Diary of a yoga nobodhi

Tuesday 19th July 2005

The Gallery space at 6am has been like an icebox lately even though I’ve been covering the entrance with a curtain, putting on two heaters and bringing extra blankets for Savasana. It’s been pretty difficult to get any heat happening in the body during practice. No heat means no progress. Heat is the transforming element that burns the impurities from the body and mind and although a heated environment isn’t essential for asana practice it’s an essential ingredient in the alchemy of Ashtanga.

So with the cold biting at our heels, we whipped through Primary this morning. I shortened my normally long, slow breathing so I could move in and out of poses quicker to stay warm. Not safe to challenge the limits or work deeply today – priority one was just to keep moving and generating enough heat to ward off the threat of stalling and freezing over.
Alas the bit of heat I generated never quite got as far as my toes. The little digits stayed frozen throughout the standing poses and each time I jumped back to Chaturanga I imagined them breaking off and tumbling over the floor like dice. In Paschimottanasana I wrapped my hands around my toes to thaw them out then resorted to putting my fluffy pink bedsocks back on for the rest of practice.

Secret thanks to Cameron. In his blog on 15th July he vowed:
“…my new commitment: practice of some kind or another on all practice days. Period. Figure it out, make it happen. If all I can muster is sun sals, then so be it. But that's the new deal with myself.”
Those few words of resolve have pricked my conscience and inspired me to do a little better, try a little harder to establish a daily practice. Discipline, tapas, commitment.

And having said that I'm feeling quite grateful to all the other yogis who blog their experiences, struggles, joys, breakthroughs and inner dialogues. Broadcasting this stuff to the world takes honesty and courage (especially when it’s read by people you know) but it's also an act of sharing and generosity. I can sense the invisible worldwide support network, real connections existing in time and space that join us together.
We are indeed all one, and our thoughts and feelings travel through the body of the universe like nerve impulses, connecting us all to the mind of the universe and to each other.

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Sunday 17th July 2005

Well it’s pretty cold.
A couple of us rocked up for a 7am Sunday morning self practice at Simi’s shala only to find the electricity was off. We managed to get the lights working but not the heaters, so it was a cold, hard practice. I warmed up and cooled down repeatedly like a yo-yo. Marichyasana C and D have become little annoyances since my back injury. I can understand losing Marichy D, but Marichy C? Well, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit – I can still bind in C so I suppose I haven’t technically lost it, I just can’t breathe or move in it anymore. The twist isn’t a workable one where I can nudge out the edge with each exhalation. It’s regressed to a stuck kind of twist with no give, no room to negotiate.
I worked on them both today, holding them for extra breaths at that frustrating point where they go no further (when they've hardly gone anywhere to begin with).

My female cycle started this morning so I didn’t do the finishing inversions. I’ve now got a good excuse to take tomorrow off…at last a real excuse for piking out on a Monday practice.

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Friday 14th July 2005

Ashtanga Iyengar reflection
Finally got to Darren’s 6am led Iyengar class this morning after an absence of 2 months. It’s a nice complement to the Ashtanga practice. Darren’s very calm. He doesn’t talk much in this class, just quietly calls the poses in the silence of the emerging dawn. This sort of class allows us the space to explore within our own experience.

I was critically aware of the asymmetry in my body this morning – one hand presses much more heavily into the floor than the other in Dog Pose, Vatayanasana was a breeze on one side and an embarrassingly awkward frustration on the other. Not to mention Padmasana … vastly different on one side to the other because I only ever do it on one side.

I hardly notice my alignment bleeps during an Ashtanga practice – my focus is more with bandhas and breath. When these are both strong and united, my body quite magically aligns itself along the energetic core of the spine and my mind is totally drawn into this epicentre as well. Every disparate part sucks together as one working entity, aligned, powerful and moving with purpose.
This cohesion rarely arises during Iyengar practices. Instead I feel out my body’s imperfections during the long holdings and try to correct them from the outside, from the skeletal and muscular structure and placement. Although there is a certain depth to this engagement – concentration is strongly focussed within the body - the subject of my focus seems superficial when compared with the internal energetic focus generated during an Ashtanga practice.
Just different ways of working I suppose.

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