The planning of my own outing

Tags

Anonymous, cloak of anonymity, Courage, nom de plume, outing, strength, vulnerability is my power base, willpower

I intend to write this book under my own name. But, I don’t want the readers of this blog to not know, or have to guess who I am.

So it seems that my nom de plume has almost outlived its usefulness.

I needed it very much when I began writing this blog, for everything I had to say was so raw. And the courage to write what I wanted to write required a shield, which I gave myself with this cloak of anonymity.

I’ve been writing this blog for over four years now, and actually, these days my identity is a bit of an open secret. Mostly because I’ve made so many wonderful friends via blogging: reading other blogs, and having others read mine.

Already, I’ve met several of my blog friends in real life, and there are more such real-life meetings to come!

Some of these friendships have lasted, while others have not. There are other people who still read this blog that I’d like to to be better friends with, but to be honest, it’s those friendships that haven’t worked that cause me to hesitate.

But really, only because I don’t wish to be outed before I’m ready, and even though the pool of people who know me already is probably more than I’d like, I’ll still try to contain things a little longer.

In recent times, I’ve held on to my semi-anonymous state because it didn’t feel right to change it, and also because I didn’t want people from my 9-5 job to know such intimate details about me.

But that was then. When I was fearful of my own vulnerability.

Before I realised that in fact, my vulnerability is my power base.

That having lived through what I have, I am stronger when I reveal the truth of my experiences.

For there is no weakness in dealing with adversity. Only strength.

For whatever reason, it doesn’t feel that way when you’re going through it. Which is very annoying. But to make it through to the other side? Requires such strength, courage and willpower.

Then, it takes time for your own power to be revealed to yourself.

You don’t have to be a super-hero, only really, really determined.

Because I’m just like everyone else. Not imbued with extra abilities. What I’ve done in my journey of recovery? Is available to anyone who wants it.

So. I’m preparing for my own self-outing. I’m not clear on the timing yet, but it’ll be soon-ish. Because I want to be able to link my journey with the book I’m writing.

In order for people to know that actually, you can rise up from the worst experiences of your life.

And when you do? You’ll be:

Transformed.

Stronger.

Wiser.

Happier.

More real, more awake and more human than ever before.

~ Svasti

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Spaciousness vs Tension

Tags

Don’t over-work, Freedom, spaciousness, strength, Stress, tension, Wisdom, yoga teaching

Enjoying a little spaciousness while I cycle...

As I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before, sometimes the words I say when I’m teaching a yoga class seem to appear from thin air. I haven’t planned them or rehearsed them but there they are, being all reflective and wisdom-ish like.

I guess I find my inspiration for what I’ll talk about from observations of my experiences or other’s. Which are really one and the same thing. This is why I can talk of these things and be pretty sure that most people are going to relate to some of what I’m saying.

Because while we all have our own experiences, many of them are shared and/or similar enough in content to be relatable. Shareable. Yes?

So. Tuesday I got to thinking about spaciousness, and how when we tense everything up in our body or mind, there isn’t a huge amount of spaciousness going around. So over-tensing, over-concentrating, over-working, pushing yourself to the limits, killing yourself with running or gym (or intensive yoga) workouts isn’t necessarily helping you.

I told my students what I learned from having a couple of fairly respectable injuries in recent times: you don’t have to push to your edges in order to get the benefit of your yoga practice.

You can do less and it is okay. You don’t have to be sweating like a fiend or waking up sore the next day in order to build strength, stability and openness in your body.

In fact the harder you strain and over-work on strength, stability and openness in your body, the more likely you are to cause an injury. And that’s just on the physical level.

Then there’s the way that pushing too hard mentally can injure your emotional well-being. You judge yourself for not being able to do everything/as well as others in the class. You develop a mindset that says if you’re not pushing yourself to the edge, then you aren’t working hard enough and you won’t get the results you want.

None of this is true, but thinking or acting in these ways can cause physical, mental and/or emotional stress.

And stress is tension. Which makes us feel small and crowded.

But life and our body and mind, feel MUCH better when we have space. When our joints and spine aren’t compacted, we feel better. When we’ve got plenty of time to do the things we want to do, we feel better.

So we practice this in our yoga, and take this idea out into our life.

Be relaxed and comfortable in your poses. Be okay with where you’re at without pushing yourself so hard. Work effectively and functionally, but not excessively.

You will still get stronger.

You will still develop better core strength.

Your body and joints will open over time, to the degree that is possible for your body.

You will find it easier to calm your mind for meditation.

And you will be able to take this sense of calm and spaciousness out into other parts of your life.

So – work as well as you can in your yoga practice, on any given day. Do today, what is appropriate for your health and energy levels today. Do what’s appropriate for you tomorrow, when it is tomorrow. Don’t over-work. Doing your best without straining or forcing is enough.

Find ways to enjoy your practice. You develop more sensitivity and body awareness when you aren’t pushing so hard, because this leaves room to feel subtleties.

You are enough as you are (injured/sick/low energy etc), and you will get the benefits of the practice anyway.

It went something like that, anyway…

~Svasti

Mind warriors

Tags

arch-nemesis asana, façade, flexibility, guard duty, in my head, keeping up appearances, mind warriors, Shadow Yoga, Shakti, strength, survival, Uddiyana bandha, Vahni, Yoga

When I first came to yoga and indeed even up until a few years back, it was just a physical/mental practice I did because I liked it. But nowadays, I find myself engaged with yoga on so many different levels. Some I’m aware of, and others… well, I’m not, or at least not straight away. Then, there’s the little hits of shakti that occasionally smack me right between the eyes during or after a yoga practice, revealing the truth as it actually is.

Like on Monday night. Oh yes.

I’ve noticed lately that a lot of my yoga blogging friends have been writing about their arch-nemesis asana(s). And don’t we all have them! Poses we’d happily never do again in our entire lives. Those we’d like to obliterate from the annals of yoga history if we could! Okay, maybe it’s not ever *that* bad or dramatic. Right?

Personally, I don’t want to abolish any poses. Not really. In fact, I enjoy taking on the challenge (most of the time) of working on asana I find challenging and discovering how joyful I feel when my body finally opens a little more until I find I can move into a pose with ease, when previously I’d thought it impossible.

My own current challenge concerns a Shadow yoga pose called Vahni.

I have this suspicion that in many ways, my body and therefore my yoga practice reflects my life. When dealing with PTSD, my attempts to protect myself involved trying to keep up appearances. As such, I’ve spent a lot of time mimicking the behaviour of others. Trying to look like I was okay even when I was a huge, HUGE mess.

I know I was somewhat successful in this, because there’s plenty of people I worked with who never knew. The reason I know this is because I’ve since told some of those people a little about what I went through and they’ve exclaimed their surprise.

I also know the balance in my body between flexibility and strength isn’t quite right. I’m really flexible in some parts of my body and not others. I have very muscular legs but they can still be very weak. And I think I’ve learned to adapt the way I move in some yoga poses rather than learn to do them properly.

But with Shadow yoga, there are no shortcuts (which is part of why I love it). And I find that every movement informs me of where I’m still struggling – I’m grateful for the struggle because it demonstrates what I still need to do.

If you take a look at the photo of Vahni above, you’ll see that the upper body is sitting on the back heel, with the toes flexed. The front foot is parallel to the back, and the feet are not very far apart. To successfully ‘sit’ in this pose, the body must rest on the legs and both legs/feet must be working. Uddiyana bandha is also engaged.

My problems with Vahni seem to be in my hips and the alignment of my legs. I don’t have slender thighs and there’s a voice in my head that tells me I can’t bring my feet as close together as I need to, because of the size of my thighs. As such, I find my hips twist when I’ve been sitting in this pose for longer than a few seconds. Once my hips twist, my knees do too, and then my front foot starts to slip and I fall out of the pose.

My teacher has been very patiently trying to help me with this, talking me through it in detail. But even when she put a little weight on my front foot, I still fell out of the pose!

That’s when she looked me in the eye and said: You’re too much in your head.

I looked at her and nodded, before continuing with the practice.

Then the inner dialog began.

Huh? What does she mean? And why did I agree with her? I mean, I never USED to be an ‘in my head’ person. Quite the opposite! Right? I’ve always been so embodied, as a swimmer and a dancer…

And then I realised why it was true. Because I needed to be in my head to survive.

Apu – the man who assaulted me – struck my body with his fists. He took away the safety I felt in my own skin. The only place he couldn’t reach (although he tried that, too) was my mind.

And how does one keep up a façade of being okay when they are not okay at all? With very stringent control via the mind. That’s how.

Oh.

These realisations bubbled up as the practice continued and I thought I was okay with it all. Until we got to the end of the session, when we slowed down to focus inwards. I felt the tears racing towards my eyes and (of course) I tried to control it. Tried not to cause a scene.

But as that small yet significant piece of the truth replayed itself over and again, I realised how much it mattered. And suddenly I couldn’t partake in the final closing movements. Thank goodness I was at the back of the room! I dropped to the floor, leant against the back wall and sobbed. Again, trying not to make too much noise, but I let myself cry and it was a great relief.

The class ended and I pulled myself together enough to leave, avoiding looking at anyone. Rode my bike home, crying some more. But they were good tears.

So what does this mean, I hear you ask?

Even though I don’t need it in the same way any more, apparently my mind is still on guard duty. Weapons at the ready. It’s a routine devised out of fear, one that will protect but not bend or change easily. However, constant vigilance limits flexibility by design. The capacity for letting anyone or anything in or out is also limited.

And anything that causes even a hint of fear in me is enough for my mind to pull the brakes on – Vahni is definitely one of those things. I fear I can’t do it, that I’ll fall over, that I’ll hurt myself. I’m sure there’s more fears there, too!

Seems I need to have a few words with these mind warriors of mine – ask them to stand down, take a leave of absence. Learn a new drill, one that’s only activated when I really need it. Relax, because the danger is well and truly over.

Except of course, that the danger of limitation remains. If I’m too much in my head, that means nothing gets out and there’s also no way in…

Stand down mind warriors, stand down!

~Svasti

Mr Bear & the Bed of Thorns: A Fable

Tags

bear, bed of thorns, Courage, fable, Healing, healing is really hard work, Mr. Bear, strength, thorns, woods

Bear Coming Out of the Woods by Max Grover

One day Mr. Bear was happily walking in the woods, feeling pretty good about himself and about life in general. He felt soooo good on this particular day, especially when he spied a fantastic looking patch sunlit of grass that was begging to be rolled in. He couldn’t wait! So Mr. Bear gambolled towards it focused only on that juicy rolling spot, but as he came closer he found himself in the middle of some very nasty, sharp thorns! They were everywhere! They pierced his skin and embedded deeply in his body.

Rolling in the sun was forgotten. In fact, everything was forgotten! Mr. Bear cried and fell to the ground, only getting more thorns stuck in his coat. He yowled, growled and screamed. He lay on his back panting, bleeding. He wondered what had happened to him and how he could make the pain go away.

But he didn’t know what to do, and he couldn’t get the thorns out. Eventually, Mr Bear’s body adapted to the thorns and grew a protective coating around each one. Now Mr. Bear could move around without too much pain, as long as he was careful about things.

Mr. Bear lived like that for a long time. It wasn’t as though he could be his normal bear self – he was still in pain every day but it was easier to handle if he only did certain things and not others. So he learned to adapt. Mr. Bear became very withdrawn and didn’t like spending time with other bears, because it made him sad to see all the things he could no longer do. And because the thorns were invisible, none of the other bears could see that there was anything wrong with him.

But after a while, Mr. Bear’s body got sick of protecting him from the thorns and started to work at pushing them out! This caused a whole lot more pain – new pain, too. Different. It was sharp and extended pain, and knew he couldn’t do much about it. But it made him feel very irritable. That is, when he didn’t feel like crying. But in general bears don’t cry!! So Mr. Bear did his best to hold back his tears, no matter how much pain he was in.

A few weeks later, Mr. Bear came across a tree that looked as though it’d be useful for relieving an itch on his hind quarters. Very carefully, of course. While he scratched against the tree, he accidentally rubbed up against a thorn that was now sticking out half-way from one of his back legs. But he noticed too late and the rough tree bark caught on the thorn, pulling it all the way out!

Of course, that really hurt Mr. Bear a lot. But afterwards it was such a relief! So Mr. Bear formulated a plan and slowly over time, worked all of the thorns out in the same way.

Each time he managed to get another thorn out, he felt better. But he also felt weak, too. His body was sore and so used to holding on to all the pain that he realised he was tired from all the stress.

So Mr. Bear took it easy. He didn’t try to do it all in one day. He rested in between his efforts, getting as much food and sleep as he needed to face his next battle.

And when it was finally all over, Mr. Bear had an extra long rest. Because healing is really hard work…

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

I’ve been meaning to write this up for a while. It’s a story that’s been floating around my brain and kinda helped guide me through all the really tough times in recent years. I wrote a draft of it as a comment on someone else’s blog, and it was suggested that I post it here.

Basically, the moral of the story is: we can only keep our hurts inside our body and mind for so long. Eventually those thorns/splinters have to come out. Even if it hurts to remove them, it’s much better in the long run. Also, sometimes we’re in so much pain, we forgot how strong and capable we really are.

This little story is dedicated to everyone out there still dealing with their own world of thorns…

~Svasti