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Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness

~ Recovery from PTSD & depression + yoga, silliness & poetry…

Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness

Tag Archives: Compassion

Honesty box Tuesday [1]

08 Tuesday Feb 2011

Posted by Svasti in Learnings, Life, Yoga

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Anger, Compassion, detachment, ego, feisty, honesty, idiotic behaviour, Kindness, Tias Little

  • Yoga teachers are not perfect!
  • Regardless of how much yoga I do, I have a feisty nature. The fuse that triggers my feisty-ness is long but when invoked, my anger isn’t pleasant for anyone.
  • I have a very low tolerance for idiotic behaviour when coming from people I think should know better.
  • These days I’ve generally got a pretty good handle on detachment and letting go of my “stuff”. You could say I’ve had a lot of practice! But sometimes, someone offends me in a way that REALLY presses my buttons. Twenty other so-called insults that might look almost identical pass me by. I laugh, I see the bigger picture and I have compassion for myself and the other party. Then, the twenty-first insult comes along and I am mightily pissed off. I take deep, deep offense and I feel that the other person owes me a heartfelt apology. Until I get that apology, I hold a grudge. I am not friendly to that person and I can hold onto that for a long, long time. It’s stupid, and it doesn’t make sense. I’m not proud of it, but that’s how it is. Eventually I chip-chip-chip away at my own stupidity and pigheadedness. I finally let go, but it’s a hard lesson. I can still be an idiot at times…
  • Tonight, teaching my second weekly regular yoga class… I felt a little burst of ego bubbling to the surface when I saw there were repeat students from the previous week. My ego translated this as: they must have enjoyed MY class! Cue the swell of pride. Kinda icky really, since teaching is just so NOT about me.
  • I’m not really a fan of Elephant Journal, but I really REALLY love this article: Anorexia and Yoga on the Runway, by Tias Little. THANK GOODNESS for Tias! If only all men and women could be accepting of our bodies like this!
  • And then there is yoga teaching: teaching is such a different way of understanding yoga. I have a responsibility not just to myself but to my students, and I want them to learn more than just the “correct” physical movements of downward facing dog.
  • I have a vast body of yoga knowledge somewhere in this person-shaped flesh-pod that identifies as me. Over ten years of meditation, yogic philosophy, asana practice and all the rest! To me, this represents only a beginning – I’ve decades of study ahead of me! But I can only genuinely share those teachings that I’ve embodied and taken on as my own. And drip-drip-drip feeding these things to my students because I will never forget how overwhelming it all was to me way back when. There’s a lot to learn and it’s all marvelous. So I slowly pass on the tiniest of moments.
  • Somewhere in the middle of today I saw a re-tweet from the wonderful Cora Wen:
  • Oh yes. So important. Be kind – to yourself and to others, in your yoga practice and your day-to-day life. This wee Twittered seed became the theme of my class this evening.
  • Because it is not kind of me to be short with people I brand “idiots” for their behaviour. And it’s definitely not kind to myself or others to hold grudges, no matter how few or how mild they might be.
  • I also need to be kind to my body – gentle with it while it gets used to the idea that I’m no longer in the siege-mode of recent years.
    I must re-learn to nourish it with good foods, and not just eat as a mindless function of being alive.
  • And I need to reach out to my students who are no doubt giving themselves a hard time about their yoga practice: what they can/can’t do; if the person next to them is better/worse than they are; straining to get into a pose; berating themselves for their busy mind or their injuries.
  • I know they need to offer themselves this kindness because I have to remember to offer it to myself, too. Perhaps not in the same ways anymore, or to the same extent. But still, do I give myself the same latitude I would give to a beloved friend? Erm, sometimes…
  • Kindness towards yourself and others is: honesty and acceptance of how things are; being aware of one’s weaknesses and strengths; observing one’s actions and thoughts without judging them harshly; and letting things be as they are.
  • I tell my yoga students that nothing is wrong with the way they do their yoga. It isn’t important if they can touch their toes or not. What’s important is how connected they are to their breath and the movement. This is kindness and honesty in action.
  • Just like last week, the words I say while teaching come out of a place that isn’t connected to the self-conscious, trip-over-my-own-feet daggy part of my nature that gets tongue-tied in the spotlight.
  • As I talk everyone through savasana at the beginning of the class I visualise my teachers floating above my head and tears in my eyes, I offer them gratitude and love for the wisdom they’ve passed on to me.
  • The teachings of yoga – way beyond descriptions of alignment or form – have their own consciousness. And yes, they are teachings of kindness and honesty, too.

~Svasti

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Find the joy

13 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by Svasti in Learnings

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Asana, Chinese New Year, Compassion, earthquake, find the joy, Haiti, hope, Meditation, perfect yoga bodies, Queensland floods, raining cats and donkeys, restorative, selfless, sharks, Sun City Picture House, Year of the Rabbit, Yogis

From a bush outside my apartment...

Some yogis never practice asana, did you know that?

It’s not the usual path for sure, but there ARE people who were born with already wide-open hearts, those so selfless they wouldn’t think twice about giving the shirt off their back to someone who needed it more than they do.

Most of us however… we need all that asana and meditation  in order to see clearly and enable us to start acting from the heart as a default first course of action.

According to the Chinese New Year, we’re moving into the Year of the Rabbit and apparently 2011 is meant to be a little slower. More restorative. And who couldn’t do with twelve months of that? I know I sure can… time to recoup and rebuild, yeah?

Friends, one and all – I ask you to take the time to watch this half hour documentary about life in Haiti one year after the earthquake.

It’s a beautiful tale about the fostering of love and fun amongst the Haitian people, despite the wretchedness of their situation. This is also a story of compassion: people helping each other with the most unimaginable tasks regardless of their own circumstances;  and how to not be destroyed by complete and utter darkness when life as you know it is over and you’ve lost so very much.

Have your hankie ready, but also be prepared to feel jubilant and blissful no matter what. The website for the doco is here: Sun City Picture House

Share it around.

Also, take a look at Diane’s post over at The Everything Yoga blog about Big Yoga. She kindly referenced my Body Talk interview with The BlissChick in a discussion about how we’ve just GOT to get over this idea about “perfect yoga bodies”. And that’s another helping of compassion right there.

There are sharks swimming down the streets of Ipswich in Queensland, folks. And it’s still raining cats and donkeys here, all day and night. But we do find ways to go on, even as our hearts are breaking for the state of this planet and it’s people and animals.

Nothing is permanent, nothing is forever. Like the dude in the doco says, find the joy in order not to be completely crushed.

Having been completely crushed before, I highly recommend the alternative: find the joy, everybody!

~Svasti

P.S. More coming soon on my review of Carried by a Promise!

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An Aussie non-Thanksgiving

26 Friday Nov 2010

Posted by Svasti in Life, Yoga

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

body, breath, Compassion, Eye contact, gratitude, interconnectedness, Intimacy, Love, Melbourne Cup Day, Mind, particles of joy, PTSD, random animals, supta baddha konasana, Sweet Mango, Thanksgiving, Yoga, yoga teaching, Yogis

Right now in America its Thanksgiving, which (and possibly you didn’t know this) isn’t celebrated as a holiday outside of the US and Canada. But in general, it’s a great idea for everyone on this planet to practice feeling grateful, and more than just once a year. Preferably without overeating, too. And even when things aren’t all rosy.

Especially yogis – y’know, I think it’s in the yogi handbook (that “official” one they give you when you sign on for life)…

(AHEM! That last sentence was a JOKE people! Well, except for the part about “especially yogis”. Coz, dudes and dudettes, yoga philosophy is all about love and compassion and stuff!)

Before this post gets going, I wanted to let you know that Sweet Mango (aka Michelle) – I wrote about her in my last post – did get the miracle she desperately needed. It’s such a wonderful story, and I am thankful for the way things turned out for her!

Over here in the ass-end of the world, we don’t do the whole turkey dinner in November thing. Today on Twitter, Ecoyogini asked if we Aussies have a holiday in November. Ha! The closest thing we have is a holiday on the first Tuesday of November and it’s for a horse race (quite a famous one though).

Yep… and in the week leading up to it, people spend stupid amounts of money on clothes and booze (translation: alcohol) and then go and stand around dusty racing tracks – unless they are lucky and get an invite to a VIP section – and bet, and drink and flirt. It’s meant to be glamorous or something.

Of course, I’m quite anti the whole thing on account of the horses. I mean, sure they get treated well as long as they’re making money. After that, some of them become breeding animals and the others…well, I think it’s dodgy.

And that is our November public holiday! Well, as long as you’re in Victoria. In the other states, people just take a half day from work, and get drunk over lunch which effectively renders them useless for the rest of the day!

Anyway, this post is meant to be about stuff that I’m grateful for, right? So here goes!

Despite everything, including all of the reasons this blog exists, I am grateful to be here.

These days my life is much more, uhhh, liveable than it has in a good long while. However, I still have days/hours/moments where I feel completely and utterly miserable. Mostly, this happens when I compare the state of my world to some cookie-cutter ideal I was hand-fed by my family, the society I grew up in, and/or the values of the entire freakin’ western world. The tendencies towards depression and anxiety attacks mean that none of that stuff is easy to deal with.

My life looks pretty much nothing like any of those “markers” of happiness and success. And yet, despite everything, and perhaps regardless of the numerous times I have to back myself away from the soul-destroying, negativity-loving shouty little demon folk, I’m pleased to report that these days it’s still possible to find happiness and gratitude.

Okay, so my version of happiness is far from perfect. But still, nearly every single day I can genuinely find something to be happy about.

A lot of that has to do with three things.

First – just taking the time to look around me. Because then I get to indulge in my predilection for saying hello to random animals on the street…

A cute random dog I befriended on the street

And appreciate nature, and other people. Yeah… that thing I used to avoid thanks to PTSD? It’s called looking other people in the eye, and now I can do that again (hooray), I look through their eyes into their hearts and offer them what they hopefully see as a smile of love. Because in case you hadn’t noticed, pretty much all of us need more of that. Love. Smiles. Pleasure gained from little things.

If what we want for this world is to generate more love, compassion and gratitude, then this seeing people is important work, because so many of us just feel invisible, right?

Second – actually, is my online world here. Through which I’ve met incredible people and hey, maybe someday I’ll get to meet a few more of you! While reading blogs and Twitter, I’ve discovered stories that angered me, brought me to tears, made me laugh out loud, entertained me and overall, educated me. You are all awesome!

Third – of course, is yoga. I still can’t quite actually believe that I’m a yoga teacher, and yet I find endless blessings and revelations from each and every class I teach. Even if I think the class went terribly, it still teaches me. And more than anything, it brings me happiness, to think that I’ve been able to share information with others that helps them learn more about their relationship to their body or mind. That just blows my mind!

Between teaching and my own practice, plus regular doses of kirtan and meeting other like-minded people… this has and continues to be a stabilising force around which I gather those smallish particles of joy.

Yoga is the basis of the new life I’m planning for myself…more about that some other time soon. For now, I’ll just say that for the first time in an absolute age, I have a plan. Something that’s about doing the right thing by myself and I just hope I can pull it off! Because if I can turn things around the way I want them to go, then it’s not just doing the right thing for me – it will in the long run benefit others, too.

And now, a little something I wrote and read out to my class this week. None of the ideas are new or original. They’re all things I’ve learned from my teachers. Maybe it’s just because I’m a new teacher, but sometimes I feel like I don’t get to say the things I really want to say while I’m teaching. Stuff that I want my students to understand about yoga!

So I basically wrote down a bunch of ideas, and asked everyone to lie in supta baddha konasana (reclined butterfly) while I read it out.

Here it is now, for you, too. With my love and thanks for being a fabulous online community. xo

About your yoga practice

The concept of yoga has been interpreted in dozens of ways all over the world. But what is yoga, really?

Is it stretching? Does movement have to be involved? Can yoga could be performed in a chair, or by a quadriplegic or paraplegic? Is yoga limited to what happens in a class and on your yoga mat? The answer could be “yes” to all of these things, but yoga philosophy and practice is a vast  body of knowledge and can take many years to study.

Through my teachers, the following definition of yoga has been passed down to me and it’s both very simple and very complex: yoga is intimacy.

Not in a sexual way of course! But intimacy as true interconnectedness. This begins with how you relate to yourself, and so we start with the breath. In much of our waking lives, we are unfamiliar with our own breath – and yet it’s the breath which carries the exchange of life force energy that keeps us alive.

How aware of your breath are you? Without training it’s difficult to breath with awareness all day long and this is why in yoga class, we practice being focussed on our breath.

The breath originates our life force and ability to move, and as such, we start and end each movement we take in yoga with our breath.

And over time, through this practice we learn to link our breath (awareness = mind) with our body. For many people this is a challenge, because the body is where we store all of our pain, fear and suppressed emotions. To connect the breath/mind with the body, is actually a really big deal.

Once that connection between the body and mind starts to open, the body responds in kind. And you might find that yoga poses you previously thought you couldn’t do become much easier. Sometimes these sorts of changes can appear to happen very quickly.

But you have to ask yourself if it was ever the case that your body couldn’t do what it can now do. Or if it was something else that changed. Your awareness of your body in space, perhaps? Or maybe your fear around what you think you can or can’t do?

People have many reactions to yoga. Some think it’s boring. Others – including me – have at times found it to be something that causes fear. Some people experience nothing but bliss doing yoga. And others yet again, try it and hate it.

These are all reactions of the body and the mind attempting to work together. And if you keep practicing over time, you might find that you experience all of these things, and possibly other experiences I haven’t mentioned.

The thing is – whatever your current experience of yoga, it can and will change. And while you’re finding your feet in your relationship to your yoga practice, it’s good to adopt an attitude of playful exploration.

In my own personal practice, there are still things I can’t do or that I find really challenging. However, there is a way around that fear, if we are willing to be playful and have fun with it!

The opposite of playful exploration is telling ourselves we can’t do something. The more we tell ourselves that, the more we won’t be able to do it because we won’t even try. If we never do those things, our relationship to them never changes.

So, back to the concept of yoga as intimacy. We fear what we’re not familiar with. To lose our fear, we have to get to know what we’re afraid of. And in yoga, our tool set for this work is the mind, the breath and the body.

The mind focuses and controls the breath in a way that helps us to relax and provides continuity and consistency. The breath starts and finishes our movements to soothe our transitions and release our fears. The mind can tell us all kinds of things about our yoga practice – how much it hurts, that we’re scared or tired, that we can’t hold that pose a second longer – but if we allow ourselves to focus on breathing instead of what the mind says, the body will respond. And suddenly all of our protests go away. And the body, with the support of the mind and the breath, can over time, experience openings that inform the mind that things are changing.

This is why it doesn’t matter if you fall over. And why it isn’t important how well or badly you can do a pose. The correct attitude to your practice at any given time is: “What’s going on in my body? Where am I holding tension? How is my breathing? Do I feel connected to my body as I move through these yoga poses?”

To answer these questions, you need to explore how you feel and what you’re thinking and doing in your practice. Although a yoga teacher leads the class, your yoga practice is unique to your own body, breath and mind. You are the only one who can do this work of exploration, and it’s the way to intimacy and the path to attaining yoga.

~Svasti

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Samskaras in samsara – part 1

08 Wednesday Sep 2010

Posted by Svasti in Health & healing, Yoga

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Amazonian, Asana, Barbie doll, bra fat, Compassion, disingenuous, fat burning, Fry your fat on the mat, hamster wheel, Healing, Heart-Chakra Opening, infomercials, jiva mukti, liberation, Living Liberation, Love, Meditation, modern-day sorcery, Radical Self-Acceptance, Self-esteem, Slim Calm Sexy Yoga, Tara Stiles, un-yogic, Unreasonable Joy, Yin Yoga, Yoga, yoga teachers

Thanks, Yoga Dawg!! 🙂

I’ve been thinking this one through and I wanted to break down my outrage for y’all a little more re: the Tara Stiles saga.

I’m much calmer now. Not so much with the angry. But still, this latest “yoga scandal” resonates with me in a way that none of the other recent issues have (e.g. see Toe Sox-Gate), and I’m gonna explain why. In detail. So bear with me, okay?

To kick things off: Tara Stiles has called her book and presumably “her” yoga “Slim Calm Sexy Yoga”. She promotes it as such and clearly believes in this message. However for me, this is very problematic.

The title itself is disingenuous.

What I mean by that is this: if you do enough yoga or ANY other kind of exercise, you will lose weight as a by-product. And for that you don’t need to buy the “Slim Calm Sexy Yoga” book. Whether 15 minutes a day of yoga is enough to deliver the sort of results Tara is claiming… well, that’s debatable.

As for “Slim”? Really? There are people in this world – people like me – who, even at their thinnest, could NEVER be described as thin. I might look in shape, toned and slim for my build (think tall Amazonian proportions, broad shoulders, busty, curvy), but no one would call me slim when there’s a world of underfed actresses and models to be compared to.

Calm, eh? Hmmm. Yesss… a little meditation and regular old yoga will help you with the calm factor. So will getting enough sleep.

And Sexy? So erm… is sexiness implied in relation to Slim? Are you only Sexy if you’re Slim and Calm? Can you possibly be Sexy and neither Slim or Calm?

And that’s just for starters.

Honestly, I don’t really care if Tara has “sensible” You Tube videos or other “helpful” tips in her book, as has been pointed out by other bloggers. And I don’t buy the “poor Tara, she’s just a victim of the marketing machine selling her book, it’s not her fault” excuse, either.

Surely, if she truly objected to the way it was going to be marketed, she’d pull out of the deal and/or find another publisher? I know I would!

And let’s not forget her “Fry your fat on the mat” segment which directly supports those advertising messages! I don’t mean to be snooty, but I’d like to point out that in that TV spot she was holding standard yoga poses for only a minute or two and calling them “fat burning” exercises. On live TV being broadcast to millions of viewers.

In direct contrast, a male yoga teacher friend of mine talks about asana in terms of their healing benefits. Yep, HEALING.

And hey, let’s not forget that Yin Yoga (which I haven’t practiced, but Linda teaches) involves holding asana for MUCH longer than a minute (with ZERO mentions of fat burning!).

Guess what I’m saying is that certain attributes have been assigned to Tara’s yoga style and the benefits promised are actually true for doing ANY kind of yoga. But generally, those things are considered by-products of the practice, and not the end-goal.

So, already there’s a major disconnect happening here for me.

But don’t get me wrong: I think it’s perfectly fine to want to lose weight (healthily, I might add). If that’s what you think you need. And in some cases for reasons to do with health and longevity, weight loss is desirable. But not to make you better, calmer or sexier.

Of course, this is the common mythology of our society and it begins the moment young girls are given their first Barbie and Ken dolls: thinner (for girls)/more muscular (for guys) = Better.

BUT THIS IS NOT YOGA.

And in my humble opinion, it is NOT okay for yoga teachers to reinforce the message that you aren’t okay the way you are. You’re fat. You need to do MY yoga in order to lose weight. Fry your fat! Buy my book!!

(My Guru refers to marketing as modern-day sorcery because of its ability to manipulate people to do what you want them to do.)

This kind of marketing message is anti EVERYTHING that yoga stands for, and it’s one of the few things that I’d describe as “un-yogic” – a word that in general I detest and think is used as a slur/insult to judge others (and therefore is in itself, un-yogic. Doh!). But that’s a whole other post!

The very branding of yoga as “Slim Calm Sexy” with skimpily-clad images of Tara infers: “Be like me/look like me”.

It doesn’t even matter if she never says that explicitly – the message is there like a blinking neon light because it’s tapping directly into all of the pre-existing “lose 100lbs and get a life” late-night infomercials that have been playing ad nausea in our collective unconscious for far too many years.

Now, here’s a cold hard fact: depending on your metabolism/doshas, genes, physical build and bone structure, you might NEVER look like Tara. Ever.

Then… what happens when those 15 minutes of “fat burning” yoga a day DON’T get rid of one’s bra fat (I’m assuming this refers to the little roll that forms under the back of the bra)? Because let’s face it – this is NOT going to be enough for some people at all.

Note: There’s no one-size-fits-all yoga routine that’s guaranteed to make a person lose weight!

==Also, as Nadine has rightly pointed out in the comments, there’s nothing wrong with bra fat anyway==

So, if someone doesn’t get the result they expect, what will it mean about their impression of yoga and more importantly, their relationship to themselves? Has yoga, then, just added another nail in the coffin of someone’s self-esteem instead of offering them a powerful means of liberation from such things?

This sort of thinking in Tara’s book and marketing in general is symptomatic of the “I’ll be happy when…” disease. When I’m richer, thinner, better looking, when I’ve had that nose/boob job, got a better job, a lover, children and so on… THEN I’ll be happy.

Of course, “I’ll be happy when…” is a lie.

And the cure to this malaise is NEVER more improvements or possessions. I mean, we know this, right? Because when we do get what we want, we’re still not as happy as we thought we’d be, right? Like a hamster on its wheel, we keep spinning on the spot thinking we’re getting somewhere but in fact, we’re digging ourselves a deeper and deeper hole.

The ONLY way out of the hamster wheel is to fully buy into Radical Self-Acceptance: that everything about you is perfect just the way you are… there’s no need to keep running, and searching. Everything you want and need is already right here, and you’ve just got to learn to see it.

Right now, some of you might be thinking: OMG, that sounds like a huge pile of horse dung, right?

How could I possibly be okay if I don’t have movie star looks and/or a model shaped body? How can I like or love myself if I’m not this generalised western concept of everything that’s acceptably attractive, fun and social? If I don’t have the right clothes, a house, a car, a family, lots of friends. HOW COULD ANY OF THAT BE OKAY?!!

Well, because who you are is not limited to your appearance, clothes, your job, how you live, your friends, hobbies and habits. None of those things!

And because if you like, you can choose to start exploring what else you might be. What other wondrous possibilities might be associated with being a human being in this inter-connected interplay of the universe!

And this, my friends, is what yoga is all about.

Because yoga is, amongst other things, Radical Self-Acceptance, Unreasonable Joy (i.e. joy without reason or cause), Heart-Chakra Opening, generating Love and Compassion, and the tradition of Living Liberation (jiva mukti)…

WHAT??! You thought yoga was just about stretching or frying your fat or getting a toned butt? Erm, sorry. That’s. Just. Not. True.

There’s much more to come! And here’s part 2..

~Svasti

P.S. Here’s a few related posts on the subject in no particular order. I don’t necessarily agree with every post, but feel free to make up your own mind!

From Nadine: The making of a yoga body

From The BlissChick: DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK

From EcoYogini: Selling Yoga: The Trends that Define our Culture

From Curvy Yoga: Yoga, weight loss, and transformation

From Brooks Hall: Slim Sexy Savvy and Yoga-sex

From Linda-Sama #1: Words almost fail me

From Linda-Sama #2: Seva is sexy

From Linda-Sama #3: Burn your blubber, fry your fat

From Linda-Sama #4: Upon further reflection of yoga noise

From Yoga Dawg: The New Epidemic: Bra Fat

From Yoga Dork: Tara Stiles Launches ‘Slim, Calm, Sexy’ Yoga to Acclaim, Insult, Revolt (see marketing)

From It’s All Yoga, Baby: Toesoxnudegate: the feminists & Kathryn Budig speak up

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A yogini & an atheist walk into a bar…

26 Friday Mar 2010

Posted by Svasti in Learnings, Life

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

atheist, Compassion, Empathy, Karma, kirtan, Love, Motorbikes, rainbows, Richard Dawkins, Tantra, Yoga, Yogini

In all seriousness, the title of this post is not the start of a joke! Okay, well maybe it is… 😉

C is one of my very good friends and a recent house guest – visiting Melbourne for a conference and then a bit of 4WD and motorbike fun. When he first asked if he could stay I kinda assumed his conference was to do with his job, and only just before his visit did he come clean about the Atheist Convention he was attending!

Which made me giggle. See when we first met, C was doing yoga and meditation which is part of the reason we had so much in common. We dated briefly almost ten years ago, and we’ve been good friends ever since. But somehow C veered into atheism and threw the baby/yoga out with the bathwater. Like many people, C didn’t have the best of times growing up, he has chronic health problems (which I suspect are related to suppressed anxiety), and one of his brothers passed away not long after we met. Outwardly he’s a very happy-go-lucky, adventurous, fun-seeking, kindly and generous person but when it comes to matters of the heart, I suspect he shut up shop long ago.

Over the years, it’s like there was a proportional relationship between my immersion in yoga and his into atheism. Nowadays he considers Richard Dawkins a hero, while I’m a fan of kirtan… But it’s cool. We love each other enough for that not to matter.

C added another twist to his Melbourne stay though. Two of his friends (a couple) were also coming to Melbourne for a few days motorbike riding (C drove to Melbourne with his bike and their’s on the trailer behind his 4WD) and I agreed they could stay at my place, too.

The only reason I’m mentioning their visit is because it meant I had to give them my sofa bed and C had to sleep on a blow up mattress in my small second bedroom. Which doubles as my yoga room – all decked out with my altar, many images of gurus, Hindu gods and goddesses, a huge sparkly print of Ganesha, prayer flags, chakra posters, incense and candles… And so the atheist had to sleep in the room in which I meditate, do yoga, chant and various other spiritual activities!! Not that he minded and I did warn him about my decorating before he arrived, but I still found it amusing (heehee!). Must be my somewhat childish sense of humour. 😉

Anyway… I took last Friday off work so we could hang out. We were meant to be heading out on his motorbike that day (we’ve a long history of adventuring around the country on his bike). But rain was threatening and being on a bike all day in the rain aint much fun (it worked out okay coz we went riding on Saturday which was awesome!).

So we took the 4WD on some very rugged back country roads. It was fun and very beautiful, and yet I felt a little uneasy. It’d been quite a while since we spent a whole day together and our views on the world differ considerably these days compared to when we first met.

Also, it seemed to me we’d both been carefully avoiding the atheist vs yogini conversation – personally I don’t have a problem with anyone’s views as long as they aren’t evangelising. However, I really didn’t want to argue with someone who’s been a good friend in my life for such a long time!

But on our 4WD trip C asked me about my “world view”, what I believed in. And ahhh… where to start when someone who doesn’t believe in anything asks you about your “world view” when you’re a yogini from a classical non-dual Tantrik tradition? Ahem!

We talked about karma for a bit (because he asked) and I explained what I could, including that most people use the term incorrectly. Generally speaking, of course. But that’s an entirely different post…

So I started explaining that my world view is an ever-unfolding path. That it’s not about “belief” for me – never has been. That what I’m interested in are my direct experiences and relationship with reality. And I told him I didn’t believe (as he does) that consciousness is just a trick of the chemicals in our brains, or that after we die there’s nothing. But I also said I didn’t know for certain, because that’s true. How can I know?

I’ve been given a lot of teachings over the past ten years and some of them are still just concepts for me. There are things I “believe” are possible – as in, they could happen – but I can’t say for sure they are true. However, some of those things have turned out to be true in my own experience. Which equals direct knowledge, and not just buying into a concept as it’s taught without any personal experience to back it up.

And sure, I understand the atheistic view – that those experiences I think I’m having could just be delusions. But how do you prove that I’m delusional? I mean, I’m an otherwise (relatively) sane person but whenever I have an experience that doesn’t match with the general consensus of reality, it *must* be a delusion? It sounds like a very convenient argument…

C asked what kinds of experiences I was talking about. But hey, those things are difficult to explain even to other yogis sometimes. So instead I talked about how what we think of as reality is really quite limited. For example, we generally don’t see light as the spectrum of rainbows that science proves it to be. And we don’t hear every sound that’s out there – things that a dog or a whale can hear. Our experience with reality is limited by our senses and just because we can’t see, feel, sense or logically explain every darn thing that happens, doesn’t make it not true. And that sometimes as a result of my practice, I find my senses expand (permanently or temporarily) in some way and I experience the world differently. Which helps me unfold/unpack reality a little more for myself.

I explained how my guru encourages all of his students to see Tantra and yoga as hypotheses, and our body and mind as a laboratory in which we can run as many tests as we like. Experience. Sense. Feel. Think. Reflect. Consider. Witness. Do. Be.

Don’t just take anyone’s word for it!

C asked me how any of what I’d been explaining can be used practically. So I got to the point – Tantra, yoga, meditation etc affords me the ability to see the world as non-different. The concept of non-dualism posits that nothing is really separate or different they way we tend to see things in day-to-day life, which helps me understand that not everything is about me.

For example, I was eventually able to see how some angry guy using me as a punching bag was not in any way personal. It just so happened that I was there and he was reacting to his own experience of reality and chose to get violent. Actually, it had nothing to do with me at all!

To get to that realisation is HUGE, especially when you’re crippled with PTSD and depression – it is NOT an easy path to come back from.

I told him how many people who go through things like I had, end up on medication for the rest of their life. Or they end up dead or destroying their lives in some way because they can’t cope. And that everything I’ve studied and practiced, hand in hand with therapy, is what helped me extract myself from the pit of hell I’d landed in. Therapy alone could never have given me the world view that I learned through practice and study.

And then I told C that actually, there is something I believe in: a (crazy) little thing called Love.

I believe that Love is pretty much the only thing worthwhile in this world. That getting to know your heart intimately and being connected to your emotions is important. That compassion and empathy and accepting people just as they are, no matter how different they are from you without expecting them to change… that that’s what I believe in, if anything… and I just silently hoped that my message of love was heard, loud and clear because even an atheist can’t argue with that, right?

**Update** @Skipetty asked in the comments how my friend C reacted. To be honest, he said very little. Possibly it’s because I said a bunch of stuff he didn’t agree with and he didn’t particularly feel like arguing with me, either. But I also hope I gave him a few things to think about in that science-driven noggin of his. And hey, maybe he took it all in the way I intended, which is not meant to be a threat to what anyone else believes. It’s all just my point of view in the end, isn’t it? 😉

~Svasti

-37.814251 144.963169

Compassion x6

02 Monday Nov 2009

Posted by Svasti in Learnings

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Compassion, Ideas Worth Spreading, Imam, layperson, Rabbi, Reverend, Swami, TED, Tenzin

A Swami, a Rabbi, an Imam, a Tenzin, a layperson, and a Reverend walk into a bar…

Sounds like the beginning of a joke!

But no.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an organisation dedicated to Ideas Worth Spreading. And this idea is very cool.

What they’ve assembled are six different perspectives on the topic of compassion. With – you guessed it – a Swami, a Rabbi, an Imam, a Tenzin, a layperson, and a Reverend.

  • Swami Dayananda Saraswati: The profound journey of compassion
  • Rabbi Jackie Tabick: The balancing act of compassion
  • Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf: Lose your ego, find your compassion
  • Tenzin Robert Thurman: Expanding your circle of compassion
  • Robert Wright: The evolution of compassion
  • Reverend James Forbes: Compassion at the dinner table

Some I found easier to relate to than others, but they are all wonderful discussions on compassion.

Of course, compassion has to start with ourselves. True compassion becomes a part of who you are, not like a jacket you clothe yourself in at will, applied sporadically.

But as Swami Dayananda puts it (paraphrased)… to learn to swim you must swim… in order to be compassionate you must act with compassion… and you fake it til you make it!

Also, check out the Charter for Compassion – a brand new inter-faith initiative looking at how to develop world-wide compassion…

The Charter seeks to change the conversation so that compassion becomes a key word in public and private discourse, making it clear that any ideology that breeds hatred or contempt ~ be it religious or secular ~ has failed the test of our time.

This is all good stuff for contemplating how we treat ourselves and others. And hopefully, a little more ammunition for learning to make peace with ourselves.  🙂

~Svasti

Hari Om Tat Sat Pattabhi Jois

19 Tuesday May 2009

Posted by Svasti in Yoga

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Compassion, Guru, Hari Om Tat Sat, Meditation, Pattabhi Jois, Permaculture, Yoga

As he passes from this earthly realm, let us offer thanks for the work Pattabhi Jois in spreading yoga to the masses.

Some of the many tribute articles:

  • Yoga Dork – This Too Shall Pass: Sri K. Pattabhi Jois Dead at 93
  • Hindu.com -Yoga exponent Pattabhi Jois dead
  • Beliefnet – Pattabhi Jois is Dead
  • Linda’s Yoga Journey – In memoriam: Sri K. Pattabhi Jois
  • Ashtanga News: Reactions on Pattabhi Jois’ death 3 days later

And, his official website – the Astanga Yoga Institute.

Interestingly, my next post (before I heard of Pattabhi Jois’ passing) was going to be part 4 of my ‘Why I have a Guru‘ series. It’s still on the way, very soon in fact (just tidying up a few things).

I don’t know a great deal about Pattabhi Jois. I’ve never studied Astanga in-depth, although I’ve done Astanga-style classes and I’m aware of Sri Pattabhi’s contributions to yoga. But without doubt, he has been a Guru for many people.

Many times, I’ve contemplated with gratitude the presence of my own Guru in my life. Which of course, also means I’ve contemplated the inevitable time when that will no longer be the case. This might be due to his passing, or perhaps in the latter part of his life he’ll decide to renounce teaching in favour of solo practice. However it happens, eventually he won’t be around.

I’ve thought a lot about what that’d be like. Undoubtedly, it would be sad, but I couldn’t be unhappy, I think. It’d be difficult to feel anything except gratitude.

In my life to date, not counting any further exchanges I might share with him, my Guru has given me more than any other person I know – meditation and yoga instruction (second to none), love, compassion, generosity, new thought paradigms, understanding of sacred texts, a second home (in Thailand), an interest in permaculture, and most importantly a vivid depiction of someone who lives and breathes everything he teaches.

Additionally, he’s shown me how to be a serious yogi without taking myself or my path too seriously.

While it’s not something everyone would choose (and certainly, this path seemed to choose me more than anything), finding myself with a Guru has been one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. And I say that in the face of having my delusions painfully stripped away at every turn. In fact, I’m grateful for the view of the world I’ve been given, no matter what else may come my way.

The following is a small prayer I offer at the end of my meditation/yoga practices and today I dedicate it to Pattabhi Jois:

Salutations and blessings to the Gurus and Wisdom Masters

May they continue their work to benefit all beings

Shining their light as always, without preference

Hari Om Tat Sat!

~Svasti

People watching, Chapter 2

11 Tuesday Nov 2008

Posted by Svasti in Learnings

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Bali, Bali Bombers, Bigotry, Compassion, Death penality, Execution, Minority groups, People watching, Prayers, Racism, Xenophobia

So… several weeks ago I get in a cab when the bus system’s let me down once again. That’ll be a $20 trip thanks very much!

I tell the very dark-skinned, heavily accented Indian driver where I’m going.

Seriously and without a trace of irony he says: Oh that’s a very dangerous part of town, there are a lot of black people there!

Really, I say looking him squarely in his deep brown eyes, I don’t see that as a problem.

He looks surprised, waits a beat, then asks me where my husband is. What husband, I say. He starts flirting with me.

*****

Today I jump on the train. The first seat I sit in is opposite a scruffy looking man, who looks terribly excited that I’m about to sit next to him. A nanosecond of deliberation later and I decide to sit there anyway. That’s until I realise I’m surrounded by a reasonable collection of half-empty food containers he’s sprawled everywhere. Sorry mate…

Looking for an empty seat I move to the next carriage. My brief but peaceful reverie is interrupted as I listen to a deaf man abusing an impeccably dressed Sikh. Apparently he was ‘looking at him funny’ – who knows if that’s the case? The deaf man mumbles his enraged insults whilst the Sikh silently watches, waiting for his tormentor to get off the train.

*****

Don’t you love it when a member of one minority group gives hell to another?

At what point does xenophobia become dangerous?

*****

Speaking of minority groups, around 200 people (80-odd Australians) were killed and around 200 injured in the 2002 Bali Bombings. Five years later, and I am sickened all over again when the perpetually unrepentant bombers are executed.

Australians have reacted with typically mixed emotions – some celebrated, others think it makes no difference. No one can judge the reactions of another. There have been suggestions that somehow the deaths of the bombers will be a deterrent to others considering similar heinous acts. Um… tell that to a suicide bomber already.

Perhaps its controversial, but I’m opposed to the death penalty no matter who we’re killing…

My heart bled and still bleeds for all those who were killed and injured in that horrible event. I feel the pain of the beautiful Balinese people, as they had kin who were taken and have suffered financially for many years from the resulting downturn in tourism. And my heart bleeds also for those who planned this act of hatred against other human beings.

And so when I learned the news of their deaths, I prayed.

  • For those taken, for those left behind. Those who have suffered from this incident. For them I wish for closure and healing.
  • For the families of the bombers, may they not feel the need to seek revenge.
  • And for the executed men, that their energy bodies are purified in the after-death state. That they finally understand they are no different from those they have killed. That they release hatred and fear. And that they take a better re-birth, free from the samskaras that plauged them in this lifetime.

Om Tryambakam Yajamahe
Sugandhim Pushtivardhanam
Urvarukamiva Bandhanan
Mrityor Mukshiya Maamritat
Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti

(We Meditate on the Three-eyed reality
Which permeates and nourishes all like a fragrance
May we be liberated from death for the sake of immortality
Even as the cucumber is severed from bondage to the creeper
Om, Peace, Peace, Peace)
~Mahamrityunjaya Mantra

~Svasti

Light on the train

02 Tuesday Sep 2008

Posted by Svasti in The Incident

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Assault, AVO, Compassion, Insights, Suffering, Train ride

The story so far (in chronological order):

  • Once upon a time
  • Ground zero
  • Those eyes – or – don’t step in the glass
  • Extracting splinters
  • A day and a week later

*******************

Friday morning arrived – a whole week after that horrible night. And it was time for action. I needed to finalise the AVO so Andre could never come near me again.

My body still doesn’t feel as though it belongs to me. And I’m terrified, utterly, that Andre will turn up to the court.

For those unfamiliar with the Australian AVO process, it goes something like this. The person making the complaint obtains an emergency AVO with valid reason as decided by a magistrate. The person about whom the complaint is being made doesn’t have to be present at this point, but the emergency AVO is only valid for a week, or until a hearing can be organised at which both parties can be present. However, the other party doesn’t have to turn up – this is simply an opportunity for them to do so.

I have no reason to think he won’t turn up, and I have no idea what I’ll do if he does.

For seven days, I’d lived with broken glass in my front door, and I didn’t want that reminder any longer. So I’d emailed my landlord and asked for contact details of any glaziers they used. And at 7am that Friday he was coming to make that scar invisible, if not forgotten.

Right around that time, my mother was due to turn up at my place. Prepared for war if need be. There are definitely some things my mother is great at, and one of them is playing the avenging mother in times of need!

As if in a dream, we’re walking to my normal go-to-work train station. Except today’s destination is the Melbourne Magistrate’s Court, at the ‘toff’ end of town. Despite the official nature of my trip, the best I manage to dress myself in is jeans and sneakers.

I am clutching print outs of pictures I made my sister take. Pictures of my face all bruised and beaten up. A black eye, an extremely down-trodden look in my eyes. And the front door, with its jagged edges silently whispering of the violence that has been. I have purposely not worn any make up so the marks Andre left on my face are plain to see.

We board the train and I feel like I have a secret – one that all the other people on the train couldn’t guess. And I look around at my fellow commuters. Those I would normally be going to work with.

Being the yogi that I am, I’ve been contemplating the nature of human suffering in my attempt to understand what happened, what’s still happening to me every nano-second.

And then I see it.

I truly notice the faces of everyone on the train. I see them more clearly than ever, as if my own pain has sand-papered away my air of indifference.

Everyone around me – everyone – looks utterly miserable. Or angry. Or upset. Or bored. Or… And I think – wow – is this what they look like every day? Is this what I look like??

Quick as lightning, I realised that when on public transport, everyone is in their own zone. Doing their best to ignore the too-closeness of other people packed tightly around them. And because of this, their thoughts turn inwards. And for many people this is not a happy place. Whether they are thoughts of self-hatred, physical or emotional pain, anger and so on, it is suffering. The human condition of suffering. Right there in front of me, plain as day. Unconcealed.

This was an “ah-ha!” moment – where I first realised that suffering is an every day, moment to moment experience for everyone. Previously, my idea of suffering had been that people suffer over an incident, like being assaulted. But I what I saw made it clear that everyone is suffering all of the time – unless you are enlightened ofcourse! Others may beg to differ, but in my philosophical understanding of the world – it made sense. It still does.

And wow, did that put where I was at into perspective. Despite what I’ve been through, I am no different than anyone else on this train. I felt my heart open up and melt into… I have no idea what! Actually, the sensation is one of expansion, incredible expansion.

My train trip transformed, I was still terrified, but no longer feeling so alone at that moment. It was the first major descent of Grace following the assault.

Luckily for me, Andre didn’t show up – for which I was extremely grateful. However, being in court for two weeks in a row still wasn’t my idea of a good time. I still shook, I still cried and I still had to tell another magistrate I didn’t know what had happened. I had to show my shame and my fear in public to ask for protection, and that sucks. I offered my face up for scrutiny. I showed her the photos, which made me feel both strong and miserably weak. But I got my AVO in place. And finally, finally, I started to feel a tiny bit relieved.

Since that day, I always try to catch people unawares on public transport. I try to read what their faces give away. And yep, it still stands true. It’s not always every single person on the train or the bus. Occasionally there’s a being that looks truly happy, serene and content. But they are the exception rather than the rule.

My response is always the same – to feel my heart opening/expanding, and try to send the energy of love as much as I can to any and all of my fellow transiting folk.

Peace be with you all.

Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.

~ Svasti

(Next: Quietly Devastated)

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