Honesty box Tuesday [2]

Tags

ego, going through the motions, heart chakra meditation, honesty, Meditation, Yoga, yoga teaching

• Seriously, who do I think I am? I haven’t quite been teaching yoga for a whole year yet – so I really need to stay focused on the basics. Those who want a more experienced teacher will go to another class.
• As student numbers in my classes go up and down, I wonder if I might’ve personally done something to annoy someone and make them not want to come back.
• I also wonder why those who are repeat students do return. Is it just a convenient time or do they like the way I teach? Or something else? [shaddup, ego!]
• Sometimes I feel like asking my students to complete anonymous feedback forms, because it’s almost impossible to know what they are really thinking otherwise. Unless they tell you directly. Which they mostly don’t.
• Speaking of feedback, read this – it’s good.
• I upped the laughter quotient in my class last night as a result of reading that, but also because two new students started giggling uncontrollably at one point and I joined in. And kept it going. 😉
• There’s no such thing as going through the motions. Well, not if I want my class to feel alive and authentic. This goes for preparation as well as the actual class.
• When I encounter students that I perceive as more “difficult” than others, I’m the one that has to stop reacting (no need to be an asshole) and just spread the love and the laughter.
• Last night I *might* have not-on-purposely added a lil heart chakra meditation to the end of the class after a student told me that he liked it that my classes didn’t have too much “spiritual direction” (his words). But actually, I was thinking of Japan and of getting everyone to open their hearts a little more. Whoops!
• Switching from teaching a yoga class to being a student in a meditation class directly afterwards is… tricky. Mind is busy in teacher-mode, thinking about the class and students and isn’t so easy to shush. Have to listen very carefully to the teacher and to the advice I give my own students!
• I didn’t get to post this until Wednesday morning, instead of Tuesday. But for a whole bunch of people it still is Tuesday, so I’m good with that…

~Svasti

Honesty box Tuesday [1]

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

A Writerly Dilemma

Tags

blockade, clamshells, correct reflection, Echo and Narcissus, ego, fool’s gold, honesty, Kali, MySpace angles, narcissism, pearls, post-PTSD memory, rambling, Samskaras, slash and burn, unfinished business, Writer's block, WWF smackdown

Having another one of those writer’s blocks thingies.

Got heaps of posts at about 70-90% readiness, yet… it’s like extracting fingernails, getting them over the line. It’s a little bit like a WWF smackdown, but neither side is winning.

This time though, I know what the blockade is called. Definitely not a shortage of ideas or words. Nor time – ha! Got plenty of that in a job that calls for me to come in for certain hours, but actually do very little. That in itself, can be somewhat paralysing, and draws up my tendencies to indulge in laziness.

But actually, I am writing. This current working file in Word (I group them by the month) sees me on page 10 of 24. I am writing post number 7 for the month, but ahead of this one, there’s many, many pages of unfinished business.

And here’s why.

I’ve been pondering the nature of my writings, and worrying if they are just a little too self-involved/narcissistic/painting myself as the heroine or victim/not honest enough/rambling/telling stories for the sake of the telling/without a point… and so on.

Am I just writing to feed my ego?

Presently on the go, are three strands of story. Two of them have remained loose ends for most of this year. I’ve yet to sew them up and make neat seams as my mother does when she knits sweaters for my nieces.

If that’s even possible! But at least some semblance of finished. Finished for now, would be close enough…

And I fear that I’ve perhaps presented MySpace angles of my stories instead of representing things more neutrally.

Some stories I’ve written purely out of raw, hardcore, seething, ragged, painful need. The kinds of stories that, if not written and released, eventually work to implode your vital organs or make you desperately ill.

But the ones I’m writing now, they aren’t like that.

For example, the stories from earlier in my life. At the time they were very traumatic and painful and I know they inform my relationships with men and many other important decisions in how my samskaras operate.

BUT they don’t eat at me like acid. Not like the stories of assault, PTSD and depression did (and heck, who knows, there might even be more of them in there somewhere?).

And the stories I’ve humourously titled my ‘spiritual quest’ – I know they’re related somehow too, but they’re not urgent.

And I wonder if that lack of urgency makes the pointy end of truth, the poke you in the ribs and soft tissues of your body kind of truth, harder to uncover?

I’m almost finished writing the next part – sort of – but I look at all the details and it’s like I can’t see the fool’s gold from the real stuff. So much going on, what’s important? What’s not? What’s just me rambling for the sake of it?

So I edit with my slash and burn tactics. I am after all, one of Kali’s own and I wield my spurious (perhaps) red pen with detached abandon. But then, do I remove too much? That bit I thought was a little goofy or unrelated, is it really related and if so, how can I write about it in a way that counts?

Then I say to heck with it! And I write some more, letting floodgates fall away and the polluted garbage flow back to source, atop the waterways that support the real stories.

But real stories aren’t the waterways. Instead they are pearls inside the carelessly scattered clamshells littering the sandy waterway floors. I dive time and again, and fumble with my diver’s knife, prising one open and then the next to find many that are seemingly empty.

And just maybe, another fragment of the story is revealed. Or I miss it all together and I write about other things that don’t ring with truth. And I fail to notice the shining gem that will undoubtedly sing brightly once liberated and polished.

Dimmed by a shoddy post-PTSD memory (which is still not that fantastic) and also with time, they all look alike.

After all, these are clamshells I’ve allowed to close and accumulate, never thinking til now I’d have to open them ever again. They seemed unimportant at the time. Are they unimportant still?

Perhaps…

But then, what would I know? I don’t have a bird’s eye view. I can only tell my story from what I think I understand, and even then, that’s surely not the full picture.

More than anything though, I hope I do not write with a kind of avarice, feeding that part of me that, as a yogini I seek to dismantle. For that would just be folly, right?

Correct reflection I fear, is what’s missing right now…

~Svasti