1st March 2006
Better late than never.
I wrote this on Tuesday 25th December but decided not to post it for some obscure reason.
Girls and yogis can, and often do, change their mind.
Toon town
Driving in to yoga practice at 5.30am this morning, heading towards a magnificent neon pink sunrise, I drifted into contemplation about my personal place in the universe – potentially big kind of thoughts.
A funny, (but almost tragic) analogy came to mind.
I envisaged our normal state of consciousness as similar to that of cartoon characters in Toon Town (a cartoon world). Each of us is like one of those little cartoon characters with wide open eyes, racing around the gaudy cartoon world that someone else has created for us, madly living out crazy lives on a shallow two dimensional story board and completely unaware of the larger context within which it is placed. We have no inkling of the extraordinary universe in which our 2D Toonworld exists.
But that universe is watching us, laughing at our antics.
Now, let’s suppose, for a moment that a wonderful, edgy thing happens.
One character slips through a crack in the cartoon story board, a portal out of there, and drops into the real world where live people are going about their business in the Disney animation studio (remember “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”).
Can you just imagine this little cartoon character suddenly confronted with the real world of people?
In that one instant, his understanding of the world he has always inhabited no longer makes sense, it was all wrong. The rug has been pulled out from under his feet and suddenly he has no ground to stand on. At first there’s utter confusion, devastation, a mental revolution is occurring. His place in the world, everything he believed in, his entire identity and egocentric consciousness is blown apart.
Our little cartoon character now discovers that someone actually drew him, placed him in Toon Town and brought him to life there along with all the other crazy characters. He had never thought to question where he came from. Yet here he now stands in front of his creator, the artist, a flesh and blood person with no black pen outline; no primary colours.
Slowly the pieces start to fall into place and he begins to see the Truth of his existence. He looks around at the magnitude and beauty of the multi-dimensional “real” world, then back at the silly cartoon world from which he came. Now that he’s experienced the Truth, his mind is altered forever. He’s different from the characters in Toon Town now. He KNOWS.
It’s an amusing analogy for how I feel these days, aware of the Truth that underpins our 2D animated lives. The activities we fill our days with, trying to gratify the ego’s need to BE somebody, results in a mass busyness and a blindness that prevents most of us from even considering that there is something much more extraordinary at work beyond our daily existence, let alone searching it out.
Discovering that we are not what we thought ourselves to be, that the universe and our being is multi dimensional beyond our current comprehension, and that we can slip through the portable hole located in our heart for an interlude with our creator… this discovery is the lightning bolt of enlightenment.
But to quote the title of Jack Kornfield’s recent book, “after enlightenment, then the laundry”.
And so daily life goes on, but the magical gift of the continuing spiritual journey is that it is self perpetuating, you can’t turn back, and new revelations are waiting to be found at every turn.
I’ve been blessed with and humbled by the greatest of secrets.
And like the cartoon character after his epiphany, I’ve gradually made peace with living in this 2 dimensional Toonworld, interacting with all the characters here who are not quite ready to have their comfortable idea of the world shattered to pieces by the blinding light of enlightenment. The tightly boxed envelope that limits the mind’s potential to receive this understanding has to be teased open, it has to become more elastic so that it can expand outwards until it’s big enough to receive and hold the magnificence.
On the outside, I just go about my Toontown day like everyone else, but on the inside, every moment is informed by an expanded, higher, understanding of our multi dimensional universe and a magnificent, kaleidoscopic vision and experience of it.
We are that which we seek.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Better late than never.
I wrote this on Tuesday 25th December but decided not to post it for some obscure reason.
Girls and yogis can, and often do, change their mind.
Toon town
Driving in to yoga practice at 5.30am this morning, heading towards a magnificent neon pink sunrise, I drifted into contemplation about my personal place in the universe – potentially big kind of thoughts.
A funny, (but almost tragic) analogy came to mind.
I envisaged our normal state of consciousness as similar to that of cartoon characters in Toon Town (a cartoon world). Each of us is like one of those little cartoon characters with wide open eyes, racing around the gaudy cartoon world that someone else has created for us, madly living out crazy lives on a shallow two dimensional story board and completely unaware of the larger context within which it is placed. We have no inkling of the extraordinary universe in which our 2D Toonworld exists.
But that universe is watching us, laughing at our antics.
Now, let’s suppose, for a moment that a wonderful, edgy thing happens.
One character slips through a crack in the cartoon story board, a portal out of there, and drops into the real world where live people are going about their business in the Disney animation studio (remember “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”).
Can you just imagine this little cartoon character suddenly confronted with the real world of people?
In that one instant, his understanding of the world he has always inhabited no longer makes sense, it was all wrong. The rug has been pulled out from under his feet and suddenly he has no ground to stand on. At first there’s utter confusion, devastation, a mental revolution is occurring. His place in the world, everything he believed in, his entire identity and egocentric consciousness is blown apart.
Our little cartoon character now discovers that someone actually drew him, placed him in Toon Town and brought him to life there along with all the other crazy characters. He had never thought to question where he came from. Yet here he now stands in front of his creator, the artist, a flesh and blood person with no black pen outline; no primary colours.
Slowly the pieces start to fall into place and he begins to see the Truth of his existence. He looks around at the magnitude and beauty of the multi-dimensional “real” world, then back at the silly cartoon world from which he came. Now that he’s experienced the Truth, his mind is altered forever. He’s different from the characters in Toon Town now. He KNOWS.
It’s an amusing analogy for how I feel these days, aware of the Truth that underpins our 2D animated lives. The activities we fill our days with, trying to gratify the ego’s need to BE somebody, results in a mass busyness and a blindness that prevents most of us from even considering that there is something much more extraordinary at work beyond our daily existence, let alone searching it out.
Discovering that we are not what we thought ourselves to be, that the universe and our being is multi dimensional beyond our current comprehension, and that we can slip through the portable hole located in our heart for an interlude with our creator… this discovery is the lightning bolt of enlightenment.
But to quote the title of Jack Kornfield’s recent book, “after enlightenment, then the laundry”.
And so daily life goes on, but the magical gift of the continuing spiritual journey is that it is self perpetuating, you can’t turn back, and new revelations are waiting to be found at every turn.
I’ve been blessed with and humbled by the greatest of secrets.
And like the cartoon character after his epiphany, I’ve gradually made peace with living in this 2 dimensional Toonworld, interacting with all the characters here who are not quite ready to have their comfortable idea of the world shattered to pieces by the blinding light of enlightenment. The tightly boxed envelope that limits the mind’s potential to receive this understanding has to be teased open, it has to become more elastic so that it can expand outwards until it’s big enough to receive and hold the magnificence.
On the outside, I just go about my Toontown day like everyone else, but on the inside, every moment is informed by an expanded, higher, understanding of our multi dimensional universe and a magnificent, kaleidoscopic vision and experience of it.
We are that which we seek.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Wednesday 22nd February
I spent the first half of practice worrying about the ache in my right hip. Moving ever so carefully and slowly, I then started thinking that I wasn’t actually doing Ashtanga – yes I was doing the primary sequence of poses in their proper order, yes I was in the shala surrounded by other people doing their practice, yes it was before sunrise. The similarities stopped there.
My breath was oh so long and smooth, not a fiery breath to stoke the intensity and ‘burn up the impurities’, but a very soothing Ujjiyi breath to cool the fiery intensity of deep aches. I cut the breath count down to 4 so that practice wouldn’t drag on for four hours. these days I’m not so anal about the “correct” way to practice. It’s a beautiful sequence and a good template, the rewards only coming after years of repetition, but you have to trust your intuition as much as trusting “the method” and sometimes that means practicing differently.
I was glad to be between Simi and another teacher in the softly lit shala. They were also moving slowly and intelligently, trusting and following invisible inner promptings, feeling their way through their own private landscapes.
If I’d been next to sweaty, hard-core A-type Ashtangis I may have felt injured, feeble, inadequate, but the energy in the room was nurturing…female…lunar, it gave me permission to practise intuitively.
A few people are still away in India so only a small gathering of dedicated yogis were there again this morning. I got a good dose of attention from David today. His verbal instructions are sometimes complex, but my body actually responded appropriately on a couple of occasions leaving me looking surprised instead of blank and perplexed.
So the first half of practice was tentative and slightly painful, but I was able to move steadily and joyfully, watching the pain in my hip joint, investigating what aggravated it and what eased it. Trying to step my right leg forward from Dog Pose caused my right hip to shriek with the pain of bearing weight.
I wondered if I should be practising at all, if I was making it worse by moving (pain is a warning), but I couldn’t stop the momentum of practise once it started.
This is always a test…do I really have faith in this practice to purify all my body/mind imbalances, injuries and samskaras? Do I just keep doing the practice, reciting the mantra "all is coming"?
Approaching Supta Kurmasana I recalled David adjusting me into the full ankles-behind-the-head pose on Monday. Maybe that set off this incident of hip pain? As I straightened my legs in Kurmasana, the hip protested. David approached and put me into full Supta Kurmasana before I could say anything (I should have mentioned my recent history of injuries to him by now, but I haven’t - probably something to do my discomfort with talking about myself).
Anyway today's pain isn't a new injury, just a crusty old friend reminding me that they haven't quite disappeared off the scene.
The Upward Dog stretch after SK was excruciating. I skipped Garbha Pindasana and headed straight for the solace of Baddha Konasana – lovely nurturing soft female pose that it is. David approached again, splayed open my thighs mercilessly til my knees met the floor then laid on my back. Everything changed. The instant I was pinned down, I dived in to find my core, drew up the bandhas, breathed prana energy through my core channel and my consciousness ignited.
The rest of practice was deeply peaceful and connected. The hip pain was still there but all the fear and all the stories around it faded into the background. I calmly got up for dropbacks, having not even attempted them for months. David tried to correct my preparation - the way I tuck my tail in, lift my sternum and raise my arms (a la Iyengar) is all wrong - but old habits die hard.
My hip and lumbar will probably ache tomorrow, but something tells me the old injury needs to be prodded into the open to heal it, otherwise it will stay buried and calcify in that hip forever.
Now I have to wait until next Monday before I can get back to the shala again.
Patience . . . is a virtue.
Sub-Conjunctival Haemorrhage
Sounds dramatic – it’s the medical term for ruptured blood vessels in the eye.
I forgot to make a diary note that I woke up with an eye full last Friday so I had to miss Darrin’s led class.
This blog is handy for keeping track of the frequency of these recurring incidents.
I usually don’t know the blood vessels have ruptured until someone gasps at the sight of my red eye. Normally there are no sensations associated with it. But this time there was an intense ache behind my left eye, it was watering and was very light sensitive.
I took the day off work and happily went blackberry picking instead.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
I spent the first half of practice worrying about the ache in my right hip. Moving ever so carefully and slowly, I then started thinking that I wasn’t actually doing Ashtanga – yes I was doing the primary sequence of poses in their proper order, yes I was in the shala surrounded by other people doing their practice, yes it was before sunrise. The similarities stopped there.
My breath was oh so long and smooth, not a fiery breath to stoke the intensity and ‘burn up the impurities’, but a very soothing Ujjiyi breath to cool the fiery intensity of deep aches. I cut the breath count down to 4 so that practice wouldn’t drag on for four hours. these days I’m not so anal about the “correct” way to practice. It’s a beautiful sequence and a good template, the rewards only coming after years of repetition, but you have to trust your intuition as much as trusting “the method” and sometimes that means practicing differently.
I was glad to be between Simi and another teacher in the softly lit shala. They were also moving slowly and intelligently, trusting and following invisible inner promptings, feeling their way through their own private landscapes.
If I’d been next to sweaty, hard-core A-type Ashtangis I may have felt injured, feeble, inadequate, but the energy in the room was nurturing…female…lunar, it gave me permission to practise intuitively.
A few people are still away in India so only a small gathering of dedicated yogis were there again this morning. I got a good dose of attention from David today. His verbal instructions are sometimes complex, but my body actually responded appropriately on a couple of occasions leaving me looking surprised instead of blank and perplexed.
So the first half of practice was tentative and slightly painful, but I was able to move steadily and joyfully, watching the pain in my hip joint, investigating what aggravated it and what eased it. Trying to step my right leg forward from Dog Pose caused my right hip to shriek with the pain of bearing weight.
I wondered if I should be practising at all, if I was making it worse by moving (pain is a warning), but I couldn’t stop the momentum of practise once it started.
This is always a test…do I really have faith in this practice to purify all my body/mind imbalances, injuries and samskaras? Do I just keep doing the practice, reciting the mantra "all is coming"?
Approaching Supta Kurmasana I recalled David adjusting me into the full ankles-behind-the-head pose on Monday. Maybe that set off this incident of hip pain? As I straightened my legs in Kurmasana, the hip protested. David approached and put me into full Supta Kurmasana before I could say anything (I should have mentioned my recent history of injuries to him by now, but I haven’t - probably something to do my discomfort with talking about myself).
Anyway today's pain isn't a new injury, just a crusty old friend reminding me that they haven't quite disappeared off the scene.
The Upward Dog stretch after SK was excruciating. I skipped Garbha Pindasana and headed straight for the solace of Baddha Konasana – lovely nurturing soft female pose that it is. David approached again, splayed open my thighs mercilessly til my knees met the floor then laid on my back. Everything changed. The instant I was pinned down, I dived in to find my core, drew up the bandhas, breathed prana energy through my core channel and my consciousness ignited.
The rest of practice was deeply peaceful and connected. The hip pain was still there but all the fear and all the stories around it faded into the background. I calmly got up for dropbacks, having not even attempted them for months. David tried to correct my preparation - the way I tuck my tail in, lift my sternum and raise my arms (a la Iyengar) is all wrong - but old habits die hard.
My hip and lumbar will probably ache tomorrow, but something tells me the old injury needs to be prodded into the open to heal it, otherwise it will stay buried and calcify in that hip forever.
Now I have to wait until next Monday before I can get back to the shala again.
Patience . . . is a virtue.
Sub-Conjunctival Haemorrhage
Sounds dramatic – it’s the medical term for ruptured blood vessels in the eye.
I forgot to make a diary note that I woke up with an eye full last Friday so I had to miss Darrin’s led class.
This blog is handy for keeping track of the frequency of these recurring incidents.
I usually don’t know the blood vessels have ruptured until someone gasps at the sight of my red eye. Normally there are no sensations associated with it. But this time there was an intense ache behind my left eye, it was watering and was very light sensitive.
I took the day off work and happily went blackberry picking instead.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Monday 20th February 2006
The alarm startled me out of a deep dream state at 5am.
I laid in bed recovering from the shock for about 10 minutes.
10 minutes of confusion.
After all the mental preparation and planning I’d done over the past week to get myself back to the shala and into regular morning Mysore practice starting today, I lay there paralysed and dangerously close to talking myself out it.
But the forces of change seem to be powerful enough to cut through the crap and catapult me out of indecision.
Thank God!
I felt the magic as soon as I walked into the shala. It was a small group today, 8 people, all female too.
I flowed through the practice at about 70% capacity, just the right intensity for re-entry. Loved David’s adjustments: they're not often the standard Ashtanga adjustments. The couple I got today in Virabhadrasana A and Urdhva Dhanurasana showed how little core strength I’ve got in my hips at the moment. In both poses I was supposed to push back against the pressure of his hand on my sternum which was pretty intense, but the hips just ached and gave up.
Maybe after practising on my own for so long, a few unused body parts have gradually fallen asleep.
It’s time to be a humble student with a beginner’s mind again.
After only one class back at the shala, I’m gleefully infected with Ashtanga fever all over again – my love for this practice is rekindled. Now I’m itching to practice there again, but can’t until Wednesday. Tomorrow I promised my Mum I’d take Buffy (my dog) with me to yoga practice in the Gallery and then on to the office to give her a dog-free day. Mum fusses and frets over BuffyDog unnecessarily.
I caught up with Kosta yesterday. He’s just back from India and did a month with Sharath because the main shala was full. He brought back some wonderful stories and one of those cute little bright orange AYRI singlet tops for me. I adore it like a precious jewel - and it's such a timely gift, seeming almost symbolic of my renewed devotion to the practice.
And another unexpected gift arrived in the mail for me at work today. It was the copy of John Scott’s Ashtanga book which I’d lent to someone over a year ago and had written off as never coming back.
Two sweet little gifts from the universe to let me know I've entered the slipstream.
Absolutely no such thing as co-incidence in this beautifully ordered connected universe.
And there are gifts are everywhere if we choose to see them.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
The alarm startled me out of a deep dream state at 5am.
I laid in bed recovering from the shock for about 10 minutes.
10 minutes of confusion.
After all the mental preparation and planning I’d done over the past week to get myself back to the shala and into regular morning Mysore practice starting today, I lay there paralysed and dangerously close to talking myself out it.
But the forces of change seem to be powerful enough to cut through the crap and catapult me out of indecision.
Thank God!
I felt the magic as soon as I walked into the shala. It was a small group today, 8 people, all female too.
I flowed through the practice at about 70% capacity, just the right intensity for re-entry. Loved David’s adjustments: they're not often the standard Ashtanga adjustments. The couple I got today in Virabhadrasana A and Urdhva Dhanurasana showed how little core strength I’ve got in my hips at the moment. In both poses I was supposed to push back against the pressure of his hand on my sternum which was pretty intense, but the hips just ached and gave up.
Maybe after practising on my own for so long, a few unused body parts have gradually fallen asleep.
It’s time to be a humble student with a beginner’s mind again.
After only one class back at the shala, I’m gleefully infected with Ashtanga fever all over again – my love for this practice is rekindled. Now I’m itching to practice there again, but can’t until Wednesday. Tomorrow I promised my Mum I’d take Buffy (my dog) with me to yoga practice in the Gallery and then on to the office to give her a dog-free day. Mum fusses and frets over BuffyDog unnecessarily.
I caught up with Kosta yesterday. He’s just back from India and did a month with Sharath because the main shala was full. He brought back some wonderful stories and one of those cute little bright orange AYRI singlet tops for me. I adore it like a precious jewel - and it's such a timely gift, seeming almost symbolic of my renewed devotion to the practice.
And another unexpected gift arrived in the mail for me at work today. It was the copy of John Scott’s Ashtanga book which I’d lent to someone over a year ago and had written off as never coming back.
Two sweet little gifts from the universe to let me know I've entered the slipstream.
Absolutely no such thing as co-incidence in this beautifully ordered connected universe.
And there are gifts are everywhere if we choose to see them.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Wednesday 15th February 2006
After pondering all the pros and cons of returning to the shala two mornings a week in a bid to reestablish some kind of a dedicated 4-5 morning Ashtanga practice,
after listing each of the reasons why I wanted to and discovering all the fears I’ve constructed around it,
after getting this all out onto paper so the honest truth would be plain to see,
after obsessively analysing all the reasons for and against, as if that would produce the answer for me, I came across this…
STOP, right where you are.
“This moment, stop right where you are. Stop all effort to get whatever you think will give you fulfillment, whatever you think will give you truth. All that is required is one instant of truly stopping. This one instant is elusive for most people, because as they approach the instant of stopping, an enormous welling of fear usually arises: “If I stop, if I really stop, I will slide back and lose the ground that I have gained through my efforts and practices. Even though I am still not fully satisfied, I am more satisfied than I was. I have a better life, my mind is calmer, my circumstances are better, and I might lose all of that.”
For me, it was quite extraordinary to hear this “stop.” I was certain that he was going to give me some secret knowledge—and he did. But it is only secret because it is so obvious. It is not esoteric. I was certain that he would whisper some magical formula in my ear—and he did. He said, “Stop.” It was so simple that I was thrown to the floor. My thoughts stopped, and in that stopping was more fulfillment than could ever be imagined. What we imagine as fulfillment has to do with less pain, less conflict, more pleasure, more peace, more acknowledgement, more love. But true fulfillment cannot be imagined, it can only be realized.
He told me to throw away every strategy, every technique, every tool, and to just be here and receive what he was offering. It soon sank in: “He really means what he says. He is not teaching me a new mantra, or a new practice, or a new set of beliefs, a liturgy, a catechism, or a cosmology. He is not telling me ‘what it all means’ and ‘what will happen’ and ‘why it came about.’” He was asking me to release all of that from my mind. Not that any of it was wrong. It was just that the hodgepodge of spiritual concepts I had created could never rival unconditional reality.
The problem is that finally, any attempt to go somewhere implies that you are not already there. In fact, any activity you undertake to achieve this is an obstruction to the deepest recognition of what has always been fully realized. In this moment you can realize what does not need to be practiced to exist. This is the easiest, simplest, and most obvious truth. What has kept it a secret throughout the ages is its absolute simplicity and its immediate availability.
This simplicity is difficult, because we are taught from childhood that to achieve something, we have to learn what the steps are and then practice them. This works beautifully for any number of things. The mind is an exquisite learning tool. But self-realization, as well as the deepest inspiration and creativity, come directly from the source of the mind. Realization does not come from any doing; it comes from surrendering the mind to the source.”
“If spiritual practices serve the purpose of stopping the mind, they are strong allies. But if they deepen the belief that you are someone in particular who practices something in particular in order to get something that you do not believe is already here, then they are an obstruction. They keep you spinning around yourself rather than allowing you to deepen into yourself.”
(Extract from 'The Diamond in Your Pocket' by Gangaji)
So I was stopped in my tracks, gobsmacked. I humbly thanked the invisible forces of the universe for this very timely reminder. Although I’ve tasted and dwelled at length in the unconditional silence of just Being, this was like a smack in the face, the realisation that my Ego Self has resurfaced with a vengeance and stealthily led me astray again.
I’ve been veering off in the wrong direction once again believing I’m on a journey Somewhere, believing I am Someone who is on that journey, madly devising a vast array of strategies in my daily life that will help me get There, strategies such as returning to regular morning Ashtanga practice, regular evening meditation practice, regular eating patterns, simplifying my life, reducing my commitments and busyness…and so it goes on and on and on. This Ego Self is an insidious enemy, very clever, very sneaky.
The reminder to just STOP and drop all the strategies, stop all the trying to get anywhere, is an enormous relief every time I come back to it.
There’s absolutely nothing at the end of the fictitious journey. It was with us all the time. It’s here, now.
I plan to go back to Ashtanga next week, and it's no big decision now, no big deal. Now that I’ve recognised all the ego based fears associated with it I can once again return to being a nobody, going nowhere.
This spiritual practice is not about doing and getting somewhere, but of undoing and discovering the exquisite beauty and timeless depth of Now. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Monday 13th February 2006
Real honest-to-goodness Ashtanga practice has been a hit and miss affair for me over the past few years.
After the initial honeymoon wore off, that period of time when I discovered Ashtanga and threw myself into regular practice, I was able to settle down into a minimum of 3 practices a week, often more. There have been injuries, life changes and periods of more dedicated practice - the last period being late last year, but it didn't last long.
Here I am debating once again if I should return to a dedicated daily practice, if I really need to, and why I even want to.
Looking objectively at the situation, I’m in a great position now to practice more regularly. I no longer live with my son so I don’t have to come home from work at night and cook for anyone; my boyfriend is away for at least a few months so I have more free time at night and on the weekends to just chill out if I need to. There’s really no excuse.
Because I’m obsessing over this decision again, I have to get all the thoughts and feelings around it out of my fuzzy head and into an orderly form to see the picture more clearly.
The reasons that deter me from returning to the shala I'll list here because they have one obvious thing in common:
- Fear of overcommitting myself to a physical yoga practice that my body can’t cope with - Fear of injury from strong adjustments
- Fear of injury from being overflexible due to the heated conditions - Fear of not being able to live up to my initial commitment to the practice
- Fear that rising at 5am 5 days a week for a full on physical daily practice may tire me out and affect my teaching performance on Saturdays
- Fear of that demoralising guilt feeling I experience when I get up at 5am and decide I don’t’ want to go. (because I don’t particularly enjoy facing up to my human weaknesses)
- Fear that I’ll be overemphasising the asana part of yoga practice which is not the point of yoga practice at all
- Fear of coming unstuck and destabilised
Yep, it’s all fear. ________________________________________________________________________________________________
Friday 3rd February 2006
Ardha Chandrasana
Only 2 of us in Darrin’s led class this morning. A subtle unspoken intimacy pervades the studio in these pre-dawn yoga sessions as we elegantly move in and out of poses, silently bonded together by our dedication to a practise that has shaped and changed our bodies and lives.
We did a few Sun Salutes, then a standing pose sequence including Vashisthasana, coming into most of the poses from Dog pose, and Ardha Chandrasana three times on each side. Some poses like Urdhva Dhanurasana get better with each repetition, some don’t; my Ardha Chandrasana started out strong and balanced, but got weaker by the third rep as my strength faded. The star like shape of this beautifully disorientating pose makes me feel strangely armless and legless, these odd appendages radiating outwards in all directions don’t seem to belong to me. I try to focus on drawing up mulabandha to get the internal support and orientation from my core – when that comes, the balance just happens.
But holding Ardha Chandrasana past the recommended use by date (which is about 5 long breaths for me) spins me out a bit and then I tend to lose the focus on my core. My internal compass starts to swing wildly around looking for North, the balance and focus that came early begin to drain rapidly away. My body begins to tire and the will to stay is all that keeps me up there.
Backbend focus today: Salabhasana, Bhujangasana, Ustrasana. The dropbacks from Ustrasana sadly I can no longer do. I gave it a test run today but as I lifted my arms up and back from the prayer position I felt my hips and lumbar seize up in fear around last year’s injury. Then the entire lower back area just went weak as if someone cut off the prana supply – there was no support from the lower back area at all. I moved to the wall and tried reaching back from Ustrasana, hands to the wall, but halfway down the wall again hit the dead resistance in my ilio-sacral area. I stayed there, hands halfway down the wall, stayed calm, stayed centred, tried engaging more bandhas and lifting up through the hips, pressing them up and forward, but I just couldn’t maintain the lift.
There’s lots and lots to work with here if I want to rebuild and heal my back.
Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana 1 and 2, Hanumanasana, some passive counter poses then a long Halasana over the chair, finishing with Janu Sirsasana and Paschimottanasana (both with head to a bolster).
I love doing this kind of asana practice once a week, but I feel a familiar longing to return to the rigour of a consistent Ashtanga practice. Maintaining a regular, committed practice at the shala is not easy for me. I’ve strayed away from the hard-core practice in favour of one that’s on my own terms – no teacher, no adjustments, no pushing past my limits except on those rare days when all three key ingredients: energy, flexibility and courage, are high.
But every now and then I get a snort of courage that reignites the little flame in my belly. I think about being one of “them” again – one of those mythical Ashtangi creatures that haunt the sacred shalas all over the world in that magical hour before sunrise. ___________________________________________________________________________________________
Tuesday 31st January 2006
Still here, but the motivation to write about my inner life has been in its waning phase. Trying to make sense of life and yoga practice through writing about it ebbs back and forth on some kind of current
Because there’s just over a week to go before my boyfriend moves interstate for 10 months, we’ve been getting in a lot of quality time together, as if building up a big fat bank account of togetherness before the separation. It may or may not see us through the 10 months of his absence.
Because of this, I’ve allowed the relationship and late nights to take priority over my morning practise for these last few weeks, knowing that the change is imminent. There’s always a trade off somewhere: when he leaves, my heart will sway back a little more to its spiritual source. I can feel it coming already…more time to practice, less distraction.
Utkatasana
Practice this morning was mediocre OK. Strong Ujjiyi breath from beginning to end, which might be in danger of becoming just a bit too loud, too powerful. Some days I’m resembling a guided missile, locked onto target. Utkatasana is the pose of the moment for me. As it comes into view, I try to temper the sense of anticipation. Then it arrives. Breath by breath I deepen the squat, the arms come forward, I take them back, bit by bit. Keep adjusting the tailbone towards the heels. Keep lifting and opening the armpits up and back, softening the back shoulders down. Each adjustment deeper into the squat, I have to adjust the arms back and the tail down. It’s like a little ritual. But I’ve discovered the close relationship between Utkatasana and the following pose in the sequence, Virabhadrasana A. Don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before: the arms are raised in both poses, the pelvis naturally wants to tip forward but must be guided back to decompress the lumbar, there’s sense of deepening down towards the ground with the lower body and a lift up out of the pelvis with the upper body. And both poses ask us to lift and open up our hearts courageously to face the vast unknown. __________________________________________________________________________________________________
After pondering all the pros and cons of returning to the shala two mornings a week in a bid to reestablish some kind of a dedicated 4-5 morning Ashtanga practice,
after listing each of the reasons why I wanted to and discovering all the fears I’ve constructed around it,
after getting this all out onto paper so the honest truth would be plain to see,
after obsessively analysing all the reasons for and against, as if that would produce the answer for me, I came across this…
STOP, right where you are.
“This moment, stop right where you are. Stop all effort to get whatever you think will give you fulfillment, whatever you think will give you truth. All that is required is one instant of truly stopping. This one instant is elusive for most people, because as they approach the instant of stopping, an enormous welling of fear usually arises: “If I stop, if I really stop, I will slide back and lose the ground that I have gained through my efforts and practices. Even though I am still not fully satisfied, I am more satisfied than I was. I have a better life, my mind is calmer, my circumstances are better, and I might lose all of that.”
For me, it was quite extraordinary to hear this “stop.” I was certain that he was going to give me some secret knowledge—and he did. But it is only secret because it is so obvious. It is not esoteric. I was certain that he would whisper some magical formula in my ear—and he did. He said, “Stop.” It was so simple that I was thrown to the floor. My thoughts stopped, and in that stopping was more fulfillment than could ever be imagined. What we imagine as fulfillment has to do with less pain, less conflict, more pleasure, more peace, more acknowledgement, more love. But true fulfillment cannot be imagined, it can only be realized.
He told me to throw away every strategy, every technique, every tool, and to just be here and receive what he was offering. It soon sank in: “He really means what he says. He is not teaching me a new mantra, or a new practice, or a new set of beliefs, a liturgy, a catechism, or a cosmology. He is not telling me ‘what it all means’ and ‘what will happen’ and ‘why it came about.’” He was asking me to release all of that from my mind. Not that any of it was wrong. It was just that the hodgepodge of spiritual concepts I had created could never rival unconditional reality.
The problem is that finally, any attempt to go somewhere implies that you are not already there. In fact, any activity you undertake to achieve this is an obstruction to the deepest recognition of what has always been fully realized. In this moment you can realize what does not need to be practiced to exist. This is the easiest, simplest, and most obvious truth. What has kept it a secret throughout the ages is its absolute simplicity and its immediate availability.
This simplicity is difficult, because we are taught from childhood that to achieve something, we have to learn what the steps are and then practice them. This works beautifully for any number of things. The mind is an exquisite learning tool. But self-realization, as well as the deepest inspiration and creativity, come directly from the source of the mind. Realization does not come from any doing; it comes from surrendering the mind to the source.”
“If spiritual practices serve the purpose of stopping the mind, they are strong allies. But if they deepen the belief that you are someone in particular who practices something in particular in order to get something that you do not believe is already here, then they are an obstruction. They keep you spinning around yourself rather than allowing you to deepen into yourself.”
(Extract from 'The Diamond in Your Pocket' by Gangaji)
So I was stopped in my tracks, gobsmacked. I humbly thanked the invisible forces of the universe for this very timely reminder. Although I’ve tasted and dwelled at length in the unconditional silence of just Being, this was like a smack in the face, the realisation that my Ego Self has resurfaced with a vengeance and stealthily led me astray again.
I’ve been veering off in the wrong direction once again believing I’m on a journey Somewhere, believing I am Someone who is on that journey, madly devising a vast array of strategies in my daily life that will help me get There, strategies such as returning to regular morning Ashtanga practice, regular evening meditation practice, regular eating patterns, simplifying my life, reducing my commitments and busyness…and so it goes on and on and on. This Ego Self is an insidious enemy, very clever, very sneaky.
The reminder to just STOP and drop all the strategies, stop all the trying to get anywhere, is an enormous relief every time I come back to it.
There’s absolutely nothing at the end of the fictitious journey. It was with us all the time. It’s here, now.
I plan to go back to Ashtanga next week, and it's no big decision now, no big deal. Now that I’ve recognised all the ego based fears associated with it I can once again return to being a nobody, going nowhere.
This spiritual practice is not about doing and getting somewhere, but of undoing and discovering the exquisite beauty and timeless depth of Now. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Monday 13th February 2006
Real honest-to-goodness Ashtanga practice has been a hit and miss affair for me over the past few years.
After the initial honeymoon wore off, that period of time when I discovered Ashtanga and threw myself into regular practice, I was able to settle down into a minimum of 3 practices a week, often more. There have been injuries, life changes and periods of more dedicated practice - the last period being late last year, but it didn't last long.
Here I am debating once again if I should return to a dedicated daily practice, if I really need to, and why I even want to.
Looking objectively at the situation, I’m in a great position now to practice more regularly. I no longer live with my son so I don’t have to come home from work at night and cook for anyone; my boyfriend is away for at least a few months so I have more free time at night and on the weekends to just chill out if I need to. There’s really no excuse.
Because I’m obsessing over this decision again, I have to get all the thoughts and feelings around it out of my fuzzy head and into an orderly form to see the picture more clearly.
The reasons that deter me from returning to the shala I'll list here because they have one obvious thing in common:
- Fear of overcommitting myself to a physical yoga practice that my body can’t cope with - Fear of injury from strong adjustments
- Fear of injury from being overflexible due to the heated conditions - Fear of not being able to live up to my initial commitment to the practice
- Fear that rising at 5am 5 days a week for a full on physical daily practice may tire me out and affect my teaching performance on Saturdays
- Fear of that demoralising guilt feeling I experience when I get up at 5am and decide I don’t’ want to go. (because I don’t particularly enjoy facing up to my human weaknesses)
- Fear that I’ll be overemphasising the asana part of yoga practice which is not the point of yoga practice at all
- Fear of coming unstuck and destabilised
Yep, it’s all fear. ________________________________________________________________________________________________
Friday 3rd February 2006
Ardha Chandrasana
Only 2 of us in Darrin’s led class this morning. A subtle unspoken intimacy pervades the studio in these pre-dawn yoga sessions as we elegantly move in and out of poses, silently bonded together by our dedication to a practise that has shaped and changed our bodies and lives.
We did a few Sun Salutes, then a standing pose sequence including Vashisthasana, coming into most of the poses from Dog pose, and Ardha Chandrasana three times on each side. Some poses like Urdhva Dhanurasana get better with each repetition, some don’t; my Ardha Chandrasana started out strong and balanced, but got weaker by the third rep as my strength faded. The star like shape of this beautifully disorientating pose makes me feel strangely armless and legless, these odd appendages radiating outwards in all directions don’t seem to belong to me. I try to focus on drawing up mulabandha to get the internal support and orientation from my core – when that comes, the balance just happens.
But holding Ardha Chandrasana past the recommended use by date (which is about 5 long breaths for me) spins me out a bit and then I tend to lose the focus on my core. My internal compass starts to swing wildly around looking for North, the balance and focus that came early begin to drain rapidly away. My body begins to tire and the will to stay is all that keeps me up there.
Backbend focus today: Salabhasana, Bhujangasana, Ustrasana. The dropbacks from Ustrasana sadly I can no longer do. I gave it a test run today but as I lifted my arms up and back from the prayer position I felt my hips and lumbar seize up in fear around last year’s injury. Then the entire lower back area just went weak as if someone cut off the prana supply – there was no support from the lower back area at all. I moved to the wall and tried reaching back from Ustrasana, hands to the wall, but halfway down the wall again hit the dead resistance in my ilio-sacral area. I stayed there, hands halfway down the wall, stayed calm, stayed centred, tried engaging more bandhas and lifting up through the hips, pressing them up and forward, but I just couldn’t maintain the lift.
There’s lots and lots to work with here if I want to rebuild and heal my back.
Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana 1 and 2, Hanumanasana, some passive counter poses then a long Halasana over the chair, finishing with Janu Sirsasana and Paschimottanasana (both with head to a bolster).
I love doing this kind of asana practice once a week, but I feel a familiar longing to return to the rigour of a consistent Ashtanga practice. Maintaining a regular, committed practice at the shala is not easy for me. I’ve strayed away from the hard-core practice in favour of one that’s on my own terms – no teacher, no adjustments, no pushing past my limits except on those rare days when all three key ingredients: energy, flexibility and courage, are high.
But every now and then I get a snort of courage that reignites the little flame in my belly. I think about being one of “them” again – one of those mythical Ashtangi creatures that haunt the sacred shalas all over the world in that magical hour before sunrise. ___________________________________________________________________________________________
Tuesday 31st January 2006
Still here, but the motivation to write about my inner life has been in its waning phase. Trying to make sense of life and yoga practice through writing about it ebbs back and forth on some kind of current
Because there’s just over a week to go before my boyfriend moves interstate for 10 months, we’ve been getting in a lot of quality time together, as if building up a big fat bank account of togetherness before the separation. It may or may not see us through the 10 months of his absence.
Because of this, I’ve allowed the relationship and late nights to take priority over my morning practise for these last few weeks, knowing that the change is imminent. There’s always a trade off somewhere: when he leaves, my heart will sway back a little more to its spiritual source. I can feel it coming already…more time to practice, less distraction.
Utkatasana
Practice this morning was mediocre OK. Strong Ujjiyi breath from beginning to end, which might be in danger of becoming just a bit too loud, too powerful. Some days I’m resembling a guided missile, locked onto target. Utkatasana is the pose of the moment for me. As it comes into view, I try to temper the sense of anticipation. Then it arrives. Breath by breath I deepen the squat, the arms come forward, I take them back, bit by bit. Keep adjusting the tailbone towards the heels. Keep lifting and opening the armpits up and back, softening the back shoulders down. Each adjustment deeper into the squat, I have to adjust the arms back and the tail down. It’s like a little ritual. But I’ve discovered the close relationship between Utkatasana and the following pose in the sequence, Virabhadrasana A. Don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before: the arms are raised in both poses, the pelvis naturally wants to tip forward but must be guided back to decompress the lumbar, there’s sense of deepening down towards the ground with the lower body and a lift up out of the pelvis with the upper body. And both poses ask us to lift and open up our hearts courageously to face the vast unknown. __________________________________________________________________________________________________
Wednesday 15th February 2006
After pondering all the pros and cons of returning to the shala two mornings a week in a bid to reestablish some kind of a dedicated 4-5 morning Ashtanga practice,
after listing each of the reasons why I wanted to and discovering all the fears I’ve constructed around it,
after getting this all out onto paper so the honest truth would be plain to see,
after obsessively analysing all the reasons for and against, as if that would produce the answer for me, I came across this…
STOP, right where you are.
“This moment, stop right where you are. Stop all effort to get whatever you think will give you fulfillment, whatever you think will give you truth. All that is required is one instant of truly stopping.
This one instant is elusive for most people, because as they approach the instant of stopping, an enormous welling of fear usually arises: “If I stop, if I really stop, I will slide back and lose the ground that I have gained through my efforts and practices. Even though I am still not fully satisfied, I am more satisfied than I was. I have a better life, my mind is calmer, my circumstances are better, and I might lose all of that.”
For me, it was quite extraordinary to hear this “stop.” I was certain that he was going to give me some secret knowledge—and he did. But it is only secret because it is so obvious. It is not esoteric. I was certain that he would whisper some magical formula in my ear—and he did. He said, “Stop.” It was so simple that I was thrown to the floor. My thoughts stopped, and in that stopping was more fulfillment than could ever be imagined. What we imagine as fulfillment has to do with less pain, less conflict, more pleasure, more peace, more acknowledgement, more love. But true fulfillment cannot be imagined, it can only be realized.
He told me to throw away every strategy, every technique, every tool, and to just be here and receive what he was offering. It soon sank in: “He really means what he says. He is not teaching me a new mantra, or a new practice, or a new set of beliefs, a liturgy, a catechism, or a cosmology. He is not telling me ‘what it all means’ and ‘what will happen’ and ‘why it came about.’” He was asking me to release all of that from my mind. Not that any of it was wrong. It was just that the hodgepodge of spiritual concepts I had created could never rival unconditional reality.
The problem is that finally, any attempt to go somewhere implies that you are not already there. In fact, any activity you undertake to achieve this is an obstruction to the deepest recognition of what has always been fully realized.
In this moment you can realize what does not need to be practiced to exist. This is the easiest, simplest, and most obvious truth. What has kept it a secret throughout the ages is its absolute simplicity and its immediate availability.
This simplicity is difficult, because we are taught from childhood that to achieve something, we have to learn what the steps are and then practice them. This works beautifully for any number of things. The mind is an exquisite learning tool. But self-realization, as well as the deepest inspiration and creativity, come directly from the source of the mind. Realization does not come from any doing; it comes from surrendering the mind to the source.”
“If spiritual practices serve the purpose of stopping the mind, they are strong allies. But if they deepen the belief that you are someone in particular who practices something in particular in order to get something that you do not believe is already here, then they are an obstruction. They keep you spinning around yourself rather than allowing you to deepen into yourself.”
(Extract from 'The Diamond in Your Pocket' by Gangaji)
So I was stopped in my tracks, gobsmacked.
I humbly thanked the invisible forces of the universe for this very timely reminder.
Although I’ve tasted and dwelled at length in the unconditional silence of just Being, this was like a smack in the face, the realisation that my Ego Self has resurfaced with a vengeance and stealthily led me astray again.
I’ve been veering off in the wrong direction once again believing I’m on a journey Somewhere, believing I am Someone who is on that journey, madly devising a vast array of strategies in my daily life that will help me get There, strategies such as returning to regular morning Ashtanga practice, regular evening meditation practice, regular eating patterns, simplifying my life, reducing my commitments and busyness…and so it goes on and on and on.
This Ego Self is an insidious enemy, very clever, very sneaky. The reminder to just STOP and drop all the strategies, stop all the trying to get anywhere, is an enormous relief every time I come back to it.
There’s absolutely nothing at the end of the fictitious journey. It was with us all the time. It’s here, now.
I plan to go back to Ashtanga next week, and it's no big decision now, no big deal.
Now that I’ve recognised all the ego based fears associated with it I can once again return to being a nobody, going nowhere.
This spiritual practice is not about doing and getting somewhere, but of undoing and discovering the exquisite beauty and timeless depth of Now.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Monday 13th February 2006
Real honest-to-goodness Ashtanga practice has been a hit and miss affair for me over the past few years.
After the initial honeymoon wore off, that period of time when I discovered Ashtanga and threw myself into regular practice, I was able to settle down into a minimum of 3 practices a week, often more. There have been injuries, life changes and periods of more dedicated practice - the last period being late last year, but it didn't last long.
Here I am debating once again if I should return to a dedicated daily practice, if I really need to, and why I even want to.
Looking objectively at the situation, I’m in a great position now to practice more regularly. I no longer live with my son so I don’t have to come home from work at night and cook for anyone; my boyfriend is away for at least a few months so I have more free time at night and on the weekends to just chill out if I need to. There’s really no excuse.
Because I’m obsessing over this decision again, I have to get all the thoughts and feelings around it out of my fuzzy head and into an orderly form to see the picture more clearly.
The reasons that deter me from returning to the shala I'll list here because they have one obvious thing in common:
- Fear of overcommitting myself to a physical yoga practice that my body can’t cope with
- Fear of injury from strong adjustments
- Fear of injury from being overflexible due to the heated conditions
- Fear of not being able to live up to my initial commitment to the practice
- Fear that rising at 5am 5 days a week for a full on physical daily practice may tire me out and affect my teaching performance on Saturdays
- Fear of that demoralising guilt feeling I experience when I get up at 5am and decide I don’t’ want to go. (because I don’t particularly enjoy facing up to my human weaknesses)
- Fear that I’ll be overemphasising the asana part of yoga practice which is not the point of yoga practice at all
- Fear of coming unstuck and destabilised
Yep, it’s all fear.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Friday 3rd February 2006
Ardha Chandrasana
Only 2 of us in Darrin’s led class this morning.
A subtle unspoken intimacy pervades the studio in these pre-dawn yoga sessions as we elegantly move in and out of poses, silently bonded together by our dedication to a practise that has shaped and changed our bodies and lives.
We did a few Sun Salutes, then a standing pose sequence including Vashisthasana, coming into most of the poses from Dog pose, and Ardha Chandrasana three times on each side. Some poses like Urdhva Dhanurasana get better with each repetition, some don’t; my Ardha Chandrasana started out strong and balanced, but got weaker by the third rep as my strength faded. The star like shape of this beautifully disorientating pose makes me feel strangely armless and legless, these odd appendages radiating outwards in all directions don’t seem to belong to me. I try to focus on drawing up mulabandha to get the internal support and orientation from my core – when that comes, the balance just happens.
But holding Ardha Chandrasana past the recommended use by date (which is about 5 long breaths for me) spins me out a bit and then I tend to lose the focus on my core. My internal compass starts to swing wildly around looking for North, the balance and focus that came early begin to drain rapidly away. My body begins to tire and the will to stay is all that keeps me up there.
Backbend focus today: Salabhasana, Bhujangasana, Ustrasana. The dropbacks from Ustrasana sadly I can no longer do. I gave it a test run today but as I lifted my arms up and back from the prayer position I felt my hips and lumbar seize up in fear around last year’s injury. Then the entire lower back area just went weak as if someone cut off the prana supply – there was no support from the lower back area at all. I moved to the wall and tried reaching back from Ustrasana, hands to the wall, but halfway down the wall again hit the dead resistance in my ilio-sacral area. I stayed there, hands halfway down the wall, stayed calm, stayed centred, tried engaging more bandhas and lifting up through the hips, pressing them up and forward, but I just couldn’t maintain the lift.. There’s lots and lots to work with here if I want to rebuild and heal my back.
Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana 1 and 2, Hanumanasana, some passive counter poses then a long Halasana over the chair, finishing with Janu Sirsasana and Paschimottanasana (both with head to a bolster).
I love doing this kind of asana practice once a week, but I feel a familiar longing to return to the rigour of a consistent Ashtanga practice. Maintaining a regular, committed practice at the shala is not easy for me. I’ve strayed away from the hard-core practice in favour of one that’s on my own terms – no teacher, no adjustments, no pushing past my limits except on those rare days when all three key ingredients: energy, flexibility and courage, are high.
But every now and then I get a snort of courage that reignites the little flame in my belly. I think about being one of “them” again – one of those mythical Ashtangi creatures that haunt the sacred shalas all over the world in that magical hour before sunrise.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Tuesday 31st January 2006
Still here, but the motivation to write about my inner life has been in its waning phase.
Trying to make sense of life and yoga practice through writing about it ebbs back and forth on some kind of current
Because there’s just over a week to go before my boyfriend moves interstate for 10 months, we’ve been getting in a lot of quality time together, as if building up a big fat bank account of togetherness before the separation. It may or may not see us through the 10 months of his absence.
Because of this, I’ve allowed the relationship and late nights to take priority over my morning practise for these last few weeks, knowing that the change is imminent. There’s always a trade off somewhere: when he leaves, my heart will sway back a little more to its spiritual source. I can feel it coming already…more time to practice, less distraction.
Utkatasana
Practice this morning was mediocre OK. Strong Ujjiyi breath from beginning to end, which might be in danger of becoming just a bit too loud, too powerful. Some days I’m resembling a guided missile, locked onto target.
Utkatasana is the pose of the moment for me. As it comes into view, I try to temper the sense of anticipation. Then it arrives. Breath by breath I deepen the squat, the arms come forward, I take them back, bit by bit. Keep adjusting the tailbone towards the heels. Keep lifting and opening the armpits up and back, softening the back shoulders down. Each adjustment deeper into the squat, I have to adjust the arms back and the tail down. It’s like a little ritual. But I’ve discovered the close relationship between Utkatasana and the following pose in the sequence, Virabhadrasana A. Don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before: the arms are raised in both poses, the pelvis naturally wants to tip forward but must be guided back to decompress the lumbar, there’s sense of deepening down towards the ground with the lower body and a lift up out of the pelvis with the upper body. And both poses ask us to lift and open up our hearts courageously to face the vast unknown.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
After pondering all the pros and cons of returning to the shala two mornings a week in a bid to reestablish some kind of a dedicated 4-5 morning Ashtanga practice,
after listing each of the reasons why I wanted to and discovering all the fears I’ve constructed around it,
after getting this all out onto paper so the honest truth would be plain to see,
after obsessively analysing all the reasons for and against, as if that would produce the answer for me, I came across this…
STOP, right where you are.
“This moment, stop right where you are. Stop all effort to get whatever you think will give you fulfillment, whatever you think will give you truth. All that is required is one instant of truly stopping.
This one instant is elusive for most people, because as they approach the instant of stopping, an enormous welling of fear usually arises: “If I stop, if I really stop, I will slide back and lose the ground that I have gained through my efforts and practices. Even though I am still not fully satisfied, I am more satisfied than I was. I have a better life, my mind is calmer, my circumstances are better, and I might lose all of that.”
For me, it was quite extraordinary to hear this “stop.” I was certain that he was going to give me some secret knowledge—and he did. But it is only secret because it is so obvious. It is not esoteric. I was certain that he would whisper some magical formula in my ear—and he did. He said, “Stop.” It was so simple that I was thrown to the floor. My thoughts stopped, and in that stopping was more fulfillment than could ever be imagined. What we imagine as fulfillment has to do with less pain, less conflict, more pleasure, more peace, more acknowledgement, more love. But true fulfillment cannot be imagined, it can only be realized.
He told me to throw away every strategy, every technique, every tool, and to just be here and receive what he was offering. It soon sank in: “He really means what he says. He is not teaching me a new mantra, or a new practice, or a new set of beliefs, a liturgy, a catechism, or a cosmology. He is not telling me ‘what it all means’ and ‘what will happen’ and ‘why it came about.’” He was asking me to release all of that from my mind. Not that any of it was wrong. It was just that the hodgepodge of spiritual concepts I had created could never rival unconditional reality.
The problem is that finally, any attempt to go somewhere implies that you are not already there. In fact, any activity you undertake to achieve this is an obstruction to the deepest recognition of what has always been fully realized.
In this moment you can realize what does not need to be practiced to exist. This is the easiest, simplest, and most obvious truth. What has kept it a secret throughout the ages is its absolute simplicity and its immediate availability.
This simplicity is difficult, because we are taught from childhood that to achieve something, we have to learn what the steps are and then practice them. This works beautifully for any number of things. The mind is an exquisite learning tool. But self-realization, as well as the deepest inspiration and creativity, come directly from the source of the mind. Realization does not come from any doing; it comes from surrendering the mind to the source.”
“If spiritual practices serve the purpose of stopping the mind, they are strong allies. But if they deepen the belief that you are someone in particular who practices something in particular in order to get something that you do not believe is already here, then they are an obstruction. They keep you spinning around yourself rather than allowing you to deepen into yourself.”
(Extract from 'The Diamond in Your Pocket' by Gangaji)
So I was stopped in my tracks, gobsmacked.
I humbly thanked the invisible forces of the universe for this very timely reminder.
Although I’ve tasted and dwelled at length in the unconditional silence of just Being, this was like a smack in the face, the realisation that my Ego Self has resurfaced with a vengeance and stealthily led me astray again.
I’ve been veering off in the wrong direction once again believing I’m on a journey Somewhere, believing I am Someone who is on that journey, madly devising a vast array of strategies in my daily life that will help me get There, strategies such as returning to regular morning Ashtanga practice, regular evening meditation practice, regular eating patterns, simplifying my life, reducing my commitments and busyness…and so it goes on and on and on.
This Ego Self is an insidious enemy, very clever, very sneaky. The reminder to just STOP and drop all the strategies, stop all the trying to get anywhere, is an enormous relief every time I come back to it.
There’s absolutely nothing at the end of the fictitious journey. It was with us all the time. It’s here, now.
I plan to go back to Ashtanga next week, and it's no big decision now, no big deal.
Now that I’ve recognised all the ego based fears associated with it I can once again return to being a nobody, going nowhere.
This spiritual practice is not about doing and getting somewhere, but of undoing and discovering the exquisite beauty and timeless depth of Now.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Monday 13th February 2006
Real honest-to-goodness Ashtanga practice has been a hit and miss affair for me over the past few years.
After the initial honeymoon wore off, that period of time when I discovered Ashtanga and threw myself into regular practice, I was able to settle down into a minimum of 3 practices a week, often more. There have been injuries, life changes and periods of more dedicated practice - the last period being late last year, but it didn't last long.
Here I am debating once again if I should return to a dedicated daily practice, if I really need to, and why I even want to.
Looking objectively at the situation, I’m in a great position now to practice more regularly. I no longer live with my son so I don’t have to come home from work at night and cook for anyone; my boyfriend is away for at least a few months so I have more free time at night and on the weekends to just chill out if I need to. There’s really no excuse.
Because I’m obsessing over this decision again, I have to get all the thoughts and feelings around it out of my fuzzy head and into an orderly form to see the picture more clearly.
The reasons that deter me from returning to the shala I'll list here because they have one obvious thing in common:
- Fear of overcommitting myself to a physical yoga practice that my body can’t cope with
- Fear of injury from strong adjustments
- Fear of injury from being overflexible due to the heated conditions
- Fear of not being able to live up to my initial commitment to the practice
- Fear that rising at 5am 5 days a week for a full on physical daily practice may tire me out and affect my teaching performance on Saturdays
- Fear of that demoralising guilt feeling I experience when I get up at 5am and decide I don’t’ want to go. (because I don’t particularly enjoy facing up to my human weaknesses)
- Fear that I’ll be overemphasising the asana part of yoga practice which is not the point of yoga practice at all
- Fear of coming unstuck and destabilised
Yep, it’s all fear.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Friday 3rd February 2006
Ardha Chandrasana
Only 2 of us in Darrin’s led class this morning.
A subtle unspoken intimacy pervades the studio in these pre-dawn yoga sessions as we elegantly move in and out of poses, silently bonded together by our dedication to a practise that has shaped and changed our bodies and lives.
We did a few Sun Salutes, then a standing pose sequence including Vashisthasana, coming into most of the poses from Dog pose, and Ardha Chandrasana three times on each side. Some poses like Urdhva Dhanurasana get better with each repetition, some don’t; my Ardha Chandrasana started out strong and balanced, but got weaker by the third rep as my strength faded. The star like shape of this beautifully disorientating pose makes me feel strangely armless and legless, these odd appendages radiating outwards in all directions don’t seem to belong to me. I try to focus on drawing up mulabandha to get the internal support and orientation from my core – when that comes, the balance just happens.
But holding Ardha Chandrasana past the recommended use by date (which is about 5 long breaths for me) spins me out a bit and then I tend to lose the focus on my core. My internal compass starts to swing wildly around looking for North, the balance and focus that came early begin to drain rapidly away. My body begins to tire and the will to stay is all that keeps me up there.
Backbend focus today: Salabhasana, Bhujangasana, Ustrasana. The dropbacks from Ustrasana sadly I can no longer do. I gave it a test run today but as I lifted my arms up and back from the prayer position I felt my hips and lumbar seize up in fear around last year’s injury. Then the entire lower back area just went weak as if someone cut off the prana supply – there was no support from the lower back area at all. I moved to the wall and tried reaching back from Ustrasana, hands to the wall, but halfway down the wall again hit the dead resistance in my ilio-sacral area. I stayed there, hands halfway down the wall, stayed calm, stayed centred, tried engaging more bandhas and lifting up through the hips, pressing them up and forward, but I just couldn’t maintain the lift.. There’s lots and lots to work with here if I want to rebuild and heal my back.
Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana 1 and 2, Hanumanasana, some passive counter poses then a long Halasana over the chair, finishing with Janu Sirsasana and Paschimottanasana (both with head to a bolster).
I love doing this kind of asana practice once a week, but I feel a familiar longing to return to the rigour of a consistent Ashtanga practice. Maintaining a regular, committed practice at the shala is not easy for me. I’ve strayed away from the hard-core practice in favour of one that’s on my own terms – no teacher, no adjustments, no pushing past my limits except on those rare days when all three key ingredients: energy, flexibility and courage, are high.
But every now and then I get a snort of courage that reignites the little flame in my belly. I think about being one of “them” again – one of those mythical Ashtangi creatures that haunt the sacred shalas all over the world in that magical hour before sunrise.
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Tuesday 31st January 2006
Still here, but the motivation to write about my inner life has been in its waning phase.
Trying to make sense of life and yoga practice through writing about it ebbs back and forth on some kind of current
Because there’s just over a week to go before my boyfriend moves interstate for 10 months, we’ve been getting in a lot of quality time together, as if building up a big fat bank account of togetherness before the separation. It may or may not see us through the 10 months of his absence.
Because of this, I’ve allowed the relationship and late nights to take priority over my morning practise for these last few weeks, knowing that the change is imminent. There’s always a trade off somewhere: when he leaves, my heart will sway back a little more to its spiritual source. I can feel it coming already…more time to practice, less distraction.
Utkatasana
Practice this morning was mediocre OK. Strong Ujjiyi breath from beginning to end, which might be in danger of becoming just a bit too loud, too powerful. Some days I’m resembling a guided missile, locked onto target.
Utkatasana is the pose of the moment for me. As it comes into view, I try to temper the sense of anticipation. Then it arrives. Breath by breath I deepen the squat, the arms come forward, I take them back, bit by bit. Keep adjusting the tailbone towards the heels. Keep lifting and opening the armpits up and back, softening the back shoulders down. Each adjustment deeper into the squat, I have to adjust the arms back and the tail down. It’s like a little ritual. But I’ve discovered the close relationship between Utkatasana and the following pose in the sequence, Virabhadrasana A. Don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before: the arms are raised in both poses, the pelvis naturally wants to tip forward but must be guided back to decompress the lumbar, there’s sense of deepening down towards the ground with the lower body and a lift up out of the pelvis with the upper body. And both poses ask us to lift and open up our hearts courageously to face the vast unknown.
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