Thursday 28th April 2006
3 days of practice and mystical musings
Relief - my lumbar healed itself very quickly this time – in fact it’s made a remarkable recovery. I was expecting to be out of action for at least 7-10 days, but it was really only 4 days before I felt it starting to improve. After spending the weekend in agony, on ice packs, immobilised and feeling sorry for myself, I skipped practice on Monday. Monday evening a little movement came back into the lumbar – Squirming felt good.
Tuesday morning’s practice in the Gallery was a delight. With only a slight shift in my intention, the Ashtanga sequence of poses became a stable backdrop on which I could conduct my investigation. Feeling out the condition of my lumbar as it responded to each pose, bending, stretching, twisting, lifting, weight bearing – I was exploring, testing and analysing how far it would go and playing with miniscule internal adjustments that poked into the still tender tissues.
Being fully present in every cell of my body during practice is a joy – yoking together mind and body into one energetic force is like a micro experience or preparation for the ultimate Union which occurs with enlightenment.
These times of injury (even minor ones like this) are times when I connect very intimately into my body, and I love it. You can’t let the mind wander when you’re practising with an injury – pain is waiting just around the corner – you have to watch where you’re going. Injury, illness, painful life changes, they’re are all opportunities to become friends with what we initially judge as obstacles. I guess I’ve moved on from the mindset that I need to GET anywhere. When I’m completely immersed in awareness of the moment during my physical yoga practice, not only watching the arising sensations, feelings and thoughts, but also loving them, there is relatedness, and a tenderness for the frailty of my human condition, a palpable fullness that lovingly fills out my skin and flesh. This is the only place I ever need to be.
Standing poses were all solid, connected, earthy and deep. I love the standing poses – they’re so safe, grounding and reassuring when you’ve got an injury. A tentative jump through to the seated poses left me feeling a little less safe. Limited to about 50% of my normal bendy range, all the forward bends needed extra care. Ditto for the backbends.
On Wednesday I went to Mysore practice at the shala and told David about my back before I started. This is out of character for me, as I’m a grin and bear it girl, not one to whinge or let on about what’s going on for me. I prefer to silently suffer in the privacy of my homely inner world. Telling others about injury or personal problems seems to give those things an exaggerated power and weighting that distorts our perception. Whatever I put out into the world through my words becomes more solidifed and entrenched into my belief system (belief system supports Ego identification). And I’m very wary of the limiting internal dialogue that prevents us from realising how powerful we are.
But having said all that, I didn’t want David thinking I was slacking off and adjusting me more deeply into a forward bend, so I thought it best to tell him this time.
What was funny was that I didn’t need to. As I moved through practice I was surprised by what I could do – a lot of flexibility had returned in the last 24 hours. And strength – it was beautiful. It was one of those days when you get taken by surprise – where did this lovely body come from, full of exuberance and vitality? My lumbar was still restricting me but the depth of focus and pure physical energy allowed me to move past the hard edge of muscular trauma and access the pliability that only comes from a deeply integrated mind/body connection.
I actually practised so well that as I rolled up my mat to leave, I felt quite silly for even mentioning by limbar incident to David. He admitted that he wouldn’t have known I was injured.
This morning (Thursday) was similar to yesterday. A fulfilling, integrated practice.
My breathing was out of this world as if I’d tapped into the universal breath. The pulsation of prana through my body was awesome and felt like it was flushing out mental and physical obstacles, undeterred by any blockages. The Ashtanga Vinyasa practice is often described as heating and fiery, which supposedly brings samskaras to the surface and burns them up and I sort of felt that happening in the first year of practice. Now as I connect more sensitively to my energetic body and the movement of prana, the purifying process feels less fiery, more windy, like a sweeping out of the cobwebs from an empty room.
Moving seamlessly into Savasana from the final poses, the entirety of my being was pulsating in time with the energy of the universe, filled to the brim with the primordial power that courses through all life.
THIS is what I practice for, the stirring up of the mystical heart stuff lying dormant in the shadowy back recesses of the soul. And believe me, when it gets stirred, it rises with a silent but explosive force and finds release only through an opening of the heart. The soul is left glowing, the eyes are alight, the invisible sheaths of the inner body are shimmering and have no choice but to expand outwards in all directions to accommodate the enormous power generated by lighting the fire of our divine potential.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
3 days of practice and mystical musings
Relief - my lumbar healed itself very quickly this time – in fact it’s made a remarkable recovery. I was expecting to be out of action for at least 7-10 days, but it was really only 4 days before I felt it starting to improve. After spending the weekend in agony, on ice packs, immobilised and feeling sorry for myself, I skipped practice on Monday. Monday evening a little movement came back into the lumbar – Squirming felt good.
Tuesday morning’s practice in the Gallery was a delight. With only a slight shift in my intention, the Ashtanga sequence of poses became a stable backdrop on which I could conduct my investigation. Feeling out the condition of my lumbar as it responded to each pose, bending, stretching, twisting, lifting, weight bearing – I was exploring, testing and analysing how far it would go and playing with miniscule internal adjustments that poked into the still tender tissues.
Being fully present in every cell of my body during practice is a joy – yoking together mind and body into one energetic force is like a micro experience or preparation for the ultimate Union which occurs with enlightenment.
These times of injury (even minor ones like this) are times when I connect very intimately into my body, and I love it. You can’t let the mind wander when you’re practising with an injury – pain is waiting just around the corner – you have to watch where you’re going. Injury, illness, painful life changes, they’re are all opportunities to become friends with what we initially judge as obstacles. I guess I’ve moved on from the mindset that I need to GET anywhere. When I’m completely immersed in awareness of the moment during my physical yoga practice, not only watching the arising sensations, feelings and thoughts, but also loving them, there is relatedness, and a tenderness for the frailty of my human condition, a palpable fullness that lovingly fills out my skin and flesh. This is the only place I ever need to be.
Standing poses were all solid, connected, earthy and deep. I love the standing poses – they’re so safe, grounding and reassuring when you’ve got an injury. A tentative jump through to the seated poses left me feeling a little less safe. Limited to about 50% of my normal bendy range, all the forward bends needed extra care. Ditto for the backbends.
On Wednesday I went to Mysore practice at the shala and told David about my back before I started. This is out of character for me, as I’m a grin and bear it girl, not one to whinge or let on about what’s going on for me. I prefer to silently suffer in the privacy of my homely inner world. Telling others about injury or personal problems seems to give those things an exaggerated power and weighting that distorts our perception. Whatever I put out into the world through my words becomes more solidifed and entrenched into my belief system (belief system supports Ego identification). And I’m very wary of the limiting internal dialogue that prevents us from realising how powerful we are.
But having said all that, I didn’t want David thinking I was slacking off and adjusting me more deeply into a forward bend, so I thought it best to tell him this time.
What was funny was that I didn’t need to. As I moved through practice I was surprised by what I could do – a lot of flexibility had returned in the last 24 hours. And strength – it was beautiful. It was one of those days when you get taken by surprise – where did this lovely body come from, full of exuberance and vitality? My lumbar was still restricting me but the depth of focus and pure physical energy allowed me to move past the hard edge of muscular trauma and access the pliability that only comes from a deeply integrated mind/body connection.
I actually practised so well that as I rolled up my mat to leave, I felt quite silly for even mentioning by limbar incident to David. He admitted that he wouldn’t have known I was injured.
This morning (Thursday) was similar to yesterday. A fulfilling, integrated practice.
My breathing was out of this world as if I’d tapped into the universal breath. The pulsation of prana through my body was awesome and felt like it was flushing out mental and physical obstacles, undeterred by any blockages. The Ashtanga Vinyasa practice is often described as heating and fiery, which supposedly brings samskaras to the surface and burns them up and I sort of felt that happening in the first year of practice. Now as I connect more sensitively to my energetic body and the movement of prana, the purifying process feels less fiery, more windy, like a sweeping out of the cobwebs from an empty room.
Moving seamlessly into Savasana from the final poses, the entirety of my being was pulsating in time with the energy of the universe, filled to the brim with the primordial power that courses through all life.
THIS is what I practice for, the stirring up of the mystical heart stuff lying dormant in the shadowy back recesses of the soul. And believe me, when it gets stirred, it rises with a silent but explosive force and finds release only through an opening of the heart. The soul is left glowing, the eyes are alight, the invisible sheaths of the inner body are shimmering and have no choice but to expand outwards in all directions to accommodate the enormous power generated by lighting the fire of our divine potential.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
