The Workshop of Love – part 3

Tags

Asana, Mantra, Mark Whitwell, Meditation, Missy Higgins, Puja, Steer, Worship, Yoga

Photo liberated from Mark's Facebook profile 🙂

[Read part 1 & part 2 first]

**Note: La Gitane raised a valid point in the comments for part 2 of this series. When Mark is talking about “your yoga”, this doesn’t mean only doing the asana that you like, or not doing a full complement of forward bend/back bend/side bend/twisting/inverted poses – if you’re capable of doing so. Instead he’s talking about a practice that contains the appropriate elements of a yoga practice, but in a way that suits your body and its limitations. Just wanted to be clear about that!**

Around two hours into our Sunday session, we’d just finished our first asana practice for the day when a young girl and her mum walked in. Mark had clearly been expecting them: This is Melissa and her mum Margaret. Come in and sit down, but just watch the rest of the group for now…

(Fact: I almost never notice famous people even when they’re right under my nose. And being in a small windowless room full of yogis proved no exception. “Melissa” was in fact, Missy Higgins – a talented and successful singer/song-writer in Australia. Of course, I didn’t realise until after we’d finished for the day when I heard others asking if it was ‘really her’).

Even when Mark quoted lyrics from one of Missy’s songs, I still didn’t twig:

…But the search ends here

Where the night is totally clear

And your heart is fierce

So now you finally know

That you control where you go

You can steer…

~Steer, Missy Higgins

Although we didn’t know it yet, Missy’s mum Margaret, was our lesson for the day. Especially for all the yoga teachers in the room.

All of Margaret’s kids love yoga and she’d always wanted to join them but found it almost impossible. She had some very serious back problems and could not join in a regular yoga class. But she could still breathe, and as such, yoga was possible.

Mark promised to help her find “her yoga” – a practice she could do, that would benefit both her body and mind.

She was game for it, and so after listening to our dialog with Mark for a while and watching while he put us through more asana practice, he started to ask her about her situation. I won’t go into what she told us specifically, but essentially any movement beyond very gentle forward bends was out. No rotation of the spine.

It meant that her practice was mostly seated and on her hands and knees. Very little standing, no twisting and nothing energetic or advanced. At the start of the session she mentioned how her mind drove her crazy with non-stop thoughts, but by the end of practicing “her yoga” (which we practiced with her) she felt so much better and found her mind was much calmer.

Now, Margaret’s yoga doesn’t look like anything you’d find in a yoga class, or even in what is taught at yoga teacher training. But still, yoga it is. And, with continued daily practice, it should benefit her every bit as much as a full-on hour and a half yoga class works for other people. Because it’s appropriate for her body and because it allows her to consciously engage her body/mind/breathe connection.

Other reasons it can still be defined as yoga are directly related to the principals of Strength Receiving that Mark taught us:

1. Breath movement IS body movement.
2. The breath starts and ends the movement.
3. Inhale from above, exhale from below.
4. Body, Breath and Bandha are a seamless process.
5. Asana, Pranayama, Meditation, and Life is a seamless design.

There’s a lot to unpack in these principals, but as I’m still unpacking them myself, I’d suggest you buy Mark’s book and/or get to one of his workshops if you can. I promise you that you’ll love it!

Towards the very end of the day, as we sat in naturally arising meditation, Mark had us chanting and placing mantra at various points of the body. Repeating the mantra at the heart centre, the crown of the head, the shoulders, the belly, the groin, the upper legs, the knees, the top and bottom of the feet.

Try this using any mantra you know. It very much felt to me like “self-puja” (or self-worship). Not as in blowing smoke up your own… y’know. But honouring your Self with love and respect. Recognising the miracle of your existence, and that your yoga practice is a sacred contract with yourself to remember who you are, every time you practice.

I’d say the most important thing I got from my time with Mark was the transmission of his gentleness. He reminds us that our yoga practice isn’t meant to be a struggle, but a pleasure. And that we have all of the tools we need for uncovering our own sense of beauty and divinity.

As he recently wrote on Facebook:

Technically, a yoga practice must make a person feel better. Then it is correct practice. “There is no bad yoga. If it’s not good, it’s not yoga!”

And when I get the chance, I’ll spend more time with him again. Absolutely.

~Svasti

Emphasis

Tags

Diacritics, Mother Goddess, Puja, Sanskrit, Sri Chakra Yantra, Tantra, Worship, Yoga

Helloooo from the house of our Pandit, where day one of our training is now complete. Its almost 9.30pm and as such, almost time for bed (on account of the fact we tend to get up real early in retreat mode). Somewhere between 5.30 & 6am).

Today’s schedule was to drill our understanding of Sanskrit and correct pronunciation.

And something that’s very important is emphasis. As in, a word can look the same in diacritics (English transliteration of Sanskrit letters) but if there’s a little symbol of some kind over or under a particular letter, that changes everything.

So, there needs to be some careful attention paid to such symbols, to ensure, for example… you don’t end up calling someone a prostitute instead of referring to their nose. I’m not kidding!

A little bit like how misunderstandings can occur between people using what we think is straightforward language… awareness and consideration are always useful skills to possess in order to avoid such mistakes…

Once we’d drilled letters and sounds and the alphabet all morning, we spent the afternoon chanting a number of sacred texts – things we use in our yoga practice anyway, but now have much greater understanding of and control over how we pronounce them.

The end of the day was interesting… we went to the local Hindu temple, which is actually a Sri Lankan Saivite temple (dedicated to Shiva – which is our linneage as well). It was a juicy puja – the hair where it attaches to my scalp has only just stopped tingling… several hours after we got back, actually.

They were performing a (very Tantrik) Sri Chakra Yantra ritual – which is about the worship of a living, married and happy woman as an incarnation of the Mother Goddess, for the benefit of all beings.

Thing I love about this stuff, is not just the worshipping of women, but that worship is considered an art form, personal and individual. Ya gotta feel it!

There’s no preaching, and beyond a few guidelines, there’s no set way of performing any Tantrik puja. There’s a freedom there, to commune with God/god as you see fit (or not).

And in my estimation, that’s how it should be.

Namaste…

~Svasti

Five sleeps…

Tags

Ceremony, Homa, Meditation, Namaste, Puja, Pujari, Ritual, Sanskrit, Sydney, Vedic chanting, Worship, Yoga, Yogini

As rough as things have been lately, up and down and round the freakin’ bend… I am, I’ll admit, feeling a little excited.

In just five more sleeps (including tonight’s – and yeah, I really shoulda been in bed a couple of hours ago), I’ll be back in my beloved Sydney.

As I might’ve mentioned in another post, in my experience, it’s not so much places as people that feel like home. Yet… some places seem more like home than others… and Sydney was like that for me when I moved there at the tender age of twenty-one. It’s also where the majority of my closest friends live.

I’m heading north on Saturday to complete some pujari training. And what’s that, I hear some of you asking?

Well, puja is a Sanskrit word referring to the act of worship. Ceremony. Ritual. And Hindu rituals are both intricate and beautiful. Truly. And full of gorgeous meaning and intent.

A pujari then, is someone who can complete puja. This level of training is for personal puja only. Later training might include being able to perform puja for other people, too.

By the way, in this context worship, although it appears to external… is really a way of projecting our own divinity outwards, where we can see it. We make offerings, worship and show love and devotion to our divine Self. Then, at the end of a puja, we draw that essence back into our heart.

Beautiful, don’t ya think?

We’ll be staying at the home of our favourite Brahmin priest – a good friend of my Guru’s in fact – who’ll try and knock some form into our puja. He’ll also be teaching us a little more Sanskrit, Vedic chanting, puja theory, homa practice (fire ceremony) and more.

Of course, there’ll be plenty of yoga and meditation going on too!

And if there’s any down time, guess we’ll be jumping in the backyard pool.

Nice, eh?

It will be very rejuvenating, spending time amongst my fellow Aussie yogis and yoginis. Most of them I haven’t seen since August last year. But a couple of others I haven’t seen for a year or two.

All very wonderful for a yogini who, for the most part, practices alone. And, I’ve always had an affinity with ritual – so its all good for me.

So anyways, posts could be a little light on this week and I won’t be back home til 1^st Feb. There’s plenty of half-finished posts, so if I get the chance I’ll sneak one out before I leave.

A big Namaste to you all…

P.S. Don’t worry about Miss Cleo the cat – a good friend will be house-sitting and making sure she’s fed and given plenty of attention.

~Svasti