Thursday 25th September 2007

Thank you to every soul out there who has sent their prayers...know that they exert an invisible power and that I am grateful.

I read a book recently called The Divine Matrix by Gregg Braden which attempted to explain the web-like links we all have with each other – sort of new age quantum physics mixed with mysticism. It didn’t quite go all the way to say that we are all The One, but it certainly alluded to it.
I have no doubt that as one human being suffers, at an invisible level we all do. As one heart ascends, so all of humanity is lifted.

My son is now fighting an enormous battle to regain his foothold on sanity. If he can get back onto solid ground I'm sure he'll be able to claw his way back to mental and physical health.
He is a fighter, a boxer, a warrior. He will survive.
He refuses to accept what has happened to him, to allow the people who so recklessly prescribed these debilitating drugs then dismissed his concerns to get away with destroying the life he'd built up. Unfortunately this attitude is probably increasing his suffering and turmoil, as he replays the events over and over in his mind in an attempt to gain clarity and understanding. It’s hard to know what approach is best: acceptance of his plight so he can move forward from this low point, or his stubborn refusal to accept it so he can fight the injustice, get even with the perpetrators and achieve some emotional compensation.

How can so-called ‘experts’ in the mental health profession be so unintelligent and insensitive?
Prior to this I’d had no contact with the mental health system, so it’s been a shock to discover that practitioners (mainly psychiatrists) rarely help people with empathetic and genuine counselling. Believe me I’ve heard some real horror stories lately.

If my son had listened to the two psychiatrists and one psychologist/pain expert we consulted, he would be in hospital and brain dead beyond repair by now. And someone with less guts than my son might have, in that situation, conceded that their mind was not clear enough to know what would help them and actually listened to these idiots.
Seriously…Electo Convulsive Therapy?
Anyone with half a brain knows INSTINCTIVELY that this treatment is barbaric and irreversible. Our brains and minds are exquisitely sensitive instruments, of a complexity that is light years beyond the comprehension of our most advanced scientific experts. This treatment does not act precisely to address a specific neural imbalance, it fries everything, yet it's so readily recommended as safe these days that we could be forgiven for believing this. NOT SO. Dr Peter Breggin again has exposed the long term damage it causes to patients in this article.

So where does that leave my son right now?
Thankfully the absolute shock and despair of his mental and physical deterioration has subsided and he is no longer suicidal. I’ve encouraged him to recognise his inner strength, I've validated all his experiences as real, and I've vowed to do whatever it takes to get him on the path to recovery.
We are still trying to find someone who may be able to shed light on exactly what has changed in his neural/chemical makeup and this is giving him hope. Today I will contact some neuropsychiatrists to see if any may be sympathetic and willing to help him unravel the mystery of why he is still deteriorating and why the thick fog of anaesthesia in his head won't budge, three months after stopping all medication.

All his medical and blood tests are normal, which reinforces our growing awareness of the limitations of western medicine. Something in his physiology really isn't functioning properly (or at all) and we can't get answers to what it is, so now we're exploring alternative therapies to address his declining health and extreme chronic fatigue.
From a yoga perspective, I’d say his life force is drying up, or perhaps it is just blocked. His body seems unable to generate it despite an extremely healthy vegetarian diet and sincere attempts to exercise.
Up til now, my son (a Taurus through and through) has been stoically resistant to anything ‘alternative’ (yoga, acupuncture, ch’i kung, ayurveda etc). He lumped it all in the ‘hippy’ category. Today we'll visit the Chinese doctor for acupuncture and herbs, which is an extraordinary U-turn for him. I’m astounded and grateful that he is now open to this. But I guess he's desperate. If Chinese traditional medicine doesn't help, next on the list is homeopathy, then perhaps some other healing modalities. But I firmly believe that with the passing of time, Nature will bring his system back into it's natural balance - he just needs time, faith and patience.

On the mat
Yes I’m still practising.
Yoga practice is both the anchor that grounds me and the breeze that lifts my spirits. Now, more than ever, those two hours are for returning to the safe house, temporarily out of the war zone.

6am practice in the Gallery on Tuesday turned out to be a reunion – Renate, Kosta and Sasha all turned up. I started off slow and deliberate, but steadily built up a powerful momentum which carried me through every pose in the entire primary sequence. A full practice at last.

Standing poses were grounded by the breath-focus in my feet rising to fill out the poses from the ground up, and after a strong Virabradrasana B, a little prompt made me try a freestanding Handstand at the front of my mat. The prompt came from nowhere, but I followed, kicked up softly and found the magic spot straight away. I stayed up there, in perfect balance for what seemed like minutes (in real time it was probably about 15 seconds). That pinnacle of suspension in perfect equipoise is an exquisite experience. Even now the feeling is still with me and as I think of it I re-enter the sublime heights, elevated above the mundane, I’m back up there, in suspension, and time and breath are held motionless.

Practice this morning (Thursday) was not as focussed – my mind seemed to be indelibly super-glued to the plight of my son.

During the sun salutes I had to pry it off over and over.

Come back to now. Stay present.

But I didn’t want to stop thinking about him because it felt selfish, like I was abandoning him, like every moment I thought about my son just might bring me closer to solving his problems and every moment was critical.

The emotional tug-of-war between There and Here continued unabated until Paschimottanasana, then it took a turn, as if the stronger side suddenly pulled harder and won.
In the forward bend I noticed my quads weren’t fully engaged, an action that grounds the entire pose. I corrected it, pulled up the quads firmly, pressed the thighbones down and felt mula bandha return. Then I wandered off to my son, lost it all, noticed I’d lost it all, re-engaged the mental and physical firmness to a slightly lesser intensity, drifted off again, brought myself back…etc…etc…etc…until my mind muscle gave up.

I did a weak vinyasa.

Then Purvottanasana, and the promise of redemption, especially if I could engage mula bandha and draw it energetically up to the top of my chest. There it lifted and opened my heart up like an erupting volcano. A tiny spark of energy flickered.

A slightly stronger vinyasa.

Ardha Baddha Padma Paschimottanasana – right side. I stayed in it for 12 breaths today – it normally takes 6 long, strong, focussed breaths before my right hip and knee will release their grip, so I usually ignore the regulation 5 breath rule here. When they release I gain access to all the emotional pain locked up in my lower back so I stick around and watch it writhing like an injured snake.
The other side of Ardha Baddha comes too easy so I have to work equally hard in a different way to avoid slacking off. The work is more subtle and my mind has to tune up to a finer frequency to remain present.
But extending the stay in this pose slows down the velocity of practice, kills the momentum.

I stayed longer than 5 breaths in Trianga Mukhai, but I wasn’t counting anymore, just enjoying the show, watching my body parts systematically release and adjusting the alignment of my pelvis in increments, keeping a watchful eye on the energy flow of the straight leg.

I stepped through the vinyasa…everything slowing down now.

Janu Sirsasana A – it’s such an elementary pose, but there’s so much going on when viewed through the microscope of total attention, the fullness of awareness seeing through muscles, tissue and bone, watching and directing fluids and energy around the body.

No vinyasa between sides, but I managed a real one after the second side – it was to be my last for today.

Janu Sirsasana B – just hurt my feet which was a surprise, they must be extra sensitive for some reason today. After all these years of practice (and-gulp- teaching) I’m still not really sure how to position that foot. Is it in the same flexed configuration as Janu A? Or is it rolled over with the sole facing slightly upwards? Both positions hurt.

No vinyasa.

Janu Sirsasana C – is fast catching up to Utkatasana as an unexpected favourite pose of mine (I think I’ve described the immediate change in my breath when I hit Utkatasana in a previous post) . In Janu C, the continual pressure from the heel into the inner thigh and an equal and opposite pressure inwards from the outer thigh creates something exciting. The inner stream of prana percolates upwards with this inward squeezing. I let that happen then remembered to press the bent knee down a bit more and my lower back screamed with delight – then the sparring dialogue opened up between those two, going back and forth like a see-saw, the knee testing the limit of how far it could go, the lower back sending immediate replies.

I laid back on the floor, interlocked my hands and took them overhead til they too rested on the floor above me. It felt good. This was my…(ahem)…new vinyasa.

My mind wanderered momentarily and I asked myself 'what would I have done at this point if I'd been practising at the shala?' The answer...'just kept going - so what's stopping me?'

Marichy A. My body really wasn’t complying now, but there was no struggle, just acceptance, awareness, understanding and application. I bound hands, went forward and held on. That was it.
Laid back on the floor again. This time it felt TOO good.
My entire body released into the earth and I felt a buoyancy supporting me. Instead of descending into the heaviness of Savasana, I finished off with a few inversions, rolling slowly out of Halasana then halfway back into it a few times to give my lower back muscles an acupressure treatment.
Then finally Savasana.

I do miss it when I don't do an intense, sweaty, challenging Ashtanga practice, but for now the challenges off the mat are excessively high voltage and I have to accept that I'm not superhuman.
Those two sweet hours of yoga were not an escape but a precious distraction, a necessary tonic to disperse the tension of my obsessive preoccupation with my son, a time to reconnect to the Source and recharge my batteries.

Ready to re-enter the war zone, fight alongside my son, and win.

Saturday 22nd September 2007

The last two weeks have been traumatic.

My son rang me one morning, he’s 25, he was in tears and said he couldn’t bear to go on living.

I panicked, dropped everything and drove like a wildwoman to his house. I got him in to see someone that day who helped on the day by listening, then got him an appointment with a psychiatrist two weeks later.
Two weeks on and we are faced with no hope from the medical profession at all, in fact my son and I are both devastated at how impotent and useless most doctors/psychologists and psychiatrists are.

Every day my son’s mental and physical condition worsens and no one seems willing or able help him.

It all started at the beginning of this year when he was suffering from insomnia and was worried that it would impair his performance at the new job he was starting. The GP prescribed very mild sleeping pills, but my son’s mind is acutely perceptive and so finely tuned that the pills hit him like a shot of heroin. He complained of the side effects and was prescribed some other medication which only made him anxious and confused.

He went to a different doctor who recommended Prozac.
As soon as he took it he spiralled out of control, the anxiety skyrocketed, but the doctor said this would wear off. It didn’t and got worse. My son said it was worse than being on speed.
His doctor called in the Assessment and Crisis Intervention Service team (usually only called in when the patient is suspected of suicidal or harmful action – his medication was changed to a strong sedative which immediately sent him into a brain-dead daze, he was unable to function. His body deteriorated quickly over the next month.
Whereas before he’d been athletic, with explosive muscular power and reflexes maintained by 2 hours of boxing training every day, soon he was a lifeless zombie living in a shrunken shell of a body, with barely enough energy to walk. All this happened over the course of four months.

He’d experienced adverse reactions to all of the medications and it hadn’t been recognised by his doctor or the Crisis Intervention team that were now visiting him sporadically at home and supposedly monitoring him.

Two and a half months ago, dazed and drugged, he somehow had the flicker of insight to stop all the anti-depressant medication, abruptly. His incredible strength and will to survive momentarily flashed through the thick fog.

He has continued to watch his mental and physical health decline at an alarming rate despite taking no medication, no drugs, eating well, still trying to exercise, and summoning all his accumulated self knowledge and wisdom to fight this battle.

It seems like the SSRI medication has damaged a part of his brain and paralysed his feelings.
Where once he was a young man of great potential, creativity, with rich and beautiful feelings about life, now he's unable to feel anything for anyone or any activity. The adverse reaction to the medication has left him dead inside unable to feel any joy, excitement, love, empathy, or any desirefor the things he used to enjoy. It’s called depersonalisation syndrome.
He can identify easily with the people who go into a place and shoot everyone without remorse or conscience.

It was a Saturday morning two weeks ago when he rang my mobile phone, crying. He couldn’t go on like this any more, day after day, isolated, stuck in the house alone, no feelings, no energy, no life force, nowhere to go. He said he felt like he was in an aeroplane that’s about to crash and nothing can stop it. You have no control over that destiny. You’re about to die.

For the past two weeks my heart’s been beating at a superhuman rate, on adrenalin overload to match the crisis. Only a mother who’s child is in immediate danger knows this feeling. Eyes flared, brain on full alert, chemicals rushing through the system, fight and flight, then fight more with everything you’ve got, protect and save at all costs, my own life means nothing. Every moment, every thought is about my son.

I took some days off work to stay with him, to watch him, to listen to him, to share his pain and anguish at what had been done to him, to cry with him, to counsel him, to be there for him. I slept in the spare bed, unable to leave him alone in the house, fearing the worst.

Two weeks on.
We’ve seen two psychiatrists, one private practitioner, and one from the hospital. They both insisted that anti-depressant medication can’t do this to people, that my son is severely depressed and blaming the medication “paranoid thoughts”.
Yet I’ve done all the homework.
Here is evidence.
And Here is the book that reveals what the entire medical profession won’t admit to.
They’ve been brainwashed by the drug companies that rule the world. In years to come, like thalidomide, we’ll surely discover how dangerous those medications are– they alter the chemical balance in your brain and for people who don’t want to escape life but want to face it head on like my son, being doped out so they can’t think straight is violently abusive and damaging.

But my son trusted that the doctors and psychiatrists and professionals knew better than he did about what could help him.
They didn’t.
Instead of listening to him, understanding him and giving him wise counsel, they took the easy way out and medicated and sedated him. And those medications have left him physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually permanently damaged.

Tell me what kind of a society do we live in when the professional people we turn to in times of crisis, end up damaging us beyond repair. Then they wash their hands and move on, leaving the patient traumatised.
My son may never recover from this. He is angry, he is frustrated. He wants to kill them all for what they’ve done to his life.

Understandably, we are not only suspicious, but incredulous of the two psychiatrists we’ve just seen who want to admit him immediately to hospital and administer Electric Convulsive Therapy – how barbaric is that? Can it possibly get any worse?

What the immediate and short term future holds I have no idea. I don’t want to think about it. I focus on an image of my son as he was a year ago, strong, healthy and happy, before this nightmare started. I pray so intently for him that my body surges with Divine love and power – and I send it to him, connecting with him, feeling the love and strength returning to his body through mine.

This should not have happened.

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Saturday 18th August 2007

“No one chooses to be a mystic of his own volition. He must undergo some sort of experience which is of sufficient intensity to lead to an expansion of normal consciousness and perception, so that there comes to him a new vision of reality which dominates his life and thought. He must experience some sort of ‘conversion’.
The illumination may be gradual, almost imperceptible, or sudden and violent. If there is a sudden conversion, a swift, overwhelming experience, it is usually preceded by and is the result of a long period of restlessness, uncertainty, and mental stress.”

“Mysticism” by F.C. Happold

Last Sunday afternoon as I was driving home from my favourite walk around Horsenell Gully, I decided to stop in at a grungy looking bookshop that I’ve been driving past for years but had never visited. The homemade sign outside said “Wholistic Bookshop”, which to me had always conjured up images of new-age, but now passé obsessions like crystals, biorhythms, UFOs etc.

Now honestly I like to have my pre-judgements proved wrong, just to remind me that by judging anything I’ve slipped into a small mind mentality, so it was a nice wake up call to discover the wholistic bookshop to be a sweet little haven with quite a variety of old books and literature on some great spiritual traditions.
It’s a tiny place, crammed with books, everything inside feels somehow washed over with sepia tones and it feels dusty even though it isn’t. After a few minutes of browsing to get familiar with the flavour of the book selection and how they were organised, a man, 45ish, appeared from behind a big shelf. He had very long hair and a glowing warm-afternoon kind of smile. As it was 4.30pm, I asked him what time he closed, expecting him to say 5 o’clock. Ever so casually he replied, “Oh whenever the sun goes down”.
There were a few yoga books, though nothing I hadn’t read or would want to read, so I explored the other shelves and found a section with miscellaneous religious/spiritual books, quite a few by Swami this and Swami that, but in between were a few books from both the Hindu and Christian mystical traditions.

I bought two books, one was “Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology” by F. C. Happold and the other was a full text version of The Philokalia.
Once again I find myself excited and breathless when reminded of the mystical.
Why do I keep getting sidetracked?
The mystical power that silently guides the direction of our lives is always so close, working away behind the scenes. But whenever I get caught up my personal stories, I’m not conscious of this delicately obscured process that is guiding me towards the light. At other times I feel it's presence illuminating me from within, an intensely surging but gentle power that effervesces my being, urging me to take notice.
To stumble across this book is a reminder from the universe. A little poke in the ribs.
“Look at me” it says “Refocus your eyes to the invisible realms again and you’ll start seeing what needs to be seen”.

Another excerpt from the book:
"In the study of contemplation we are considering a movement of consciousness towards a higher level, as the result of the emergence and cultivation of powers which in most men and women remain latent. As found in the true contemplative it is an extreme form of the withdrawal of attention from the sensible world and a total dedication of action and mind towards a particular interior object. It is essentially a creative activity, similar to the highest activity of poet, painter, and musician.”

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Tuesday 14th August 2007

On the mat

My son was able to make a CD out of Sharath’s DVD so I picked it up from him last night and set my alarm for 6am this morning with great anticipation.

It wasn’t hard to get out of bed and onto the mat with the promise of this new toy to play with. And I wasn’t disappointed. Yes it was fast, but since my natural breath is long and deep, I moved through the sun salutes and standing poses fairly smoothly, only taking 3 breaths in each pose. If I’d breathed along with Sharath’s count I would have hyperventilated.

Unfortunatly, the practice was cut very short because of my little dog. Instead of curling back up on the bed while I did my yoga, she got frisky and naughty and insisted on dropping her toys on the mat by my feet as I practised. I kicked them off the mat. I kicked HER off the mat (gently). Then she started barking somewhere in the other room which, at 6.30am, doesn’t help build good relations with the tenants upstairs and next door. Then she plonked herself down in the middle of the mat. So by the end of the standing poses I gave in and gave up and took her for a walk. Oh well, first practice with Sharath foiled, but there'll be plenty more.

Next weekend I'll hijack someone’s TV and watch the DVD. It will help me to connect Sharath's instructions to his movements and give me inspiration plus.

The “Ashtanga” class last Wednesday night was fun (note the “…”) so I”ll probably go again tomorrow night. It's held in a school gymnasium at 6pm on a Wednesday night, a surprisingly warm space for the middle of winter.
Basically the class is like a led primary series bootcamp class, unpretentious and purely a workout – it was all over in 70 minutes. No chanting, no Sanskrit, no counting. A simple physical slog which the guys really enjoy and I'm not ashamed to admit that I really enjoyed it too.
Yoga is a spiritual practice but there are times when a girl's just gotta take time out and have some fun.

Practice starts slowly with 5 As and 3Bs and we were even given compassionate pauses of 2 breaths between each round. That would normally annoy me, but since I’m slightly out of yoga shape and the teacher insists on double dipping, I was happy to comply.
(Double dipping is where you jump back into Chaturanga Dandasana (catvari), inhale to Upward Dog then EXHALE BACK TO CHATURANGA DANDASANA before the “inhale exhale to Downward Dog command).

The novelty of this additionally gruelling move wore off and got pretty challenging about halfway through the seated poses but by that time, the class of seven had broken up into a ragged bunch, with five of them stealing rests between poses and chatting casually between themselves, while two of us (me and the guy next to me) forged ahead independently to the finish line in our own time. I discarded the double dips when my arm strength started to fail and sloppy shoulders set in. With no cartilage in that right shoulder joint I have to be sensible and avoid excessive shoulder stress while rebuilding my practice.

And since I was able to breeze through all of Primary quite easily (with only a couple of modifications), my confidence is restored. All has not been lost. All is on the horizon. All is coming.
All is already here. All is everywhere.
From the mundane to the mystical.

Some scenes from my trip to the Flinders Ranges

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Monday 6th August

Sharath’s DVD could be on its way
eBay – to me the name sounds like a futuristic alternative universe, like something out of that old cartoon series ‘The Jetsons’.
Oh, hang on a minute…I think we are in the future.
Not only am I way behind the times, I like it back here. I stubbornly refuse to participate in consumerism or do anything that might align me with the rat race mentality that perpetuates third world poverty and global warming.

My global and environmental footprints have decreased to the size of a sparrow’s.

I try to buy only what I desperately need and even then I question whether I REALLY need it. More often than not, I decide that I don’t.
So naturally (what a nice word) eBay is a site I never have, and never will visit. The thought of it horrifies me.
‘Like mother, like daughter?’ – not likely in my daughter’s case. Ebony often skims eBay for bargains, but I understand why…she is still young and setting up house - me, I'm way over all that.
Anyway she called me on the weekend after finding Sharath’s Primary series DVD on eBay. That sweet girl joined the bidding and got it for me.
Does it matter that I don’t have a TV or DVD player? Seems not. My son has spent years building an entire sound studio in his (my old) house and he assures me he can make a CD out of the DVD.
How very exciting to think I could be practising hi-speed Ashtanga with no frills, no pauses, no excuses soon. Just take off and fly over the moon with Sharath.
Anticipating the need to prepare for this, I’ve decided to go to an Ashtanga class this Wednesday night which is pure sweat with no spirit – just good fun.

Meme
Dear Gartenfische nominated me for the meme award, so for what it’s worth, here’s my humble and boring acceptance speech:

Four jobs I’ve had

1. Academic Administrator in Art School (now)

2. Art Gallery assistant (weekends)
3. Barperson/waitress
4. Mum

Four (five) movies I can watch over and over

1. American Beauty
2. Ghost (Whoopi Goldberg)
3. Run Lola Run (German film)
4. The Boy Who Could Fly
5. What the Bleep Do We know

Four places I’ve lived

1. Adelaide is the only place I’ve ever lived. The beautiful white beaches are 15 minutes west of the city centre and the mountains envelope us 10 minutes east. There’s lots of space, and lots of trees so why would I want to live anywhere else?

Four TV shows I loved
1. Prison Break

Now let me explain: TV is an insidious form of brainwashing and I don’t ever watch it, ever, but oh dear, last year my daughter got me addicted to Prison Break because she had all the episodes on DVD and we had several girl’s nights watching them like a movie marathon for 7 hours straight.
2. Kung Fu

When I was 14 years old, I watched Kung Fu with David Carardine and it changed my life – from that moment I began studying Buddhist and Taoist literature, the spiritual spark was ignited.

Four books that have had an impact on me (I made this category up and there’s more than four books so I’ve cheated and listed them under four sub-categories)
1. Christian Mysticism:

- Dark Night of the Soul by Gerald G May MD

- Mysticism: the nature and development of spiritual consciousness by Evelyn Underhill
2. Yoga:

- The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness by Eric Schiffmann

- Light on Yoga by Iyengar

- Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (various translations)
3. Buddhism:

- Breath by Breath by Larry Rosenberg
4. Spirituality and Psychology:

- The Psychology of Romantic Love by Dr Robert A Johnson

- The Pearl Beyond Price by A H Almaas (my current reading fascination)

Four places I’ve vacationed
1. Flinders Ranges (recently)
2. Byron Bay (2005)
3. Sydney (2004)
4. Did Europe in 1981 (Yugoslavia, Italy, France, Germany, Austria and back to Yugoslavia)

Four favourite dishes
1. Vegetable curry and dhal

2. Big bowls of Salad

3. Spanakopita
4. Chilli anything

Four sites I visit daily
1. my worksite

2. my homesite
3. my shoppingsite
4. my yogasite (almost daily for the yogasite now).
If only I had time to indulge in surfing the internet on a daily basis – occasionally I check out the ashtanga blogs listed on the left.

Four places I’d rather be
1. Camping far, far away from civilisation
2. Bushwalking at Horsenell Gully
3. On a meditation retreat
4. Home

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Saturday 4th August 2007

On the Mat
Throughout my teenage years I helped my father on his early morning milk delivery round, getting up at 5am to run around the dark streets delivering bottles and cartons of milk to people’s front verandahs. Apart from being great physical and mental training, it gave me a bit of pocket money, but I think the most valuable thing it gave me was a love for the purity of the early mornings. I’m so grateful to my father for making get up before dawn, over and over, no matter what the weather was like outside. It built the foundation for early morning yoga practice in later years.

Fast forward to 2007…and a total breakdown of all that I held close to my heart – early morning yoga practice included.

Over the last few months I’ve doggedly set my alarm almost daily at 5.30am (lately 6am) and I've just as often turned it off and rolled over, getting out of bed just in time to walk the dog before going to work. This is my new routine – most mornings now.
But there’s no way I’m going to stop setting that alarm. It's permanently ingrained into my routine, even though I ignore it every morning.

So since I can't seem to get up to do yoga these days, I took steps last night to get out of the yoga practice ditch by broadening my yoga repertoire and doing an evening practice.
Now in my mind there's not a better start to the day than an Ashtanga vinyasa practice, but somehow it just doesn’t feel right to be generating that much energy in the evenings.

Second choice...I pulled out Mr Iyengar’s Light On Yoga.
In addition to the magnificent 300 week course he has in the appendix at the back of this bible, there’s a 3 day course which promises that “whenever followed it will benefit the body and bring harmony to the mind”. I decided to do the Day 1 sequence of the 3 day course because, apart from Uttanasana, there are no standing poses in it and there’s something comforting about doing an evening home yoga practice that has a lot of your body close to the floor.

The Day 1 sequence I did last night goes like this:
Sirsasana (Headstand)
Sarvangasana (Shoulderstand)
Halasana (Plough)
Jatara Parivartanasana (supine twist with both legs extended)
Navasana (Boat)
Paschimottanasana (seated forward bend)
Twists – Marichyasana III and Ardha Matsyendrasana
Parvatasana (seated in Lotus with arms extended above head and hands interlocked)
Backbends – Matsyasana (fish) , Salabhasana (Locust), Dhanurasana (Bow) and Upward Dog Pose
Downward Dog Pose
Uttanasana
Savasana

From an Ashtanga point of view it’s almost a reverse practice. In fact I remember reading about an Ashtanga class where the teacher led the class through the entire Primary series backwards.

Now I consider the Ashtanga Primary sequence to be absolutely inspired. The sequence seems to be designed to stimulate the chakras from the base upwards:
Sun Salutes to warm up
Standing poses (grounding through the earth and energising the base chakra)
Seated forward bending and twisting poses (base chakra, naval and solar plexis chakras as well as lower spine and kundalini area)
Backbends (open the heart chakra)
Shoulderstand through to Matsyasana (stimulate throat area)
Headstand (third eye and crown chakra)
Final Padmasana poses to integrate them all

It’s brilliant.

So what happens when you start from the top chakras and go down as in most of Mr Iyengar’s advanced Light on Yoga sequences?
Could it be that the Ashtanga sequence really is best for raising your energy in the morning and the opposite sequence should be done at night?
Sounds logical to me.

This morning, being Saturday, I didn’t have to start work until 11am (I’m minding the Art Gallery every second Saturday now). So I did my usual routine of setting the alarm early, rolling over when it went off and sleeping in til 8am. Then hey presto, since I didn’t have to be at work til 11, I was able to get up and do a damn good Ashtanga practice (to some great tribal didgeridoo music I might add).
For the first time ever, I tried to jump straight from Dog Pose into Janu Sirsasana (if you read an earlier blog entry I had a whinge about not being taught this after 2 years of primary practice at the shala). Not a good result this morning. As I was jumping through, the base of my palms lifted slightly from the mat and my bent leg hit my hand, effectively bending the fingers back from the knuckles. My fingers are sore and slightly swollen now, but thankfully not broken.
I made it to Marichyasana C then called it quits and did three pretty intense Urdhva Dhanurasanas and the full count for all the finishing poses. In another past post (my old blog) I whinged (ever so nicely) about the gorgeous blonde girl at the shala who grunts and groans her way through every practice, but I now have to retract that because similar sound effects came out of my mouth during those backbends this morning. The opening felt FANTASTIC.


Reflections on yoga

It’s starting to come back to me – yoga practice that is.

Taking a REAL break from regular yoga practise has been quite a shock to my life, but it’s shown me the belief habits my mind had taken on, and especially how my identity had been all wrapped up in being a yogi. Regularly practising Ashtanga in a morning Mysore class situation tends to mould your thinking into a certain shape – you do a very strict yoga routine in a particular sequence that evolves in a linear manner over a plong period of time, and the teachers are all trained to adjust and speak from within that specific tradition so that all the time you think it is leading somewhere. Even studying the yoga texts like Patanjalis Sutras and the Hatha Yoga Pratipika is training and expanding your mind within one school of thought only.
Moving on from my immersion in the yoga tradition was a shock because suddenly I felt like I was no longer going anywhere and I lost my identity as a ‘serious practising yogi’, pursuing and penetrating the esoteric mysteries of life.

But after stepping outside the framework of the entire yoga system and looking back into it from a broader spiritual perspective, the view is REALLY different. Yoga (and I use this term to cover the entire philosophical system, not just the physical practice) is a very pragmatic and practical system of self development for our body mind and spirit, but viewed from higher perspective there are many of these and each one is like using a set of training wheels on a bicycle. Use them for a while, get the feel of how to navigate, then be brave, take them off and you’re off on your own journey. In spiritual terms you’ve matured into a grown up.

Maybe I’m still grieving the loss of my yoga crutch, my yoga identity and my yoga flavoured outlook on life (my, my, my). It’s similar to leaving a relationship that’s gone stale, yes you can look back lovingly and remember the beautiful times, but there’s no doubt that it will never be the same so the only thing to do is let go and move on.

Now having said all that you might think I’m not going to practice yoga any more.
Funny that…I think the reverse is actually happening simply because I’ve let go of all the beliefs around what I should and shouldn’t be doing. There’s no framework.
And at last I’m starting to get back to the mat and enjoying it immensely, but the shala and the traditional ‘one-eyed’ approach really don’t sit comfortably with me right now.

Camping in the Flinders Ranges
Words fail when I try to describe the 4 days I spent deep in the bush.
We set up camp in Parachilna Gorge, slept in the tent, cooking breakfast and dinner over the campfire. We woke to a symphony of birdsong, the treble notes full of twittering and chattering, the cries of cockatoos and kookaburras, and the mournful sound of the single black crow in the tree above us. Days were spent climbing the mountains, exploring the terrain and discovering abandoned ruins that spoke sadly of the hard times endured by optimistic pioneering souls. We spent a harrowing day in the 4 wheel drive manouvering over dangerously rugged tracks, stopping now and then to watch the kangaroos and emus , sheep and wild goats naturally surviving in this harsh, beautiful land.

One night after sunset we walked in the dark to the nearly ridge and laid on a dragon line – a sliver-like rocky formation that begins underground and rises just above the ridge surface. It looks like a very long line of shallow rock that follows the ridge of the mountains up and down like the thorny back of a dragon. Apparently it emanates a special kind of ch’i. As I laid on it, my body came alive with sparkling tingles and it took me hours to get to sleep afterwards.

The Australian bushland is extraordinarly beautiful, not in a luscious sense like a forest, but more because of the harshness of the arid conditions and the enormous courage that every living thing must find to fight for it’s survival. It pulses with an emotional power of wanting to reach upwards, live at all costs.
The huge eucalyptus gums that dominate early colonial artworks had never, until now, had any impact on me. I’d seen so many of these paintings by people seemingly obsessed with boring old gum trees. I'd written them off as archaic and sentimental icons of the Australian bush. Here, out in the vast expanse of their natural environment, I was surrounded by them and mesmerised by their grandeur and enormous presence. Their bark has a silvery pink skin-like quality which makes them seem eerily human – these majestic trees speak to you and every one has a solid character and centuries of stories locked up in their ancient, gnarly limbs.

I wish I could have found the time to record more of my impressions and feelings about this trip but we arrived back in Adelaide very late on Sunday night and I was thrown back into the working world on Monday morning. By Monday evening, sadly I'd been reassimilated. But the raw, calm energy of the landscape has infiltrated the depths of my soul and I swear I shall return every year to that hauntingly beautiful place.
We took a few images on the trip but I haven’t seen them yet. If any are worthwhile I’ll post them this week.

Friday 3rd August 2007

I'm back from the never-never (camping out bush), now settling into my new house and planning a comeback to daily yoga practice.

With so much swimming around in my head there's a lot to write about but just not enough time at the moment, so instead I'm going to post this photo of my gorgeous daughter Ebony.
And she's as gorgeous on the inside as she is on the outside.