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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: Yogis

Find the joy

13 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by Svasti in Learnings

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Asana, Chinese New Year, Compassion, earthquake, find the joy, Haiti, hope, Meditation, perfect yoga bodies, Queensland floods, raining cats and donkeys, restorative, selfless, sharks, Sun City Picture House, Year of the Rabbit, Yogis

From a bush outside my apartment...

Some yogis never practice asana, did you know that?

It’s not the usual path for sure, but there ARE people who were born with already wide-open hearts, those so selfless they wouldn’t think twice about giving the shirt off their back to someone who needed it more than they do.

Most of us however… we need all that asana and meditation  in order to see clearly and enable us to start acting from the heart as a default first course of action.

According to the Chinese New Year, we’re moving into the Year of the Rabbit and apparently 2011 is meant to be a little slower. More restorative. And who couldn’t do with twelve months of that? I know I sure can… time to recoup and rebuild, yeah?

Friends, one and all – I ask you to take the time to watch this half hour documentary about life in Haiti one year after the earthquake.

It’s a beautiful tale about the fostering of love and fun amongst the Haitian people, despite the wretchedness of their situation. This is also a story of compassion: people helping each other with the most unimaginable tasks regardless of their own circumstances;  and how to not be destroyed by complete and utter darkness when life as you know it is over and you’ve lost so very much.

Have your hankie ready, but also be prepared to feel jubilant and blissful no matter what. The website for the doco is here: Sun City Picture House

Share it around.

Also, take a look at Diane’s post over at The Everything Yoga blog about Big Yoga. She kindly referenced my Body Talk interview with The BlissChick in a discussion about how we’ve just GOT to get over this idea about “perfect yoga bodies”. And that’s another helping of compassion right there.

There are sharks swimming down the streets of Ipswich in Queensland, folks. And it’s still raining cats and donkeys here, all day and night. But we do find ways to go on, even as our hearts are breaking for the state of this planet and it’s people and animals.

Nothing is permanent, nothing is forever. Like the dude in the doco says, find the joy in order not to be completely crushed.

Having been completely crushed before, I highly recommend the alternative: find the joy, everybody!

~Svasti

P.S. More coming soon on my review of Carried by a Promise!

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An Aussie non-Thanksgiving

26 Friday Nov 2010

Posted by Svasti in Life, Yoga

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

body, breath, Compassion, Eye contact, gratitude, interconnectedness, Intimacy, Love, Melbourne Cup Day, Mind, particles of joy, PTSD, random animals, supta baddha konasana, Sweet Mango, Thanksgiving, Yoga, yoga teaching, Yogis

Right now in America its Thanksgiving, which (and possibly you didn’t know this) isn’t celebrated as a holiday outside of the US and Canada. But in general, it’s a great idea for everyone on this planet to practice feeling grateful, and more than just once a year. Preferably without overeating, too. And even when things aren’t all rosy.

Especially yogis – y’know, I think it’s in the yogi handbook (that “official” one they give you when you sign on for life)…

(AHEM! That last sentence was a JOKE people! Well, except for the part about “especially yogis”. Coz, dudes and dudettes, yoga philosophy is all about love and compassion and stuff!)

Before this post gets going, I wanted to let you know that Sweet Mango (aka Michelle) – I wrote about her in my last post – did get the miracle she desperately needed. It’s such a wonderful story, and I am thankful for the way things turned out for her!

Over here in the ass-end of the world, we don’t do the whole turkey dinner in November thing. Today on Twitter, Ecoyogini asked if we Aussies have a holiday in November. Ha! The closest thing we have is a holiday on the first Tuesday of November and it’s for a horse race (quite a famous one though).

Yep… and in the week leading up to it, people spend stupid amounts of money on clothes and booze (translation: alcohol) and then go and stand around dusty racing tracks – unless they are lucky and get an invite to a VIP section – and bet, and drink and flirt. It’s meant to be glamorous or something.

Of course, I’m quite anti the whole thing on account of the horses. I mean, sure they get treated well as long as they’re making money. After that, some of them become breeding animals and the others…well, I think it’s dodgy.

And that is our November public holiday! Well, as long as you’re in Victoria. In the other states, people just take a half day from work, and get drunk over lunch which effectively renders them useless for the rest of the day!

Anyway, this post is meant to be about stuff that I’m grateful for, right? So here goes!

Despite everything, including all of the reasons this blog exists, I am grateful to be here.

These days my life is much more, uhhh, liveable than it has in a good long while. However, I still have days/hours/moments where I feel completely and utterly miserable. Mostly, this happens when I compare the state of my world to some cookie-cutter ideal I was hand-fed by my family, the society I grew up in, and/or the values of the entire freakin’ western world. The tendencies towards depression and anxiety attacks mean that none of that stuff is easy to deal with.

My life looks pretty much nothing like any of those “markers” of happiness and success. And yet, despite everything, and perhaps regardless of the numerous times I have to back myself away from the soul-destroying, negativity-loving shouty little demon folk, I’m pleased to report that these days it’s still possible to find happiness and gratitude.

Okay, so my version of happiness is far from perfect. But still, nearly every single day I can genuinely find something to be happy about.

A lot of that has to do with three things.

First – just taking the time to look around me. Because then I get to indulge in my predilection for saying hello to random animals on the street…

A cute random dog I befriended on the street

And appreciate nature, and other people. Yeah… that thing I used to avoid thanks to PTSD? It’s called looking other people in the eye, and now I can do that again (hooray), I look through their eyes into their hearts and offer them what they hopefully see as a smile of love. Because in case you hadn’t noticed, pretty much all of us need more of that. Love. Smiles. Pleasure gained from little things.

If what we want for this world is to generate more love, compassion and gratitude, then this seeing people is important work, because so many of us just feel invisible, right?

Second – actually, is my online world here. Through which I’ve met incredible people and hey, maybe someday I’ll get to meet a few more of you! While reading blogs and Twitter, I’ve discovered stories that angered me, brought me to tears, made me laugh out loud, entertained me and overall, educated me. You are all awesome!

Third – of course, is yoga. I still can’t quite actually believe that I’m a yoga teacher, and yet I find endless blessings and revelations from each and every class I teach. Even if I think the class went terribly, it still teaches me. And more than anything, it brings me happiness, to think that I’ve been able to share information with others that helps them learn more about their relationship to their body or mind. That just blows my mind!

Between teaching and my own practice, plus regular doses of kirtan and meeting other like-minded people… this has and continues to be a stabilising force around which I gather those smallish particles of joy.

Yoga is the basis of the new life I’m planning for myself…more about that some other time soon. For now, I’ll just say that for the first time in an absolute age, I have a plan. Something that’s about doing the right thing by myself and I just hope I can pull it off! Because if I can turn things around the way I want them to go, then it’s not just doing the right thing for me – it will in the long run benefit others, too.

And now, a little something I wrote and read out to my class this week. None of the ideas are new or original. They’re all things I’ve learned from my teachers. Maybe it’s just because I’m a new teacher, but sometimes I feel like I don’t get to say the things I really want to say while I’m teaching. Stuff that I want my students to understand about yoga!

So I basically wrote down a bunch of ideas, and asked everyone to lie in supta baddha konasana (reclined butterfly) while I read it out.

Here it is now, for you, too. With my love and thanks for being a fabulous online community. xo

About your yoga practice

The concept of yoga has been interpreted in dozens of ways all over the world. But what is yoga, really?

Is it stretching? Does movement have to be involved? Can yoga could be performed in a chair, or by a quadriplegic or paraplegic? Is yoga limited to what happens in a class and on your yoga mat? The answer could be “yes” to all of these things, but yoga philosophy and practice is a vast  body of knowledge and can take many years to study.

Through my teachers, the following definition of yoga has been passed down to me and it’s both very simple and very complex: yoga is intimacy.

Not in a sexual way of course! But intimacy as true interconnectedness. This begins with how you relate to yourself, and so we start with the breath. In much of our waking lives, we are unfamiliar with our own breath – and yet it’s the breath which carries the exchange of life force energy that keeps us alive.

How aware of your breath are you? Without training it’s difficult to breath with awareness all day long and this is why in yoga class, we practice being focussed on our breath.

The breath originates our life force and ability to move, and as such, we start and end each movement we take in yoga with our breath.

And over time, through this practice we learn to link our breath (awareness = mind) with our body. For many people this is a challenge, because the body is where we store all of our pain, fear and suppressed emotions. To connect the breath/mind with the body, is actually a really big deal.

Once that connection between the body and mind starts to open, the body responds in kind. And you might find that yoga poses you previously thought you couldn’t do become much easier. Sometimes these sorts of changes can appear to happen very quickly.

But you have to ask yourself if it was ever the case that your body couldn’t do what it can now do. Or if it was something else that changed. Your awareness of your body in space, perhaps? Or maybe your fear around what you think you can or can’t do?

People have many reactions to yoga. Some think it’s boring. Others – including me – have at times found it to be something that causes fear. Some people experience nothing but bliss doing yoga. And others yet again, try it and hate it.

These are all reactions of the body and the mind attempting to work together. And if you keep practicing over time, you might find that you experience all of these things, and possibly other experiences I haven’t mentioned.

The thing is – whatever your current experience of yoga, it can and will change. And while you’re finding your feet in your relationship to your yoga practice, it’s good to adopt an attitude of playful exploration.

In my own personal practice, there are still things I can’t do or that I find really challenging. However, there is a way around that fear, if we are willing to be playful and have fun with it!

The opposite of playful exploration is telling ourselves we can’t do something. The more we tell ourselves that, the more we won’t be able to do it because we won’t even try. If we never do those things, our relationship to them never changes.

So, back to the concept of yoga as intimacy. We fear what we’re not familiar with. To lose our fear, we have to get to know what we’re afraid of. And in yoga, our tool set for this work is the mind, the breath and the body.

The mind focuses and controls the breath in a way that helps us to relax and provides continuity and consistency. The breath starts and finishes our movements to soothe our transitions and release our fears. The mind can tell us all kinds of things about our yoga practice – how much it hurts, that we’re scared or tired, that we can’t hold that pose a second longer – but if we allow ourselves to focus on breathing instead of what the mind says, the body will respond. And suddenly all of our protests go away. And the body, with the support of the mind and the breath, can over time, experience openings that inform the mind that things are changing.

This is why it doesn’t matter if you fall over. And why it isn’t important how well or badly you can do a pose. The correct attitude to your practice at any given time is: “What’s going on in my body? Where am I holding tension? How is my breathing? Do I feel connected to my body as I move through these yoga poses?”

To answer these questions, you need to explore how you feel and what you’re thinking and doing in your practice. Although a yoga teacher leads the class, your yoga practice is unique to your own body, breath and mind. You are the only one who can do this work of exploration, and it’s the way to intimacy and the path to attaining yoga.

~Svasti

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News from the anti-Slim, Calm, Sexy “Yoga” trenches

16 Thursday Sep 2010

Posted by Svasti in Health & healing, Yoga

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

American Yoga, anti-yoga yoga, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Depression, hypocritical, Land Down Under, meaningless gloop, minority voice, Mr. Men, oil and water, old fashioned mind-set, passive-aggressive, patronising, pseudo-yoga, PTSD, radical feminist, radical humanists, Roald Dhal, Samskaras, Slim Calm Sexy, Tara Stiles, trenches, Upanishads, Yoga, yoga puree, Yogis

This guy is hoping it's safe to come out of this low crouching position soon!

The ongoing discussion re: Tara Stiles’ Slim Calm Sexy “Yoga” and similar horrendous-yet-commercial “anti-yoga yoga” advertising, certainly has legs (no pun intended).

Like oil and water, seems there’s two main groups disagreeing with each other and the effects are still reverberating around the blogosphere.

I’ve been called a “radical feminist” for my opinions, although in this day and age I’ve no idea what is radical about anything I’ve said. In fact, as Linda put it (someone who was also labelled as such), perhaps we are “radical humanists” at the most. But our views on all of this are not extreme in any way.

It’s also been suggested that anyone who thinks Tara is selling out is just jealous of her success. Can you imagine that? Women who oppose yoga being used as a weapon against women’s self-esteem are being accused of things that suggest a very old fashioned mind-set, circa 1960s. And being accused by other women, no less!

Apparently, my anger and objections to the way Tara is using yoga can be boiled down to “extreme” ideas and oh… jealousy. How nice, because then you get to ignore me, right?

I shake my head in wonder, particularly because I expected more from some people. But perhaps they want to buy into the fame and glory associated with models-turned-yoga-teachers-who-don’t-know-yoga-from-a-hole-in-their… y’know. I’ve no idea! It does at least appear that some people’s heads are turned by even the slightest association with someone famous, even if they don’t actually know them personally!

But then, perhaps that’s just part of their samskaras in this life. Who’s to say?

I’ve even had to end my association with a couple of bloggers who quite frankly, have been incredibly judgey, patronising and hypocritical. Although if our ideas on yoga, human/women’s rights differ so much, then perhaps that’s for the best at this point in time.

Maybe that’s how I look to them, too. It’s possible! I’m okay with others disagreeing with me, but not with being called names and people getting all passive-aggressive about it. With me, if I don’t like something I’m gonna tell you to your face (and I have!).

So it’s been quite the ride, but then I think it just shows how important this issue is. Everyone’s personal issues (mine included) – or rather our samskaras – are flaring up like crazy!

There’s a “don’t pick on Tara, she’s not hurting anybodeee” attitude that belies the reality of what’s going on. (BTW “Lalanna”, folks who leave comments on my blog with a fake email address will NOT get published!).

But actually this isn’t about Tara personally (although please don’t get me started on the 20 hour “yoga teacher training” she offers!), so much as it is about a certain approach to yoga. Or “pseudo-yoga”, shall we call it? Or perhaps “yoga-flavoured movement to sell books and DVDs”?

There also seems to be a “peace, love and its all good no matter what” thing going on. Let’s all agree with everybody else! But in my opinion, that’s how you get something I like to call “yoga puree”, or meaningless gloop.

And if yoga puree is what people think is acceptable, why don’t we all just not bother with (expensive) yoga teacher training? Why not just read some Roald Dhal and Mr. Men and call ourselves yoga teachers? I’ll translate Charlie and the Chocolate Factory into a version of the Upanishads, shall I?

Or rather, I won’t.

Sad when a student says on the first day of my Mindful Yoga class, “I hope I survive this class!” I asked “why do you say that?” She said “I’m not flexible”, not this, not that. I said “What makes you think yoga is all about that?” She said “all the ads I see.”

So for those who think current ads for yoga have no affect on future students, look harder. She had not done yoga for 40 years – said [that] yoga 40 years ago was “about the mind”. I said, “In my class it still is”. She left feeling wonderful BTW..:)

And after class she said her hips no longer hurt.

~from Linda-Sama about a very recent student

Can you imagine? A mature-age woman who felt inadequate about going to a yoga class! Because of yoga ads.

It’s not like I’m saying it’s all the fault of people like Tara Stiles, but she sure isn’t helping the situation! She herself is caught up in her own samskaras. So she really can’t help it, I guess.

And this is what we need to be mindful of. We cannot be okay with calling everything and anything yoga! We cannot let yoga be over-run with a very narrow definition of acceptable physical appearance in the same way the fashion industry has! We cannot allow yoga to be co-opted by the fashion industry (any more than it already is) or other commercial pursuits!

I realise that those of us who are dissenting are apparently the minority voice. But then, that’s traditionally been the role of yogis anyway. And yoga has always been about freeing the mind of such shallow and limited points of view. So really, it makes sense.

It’s just rather sad.

Years ago, I remember listening to my Guru explain a bunch of stuff about “American Yoga”, and make clear definitions between what we were studying and ummm, other kinds of teachings. Not in an elitist way, however. Back then, I didn’t really get it. But now I do, and I also understand why he refuses to live in America and be a part of the yoga scene there. It’s just too KRAAAAAZY for him!

I also recall the yoga debate on Yoga Dork’s blog a while back. At the time, I didn’t understand why the Indian community was so angry about the western-world co-opting yoga the way it has. I’d like to apologise to those people now!

Perhaps I didn’t get it because I’ve only ever been trained in a relatively traditional way. I have an authentic Guru who’s given me an incredible knowledge base already. And all of the yoga I’ve studied, practice and teach is relatively traditional, too.

Also, here in Australia we simply don’t have the same sort of yoga scene that the US does.

In the Land Down Under, yoga is still just plain old (but super-wonderful) yoga. No bells. No whistles. No catchy slogans to manipulate people into signing up for yoga class or buying a book or DVD.

Just yoga.

And really, that’s all I’m interested in.

I’m not giving up my position in the trenches. I’ll still disagree with blatantly commercial and self-esteem harming advertising in the name of yoga. BUT, I won’t bother trying to convince those who are too deluded to see. Not any more, anyway.

And I’ll still be here writing about real yoga (I won’t be shutting up any time soon), along with topics like PTSD and depression. Because they’re all inter-related as human experiences, and we need to look for truth in each of them.

You can count on that. You can also count on me being fierce (as is my warrior nature) as I do so, and truthful. And I won’t give up, I promise!

~Svasti

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Samskaras in samsara – part 2

10 Friday Sep 2010

Posted by Svasti in Health & healing, Yoga

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Asana, Asatoma Sat Gamaya, Ayurveda, bandha, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, dance, Deepak Chopra, duality, Karma, Krishna, Limitations, martial arts, Meditation, metaphysical, mula, non-dual reality, pranayama, psychoanalysis, Reality, Samsara, samskara, self-loathing, Shanti Path, Slim Calm Sexy, Swami Niranjananda Sawaswati, Tara Stiles, Wake up, Yoga, yogic philosophy, Yogis

I didn’t take this photo, but I’ve driven past this statue of Arjuna in Bali. It’s magnificent!

[Read part 1 first]

Okay, so enough with the psychoanalysis of our western self-loathing mind-set for a moment.

How about we go beyond the physical, to the metaphysical for a bit? Yeah?

Okay, so let’s take a tiny peek at some of the subtleties of yogic philosophy.

Note #1: I’m going to do my best to explain these rather complex concepts to you as passed down from my wonderful teachers. Of course, my understanding is still limited and imperfect but hey… I’ll give it a go. Also, there’s only so much I can pack into a single blog post!

Note #2: This is another long post. Try to hang in there!!

Samsara is considered to be this world of duality – the place where the universe can experience its Self as Other than its Self. ‘Nuff said about that for now…

And samskaras are deeply embedded patterns of energy within collective energy forms that manifest as individual human beings. “Pattern” being the key word here – a pattern comes from actions being repeated over and over again. And of course, the more often a pattern is repeated, the harder it is to change it. Kinda like a train running on the only tracks it’s got.

Samskara is a very peculiar thing. It is the library within a DNA molecule, containing everything that we have imbibed. One DNA molecule contains the total information of all of the libraries in the world combined. Samskaras are like that too. Samskaras are the inputs of volumes and volumes of books which we carry within us and which have been accumulating over millions of years. When these samskaras come to the surface of the mind, they are very powerful.
~From Yoga Darshan, Swami Niranjananda Sawaswati

A samskara then, is a thought or activity that’s become part of how the world appears to us. It can define our preferences, personality, understanding of other people and things. And with those definitions come limitations – what is subjectively true and what is not. However, limitations aren’t actually “bad”, not in the least.

In fact, they are key to our ability to exist in as humans where we all appear as separate entities, cut off from source/the universe/god etc. So, samskaras can be considered to be both useful (i.e. they comprise and make possible our limited view of the world) and problematic (when we can’t discriminate between our limited view and a wider view).

Still with me?

Limitations are a naturally occurring construct of this world and universe. They are part of how we function, our identity, why we have certain opinions and emotions and ideas. Our samskaras interact with karma (another much-maligned and misunderstood yogic concept) and form a filter through which we view “reality”. As we know, reality at this level is different for everyone, and far from the non-dual view the rishis and wisdom masters speak of. Hence, our diversity of opinions!

However, one of the true goals of yoga and serious yogis is to free ourselves from the limitations of the dual world, while simultaneously existing in both the dual and the non-dual. In fact, we can’t exist in the non-dual without duality, because then it wouldn’t be a non-dual reality – for the non-dual to be truly non-dual, it also has to encompass duality (hope that makes sense!).

Asatoma Sat Gamaya
Lead me from the unreal to the Real

Tamasoma Jyotir Gamaya
Lead me from the darkness to the Light

~Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

And so we yogis work to free ourselves from limited views through an intimate understanding of, and connection to our mind and body. The path to achieving this can include: asana, pranayama, mula, bandha, meditation, martial arts, dance, Ayurveda and so on. Usually, more than one of these methods is required to develop our mind-body awareness. Ultimately this MUST include long and deep hours of meditation (as opposed to say, fifteen minutes a day).

Freeing ourselves from limited views does not mean however, denying our anger or any other emotion. We need to go fully into the experience of being a human being in order to understand and liberate ourselves from the suffering of samsara. Because, how can you possibly be free of what you don’t understand?

As such, suppressing emotions or decrying other people’s anger as “un-yogic” is doing little more than keeping you stuck on those same train tracks, going around and around and around… and the more circuits of the train track you make, the harder it is to change. Get it?

It is tricky, because on the one hand we are here on this planet that exists in duality, and so we play by the rules of this world where interactions with people, our emotional states and experiences DO matter. But then, as we learn to drop into non-duality more and more (it comes in flashes or waves), we begin to see how much none of it really matters in the end. And things start to change as we begin to increasingly experience non-duality as our actual reality.

It can be both incredibly liberating and stupendously confusing at the same time…

And yet. We MUST learn to see the real from the unreal. This for me, is what makes the false and harmful messages about body image (burn that bra fat, minimise those wider-than-desired hips) so completely alarming.

Because it is being condoned not just by Tara Stiles (who, as a yogi with connections to Deepak Chopra should bloody well know better), but by so many other people involved in yoga.

The outcry in return seems to be all “don’t hate on Tara”, “don’t hate on anything we want to define as yoga” and “you people who are complaining are just simply un-yogic”.

BUT all of the folks in that camp – including Tara – are missing the glaringly obvious point here:

Yoga is about liberation from samskaras and the human condition of suffering. NOT about playing into and re-enforcing those patterns for ourselves and others. NOT about continuing to make people think there is something wrong about their physical appearance that needs to be fixed – this is a mass personal and cultural samskara and one that’s deeply embedded!!

This isn’t a personal attack on Tara or anyone else, but as my own Guru would say: WHERE IS YOUR MIND??

My criticism comes from asking: what kind of yogi supports messages that invoke deep-seated insecurities and self-esteem issues of others? From generating and confirming samskaras as real instead of limited thinking that one can learn to revoke?

This is not good work. And it is not yogic in the least. In fact, those in the yoga community who buy into this, saying that it’s all okay, are demonstrating minds that are still deeply embedded in their own samskaras, whatever they might be. Some things are NOT okay, especially coming from yogis.

Seriously, anyone who thinks Tara Stiles’ “Slim Calm Sexy” yoga is an okay way to market yoga to the uninitiated masses is not engaging in enough discernment or discriminate thinking. And those uninitiated masses? They probably spend most of their time feeling deeply unhappy and thinking self-loathing thoughts anyway, and don’t NEED anyone else to point it out to them!

Even as Tara et all are claiming “it doesn’t matter how people come to yoga” – and I’ll admit that’s generally true – in some ways it actually DOES. Because by pressing the self-esteem/physical appearance buttons you’re embedding those samskaras just a little more deeply than before and messing with someone’s appreciation of what yoga is all about. Who knows how much extra work – conscious and sub-consciously – will be involved in undoing all of that?

Basically, the Tara Stiles school of yoga marketing is unhealthy and unethical.

And as another teacher I’ve studied with would put it… WAKE UP!!

Or as I’d put it… WAKE (THE FUCK) UP!!

This is not a popularity contest where we have to be friends with everyone and accept everything that’s said about yoga, simply because we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

SO WAKE UP!!

Remember, Krishna was a warrior and he worked very hard to make Arjuna fight a battle. It’s not always about having the most friends, but about cutting through the crap and seeing clearly.

Lead me from the unreal to the freaking real, already!

~Svasti

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Fun with food & Twitter

03 Friday Apr 2009

Posted by Svasti in Recipies

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Apricot Bliss Balls, Cooking, Food, Foodie Friday, Hummus, Lightning, Rain, recipe, Roast pork, Thunder, Twitter, Vegetarians, Yogis

The skies, they opened up today and completely saturated the kingdom of Melbourne, in the region of Victoria, municipality of Ozstraaaylia.

The day started out fine before the skies darkened, and the downpour began. Its all blue skies again now, though.

Melbourne: if you don’t like the weather, just wait a while…
~Most Melbournites

It was a good thing, y’know, since we’ve been in drought for absolutely years and years. So we never complain.

‘Cept I was out and about and coulda been struck by the mad lightning accompanying the gloriously rumbly thunder!!

Stuck as I was in the city for an hour before I could attempt to make my way home. Me and the bike, actually. Got as far as 10 minutes from my place during a break in the rain. Had to wait again. Then, bought a $2 poncho, accepting I wasn’t gonna make it home entirely dry. I did okay though…

Then, it was on to my brand new invention on Twitter – #Foodie Friday.

Everyone’s been doing Follow Friday there for yonks (yawn!). So I thought it was time to try something new.

One of my friends thought it was some kind of event (well it was, just a private one). And I ended up having a food conversation with someone I’ve never met whose first tweet to me was: You are making me salivate and wishing for a teleport to your house.

Hehe 😉

Most of the cooking is in honour of my yoga school. Tomorrow we have our last class before term break, and we’re all meant to bring a dish. But no one said I couldn’t bring two!

Plus, I wanted to roast up a pork shoulder that’d been patiently waiting in my fridge saying eatmeeatme! every time I opened the door (y’see, its not true that all yogis are vegetarian. Not at all!!).

With little else to do in this weather, I began cooking, and entertaining myself by Tweeting about it. Hehe.

And what did I make, exactly?

Roast pork, basted with ghee, rubbed with salt & sprinkled with rosemary

(for moi)

Almond & apricot bliss balls

(for my yoga school)

Here’s the recipe if you wanna make ’em yourself!

And finally, some incredibly tasty hummus

(for my yoga school, thank goodness coz the recipe makes A LOT)

The recipe is in a seperate post

And now its time to sit down with some hummus and do my yoga studies homework.

Happy weekend, everybody.

~Svasti

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Over the rainbow bridge

02 Tuesday Dec 2008

Posted by Svasti in Spirituality

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Tags

After death state, Cancer, death, Energy, Grandpa, Mantra, Om Shanti, Strange dream, Yoga, Yogis

One of my yogini sisters has been duking it out with cancer for many years now… she’s young, and vital and yet… cancer kept up its slow inevitable march forward.

Being initiated into the same yogic lineage (and I don’t give a toss if you think it’s a load of crap) means energy connections between me and my fellow yogis (as well as family and some close friends) I feel more easily than others… and word came down the line today that she’d passed.

But not before I’d spent most of last night almost comatose on the couch from around 7.30pm, weirdly tired, and completely falling into a deep, deep sleep during the twilight hours…

And this morning before awaking, dreaming a strange dream:

You know those photos where someone’s arm or feet or another body part is in the shot, but that’s all you see of them? The main person who’s featured appears to have dismembered body parts floating in their general vicinity? In my dream I met a man, of Asian appearance, with incredible Photoshop skills and he was systematically removing the unattached limbs from several photos. They looked like they’d never been there. I was amazed he could do that so well…

Morning arrived, I was still exhausted, and inexplicably I felt unwell. So I stayed home from work and around 1.30pm local time, received the text message of her passing.

I knew it was coming; we’d received an email just a couple of days ago.

Those in our yogi school had been asked to send the energy of our practice and prayers to help her through this time… passing of life into death… through the bardos where images clung to as reality in the world we believe to be solid and permanent show up again… and where, if we so choose, we can reside ever after in a dream-like state… much as we do anyway… just another possible way of existing… Who says it’s all ‘like this’ or ‘like that’ anyway?

It’s the after-death state(s) that some yogis and yoginis practice for throughout their lives.

We practice not just to live here and now as humanly and humanely as possible, but to navigate the various stages of letting go – slowly unfurling and shrugging off corporeal shackles to grasp the wider view of what life is and how death actually, isn’t separate, but part of it… beyond the tangible with its rules both societal and physical.

In this world, we humans grieve for what has been, fixating on something that after this moment ‘right now’… no longer ‘is’.

My paternal grandfather’s passing a couple of years ago was like that. With my own father so angry at him for not calling the ambulance (or anyone) when grandpa had clearly felt heart pain for several days before he died alone in his home with the blinds still drawn and his bed not made.

There was a viewing before the service where I was to speak as a proxy for my father who’s voice was not reliable (neither was mine). I slipped in early, before anyone else arrived.

In an impossibly small coffin at the end of a narrow room lay his shrunken form, no longer my twinkly eyed grandpa, so gentle and sweet in his silent ways. He was no longer an inhabitant of this form, if he ever was. If any of us ever are…

Right there is a good philosophical argument for cremation, which is certainly my preference…

As I offered prayer and mantra, I knew I wasn’t praying to this lifeless inanimate flesh but to the surrounding environment… where I felt him to be more real and present than this frozen grandpa-like shape.

Do you start to wail and cry if a person goes to another room in the house? This death is inevitably connected with this life. In the sphere of Immortality, where is the question of death and loss? Nobody is lost to me.
~Sri Anandamayi Ma

Aum
Shanti, Shanti, Shanti!

~Svasti

Why I have a Guru – part 1

14 Friday Nov 2008

Posted by Svasti in Life Rant, Spirituality

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Commercial yoga, Cynicism, Cynics, Direct experience, Guidance, Guru, Yoga, Yogis

Readers of this blog might’ve noticed the occasional remark in my posts about my Guru.

Thanks to a particularly cynical comment from a blog friend in response to a recent post (which wasn’t the one I wanted him to read anyway… oh never mind!)… in reflection I realise I haven’t been very clear about some things.

The rant

I’m just a little angry.

Far as I can tell, there’s unwarranted suspicion around the concept of Guru. What’s it based on exactly? Personal real life experiences? Third or fourth hand stories? Reading a book or some random online account of some unknown person(s) about their ‘bad Guru’ experience? Stereotypes?

Please, do tell. Coz I’d love to know if it’s just another form of ignorance, discrimination or bigotry or similar… or based on something real?

How many of the cynical amongst you have ever met a bona fide Guru in the flesh? How many have spent any time studying with one? Huh? Please, do tell!

What is it? Do ya think I’m gonna to try and covert you? (Just so… not!) Is it fear of something that’s not easy to comprehend? Fear of the unknown? Does it sound to you like bondage instead of freedom?

I’m absolutely sick to death of people thinking (not that I really care, but y’know…) that I’m brainwashed, or mindless, or lost, or in someway retarded because I happen to have a profound connection with an accomplished spiritual being (not that he’d ever say that about himself mind you…).

Do you see me suggesting to anyone do what I do? No! So what makes you feel the need to criticise my choices without understanding where I’m coming from?

And trust me, unless you’ve taken initiation into a traditional yogic lineage of some kind, you’re simply NOT gonna get it. You can’t. You haven’t been there. It’s not like going to another city on the other side of the world. It’s like visiting another planet. I’ve tried to explain but much gets lost in the translation.

Most people simply can’t and won’t have the same experiences going to a commercial yoga class. You may learn the same asana, but you won’t learn them for the same reasons. And you certainly won’t be receiving the same kind of meditation instruction – if you get any at all. And if you’re not, I don’t know what you think yoga actually is! Its certainly not just a series of ‘yogaerobics’ to – keep you flexible or tone your body – as I’ve seen yoga classes advertised. Eeewwww.

I don’t need to be saved or woken up. I’m more awake than you can possibly imagine despite my frailties and insecurities.

And do you wanna know why I can say that? Because I see who and what I am in this limited world view and I don’t deny any of it. BUT I also have direct knowledge that this experience is far from all I am. Far from all anyone is…

I sometimes exist in the open spaces – the gaps in between – where it’s possible to see the whole friggin’ world as non-dual, everything as one. And yes, there’s a huge difference between theoretical/philosophical knowledge and practical experience where irrevocably, you gain intimate first hand knowledge.

So here’s where I get my love and respect for my Guru – there’s no one and I mean not a single person I’ve ever met who sees reality as clearly as he does. He lives in that world and for those willing to stick around, he’s happy to share what he knows. But in return he insists that his students strip away ALL bullshit romantic fantasies around how we see ourselves and other people. Dismantle that house of cards.

He’s the captain of my spiritual ship. Or rather I’ve tied my ship to his flotilla. Because we’re going into waters he’s traversed many a time and I’ve never been there myself. I don’t know the territory. The wind and the waves work differently there. He trains us and he wants us to be capable, but it can only be learned over time due to its complexity.

His advice is not used to work out what to wear or eat or do with my day. I’m not a child, he’s not my parent or saviour and I don’t rely on him for approval. I’m independent as a person – where I do rely on him is to explain the territory if I hit a part of the map I’ve never seen before.

When nothing looks familiar and my own resources fail me… when self reflection has taken me as far as I can possibly get… when I’ve talked to my more experienced yogi brothers and sisters and they can’t help me either… its then that I need my Guru’s guidance.

And that’s kind of where I’m at right now.

Svasti says: don’t generalise, don’t criticise what you don’t understand. Fine if its not for you, but just get on with it and let us ‘loony’ off-the-chart yogis do what we do best… Om  namah sivaya!

[Read part 2]

~Svasti

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