The skinny on Shadow Yoga – part 1

Tags

Acupuncture, Asana, churning, connectedness, massage, orgasm, physio, Prasarita Padottanasana, Prelude, Shadow Yoga, undone, Yoga, Yogasana

True story: If my shoulder could’ve had an orgasm in yoga class tonight, it WOULD’VE!!

Sure, I hear what you’re saying – that’s possibly way too much information for some of you, and certainly for the opening line of a post, right? Okay, okay! Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

BUT seriously folks, this injured shoulder of mine has not had the sort of release it got this evening in the entire time it’s been injured. I’ve tried all kinds of yoga and stretching of course, massage, acupuncture and physio. Truly, I’ve tried a lot of things. And tonight oh, tonight… I found the asana that makes all the difference – the rehab manoeuvre that brings incredible relief (it is of course, still mangled but this REALLY helps). And riding my bike home, so happy was I that I cried and I screamed and hence the opening line of this post! *giggles*

(The asana in question by the way, is a form of Prasarita Padottanasana where each arm clasps the opposite leg while you hold a deep forward bend. I tried to find a photo of it but couldn’t! It makes sense that it helps though: the shoulder is moving in the opposite direction than it normally does and it’s both intense and very releasing! YAY!)

So anyway, this is my next attempt to talk about Shadow Yoga, in a much less poetic, more straightforward manner. Let’s see how that goes, shall we?

I took the above photo with my mobile phone camera before going into class tonight. Just off the main drag of my lil burgh. Once through the door you head up two flights of an old wooden staircase with a large studio off to the right and a smaller one to the left. Luckily, I mostly get to work in the larger one which faces the street with its incoming tram and traffic noise. Not that it matters in that wide-open wooden floor-boarded room…

I’ve been practicing Shadow Yoga for about seven months now. It’s been a bit of a progression through the introduction course, then the introduction to Preludes, before the actual Preludes themselves (which are before the full-on asana practice!).

You see, Shadow Yoga takes quite a different view of asana than almost any other school I’ve come across. Their view is that most of the asana found in your average yoga class is actually quite advanced, because it requires a lot of knowledge about how to move the body and the joints that just isn’t taught in said average yoga class. And so a Shadow Yoga class doesn’t look much like any asana class you’ve ever been in before, and it is incredibly detailed!

There is pre-asana asana, there’s a lot of focus on breaking movements down in minute detail, placing awareness in the joints and the bones, and a huge focus on Uddiyana Bandha. And yet it is very hard work! Really hard, no matter how much yoga you’ve done before.

There’s a series of forms to learn, kind of like they have in kung fu (although the moves are yoga-ish, not kung fu-ish) and they’re very specific. Nothing it seems, is included in a Shadow Yoga form without purpose. And part of the work is unravelling what everything means to you – letting the forms wash over you and play out in your mind and body.

And how.

A couple of weeks back, I had to work out if I was going to step up into my first Prelude class or stay where I was in the Prelude Introduction series. You might think that given my years of yoga experience, I’d just naturally want to move forward, but… not necessarily. There’s so much to learn!

Because I couldn’t make up my mind, I had quite an involved phone conversation with the teacher I’d been working with up til now (moving forward would also mean a change of teacher – hello attachment issues!). And I confessed that I always find myself feeling excited but also just a little bit terrified before every class.

She asked me why – and to be honest, I hadn’t even tried to answer that one for myself before her question.

So I was surprised to find myself saying this: Because I never know how I’m going to leave each class. Sometimes I want to cry, or throw up, or I feel really energised. And sometimes I just feel completely undone and not sure what to do with myself. I don’t even know how to write about it all properly right now, and I’ve tried…

In response, she said: Well you know that Shadow Yoga is a physical form and that it also works on your organs and your energy/chi. But it ALSO works on your emotional body, and if it’s churning up so much stuff for you like that, then you know the practice is working. So it’s a good thing to feel terrified…

!!DING!! [That’s the sound of lights turning on in my squishy lil brain]

Because of what we talked about (a lot more than just the above snippet), I eventually decided that I’d move into the Prelude class. But also, I’ve found a way to start explaining Shadow Yoga to myself (and any readers of this blog) more succinctly. And while I still find each class incredibly exciting, I’m not quite as terrified any more (even if I still find myself in some state of un-done-ness at the end). It’s all good!

To summarise, and before I dig deeper into my explanation, Shadow Yoga is the nitty gritty of yogasana. It’s a very serious and intense class, and yet we often laugh. We work without yoga mats for better grip and more connectedness and yes… that’s how I’d put it… Shadow Yoga is connectedness like no other kind of asana class I’ve come across to date.

What’s in a shadow anyway? Light falls onto an object, a shadow sits behind the object or form. Hidden. But does that make it insubstantial or unimportant? I think not! A shadow is the underside, that which we don’t normally pay attention to. But if there was no light, there’d be no shadow. So it’s the other side of what’s seen and known. The less obvious, but part of the same.

[Read part 2]

~Svasti

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You’ve come a long way, baby

Tags

Asana, bird’s eye view, Blogging, Depression, Fat Boy Slim, Happy blog birthday, Healing, Meditation, Nataraj, Natarajasana, Post, Post-traumatic stress, PTSD, Recovery, Retreat, Spirituality, Therapy, Trauma, Truth, Unemployed, Yoga, yoga teacher training, Yogasana

For years I was totally hopeless with balancing asana in my yoga practice. I’d wobble, fall over and enviously look at others, wondering why I couldn’t do what they did.

Then some time ago, wobbling through Natarajasana (dancer pose) I had a realisation that changed everything… You’re not just trying to balance on one leg – you need to stabilise yourself by engaging every little piece of your body!

Oh! Seems so obvious in retrospect, but for some reason I really didn’t get that, until I did.

In turn, this taught me something important about life, in a very practical (not theoretical) way: Nothing in our lives is disconnected. Nothing.

Funnily enough, I’ve had this realisation many times – during meditation, from reading books and listening to dozens of lectures on the matter too.

Seems we don’t get it, until we do. Nothing is disconnected.

We’ve come a long long way together
Through the hard times and the good
I have to celebrate you baby
I have to praise you like I should
~Fat Boy Slim

For those of us consciously trying to heal our inner wounds, with our fragmented selves desperately trying to keep up… we’re often so busy focusing on the trauma, it’s hard to see the bigger picture.

Just for now though, I’m taking a bird’s eye view, trying to see the lay of the land, so to speak.

Why? Well, today marks the first birthday of Svasti! Hip-hip-hooray!!

To quote my last post, this blog grew as something of an impulse – a very strong desire to save my sanity. A much needed space to expel the violence, sadness and struggles I’d been dealing with all alone. Screaming into cyberspace seemed like a good idea, and I was right.

Blogging I’ve found… is sort of like travelling the world with an entirely different perspective. Instead of seeing museums and temples and the like, I find myself surveying the inner workings of people’s minds all ‘round the world.

In the process, I’ve made a lot of friends and learned plenty about myself and others.

Such as: There’s no simple cure to PTSD or depression. And there’s peaks and troughs to recovery. The peaks make me feel like I’m finally getting somewhere. The troughs make me feel like checking out of Hotel de Life.

Healing is not a one-shot deal. There’s no magic pill to solve all my ills, or anyone else’s. But the more we express, the better it gets (in the long run, if not straight away).

And given human nature is how it is, we find resonance in each other’s words. We discover we aren’t alone. We’re all connected. So, what we write can benefit others. That’s a good thing!

But I’ve also learned the assault I started writing about was only a small part of the story – a kind of bookend really, to a certain era of my life. An era I’m learning I need to write about. That’s all connected, too.

In the last twelve months I’ve: started therapy, quit a stable (but soul-destroying job), spent five weeks in spiritual retreat, conquered the worst of my PTSD symptoms (although I’m far from symptom-free), gained and lost another job, had a second niece arrive, found new friends, started yoga teacher training and struggled with a very morbid attack of depression. And I’ve spent the better part of this year unemployed, surviving on a fraction of what I usually earn.

Seems I’ve been shedding one skin after the other, kinda like an onion and with just as many tears.

But none of it is disconnected, I’m convinced of that. Where we’re at is a result of where we’ve been. There’s no plot device that led me down this path.

Gotta say this much – it’s a glorious place from which to find my balance in life, and I know I can do it.

So, here’s to the next twelve months in my/everyone else’s journey.

And thanks everyone for reading!

~Svasti

Feel your way

Tags

Guru, Utthita Trikonasana, Yoga, Yogasana

Ever been driving somewhere while another person gives all the directions… and noticed really, you don’t know where you are at all?

Well, I’ve been practicing yoga on and off for years now.

But I’m beginning to realise, I think, I’ve always been a little bit afraid of my home practice. Even though I’ve had one on and off for years.

Partly, it’s because I’ve always felt like I don’t know what I’m doing.

Not sure why that is exactly, given I’ve had (in my humble opinion) one of the very best yoga teachers going, at my disposal once a year. My Guru. That man is an absolute font of wisdom and love, and incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to asana. He’s a true explorer of the body and mind’s capabilities and it shows in the way he teaches.

It’s not the fault of the teacher or teachings. Perhaps I’ve just had a problem listening – maybe a crack in the pot?

And then, of my fellow students, many are yoga teachers, too. So I’ve had plenty of resources. Yet, for the longest time I felt embarrassed that I didn’t know as much as them, as though I couldn’t possibly catch up. And I let that hold me back.

Why? Because I haven’t known where I was.

And the yoga studies course I’m doing right now is finally showing me where it is that I am.

I have books, notes, homework to mesh with the practical work.

For the last few weeks, we’ve been focusing on standing asanas (beneficial for developing strong foundations). Actually, we’ve practicing them against the wall – if you ever wanna check your alignment while doing yoga, this is a fool-proof method to discover if you’re kidding yourself or not!

And right now I have an injury, so I’m hyper-aware of how I move my body.

With each asana, I pronounce the name in Sanskrit and English, and check my handy visual notes (works well for a super-visual person like me). Once I’m there, I check my body internally and externally… am I where I think I am… am I fully extended… are my mind and my movements as one… where are my feet, my hands, are my legs strong… am I breathing deeply?

Feeling my way through the asana, guides me to the right place.

I’ve performed Utthita Trikonasana (see picture above) innumerable times.

But tonight… a warm trickle of understanding ran down my left temple. With it, a flash of happiness and something of a stake in the ground.

Learning exactly what I’m doing, not just approximating what I remember from class… now that’s a very different experience of yoga.

And perhaps of life, too.

Am I where I’m meant to be? Hard to know for certain, but if I go by feel, sensation, finding something to align myself with, I’m sure I’ll figure it out. Yeah. That sounds like a plan…

Because there’s nothing like establishing strong foundations. Especially when one’s life is awash with change, as mine always has been. Always.

But no one can tell you that. You have to find a way to stand up in the face of all that change, on your own.

~Svasti