Diary of a yoga nobodhi

Thursday 21st July 2005

Well I came home from work tonight, ate a salad, cooked my son’s dinner, washed dishes, went out and did my weekly shopping, came home and walked the dog. By that time it was 9.30pm. I picked up Light on Yoga again. The lingering fantasy of a regular evening practice was hanging around in the shadowy corners of my room, tempting me. When I first thought of it last night I had no misconceptions that I’d ever be able to incorporate it into my busy life.

So there it was, 9.30pm and I’m thinking “I got up at 5.15am this morning, I’ll be up at 5.15am tomorrow, what’s it going to be?”. The choices were bed or practice.

Well, strike me down, I must be a real yogi at last. I scanned the courses at the back of Light on Yoga and decided to make a conservative start with the sequence from week 19-21.
The sequence is odd - totally backwards. You start with Headstand plus some variations, then Shoulderstand plus variations, Jathara, Navasana, Utkatasana (the only standing pose), then a few simple backbends, Mahamudra, some forward bends including Marichyasana A and B, Purvottanasana, Bharadvadrasana, Malasana and Baddha Konasana.
All the seated poses are done bending up the left leg first according to the instructions from the book which is the opposite to Ashtanga... someone’s got it VERY wrong. Isn’t there a reason behind doing it on one side first – something to do with the peristaltic movement from the large to the small intestine – food moves from the right side to the left side of the abdomen or something like that.

Looking at the list of poses, I thought it would be a two hour practice but it only took me one and a half hours (not including Savasana because I fell straight into bed instead).
I did all the poses for 8 long breaths excluding Headstand and Shoulderstand which I held for 20 breaths. Did Ujjiyi pranayama throughout and tried to integrate bandha work as well. It was a nice, quiet, but deep practice and it showed up a lot of weak areas in my body that need to be worked on.
There were a few poses that I really wanted to come out of after 5 breaths: Purvottanasana and Baradvadrasana 1 especially.
Niralamba Sarvangasana came surprisingly easy. It’s a precarious balance but beautiful when you get it. There’s an incredible elegance about it – the same as holding a free handstand. It’s like you’re suspended in between two moments, and those two moments are sliding apart, leaving you in an increasingly silent vortex. You exist momentarily in a timeless, eternal pause in those balances, alive, awake and breathing while everything else around you has frozen.

"Perfection in sarvangasana is reached when the posture can be maintained without the support of the hands. Niralamba means "without support", sometimes it is used the word purna. Under a symbolic point of view, as the body is sustained by nothing, it indicates the overcoming of the ego and the sensory control, at that stage the Purusa realises its own nature which for its own quality does not rest on anything, as it is self sustained. As the atman, has not a beginning nor an end, because the reality is unique, omnipervading and undivided, so there is nothing to lean on."

If I was a 6 day a week Ashtangi (4 is a good week for me), I probably wouldn’t consider doing an Iyengar practice. But in my current circumstances (motivationally challenged), any extra asana work can only be to my advantage.
It’s like being on a very specific cleansing diet and slipping in some healthy food which is not on your list. Because it's healthy you can justify it.

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Wednesday 20th July 2005

I dug out my decaying copy of Light on Yoga last night to look up the name of a pose, then flicking through the loose pages I happened across the program of courses near the end of the book. The suggested regimen spans something like 3 years. I remembered starting this in my early yoga days and getting bored after the first week. So much for beginners mind.

I playfully toyed with the idea of picking up the regimen again, following Mr Iyengar’s course. “Hmmm..I could do my Ashtanga practice in the mornings and the Iyengar practice at night –not every night of course – maybe 3 evenings a week”.
It sounded good at the time as I was snuggled up in bed.

When Glenn Ceresoli was here giving a workshop earlier this year, we did a morning and an evening practice for 5 days straight with him. The daily double practice filled up every vacant space in my mind. All mundane activity in between the sessions paled into insignificance.
A morning Ashtanga/evening Iyengar practice is quite an alluring proposition, but unfortunately pretty far-fetched for someone who has such a heavy schedule already and a poor history of disciplined asana practice. I can barely find time to squeeze in 4 morning practices a week as it is. But what the heck, entertaining a little fantasy now and then is harmless.

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