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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: learning

Notes from the other side of the mat

01 Tuesday Feb 2011

Posted by Svasti in Yoga

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

dance of life, giggles, give and take, gratitude, Healing, learning, monkey mind, savasana, students, Yoga, yoga teaching

I stare at the photos on the wall – someone else’s gurus. But they’re very kindly looking and steady. Calming. So I share a few silent words of prayer with them: Please just let me just get out of the way.

You’re all lying in savasana – almost equal numbers of men and women. Peacefully lying there. I direct your attention to your breath and the rise and fall of your chest. Or, the movement of the air at your nostrils. I watch you all lying there, trusting the words I’m saying and I think, wow, how DID I manage to get into such a cool line of work?

I feel very humble and thankful and from this mindset, I begin the class.

It’s a gentle class, for beginners. That doesn’t mean it’s without challenge, though!

There are giggles – which is always a good thing – yoga should never be so serious that you can’t find a smile or a smirk. We get through the simpler movements and then things slow down because each movement of the next sequence needs to be broken down. Just like that feeling of trying to learn new choreography in a dance class, things are a little awkward for a while. But that’s okay…

So many beginners in the room all at once, which means I have to explain where you need to place your forward foot for a (back knee on the ground) lunge because otherwise I’m seeing all kinds of “interesting” shapes. Keep your elbows to your sides for cobra and use your spine to come up, not your arms so much! But we get there.

I work in my two of my current favourite nuggets of yoga knowledge:

  1. The focus on the breath is to train the mind so that when you’re in a more challenging posture, eventually you’ll remember to go back to your breathing without being reminded. And just when you think a pose is too hard or you can’t hold it, if you use your breath as a vehicle you might surprise yourself.
  2. When I ask you to scan your body for sensation, it doesn’t matter what you notice. Don’t get stuck on, or overly fascinated by any of those sensations. We’re developing a practice of self-awareness to sense and notice what’s going on both inside and outside of the body. It is the noticing that’s important: not what you’re noticing.

And suddenly we’re at the other end of the hour. No real meditation, because there’s a whole meditation class right afterwards and you’re welcome to join in that. But we do a little more focused breathing in savasana, and I give you a few more clues on how to get along with your monkey mind.

It’s over, and I realise with gratitude that it happened again: much of what I said felt more like something I channeled rather than a consciously worded class. Indeed, I ‘got out of the way’, so to speak.

Teaching yoga is not about my ego, or how wonderful a yogi I am. It’s this crazy and sublime sense of service, a true privilege. There’s an implied trust radiating off of you, and I feel extremely protective of those in my care. In my class. Learning from me!

Cycling home I feel very light of spirit, and I can’t stop smiling (which is kinda tricky coz I don’t really want to swallow any bugs). There’s a feeling of “rightness” that goes with this work, and whenever I teach a class I am learning to put aside all of those “who, me?” stories. Because each class shows me that I have knowledge to share; it doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to everyone but here I am in a position to pass it on to you.

So as I teach you, you are undoubtedly teaching me as well. I learn more about myself, and how I can interact with you. I learn more about yoga. I learn that in fact, I’m better off not hiding away from the world. That I should be out there, being a part of the dance of give and take. That it’s worth it. That it brings light into my life.

Thank you. Thanks for being my student and allowing me to learn these things. It’s such a damn honour, truly it is.

~Svasti xxx

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Happy New Year & final #reverb10

01 Saturday Jan 2011

Posted by Svasti in Writing prompts

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

#reverb10, Air Bourne, beer, champagne, cobwebs, core story, Growth, Healing, honesty, learning, Love, New Years Eve, Service, Truth, Yoga, You Am I

A little of last night's liquid joy 😉

Happy New Year, everyone!

Isn’t it wonderful to be here on the first day of a brand new year?

I hope you enjoyed your new year’s celebrations, whatever form they took.

For the first time in too many years and perhaps not entirely wisely, I decided that I’d go out for the evening and get down with my funky (??!) self. Haha. So I ended up at a live music gig at a Melbourne landmark, the Espy Hotel. The line up featured You Am I and Air Bourne, lots of awesomeness there!

Much fun was had, ridiculous amounts of beer were consumed (after the champagne I drank at home – I can’t tell you how rare such a boozy night is for me!) and many insane tweets were sent (if you missed out on those, consider yourself lucky!).

So here we are, the final #reverb10 post, and the first day of a brand new year. It’s been really interesting writing about personal topics based on other people’s questions, and fascinating to realise as a result just how central and deeply ingrained yoga really is to my life.

It’s also been a wonderful discipline to write almost every day and though I doubt I’ll keep that up for daily blog posts in future, I think I’ll aim to do some personal writing each day now. Coz it really helps keep the cobwebs from forming.

Core Story. What central story is at the core of you, and how do you share it with the world?
(Bonus: Consider your reflections from this month. Look through them to discover a thread you may not have noticed until today.)
~ December 31 prompt

My core story is a delicious cocktail (vodka martini, anyone?) of these things:

  • Being of service – using whatever skills I possess to help those in need.
  • Healing – myself and by extension, the way I interact with others
  • Growth – change is always possible if we really want it enough.
  • Learning, always learning – may I never stop!
  • The giving and accepting of love – this heart of mine contains endless amounts of the stuff…
  • Yoga – my saving grace, my teacher and my bestest buddy.
  • Honesty – I’ll answer stuff honestly even if it’s not always to my advantage.
  • Truth – the seeking of it, speaking and living it.

Reading back through my #reverb10 posts, these ARE the common threads. It’s all pretty much where I’m coming from as well as where I’m headed.

May your New Year be bright and full of love!

~Svasti xo

-37.814251 144.963169
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