Hellooooo…

Tags

Healing, Simon Borg-Olivier, toute de suite, workshop, Yoga

So I totally meant to draw the winner for my give-away this weekend. I even planned on making a little movie to show you the drawing.

BUT I failed to realise the yoga workshop I’m doing this weekend would take over my life quite as much as it has! It’s my second Simon Borg Olivier workshop for the year and I’m feeling… overwhelmed, amazed, excited, grateful and blown away.

Since the first workshop I did with him in May, I’ve been doing classes with one of his senior students here in Melbourne (Simon is Sydney-based). Also since then, I’ve gotten very sick and made something of a rebound (still working on it!).

I’m pretty sure that switching to Simon’s style of yoga has played a role in my recovery to-date because it’s quite simply amazing.

Simultaneously, this yoga builds strength and yet is both graceful and beautiful. Instead of being exhausted after a class, I usually feel like a jumping bean – full of energy. And today I’ve just finished up six hours of workshop with another six still to come tomorrow.

My teacher (who is assisting Simon) hugged me at the end of today and complimented my pink cheeks (showing excellent circulation), while reminding me how well I did to get through the entire day. And actually, I feel really good. I need of a sleep, yeah. But otherwise really, really good.

Dear readers, I have so much to tell you about this workshop and the classes I’ve been doing.

What Simon teaches is profound – most yoga teachers come away from his workshops re-thinking the way they teach asana completely. So hopefully soon, I’ll be ready to write up a few bits and pieces for you about what I’ve been learning.

For now,  I just want to state a few things that are probably self-evident to most yoga teachers, and perhaps some students, too. This is more my observations in recent times rather than anything I’ve been taught explicitly.

Are you ready?

Okay, so some of us are prone to saying things like: “Yoga is not about doing sick arm balances”, and this is VERY true.

But to expand on that, yoga is not about how a pose looks or even about achieving/mastering various poses. I mean hey, it’s not a bad thing to have mastered a pose but one’s practice should never be about the goal of mastering a pose. Yeah?

In other words, yoga isn’t about looking good and showing off what you can do. That means nothing whatsoever. It’s possible to use brute strength/force/gravity to maneuver your body into a yoga pose. What does that prove? More importantly, what does it do or not do? Is the pose “dead” or “alive”? Does it help keep your circulation functioning well or do you over-heat/get cold fingers and toes? Are you relaxed in your practice or do you try so hard to do various poses that you hurt yourself?

But what if instead, your yoga practice could improve your blood pressure, or your immune system? How would you feel if learning to breathe properly changed the acidity levels of your body? What if you could learn to do a back bend that didn’t squash your lower back? Or if by doing a very simple practice and without any forcing, you discovered access to more “advanced” poses without doing them obsessively?

Wouldn’t all of that be amazing?

This is some of the essence of what Simon teaches. But there’s more. So. Much. More.

I think I’m ready to try to craft a couple of posts on it all. And I promise, once the weekend is over I’ll draw the giveaway toute de suite.

In the meantime I’m pretty absorbed in everything I’m learning. And thankful for being fortunate enough to receive these teachings.

And very soon it’ll be time for bed.

More soon, y’all!

~Svasti xx

Simon Borg Olivier workshop redux

Tags

circulation, Hatha, internal force, Kundalini, relaxation, Simon Borg-Olivier, Stretching, Tantra, workshop, Yoga

Here I am, finally reporting in on last weekend, where lucky, lucky me got to spend a day and a half learning from the wonderful Simon Borg Olivier.

Simon is all joyousness, fun, passion, love, enthusiasm, knowledge and wisdom. His teachings make so much sense, and yet some of what he has to say flies in the face of what is taught to many yoga teachers.

Seems to me that many of the most interesting yoga teachers out there each have pieces of the “yoga puzzle”: reviving and expanding modern-day western-world yoga from the benign practice of “stretching”.

Simon is another of these teachers.

In this particular workshop – a day and a half of teachings and practice – Simon spoke of Hatha yoga as being the right-hand side of Tantra (which concurs with all of my previous training). Tantra, of course, being a series of practices designed to bring awakening of consciousness via raising kundalini energy. He also spoke of a little of left-hand Tantra – which includes practices of extremes and taboos to achieve the same result.

[Note: my training in Tantra has included these aspects, but also a strong focus on various forms of meditation, ritual and deity yoga.]

Far from being the generic name for yoga until it branches out into Iyengar, Ashtanga and all the rest (the refrain of “all yoga comes from Hatha yoga” being extremely common), Simon speaks of Hatha yoga as being about creating internal forces. These forces, if used in the correct way, can bring about awakening of kundalini.

And it’s with this view that we began the workshop (the room was packed wall-to-wall with yogis).

So let me give you a taste of the weekend, if I can. There’s so much to say and my puny brain has no hope of remembering it all, let alone fitting it into a single blog post…

Simon’s style of practice has a very funky flow to it – lots of beautiful flowing arm movements and both small and large movements of the body. There’s plenty of video footage on Simon’s website and blog for you to check out if you like.

He walked us through making tiny movements with the body that are in effect the same as the grosser movements – forward, side and backbends, for example. But rather than a side bend that focuses on the bending side of the body, Simon asked us to think of lengthening the non-bending side. This still creates a side bend, but without jamming the spine.

Another thing Simon asked us to focus on was keeping our lower belly “baby soft”. By that he means not sucking the belly to the spine in most instances – instead, the belly is engaged by pushing the belly button away from the spine. This action creates strength and space, but also once again, does not squish what shouldn’t be squished. In fact, it’s possible to create firmness in the belly while keeping it soft, and still be able to hold a conversation without gasping for air.

We also focused on circulation of blood/energy (they’re one and the same, right?) by engaging all body parts – the trunk, arms, legs, fingers and toes – in each asana. Not just having some parts of the body come along for the ride. I have to say that being quite sensitive to energy as I am, this part of the work had a huge impact on me!

Simon posits that if our circulation is working properly, we don’t waste energy. That profuse sweating and/or numbness or coldness in our body while practicing suggests our circulation isn’t working as effectively as it could.

All very interesting stuff!

And hey, I know I’ve got some work to do on the circulation front. Coz okay, I might be a pitta/kapha constitution, but I sweat a hella lot even when practicing in a cold room!

Another important point from the workshop surrounds the common yoga teacher instruction of making sure your shoulders aren’t raised when you bring your hands over your head. How many of us were trained with that instruction and have in fact, said just that to students?

The thing is, that by pressing our shoulders down when our arms are above our head, we are in fact jamming the spine. Which isn’t particularly helpful for circulation and the flow of energy in the body, yes?

He also emphasises a point that I’ve never forgotten from his teachings 12 years ago: that yoga creates artificially tense situations for the body, in which we need to learn how to relax. In fact, Simon says that he relaxes throughout his entire practice (even in all those “fancy” poses, as he calls them), which is better than just waiting for savasana at the end!

Interspersed with all of these lovely little wisdom nuggets, we completed three full practices over Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday, while Melbourne’s grey skies opened up intermittently. With lots of intense instructions to go with the asana, wow did I sleep well Sunday night!

The other brilliant thing about re-connecting with Simon via this workshop is that I discovered there’s someone teaching his style of yoga right here in Melbourne, and actually not far from where I live.

Can I hear a HUZZAH? Coz this yogi now has a new yoga studio to call home. 😀

I’m not sure if Simon teaches much further afield than around Australia and Asia, but if you ever get the chance to do some yoga with him then go for it! Not only is he a lovely, adorable person but he’s got an encyclopaedic knowledge of the body and yoga.

Enough for now. My brain had a wee melt-down this weekend and I need some rest…

More about that soon.

~Svasti

P.S. Please note the above are my recollections of the workshop, so if I got something wrong, my apologies!

P.P.S. There’s also a lot of stuff Simon covered that I haven’t mentioned above. There just isn’t the space here…

Getting unstuck (hopefully)

Tags

Kinesiology, melted plastic, Stuck, unstuck, unstuckness, workshop, Yoga

Got a full schedule today. Heck, the whole weekend is a bit of a full schedule, but anyways…

After teaching my class at noon (fingers crossed the people who called actually show up!!), I’m heading off to this:

It’s so exciting! Nadine and Kerry’s workshop combines yoga and kinesiology with an emphasis on getting ‘unstuck’. Just like the title says!

I’ve got a lot of time for kinesiology (and of course, yoga!), because at the very beginning of trying to deal with PTSD, it was exceedingly helpful for me.

You can read about the slightly round-about way that I ended up seeing a kinesiologist right here. Funnily enough, I haven’t written about the treatments I had at the time – I think that part of my story is a little too compressed still. Even now. Kind of like trying to evaluate a piece of melted plastic where the former shape has collapsed into something indistinguishable.

Anyway, kinesiology is a very, VERY cool technique for helping shift energetic/emotional states, and I strongly suspect that at the time it was one of the things – no exaggeration – that saved my life.

Combine that with some yoga as led the fabulous Nadine, and I’m expecting today to be very powerful!

And the timing is awesome. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m feeling a little stuck  right now. Okay, A LOT stuck. I’ve been hanging out for this, and now it’s happening today. HOORAY!

The rest of this post contains bits and pieces of a comment I left on Nadine’s blog as well as her reply, which all kinda relates to unstuckness…

This is part of what I wrote:

…the braver we all are, and the more we share about our fears and bravery, the better it is for everyone in the long term. Here you are, doing your pioneering work of bravery and courage and hoping. And that does inspire others, including me!

Seems we’re all carrying these packages of loss and sadness and anger around and unless we learn to unpack them and deal with them effectively, it doesn’t matter how old we get, we’ll always be wishing life was different than it is.

And what I want is a life where I’m supremely happy to be wherever I am at all times…

Nadine’s reply comment was:

I got a bit teary when I read this! Because that is EXACTLY what the workshop is about. Finding a gentle way into the fun and pleasure of life just as it is. Now.

And I’m with you. I’m totally hanging out for the workshop too. Because all this stuff?

It’s coming up because it wants to be cleared.

And I sincerely hope (please-please-please-please) that she’s right!

Here’s to a more successful yoga teaching expedition today, AND to getting a little freer and happier!

Yep, gotta get some flow back in my life, stat!

And I recommend that you make sure you’re getting some flow happening, too. 🙂

~Svasti