Wednesday 18th February 2004
Blah blah
Mediochre kind of practice this morning – had to go gently because of my injured right hamstring but I'm gaining quite some insight into where these hamstrings come into play. Trikonasana has been so easy for me for so long and always a nice pose to work into: strong grounding of the leg energy, adjusting the pelvis to conduct that energy up the spine to lengthen and straighten it and a expansive opening from the heart out to the fingertips. Having been used to entering it fully on the first exhalation (instant toe grab) then correcting and aligning on the subsequent inhalation, then moving to the inner work for the remaining breaths, I’m reluctantly having to accept that it’s taking me at least three full breaths to even get my fingers close to my big toe on the right side - a precarious journey going down, fraught with danger.
But it’s been a revelation to observe how much the hamstring is involved in this pose. Not to mention Parsvottanasana, the Prasarittas, Utthita Hasta and Supta Padangusthasana, and all the forward bends especially Upavista Konasana. All those poses that I slipped into each day like old soft shoes have turned on me, threatening hamstring trauma with every movement. Injuries can also be a gift...I can understand with more compassion the restrictions that my beginner students experience. After a few years of yoga, you forget how it feels to be stiff and unable to even touch your toes.
Something I don’t quite understand is how it has affected my Urdhva Dhanurasana because as far as I can tell, there’s no length demanded from the hamstrings here. Perhaps my body is harbouring a subconscious panic during practice as a protective fear response to the possibility of pain. This morning as I was preparing for my first drop back from standing to Urdhva Dhanurasana, my body’s surveillance system went on full alert, so I asked Simi to support me instead of going solo. The crash landing on my head last week I now think was the result of my body's tightened up fear response to this hamstring injury. Energetically, it’s blocking the opening I need for a soft and safe landing.
Soft mind, soft body
The mind state manifests in the body for sure. I have fond memories of the days that followed immediately after completing my 10 day Vipassana retreats. The body is so open and soft, and the energy pathways so clear, that backbends just bloom open with joy. It’s almost unbelievable considering you’ve sat in meditation for 11 hours a day, 10 days straight without any yoga or exercises in between. That proved to me beyond any doubt that the state of our mind is reflected in our body. When the mind is fully at peace, when the constrictions of the mind are released, there is a corresponding release throughout the physical and emotional body.
So on days like today when my physical Ashtanga practice drags, I look to what’s happening in my life and the mental and emotional tightness that’s holding me back from being fully open, at ease and flowing with Grace.
Patanjali (3:42) “From perfect discipline of the relation between the body and space and from contemplative poise in which the body is as light as cotton, one can move through space” (translation of Barbara Stoler Miller). Other translators of this sutra have suggested levitation and actual space travel – alluding to the potential for the human body to transcend physical limitations when the mind and body gain spatial unification. The memory of my physical body’s grace and ease that were a byproduct of my long hours in meditation remains as a reminder of the mind and body’s interconnectedness.
_______________________________________________________________________
Friday 13th February 2004
Led Primary practice
Friday morning, city café, just finished the Led Primary practice with Simi. It may be my last one for a while as Darrin gets back from holidays next week and I miss his Friday morning Iyengar led class. Apart from providing a balance to my growing Ashtanga practice, I’m fond of Darrin. Although he was my first teacher he wasn’t my most influential one. But I’ve returned to Darrin’s classes often over the years. They are always strong and grounding, challenging but safe, and with a gentleness and purity that is uniquely Darrin.
Simi inserted a few extras toward the end of the practice this morning. After Setu Bandhasana, we did three Setu Bandha Sarvangasana, then a couple of Salabhasanas with hands interlocked and arms stretching behind the back, then some deep lunges with the back knee on the floor while holding the sides of our mats and arching the back. Then three Urdhva Dhanurasanas. Breathed a sigh of relief when we moved straight onto Paschimottanasana without doing any drop backs. I was a bit apprehensive as we approached the impending dropbacks because I crash landed on my head on the first one yesterday and it sort of shook me up. I tried to tell myself that it was because my hands slipped on the sweaty mat, but really I just wasn’t focusing on that first one – my mind was elsewhere. Looking back I should have gone to the wall for a few dropbacks to regain my confidence, but I felt a little teary and wanted a loving hug from my mum to wash away all the hurt from my endless failures. Folded into Paschimottanasana, hugging, cradling my tender self.
It’s been five days straight of 35C plus temperatures with 43C expected tomorrow. People in the city seem a bit worn from the week but there’s a freshness to the morning air. The espresso smells great and tastes rich and mellow, replenishing my spirit. This is the end of my first 3 day working week and it feels GREAT! I’d intended to spend the 2 extra days practicing, reading and meditating – deepening my spiritual life. But this first week was an adjustment. I caught up with friends, did some shopping and cooking, cleaning etc. It’s easy to fritter away the time – the more time you’ve got, the more time you waste. That happens with money too.
Divine Music
I taught my Level 1 class last night. It was one of those wonderful classes when everything falls perfectly into place and somehow your heart opens and connects with every one of your students. After the class I chatted to a few people and one new student (only his second class with me) gave me a CD. I was taken completely by surprise. It was a genuine gift from his heart. The CD was ‘Duality’ by Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke. I once had Lisa’s first CD called The Mirror Pool, but loved it and lost it and hadn’t heard her music for a few years.
When I got home after the class I played it. I sat transfixed for an hour. The music…her voice is deeply reverential, deeply mystical, evocative and sacred. In the warm darkness of my kitchen, I became one with the music as the softness of my voice rose spontaneously to unite with the divine and the sacred. Music can tap into our eternal soul and draw it to the surface, evoking memories of immortality, splendour and beauty. The music and my soul weaved in and around each other, as if making love out of creation. I’ve only felt the true potency of music and sound on rare occasions. Sometimes when chanting om at the shala I feel it – when my om joins with all the others to create one, when it’s no longer separate, when I surrender to the one om that unites us all in the room and the practice, when the ego dissolves and the sound moves through me as it moves through us all.
Music is divine. Lisa Gerrard’s work is both hauntingly human and divine and it connects me with my longing for That which is eternal…loving…timeless and formless…That which is us.
_________________________________________________________________________
Thursday 12th February 2004
I could have stayed for hours in Urdhva Padmasana this morning. It’s a beautiful pose that cultivates balance and harmony which I use as a springboard for deep sea inner exploration. I’ve been experimenting with spinal breathing in this pose lately but don’t have the mental application yet to sustain my concentration on it for long. Spinal breathing uses mulabandha to draw up prana from the base of the spine and move it up through the sushumna nadi to the third eye. You draw it up on the inhalation and release it down on the exhalation. I imagine it would feel like a thorough flushing out of the central energetic channel. The exact location of the sushumna nadi still eludes my inner eye – it’s elusive, but I guess with practice and correct application it will come. This kind internal work is very challenging because it demands a very delicate sensitivity and sustained focus. You have to use a different kind of intelligence to access it and a different mind/heart approach. It often feels like a surgical operation, sitting there motionless in Padmasana (or Urdhva Padmasana), trying to harness the power of the will to forge new neural pathways to connect the mind into various parts of the subtle body.
Must learn to think less, feel more.
Blah blah
Mediochre kind of practice this morning – had to go gently because of my injured right hamstring but I'm gaining quite some insight into where these hamstrings come into play. Trikonasana has been so easy for me for so long and always a nice pose to work into: strong grounding of the leg energy, adjusting the pelvis to conduct that energy up the spine to lengthen and straighten it and a expansive opening from the heart out to the fingertips. Having been used to entering it fully on the first exhalation (instant toe grab) then correcting and aligning on the subsequent inhalation, then moving to the inner work for the remaining breaths, I’m reluctantly having to accept that it’s taking me at least three full breaths to even get my fingers close to my big toe on the right side - a precarious journey going down, fraught with danger.
But it’s been a revelation to observe how much the hamstring is involved in this pose. Not to mention Parsvottanasana, the Prasarittas, Utthita Hasta and Supta Padangusthasana, and all the forward bends especially Upavista Konasana. All those poses that I slipped into each day like old soft shoes have turned on me, threatening hamstring trauma with every movement. Injuries can also be a gift...I can understand with more compassion the restrictions that my beginner students experience. After a few years of yoga, you forget how it feels to be stiff and unable to even touch your toes.
Something I don’t quite understand is how it has affected my Urdhva Dhanurasana because as far as I can tell, there’s no length demanded from the hamstrings here. Perhaps my body is harbouring a subconscious panic during practice as a protective fear response to the possibility of pain. This morning as I was preparing for my first drop back from standing to Urdhva Dhanurasana, my body’s surveillance system went on full alert, so I asked Simi to support me instead of going solo. The crash landing on my head last week I now think was the result of my body's tightened up fear response to this hamstring injury. Energetically, it’s blocking the opening I need for a soft and safe landing.
Soft mind, soft body
The mind state manifests in the body for sure. I have fond memories of the days that followed immediately after completing my 10 day Vipassana retreats. The body is so open and soft, and the energy pathways so clear, that backbends just bloom open with joy. It’s almost unbelievable considering you’ve sat in meditation for 11 hours a day, 10 days straight without any yoga or exercises in between. That proved to me beyond any doubt that the state of our mind is reflected in our body. When the mind is fully at peace, when the constrictions of the mind are released, there is a corresponding release throughout the physical and emotional body.
So on days like today when my physical Ashtanga practice drags, I look to what’s happening in my life and the mental and emotional tightness that’s holding me back from being fully open, at ease and flowing with Grace.
Patanjali (3:42) “From perfect discipline of the relation between the body and space and from contemplative poise in which the body is as light as cotton, one can move through space” (translation of Barbara Stoler Miller). Other translators of this sutra have suggested levitation and actual space travel – alluding to the potential for the human body to transcend physical limitations when the mind and body gain spatial unification. The memory of my physical body’s grace and ease that were a byproduct of my long hours in meditation remains as a reminder of the mind and body’s interconnectedness.
_______________________________________________________________________
Friday 13th February 2004
Led Primary practice
Friday morning, city café, just finished the Led Primary practice with Simi. It may be my last one for a while as Darrin gets back from holidays next week and I miss his Friday morning Iyengar led class. Apart from providing a balance to my growing Ashtanga practice, I’m fond of Darrin. Although he was my first teacher he wasn’t my most influential one. But I’ve returned to Darrin’s classes often over the years. They are always strong and grounding, challenging but safe, and with a gentleness and purity that is uniquely Darrin.
Simi inserted a few extras toward the end of the practice this morning. After Setu Bandhasana, we did three Setu Bandha Sarvangasana, then a couple of Salabhasanas with hands interlocked and arms stretching behind the back, then some deep lunges with the back knee on the floor while holding the sides of our mats and arching the back. Then three Urdhva Dhanurasanas. Breathed a sigh of relief when we moved straight onto Paschimottanasana without doing any drop backs. I was a bit apprehensive as we approached the impending dropbacks because I crash landed on my head on the first one yesterday and it sort of shook me up. I tried to tell myself that it was because my hands slipped on the sweaty mat, but really I just wasn’t focusing on that first one – my mind was elsewhere. Looking back I should have gone to the wall for a few dropbacks to regain my confidence, but I felt a little teary and wanted a loving hug from my mum to wash away all the hurt from my endless failures. Folded into Paschimottanasana, hugging, cradling my tender self.
It’s been five days straight of 35C plus temperatures with 43C expected tomorrow. People in the city seem a bit worn from the week but there’s a freshness to the morning air. The espresso smells great and tastes rich and mellow, replenishing my spirit. This is the end of my first 3 day working week and it feels GREAT! I’d intended to spend the 2 extra days practicing, reading and meditating – deepening my spiritual life. But this first week was an adjustment. I caught up with friends, did some shopping and cooking, cleaning etc. It’s easy to fritter away the time – the more time you’ve got, the more time you waste. That happens with money too.
Divine Music
I taught my Level 1 class last night. It was one of those wonderful classes when everything falls perfectly into place and somehow your heart opens and connects with every one of your students. After the class I chatted to a few people and one new student (only his second class with me) gave me a CD. I was taken completely by surprise. It was a genuine gift from his heart. The CD was ‘Duality’ by Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke. I once had Lisa’s first CD called The Mirror Pool, but loved it and lost it and hadn’t heard her music for a few years.
When I got home after the class I played it. I sat transfixed for an hour. The music…her voice is deeply reverential, deeply mystical, evocative and sacred. In the warm darkness of my kitchen, I became one with the music as the softness of my voice rose spontaneously to unite with the divine and the sacred. Music can tap into our eternal soul and draw it to the surface, evoking memories of immortality, splendour and beauty. The music and my soul weaved in and around each other, as if making love out of creation. I’ve only felt the true potency of music and sound on rare occasions. Sometimes when chanting om at the shala I feel it – when my om joins with all the others to create one, when it’s no longer separate, when I surrender to the one om that unites us all in the room and the practice, when the ego dissolves and the sound moves through me as it moves through us all.
Music is divine. Lisa Gerrard’s work is both hauntingly human and divine and it connects me with my longing for That which is eternal…loving…timeless and formless…That which is us.
_________________________________________________________________________
Thursday 12th February 2004
I could have stayed for hours in Urdhva Padmasana this morning. It’s a beautiful pose that cultivates balance and harmony which I use as a springboard for deep sea inner exploration. I’ve been experimenting with spinal breathing in this pose lately but don’t have the mental application yet to sustain my concentration on it for long. Spinal breathing uses mulabandha to draw up prana from the base of the spine and move it up through the sushumna nadi to the third eye. You draw it up on the inhalation and release it down on the exhalation. I imagine it would feel like a thorough flushing out of the central energetic channel. The exact location of the sushumna nadi still eludes my inner eye – it’s elusive, but I guess with practice and correct application it will come. This kind internal work is very challenging because it demands a very delicate sensitivity and sustained focus. You have to use a different kind of intelligence to access it and a different mind/heart approach. It often feels like a surgical operation, sitting there motionless in Padmasana (or Urdhva Padmasana), trying to harness the power of the will to forge new neural pathways to connect the mind into various parts of the subtle body.
Must learn to think less, feel more.
