression, Road to Nowhere, Talking Heads, Yoga, yoga teaching

Just how attached to your yoga practice, or any other practice (like art, writing etc) are you, anyway?

This is the question I’ve been facing up to lately, in the wake of my ongoing physical injuries and ill health.

Right now in my yoga practice I can’t do everything I normally would. I can’t stand on one leg, or even put too much pressure or weight onto my right leg. Heck, I’m still Ms Limpy and dealing with the strain my injury places on the rest of my body. It sucks.

Fortunately for me, the style of yoga I’m doing right now is more concerned with the gathering of energy in the body and working the kinks out of the most compressed parts of our spine, than it is with “stretching” or “getting a good workout”.

That doesn’t mean the practice isn’t a sweaty or intense one, because it can be. There’s a lot of focus on the body’s natural movement without pulling or swinging or using force to get into various poses.

My teacher (who knows what’s going on with my health and injuries) is constantly telling me to do less, be softer, and right now… to do an “appropriate” practice.

This is VERY challenging because my ego still wants to do more!

My teacher insists that I only do with the left side of my body what the right side can do. For the balance. So most of my standing postures are extremely limited and I’m trying to be okay with that and keep my frustrations in check. (There’s a small victory for my ego though, when we get to arm balance poses like bakasana – heehee!)

Of course, this is quite ironic. I often tell my own yoga students things like this:

When doing simpler movements that your mind doesn’t have to concentrate on very much, don’t start doing your shopping list in your head! These poses are just as beneficial as something you find more challenging, but they present an opportunity to learn to keep your mind with your body. So focus on your breathing. Look at your body and what it’s doing. Pay attention to the minutiae. Inhabit yourself.

Teacher, take your own advice, right? Also, the words of my beloved teacher sound off in my mind: Work right where you’re at.

I remember hating that advice the first time I heard it…

So when my ego takes off on one of it’s BUT I WANT TO DO MORE riffs, I chuckle and remind myself to inhabit my body and the work that it’s doing right now, and NOT what it could do before or what it will do once I’m healed.

Of course even reminding myself like this, it’s still hard to let go of wanting MORE because our society worships at the altar of BIGGER. BETTER. NOW.

Just the other day my sister sent a photo of my four year old niece holding up a piece of paper with her name written in squiggly hand-writing. She was all Cheshire-cat grins because she can now write her own name! Actually, she’s been able to do it for a little while now, but has only just recently learned how to write “Y” the correct way up. Hehe.

While I adore the photo and the happiness on my niece’s face, it occurred to me that all of this celebration of achievement just sets us up for feeling terrible when we can’t or don’t achieve something we really want.

It also drew my attention to the fact that we tend to praise growth, advancement, development. We cheer on babies and children for walking and talking etc, we get all proud when people excel at their schooling and we high five ourselves when we can suddenly do a yoga pose we’ve been working on for ages. We deify our sporting heroes and Olympic athletes. Being the best is considered to be all-important, right?

Advancing is what counts – someone wrote this to me recently on Twitter. I beg to differ because really, what is “advancing” anyway?

Don’t get me wrong – enjoying progression isn’t a bad thing, as long as it isn’t our central/only focus. As long as it doesn’t stop us from enjoying other things, like a simpler yoga practice for example.

To expand: for every person who masters a new yoga pose and gets a hit of pride for what they can now do, there’s someone else who finds that years of practice have NOT made them more flexible. And in the face of our celebration of achievement, this can make a person feel like crap.

But what’s important here? Encouraging a student to keep going? Telling them their flexibility will come eventually (which might or might not be true)? Or helping them understand that yoga/life isn’t all about being the bendiest person in the room?

Yoga teachers – what are we saying when we give compliments for doing poses well? Do we balance that with information that can help less physically able students to feel like yoga isn’t a waste of their time?

There’s much to be learned by doing less.

Right now when I stop berating myself for not being able to do everything, I notice that I’m fine-tuning the small details of my practice. Like strengthening my lower back, checking what my knees are up to, and relaxing the tension from my shoulders. I’m learning to concentrate on the small details of moving my body in a way that my “normal” practice – with its focus on “achieving” – often glosses over. My awareness of what I’m doing is increasing.

So chill the heck out everyone (including myself)! Where are we trying to get to with all this achievement, anyway?

We’re on a road to nowhere

Come on inside

Takin’ that ride to nowhere

We’ll take that ride

~ Svasti

Yoga Crones are rockin’ mo-fo inspiration

Tags

Cora Wen, Genmaicha, Kali, Linda Sama, Magazine of Yoga, Yoga, Yoga Crones, yoga teaching

This post is a little shout out for two of my favourite yoginis in the Twitterdom/blogosphere, both of whom I hope to meet and study with IRL (in real life) at some point…

That’s right, Imma talkin’ ‘bout the take-no-prisoners, expansive and interesting Linda Sama and Cora Wen.

Both these lovely ladies identify as Yoga Crones – a sisterhood I’ll hopefully get to join one day. I see them as celebrating womanhood in a way that isn’t about having perfect hair and nails, but instead, knowing who they are and inhabiting themselves fully – body and mind.

The other cool thing about these bust-an-asana chicas is that The Magazine of Yoga has done interviews with them both – it’s one of the handful of online yoga magazines/journals I like reading. They are both fierce and fabulous, and not afraid to speak their truth!

Here’s a little more about these Yoga Crones…

Linda Sama

Linda and I have been blog buddies for a while, and we came *this close* to meeting in person only recently. Unfortunately the Bali retreat Linda was planning fell through. Bummer, that. Never mind – it’ll happen!

Also, Linda and I are Ladies of Kali – not a choice you get to make (kinda hard to explain that!), but having a Kali patroness membership card makes you one helluva interesting/fiery/madcap person to know!

Linda recently stopped blogging as much as she used to but with a little encouragement, she’ll hopefully get back in the game sooner rather than later.

I LOVE Linda.

Links: check out Linda’s blog, and read part 1 and part 2 of her Mag of Yoga interviews.

Linda’s interview talks about her Vinyasa Krama/KYM style of teaching, and how this involves slower but repetitive movements. This “different” style of yoga offers another experience of yoga that isn’t just about mastering arm balances and getting your asana kicked. Which works for me.

Cora Wen

I also LOVE Cora Wen. On my other Twitter account, Cora and I have recently been sharing our love for tea – especially green tea. She even shared her favourite brand of Genmaicha and HELLO, they have a store in my city! I’m endlessly grateful, even if I’m now a total Genmaicha addict. Oh well. 😉

The sharing of information about tea – that’s the kind of generosity and love you get from interacting with Cora, even if it’s only virtual and she couldn’t pick you out of a line up.

Cora is an avid Twitter user, sharing all kinds of yogic wisdom on the wire. I think she does it just because she enjoys sharing.

Links: Cora’s website, and part 1 and part 2 of her Mag of Yoga interviews.

I adore everything Cora has to say in her interview because as a woman it’s all very relatable. She’s clearly very present within her body, and makes no apologies for not having the typical uber-thin “yoga body” popularised in the media! As a yoga teacher, she’s instructional, inspirational and generous with her knowledge. I especially loved part two of the interview, where Cora describes her journey as a yogi from a type-A hardcore practitioner to something softer and far more encompassing.

Cora also describes how her teaching style has evolved and this is excellent for someone like me.

How reading these Yoga Crones helps me as a yogi and a teacher

A few weeks ago, the class I taught was just two people. Usually it’s busy-busy and perhaps the Easter break put a spanner in the works, who knows?

This never bothers me – I’m happy teaching to one or twenty people. And as it happened, I found myself having to break down something that I’ve always considered to be very simple – the full yogic breath.

Since I always encourage questions, I was happy when my of my students commented that it “feels weird” doing lower abdominal breathing. I wondered how many other people I’ve guided through this practice that have felt the same way: lower abdominal breathing is hard if you’re not accustomed to it.

So the class took a bit of a side-step as we spoke about one of the lesser known goals of yoga – to learn to sense your own body and energy. To develop sensitivity. We’re so used to using our bodies in certain ways only, and to gain sensitivity we need to practice. It’s that simple.

But then, it’s not so simple after all because developing that ability, via using your hands to help you sense what your body is doing – can lead to a greater capacity for awareness of physical and energetic sensation. And this is where yoga really begins to take off.

So we talked about that for a while and workshopped the breathing actions before moving on.

To me, that’s a class I’m glad to have taught. Like Cora, I see teaching yoga as an honour and a privilege. Like Linda, I’m not afraid to slow my classes down.

Sometimes I still can’t believe that it’s me up there, teaching people. And I know I’m so very lucky because for every class I teach, I am the student, too.

Anyway, I guess the point of this love-in is to direct you to Linda and Cora’s Mag of Yoga interviews and to point out how grateful I am to have connected with these awesome Yoga Crones via the interwebs.

To paraphrase Linda (quoting someone else, I think): if you don’t pass on the teachings, then you’re no better than a thief. And these ladies are Queens of Sharing. *hat tip* to you both!

~Svasti