Here's to the Practice!

I'm off on vacation starting tomorrow, so this will be my last post of the year. I'm planning for some real time off...no day job, no teaching, no blogging. I'll be spending the next week having some leisurely morning practices (with no hurry to be at work on time!), spending some quality time with my husband and some time with friends.

I'm ending the year on the blog with a quote by Tim Miller from the 'Guruji' book.

Guy Donahaye asks this question:
"Where do you think the legacy of this practice will go after Guruji stops teaching?"

And Tim begins his answer with this:
"Years ago, those of us who were practicing ashtanga yoga and feeling great benefit from it would say to each other that it's only a matter of time before this stuff catches on."

It has, of course, "caught on". :)

...and the legacy is all of us...those who practice in a shala, those who practice with groups, those who practice at home alone.

So my toast to the New Year: Here's to the Practice!

Yoga Sutra 2.18-2.25: Moving the Viewfinder

Yoga Sutras 2.18 - 2.25:

"Nature, its three qualities, sattva, rajas and tamas, and its evolutes, the elements, mind, senses of perception and organs of action, exist eternally to serve the seer, for enjoyment or emancipation. The gunas generate their characteristic divisions and energies in the seer. Their stages are distinguishable and non-distinguishable, differentiable and non-differentiable. The seer is pure consciousness. He witnesses nature without being reliant on it. Nature and intelligence exist solely to serve the seer's true purpose, emancipation. The relationship with nature ceases for emancipated beings, its purpose having been fulfilled, but its processes continue to affect others. The conjunction of the seer with the seen is for the seer to discover his own true nature. Lack of spiritual understanding (avidya) is the cause of the false identification of the seer with the seen.
The destruction of ignorance through right knowledge breaks the link binding the seer to the seen. This is kaivalya, emancipation."

-translation by B.K. S. Iyengar

Thoughts:
This is a big chunk of Yoga Sutra for a single blog post, but as they all sound to me to be moving towards the same point I thought I'd just post this whole section.

What I'm hearing from this section of the Yoga Sutra:
I need the world to push against. I need all the things that irritate me and frustrate me and amuse me and impress me. I need something to be attached to in order to catch myself in a moment of attachment and get a glimpse of what that looks like. It's in knowing what attachment looks like that I can begin to see what non-attachment looks like. Practice has given me a method of really hearing how loud the world in and outside my mind is. It's only now that I know what the noise sounds like, that I notice when it's missing, when it's gone quiet.

"The conjunction of the seer with the seen is for the seer to discover his own true nature."

Something I that catches my attention throughout the Yoga Sutra that is echoed again here is Patanjali's suggestion that this non-attachment is a process. He does suggest that disentangling ourselves from all the stickiness is possible, but also seems to suggest that we won't learn to step out of our "relationship with nature" until we have spent some time tangled up in the web of defining ourselves and the situations we find ourselves in.

"The relationship with nature ceases for emancipated beings, its purpose having been fulfilled, but its processes continue to affect others."

I notice a sort of back and forth in life of feeling more deeply tangled in situations as they arise and then feeling space from them. Much of the feeling has to do I think, with where I'm standing when I look at life stuff. Moving the viewfinder has a lot to do with what I see and how caught up I feel in "nature" versus how much space I feel.

A great recent post by Patrick got me thinking more about what happens when you stand somewhere else.
Here's an excerpt:
"Nurture's not easy if you're a boy, especially if you're one with good exposure to gender politics. Obviously, nurture is marked feminine in this culture. I was having lunch last week in the campus center and sitting near a table of about eight college guys: sporty, trendy, loud. The energy coming off them, the sheer extroverted testosterone, was absolutely tactile, touchable, visible. Instinctively, I didn't care for it, because those guys mocked me for years when I was in my teens, but then I re-looked at them, imagined them as guys who'd maybe gotten curious about the US yoga trend and walked into my room. And that changed everything; they became powerful bodies with curiosity, with shyness, and immediately I developed a sort of intimate empathy with them. Just to play with it, I let my view switch from one to the other, reinventing the human beings in front of me by means of different lenses. Then it became very funny and amusing and I turned someone that I used to be, into a tool in my toolkit."

I love that! What if the next time I feel stuck, when I feel absolutely glued to one definition of a situation, what if I just stood somewhere else?

"The destruction of ignorance through right knowledge breaks the link binding the seer to the seen. This is kaivalya, emancipation."

It's Not Discipline, It's Love

Several years ago at a workshop, I remember David Williams saying that he didn't do a daily Ashtanga practice because he was disciplined, but because he just loved the practice. (paraphrasing here as I didn't write it down)
...I also remember wanting to roll my eyes when he said that...

Of course daily practice requires discipline! Getting out of bed is hard!...but I think I do really understand what he meant. I love this practice. I couldn't walk away from it if I tried.

This week was definitely a testament to that. I was grumpy from the first sound of the alarm on Monday and I'm not sure I've fully shaken it off yet. Unseasonably low temperatures made leaving the warmth of the covers for a COLD studio a struggle. (My studio space is unheated, since I live in Florida and most of the year it's not an issue.) I have so much respect for those of you up north who do this...I don't know how you manage it! A combination of the cold weather, ladies holiday and a headache that I couldn't shake for 3 days left me feeling distracted and like a lead weight most of the week. I'm sure all the extra sugar I've eaten lately didn't help matters. ;)

Discipline alone would not have gotten me out of bed this week. Only love of the practice could manage to drag me out to the studio, turn on the space heaters, and nudge me into the first surya namaskara. Once I was there, I was still glad to be there...despite the lead weight body and distracted mind.

David Williams might be on to something...

Think of Your Practice in Terms of Decades...

A student of Tim Miller's once said at a workshop that I was attending that Tim had advised her to think of her practice in terms of decades rather than in days or months.

It's been more than 10 years now since my first led Ashtanga class. I've been hanging on for about 9 years of regular practice; it's been a mix of Mysore classes and home practice. The biggest shift in that time has been a move from focus on the physical to focus on the mental. I found the primary series exhausting and daunting for a long time. I don't now. It's comfortable, familiar and soothing to my nervous system. On the one day a week that I practice primary now, it's a joy to do.

It's interesting to me that although the poses that present my daily challenge in the intermediate sequence ask increasing physical efforts from my body, it's really the mental challenge in this sequence that I find the hardest. Kapotasana is an intense, deep stretch, but it's really the mental challenge of convincing myself to go there and then to stay there that I wrestle with. It's much the same with Karandavasana. That pose asks so much strength from my body. The biggest challenge for me is staying with it and using all the strength that I have to do what I can. It is so easy to let the mind convince me that "I can't" and then give up and fall out before I really have to.

A similar shift has mirrored practice on the mat in my life off the mat. I started practice with a lot of physical irritation. I wasn't crazy about the body I was given and would have gladly traded it in for a different model. I felt glued to body image issues lingering from childhood and teenage years.
...and while there are still ghosts of that "stuff" that I notice from time to time, I am physically generally comfortable now.

The big lesson of the first decade for me seems to be: "when the body goes mostly quiet, you can really hear the mind...and it is LOUD!"

The primary series has done it's work and for the most part left me with less "physical white noise". Now I watch the second series push all my buttons and listen to my mind yell in protest. I can't wait to see what the next 10 years will bring. :)

Yoga Sutras 2.12-2.17...the Grinchmas Edition

Haven't posted much on the Yoga Sutras recently, so here's a section to ponder on...

Yoga Sutras 2.12-2.17
The accumulated imprints of past lives, rooted in afflictions, will be experienced in present and future lives. As long as the root of actions exists, it will give rise to class of birth, span of life and experiences. The wise man knows that owing to fluctuations, the qualities of nature, and subliminal impressions, even pleasant experiences are tinged with sorrows, and he keeps aloof from them. The pains which are yet to come can be and are to be avoided. The cause of pain is the association or identification of the seer (atma) with the seen (prakrti) and the remedy lies in their dissociation.
-Iyengar translation

Thoughts:
This is definitely a time of year when I have difficulty getting off the hamster wheel...so to speak. I leave most family gatherings feeling insecure, full of self-doubt and just generally picked on. As the lone liberal yoga teacher, field biologist and vegetarian of the family, I do stand out...despite efforts to stay quietly in the background. The rest of the family have sensible stable jobs mostly having to do with either numbers or computers. "The holidays" leave me with that panicky feeling that you might get in a cave if you were afraid of enclosed spaces or on the edge of the Grand Canyon if you were afraid of heights. I have the urge to bolt and hide from all things "holiday" related until the whole business is over. Those who of you who love this time of year can feel totally free to think I'm terrible person...I understand.

How much of what I feel at this time of year is a mental and physical response to a pattern set off by a date on a calendar that I allow myself to respond to without pause....maybe not an "imprint of past lives", but an imprint of past decades for sure. Patanjali seems to me to suggest, that if I don't change the pattern, I'm doomed to repeat it, Groundhog's Day style, for a long time.

It reminds me of a great recent post by Claudia talking about our chances to pause and make the decision to do it differently this time.
She says: "I cannot always control the first arrow, my dad will die, my sister will stop talking to me, that will come, it's life. I can however, work on my reaction to this arrow, I can control my own reaction, observe what happens in me but not react, clean up my own neurosis."
...beautifully said and so true. That in essence is our work.

I like this section of the Yoga Sutra because it suggests that all the patterns we have created...even the "holiday dread" can be changed. "The pains which are yet to come can be and are to be avoided."

Unfortunately, it also suggests that there is work to do to shift the pattern and that work is mine to do....so much easier to complain about others.... "The cause of pain is the association or identification of the seer (atma) with the seen (prakrti) and the remedy lies in their dissociation."

Right then: I am not my job, my political views, the food I eat (or don't eat) and neither is my family. Despite their concern over what I do with life and my puzzlement over what they do with theirs, we do care about one another...and I think Patanjali would agree that if we can keep the focus there, it is enough.
"The cause of pain is the association or identification of the seer (atma) with the seen (prakrti) and the remedy lies in their dissociation."

Yoga and Injury

I'm going to dive in and write just a little bit about something that stirs up a lot of chatter from time to time...yoga and injury.

It's on my mind because, of course, I've managed to injury something...sprained my thumb actually. Apparently there is not really a good way to fall out of Mayurasana. I went too far forward, panicked as I realized a face plant was imminent and when into some weird roll to the side...unfortunately with my arms pinned underneath me...ouch!
As injuries go, it's not really too bad. Most of the swelling went down in a couple days and I'm able to practice on it. Palms to the floor is no problem; I just can't reach the thumb around to bind anything at the moment.

The whole process of working through injury and all the muttering that surrounds the topic is so interesting to me! I'm always puzzled with the view, often from those who don't actually practice yoga of any style, that when an injury happens, someone was doing "bad yoga". Often it's the pose itself that gets the blame; chakrasana gets mentioned in this context as does chaturanga. (Check out a great article on chaturanga, injury and the shoulder joint by David Keil.)

First of all, it just seems unfair to have this expectation of perfection from anything physical. If I twisted an ankle playing basketball with friends or stumbled over something in the street while going running, no one would bat an eye! Secondly, If my attention to the present moment were so steady that it never wandered and I was always perfectly aware, then I wouldn't need asana practice...I'd already be enlightened!!

Right then, now have the ranting out of my system...on to some thoughts on the process of working through injury...

Over the course of about 9 years of regular practice, I have tweaked things from time to time. Thankfully, it hasn't happened often and only in 2 cases has it taken more than a couple weeks to heal. Every time though, I've gone through a similar mental process during practice while modifying to accommodate the injury. Injury always seems to prompt a super steady focus in my practice. The thought of having to give up practice completely or that I might make the injury worse seems to draw in all my attention to every breath and movement. I follow each movement so carefully, scanning the body to see how the injury is responding to every shift.

It always gives me a lot to think about as far as attention during practice and what practice really consists of. It's always just a little bit humbling to back up (so to speak) and modify poses that I'm used to doing full expression of. This is a good thing! It reminds me practice is whatever I can do with my best effort at paying attention. If this is really to be a lifetime practice, then there will likely come some day when I will have to let full expression of some pose go. Better to start practicing that now from time to time.

As Ashtangis we have 3 places provided to place the attention: breath, bandha and driste. When my body points out very clearly that I wasn't paying attention, it's a reminder to refocus my attention on the fundamentals.

Practice

A third and last post of my thoughts on David Keil’s adjustment workshop…
Whether a workshop is great or just ok depends for sure on the quality of the presenter’s material and how they share it, but I think it also depends on the group of participants. The adjustment workshop in Savannah was especially good because everyone really wanted to learn.

All the time spent assisting others and being assisted got me thinking…we never really practice alone.

Even early in the morning, when I’m the only one in the studio or when I throw my mat down in a quiet spot somewhere, ostensibly to practice alone, my practice is really not "mine". It's really a cumulative product of everyone who has ever guided me, assisted me or just breathed alongside of me...along with my own "stuff" of course. When I think “I” have just done something new that I’ve never done before in my asana practice, I should really be thinking “we”. I might be doing the action, but the credit goes to everyone who was along on the ride.

If I think of it like this, it gives the ego’s hold on thoughts of "achievement" a good shake. This shifts my feelings to ones of gratitude and makes me smile. I realize that we never really practice in isolation. The community and lineage is always present.