Echidnas

Sunday 11th November 2007

Not on the mat
Another day without a yoga practice....It’ s becoming the norm not the exception.
I’m losing track of how many days it’s been since the last one. Was it last Tuesday – I hope not.
Today and yesterday I took off to Horsenell Gully and walked the vigorous 80 minute trek up and down the hills. My determined stride was interrupted by an echidna wandering just as determinedly across my path. These shy creatures with pinnocchio noses that tunnel into the earth are covered in spikes but this is so wrong….they should be covered in fur. Perhaps back in aboriginal dreamtime they did have koala-wombat fur and an evil spirit put a hex on them. Doomed for eternity to wear a coat of spikes so no-one will ever cuddle or pat them. A life lived untouched.

The Exhibition Opening

Saturday 10th November

A warm balmy evening at an art gallery in the centre of the city. People with glasses of wine spilling out onto the street, most conversations brief, shallow and awkwardly saccharine, an occasional moment of depth following a comment or a wink of an eye, an insecurity shared, a common feeling acknowledged.

It was Renate and Louise’s opening night, the one and only exhibition opening I’ll attend socially this year. Working in a tertiary art School for 10 years, I’ve gained a network of arty friends and acquaintances by a natural process of osmosis, some of them emerging artists, some unknowns, some despised, some highly regarded and some legendary in the counter-culture circles.

As a confirmed anti-social recluse, networking and socialising for me is like sipping on arsenic.

Yet how easily I can slip into real conversations with sculptors. They seem to think about things and express their creativity more organically – they think AROUND things, they explore the space which contains things, they’re experimenting outside the square. Their minds have that pliable quality that I’ve been finding in my practice lately. I tend to think of sculptors and 3D artists as the truly creative and misunderstood elite practitioners of the art world – not unlike Ashtangis in the yoga world.

Blogging

Friday 9th November 2007

I’ve occasionally thought about trying to blog every day.
I write almost every day. I’ve become one of those dead set regulars at the local café at 8am every morning, the baristas know my name and just make my coffee without me even ordering. They must wonder what I write about so fervently every day while sipping my espresso, but they never ask. And good that they don’t because my privacy would be violated, my cover blown, and I might have to change cafes.

But do I get to publish what I scribble? It’s rare. With such a busy busy life, there’s not enough time for the thoughts and feelings that arise over that morning coffee to bear fruit. I desperately need a decent block of time to reflect, to allow the thoughts to meander where they will, gathering moss, gathering momentum til they form something of substance and insight. Two coffees perhaps. Then, and only then, once it is worthwhile and insightful, will I type it up, connect, copy/paste and publish.

Half an hour over coffee is barely enough time to even scribble my practice notes. If I tried to do daily blog entries (actually publishing them to my weblog) you’d get all the endlessly superficial thoughts, so is it worth me skimming off the scum from the top of my mind every day and smearing it over a screen?
Do I really need to advertise what preoccupies my small mind while my big mind is stting back in the armchair patiently waiting for my thoughts to stop flying around and settle into it arms?

On the Mat
Renate send me an SMS on Wednesday night saying she wouldn’t be coming to practice in the Gallery on Thursday morning. So Thursday practice was walking the dog again.Today I did a short practice along with Sharath’s CD, but only up to Janu Sirsasana (have I discovered a new exit point?), but that was enough to give me a kick start to the day.

On the Mat

Tuesday 6th November 2007

Fantastic practice this morning. Every primary pose attempted and conquered, well in my mind anyway (the only exception being Supta Kurmasana – attempted and defeated yet again).
Since it WAS such a good practice Supta K was particularly disappointing, my hands barely touched. It wasn’t so long ago that I could bind to the wrist and get my feet touching by myself before the teacher came round to cross my ankes behind my head. Now…well…let’s not rub it in.
This pose needs curve and stretch across the lower back and mobility in the hip joints, and my body just won’t comply. But I did get Marichy D on both sides today which was heartening. Funny that…it actually turned out to be less intense than Marichy A! Marichy A is currently triggering all my alarm buttons – the articulation in the hip joint of this position, coupled with the forward bend means I have to do some real deep breathing to calm the panic pains arising in my lumbar.

My Son

Monday 5th November 2007

A sleepless might worrying myself sick about my son. He looked awful last night, barely able to hold himself upright but still fighting against his body’s deterioration, still pleading for some kind of intervention.
We’ll see two more doctors this week, and a neurologist and endocrinologist in about two weeks time. I pray he can last that long. It’s unbearable for him. We were talking last night about admitting him to hospital – that’s the end of the line really. Whatever is wrong in his sytem has not shown up in any tests so far, so no-one is taking him seriously. Yet this once strong, athletic, powerful young man has wasted away to a ghost in 6 months despite eating well and trying to keep up his basic exercise routine.

I got up an hour after the alarm went off and did Surya namaskars, standing poses, a couple of forward bends, a backbend, and a cut down finishing sequence.
My head aches with the heaviness of anguish for the trauma my son is enduring.

Sunday 4th November 2007

I didn’t set my alarm or have any expectation of practising this morning so I woke up in a slightly better mood – no guilt or disappointment in myself.
I threw on some clothes and drove up to Horsenell Gully for a walk. At some point in the middle of the walk, the sun disappeared behind a cloud. A freaky torrent of rain poured down and soaked my clothes to my skin. I was drenched. Then the sun came out again as if nothing had happened. Sort of sums up my moods lately. One day I’ll be soaked in my son’s pain and anguish, drowning with the weight of it, next day I’ll rise above it, feeling strong and clear and sunny.
Horsenell Gully saves me from drowning in life’s dramas – the sheer physical work of walking up the steep winding paths reinvigorates my energy system and the energy in natural places is very healing. Good combination.

Too close to the core

Saturday 3rd November 2007

I woke up crying this morning – it happens occasionally when I get caught up in what my son is going through, but it’s not such a bad thing to cry – tears relieve the pain a little. But today it meant I didn’t have the emotional strength to go to mysore practice at the shala as I’d planned.
Every second Saturday I work in the art gallery. It’s a six day working week. How on earth did I manage to do this AND teach two yoga classes last year – no wonder my mind/body rebelled with injuries.

Even without the teaching, life is crammed full. The busyness keeps me on a superficially even plane. But when I have a full weekend off, when I take time to breathe more slowly with the natural pulse of life, I sink straight to the bottom and all the unacknowledged feelings are there waiting for me.
I wonder if this rings true for a lot people who keep themselves constantly busy. We purposefully avoid getting too close to our core, because as we get closer to it, all we can see and feel is an emptiness – deep down, past the ego personality, we have no substance and what we face when we’ve dug through all those layers of personality and character is nothing – nobody home – and for most people that can be scary.

Many people I know who suffer from depression are sensitive, perceptive people who live close to their core. They sense that our modern life is artificial, that society keeps us all on a pointless merry-go-round, and the average person in the street is sleepwalking in denial.
When you’re depressed you FEEL – REALLY DEEPLY. And what you feel is great sadness and emptiness because there seems to be no purpose to life, no reason to do, achieve, aspire, create or even live. So close to the Truth, but not close enough to recognise that in that empty space is God – waiting patiently, calling softly.

Buddha’s four Noble Truths (roughtly translated):
1) Life is suffering
2) Suffering is caused by our desires and attachments
2) There is a way out of suffering
4) The Way

Perhaps we get pulled into the centre of our dark internal Universe because this is the only place where the secret can be revealed, where the ultimate Truth of our Divine essence is hidden. But the trip there through suffering is hell.
Depression is that place where we hover at the edge of the precipice, looking into emptiness, overcome by fear, unknowing and darkness. We’ve come too far and the road that brought us here has disappeared so there’s no way to get back.
Depression is the edge of the precipice.

It’s often said that crisis and trauma bring many people to the spiritual search. When the superficial and petty concerns of daily life are replaced by life threatening ones they are exposed as fraudulent, and we are plunged into the dark death of unknowing, where all our beliefs are shattered and we are left naked. That’s when the instinct to survive, to go beyond, will expand our minds.
This is when we suddenly find ourselves opening to new possibilities. This is when parts of our old mental structure and limiting belief systems dissolve away, creating space for the neglected spirit to awaken and flow in.

I am fortunate to have discovered my divine core, that God is within, that I am It - though it needs constant reinforcement not to forget and fall back into the old habits of thinking. And when I do, when the inevitable trials of life threaten to engulf me, I have to remember what I am and who I am not. I have to reach in and touch heaven with my fingertips.
But for gentle, sensitive people like my son and my sister who still cling to the edge of the precipice, who are stuck between the two worlds, life is lived in hell.
If only I could reach out with my fingertips and touch them too, tip them softly over the edge into the real world of wonder.

Exit Points and Inner Thighs

Thursday 1st November 2007

Practice started off strong but the joyride only lasted for the standing poses. At that point it changed into a passive Iyengar practice. I seem to have created certain exit points in this sequence, different places where I get off, like a bus stop. Doing this practice alone, outside the watchful eye of a Mysore class, I’m more prone to giving up early.

Exit point 1 is at the end of the Surya Namaskars – it’s pretty sad if I get off here and I don’t even count it as practice.

Exit point 2 is at the end of the standing poses – this seems like a short practice when judged by Ashtanga standards, but at least I’ve done something. And besides I’ve been to many Iyengar classes in my time where the entire 80 minute class has consisted of the full repertoire of standing poses followed by inversions with all their variations, and ending of course with Savasana, so if I get off at this exit point and do a few inversions at least I can feel like I’ve done the equivalent to a real class.

Exit point 3 is after Marichyasana C. Exiting here means my energy has waned, the seated poses have become a chore and I’ve started skipping the vinyasas, so I know I won’t have the mental determination, stamina or will to attempt Marichy D so that rough little trip from Bhuja to Supta K is unthinkable.
If I exit at Marichy C, I usually attempt a few extra poses like Baddha Konasana, Supta Padangusthasana and a couple of backbends before the finishing poses, so once again it’s not such as bad practice by “other” standards (I tell myself).

Then there’s exit point 4 at Urdhva Mukha Paschimottanasana which only happens when I’m so emotionally exhausted that I can’t summon the strength or courage to face any backbending – this was a common exit point last year but happily I rarely get off here now as backbending is the highlight of my practice these days even if I exit early.

Inner Thighs
Here’s a little gem I’ve discovered in the Surya Namaskars: an awareness of the inner thighs. When I was teaching yoga I often instructed students in Downward Dog pose to roll the inner thighs back and lift the inner thigh flesh up to the ceiling (rather than rolling it around toward the back of the thigh). This gives the sensation of a subtle upward lift. Lately I’ve been remembering this in my own practice and applying it not just in Dog Pose but in sun salutes and vinyasas, and consciously combining it with mula bandha.

This simple instruction has the initial effect of helping beginners with the pelvic tilt forward, but when the pelvis is tilted too far forward you can’t engage mula bandha to its maximum and therefore the energy from the lower body is not being fully drawn upwards. So as practice becomes more refined and subtle, it’s fascinating to play with the degree of pelvic tilt that allows the best flow of energy.

To describe it more: I’m in the standing forward bend…inhale and look up…exhale bend the knees and jump back to Chaturanga Dandasana. Right at this point I focus awareness on my inner thighs, engage these muscles and roll them upwards. At first I didn’t feel anything happening and couldn’t make the connection – it’s a real dead area – but just by trying seomthing was stimulated. During the next two moves, inhaling to Upward Dog and exhaling to Downward Dog, all my attention is focussed on consistently lifting the inner thighs and engaging Mula Bandha.

I don’t’ know why I’ve got this sudden fascination with my inner thighs. Maybe they’re just waking up after all these years. It’s quite exciting feeling life and awareness return to long dead parts of the body.