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

Crash

Tags

Accident, Anxiety, Bike stack, Confusion, Crash, Depression, EMDR, Fear, Gravel rash, Injuries, Intuition, Mojo, Panic attacks, super powers, Unemployed

Been in a funny little funk this week. And its made it hard to write, damnit. Which really doesn’t help matters.

Where there’s movement after a long period of stagnation, often what you get is the discovery of more stuff to deal with. You couldn’t see it before coz there was so much else in the way…

Fell off my bike the weekend before this one. Took a major tumble. I’ve mentioned my clumsiness before… Somehow though, I managed to not break any bones, trash my clothing, and I didn’t wreck my bike. Overall, it was a pretty successful stack (Aussie term for fall/crash).

Returning from my yoga studies course, I was travelling on the footpath (which I don’t do a lot, but this was a busy road), and probably going just a touch too fast (ahem, when would I do that??). So when the broken footpath came into view, it was too late to avoid it. Just beyond this nasty piece of trouble was dirt – not helpful when you’re trying not to skid.

I could see what was gonna happen, and so I called on possibly the only super-power I actually do have… the ability to think clearly as I fall, and do what I can to minimise the end result.

As in, make sure my fingers aren’t in bad places, don’t try to break the fall with an outstretched hand (which can result in broken wrists) and try to relax as much as possible. The opposite of ‘bracing for impact’. Also, I threw myself off my bike, knowing I didn’t really want a handle bar or any other part lodged firmly against my ribs, for example.

‘Course, that doesn’t mean that I got off scot-free. Hardly! As I lay there fully stretched out on my belly, arms in front of me… trying to asses if I was okay, a lovely, well-meaning dude (himself a cyclist) came over to see if I was alright. But then, without warning tried to lift me to my feet, grabbing me under the shoulders while standing in front of me, causing my back to arch upwards… Don’t do that, please, I begged.

He looked offended, but I explained, I need to get up a little more gently. And y’know, its handy to understand if someone is really injured or not, before hauling them up by the shoulders! Rolling to one side and sitting up was much more ideal, once adrenaline stopped pumping so hard and I could start to feel the extent of my injuries.

Thank goodness for cycling gloves, is all I could think while inspecting the trashed palms of my gloves (grateful it wasn’t my hands). Elbows didn’t fair so well, though. The day was warm and I was dressed in an orange North Face t-shirt, not really ideal for cycling (though tempting when you think you’re invincible on a warm day).

Oh yes, it wasn’t pretty.

It was gravel rash.

Both elbows and knees, and my stomach. Found out later I was also gifted with a bruised boob. Ouch!

Left elbow was the worst. But both were nicely mashed up. Blood, dirt, tiny pebbles. Profusely stinging.

And what was that? My left shoulder was putting in a serious complaint. Didn’t have time to think about it too much, coz I was in danger of fainting.

The nice old guy checked my bike was okay and seeing I wasn’t in need of emergency treatment, directed me to a nearby seat. Which I needed, to catch my breath and make sure I was okay.

I needed to regroup if I was gonna cycle another five kilometers home.

Almost there, I dragged my bruised and battered self into the pharmacy conveniently placed on the road home… got pain killers and bandages and stuff from a very unsympathetic looking pharmacist.

Luckily as I said, nothing broken. I did wonder though, where my hot male nurse was… the one who shoulda been there to pick up the pieces!

So, anyway. Here I am, just finished a course of EMDR therapy. I’ll go and see my therapist again in a month. Just to see how things are going.

But on top of the physical meshing of body against pavement… there’s been another sort of crash.

Or, perhaps the best word is… panic.

No job. Again. No income. Limited stores of cash that won’t last forever. The job market is D-E-A-D and I’m not even getting a nibble from applications I’ve sent in! Doom and gloom on the news, unemployment’s jumped x%. Whatever skills I have, they’re only useful as long as there’s demand for them…

But there’s actually a bunch of work in my field in Sydney right now. So what am I doing here, anyway? In Melbourne? With nothing really going for me? The only thing that’s actually working for me here, is my yoga course. The whole move-to-Melbourne-and-become-closer-to-my-family thing was a wash. Of course, there’s my beautiful nieces.

But they aren’t my life. That’s my sister’s family, not mine. As for me? I’m trying to get my life back on track, fighting really hard for that and… its one thing after another.

Not to mention… my mojo has vanished! That little light of intuition, voices in my head that talk to me, tell me stuff… well, its been radio silence almost all of the last couple of weeks.

So what the heck am I doing again? Do I actually have a point, here? I’m not so sure about that right now…

That panic attack it seems, was just waiting for a clearing to have its turn. And so I couldn’t write. Couldn’t do anything much, especially in the last week… and I’m not feeling pulled in any one direction or the other. Nothing to guide me. Nothing.

And that’s where I am, still.

Got ordered out of the house on Friday by a friend… which helped but still, I’m not cool with all this nothingness. Though as a yogini, I darn well should be!

I know, I know. I’m still healing, moving on from demons of the past. Licking my wounds. Give myself a break. Yaadayaadayaada…

~Svasti