Observations about my world

Certainly been a long while since I’ve posted anything.  Explains why all my beautiful journals remain empty.  While I can mull around in my head ad nauseum (sp?), I’m not so great at actually preserving it.

Now for some recent or not so recent observations.

• Spring has arrived!!! Although I spent a very long weekend in the mountains surrounded by beautiful snow complete with a  new layer nightly, Sacramento has definitely entered spring.  The park is awash in little white daisyish flowers, wild violets, and dandelions… many with already spent seed puffs.  Yards have camellias, iris, azaleas, rhododendrons, oxalis, croci, daffodils,etc.  I even have one very feisty coral miniature rose blooming.
• Teachers Training Weekends are missed!!! I am totally amazed  that we finished our class time together almost two months ago.  I immediately left town and basically was gone most of a six week period, returning for a few days between trips to my families in Texas, North Carolina and Connecticut and then to Sayulita, Mexico at Haramara Retreat for yoga with my teacher, Michelle of It’s All Yoga.  Each trip was different and wonderful.  Now that I’ve been officially home for almost a month, I find myself still somewhat at loose ends.  I almost seem to be living a a cocoon.  Many of my fellow trainees are actively teaching and loving every minute.  I’ve co-taught one class… stewed for days before and then it was over in a flash.  I’ve progressed to the point that I could actually watch the class respond to my suggestions.  I have no idea what the next step will be.  I am the helper at the desk, aka “diva,” at most classes that I attend as the student.  Perhaps this is my role,  that computer never intimidates me. Bottom line:  I miss the yoga weekends but know it’s time to be a big girl in do my study on my own and if I’m going to teach I need to make arrangements for a space to invite my peeps.
• Rolfing rocks!!! I’ve been plagued for years with a chronically sore left shoulder.  I cracked the head of the humerus (~30 years ago), didn’t do any conscious rehabilitation and since have had periods of aggravation brought on by hauling too heavy baggage (don’t do any more), weight bearing and over the head yoga poses, and once even a very tight steering wheel of a new car.  My “cures” have included cortisone shots, physical therapy, and targeted exercises.  After meeting Lisa Biow at one of our teachers trainings and talking with several of her clients (fellow yogis), I decided to give rolfing a try.  I’ve had two sessions and can’t say I’m near a “cure” but have a lot of confidence that I may be on the right track.  Each session included  “physical pressure to stretch, lengthen and loosen both muscle and connective tissue” which feels great.  Basically I have an impingement of the superspinatous and weak muscles of the rest of the rotator cuff, overactive upper and middle trapezius muscles and almost dormant lower trapezius muscles.  Actually all the muscles that move my scapula need to be awakened to learn to share the “load.”  Lisa gave me 10+ exercises that I’m going to try to faithfully do.  It’s my responsibility to get this part of my bod happy again.  She suggested that with my body profile (aka fat middle) I’ll should probably avoid Chadaranga forever but maybe will someday be strong enough for some arm balances.
• Pandora  rocks !!! Internet radio not the Avatar “world” (I still haven’t decided if I can watch the “war” so the movie remains unseen) Although I’ve had the app on my iTouch for awhile, I didn’t really use Pandora until this weekend in the mountains.  Basically I went from miserable radio reception to my own personal radio station depending on the mood…. spa radio, Norah Jones, western swing, Peter White, Air Supply… Occasionally I threw in the Crazy Heart soundtrack and a Natalie Cole mix.  We had an eclectic musical palate.
• Knitting rocks most of all!!! Okay I’ll admit it… while I can’t develop the discipline of a home yoga practice of asanas, pranayama or meditation, I can pick up my knitting needles at the drop of a hat (or to make a hat).  During teachers training, I rarely picked up my needles until the last month or so before Christmas.  Since training ended, rarely a day goes by without my  knitting a little.  I’ve made hats, scarves. dishcloths and I only have the crocheted edging left for a knitted top I started two years ago.  I’m now contemplating making afghans for each of my children.  This was a project that my grandmother did probably when she was about my age although she made them for her children, grandchildren and eventually her great-grandchildren as well.  She kept it up for another 15-20 years.
• Life brings surprises!!… and I’m going to wait to see what the next one will be.  Hopefully I’ll keep you posted…. eventually

Being Donna

The other evening I watched Being Julia, based on the novel, Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham.  Annette Benning played a British actress of the 1930′s who lived her life playing roles both on and off stage.  Conversations with those in her life often were the same “lines” that she had spoken in previously roles in the theater.  Her relationships with family, friends and lovers quickly fizzled out.  Finally she discovered her unique voice  in a new play when she suddenly altered a scene in order to humiliate the new starlet who was involved with both her husband and lover. Maybe not the most positive approach for her individuality to blossom. During the final scene we find her alone at a restaurant ordering a pint of beer rather than a more “appropriate” drink befitting the great actress…  Was she on the road to authenticity?

As we are nearing the end of our “contact” hours of teacher’s training (December 20th is the final day), I realize I have been given tools to find my authentic self. As each day goes by I’m trying to become even more intentional about how I orchestrate my life. Of course, some days I accomplish very little ;-( . I continue to have the courage to eliminate things from my life that haven’t worked for years.  Amazingly there have been no regrets.. mostly just relief.  As the blog title suggests (Svadhyaya….. inquiry into my own nature, the nature of my beliefs, and the nature of the world’s spiritual journey) I have much yet to discover as the practice continue.  My goal while I’m “being” Donna is to act from the place of authenticity rather than through the roles others want to assign me.  Now if I can get the spiritual practice flowing.

During our session this Sunday with Havi Brooks she challenged us to both identify our resistance to a future as a yoga teacher and our accumulated life skills that can be used to help us determine who “our People” are that will be drawn to our teaching style.  Then we did the most amazing exercise, Shiva Nata (be sure to check out the video), designed to “spark your own epiphanies, find your creative energy, make stuff happen.”  We had to mirror each of her motions and it’s corresponding “word” as she increased speed and complexity of movements.

I laid awake that evening with the creative juices flowing.  Unfortunately I didn’t get out the pencil and paper so now many of the great ideas have dissipated.  BUT..  I have retained the conviction that I’m willing to give  the yoga teacher role a try to see if it is authentically me and “my People” definitely are my peers who have yet to discover yoga or have been frustrated by classes that they were unable to  keep up with. No 20 somethings for me.

As we in training all know… It’s All Yoga and it’s for everyone.   You just need to let the practice find you.

Respect

An entire month has gone by without any posting.  I think santosha (contentment) continues to be my byword thus no peculating of thoughts to inspire comments here.

This weekend of training was wonderful as always.  Much asana practice but also opportunities to think about yoga philosophy which replicates moral teachings found in almost every religion and culture.  Our dharma talk  focused on respect for others and our self.  This caused me to ponder how outwardly I easily embody this concept– no problem.  But inwardly I do have to admit that it’s sometimes very hard to respect the viewpoints of  folks when different from mine and ultimately to continue to respect the person with these divergent viewpoints.   How to respect the person without any concept of social justice, instead it’s  “I’ve got mine; tough luck and it’s your fault that you don’t have x,y or z.”    Ah, to be able to just remember that all of this is impermanent, and we each have our unique lessons to learn.  Keep the judgment away and focus on my own actions.

Our primary teaching exercise was to work with a partner and develop a yoga practice specifically for a “group” who had a special need or situation.  These included a corporate setting, prison, women’s shelter, senior citizens and those with various physical disabilities.  It was amazing how although each group was drawn randomly, one or both of the pair had actual life experience with the population.  The prison duo included a criminal attorney and a victim’s advocate both with exposure to a prison environment.  Weird. Tamara and I developed a practice for a small group of people who are blind and realized that just closing our eyes really couldn’t give us the experience of being without clear vision.  We could only guess how their other senses have been amplified.  By the by each pair’s practice was thoughtful and potentially effective for the identified group.

These next two weeks we will be studying svadhyaya… the current name of this blog.  Let’s see if I can come up with some profound insights to share.

 

The weekend of Gita and Parivrtta Trikonasana, again

It is amazing to me that the training only has four more weekends left.  Where has the time gone??  I have experienced so much physically, mentally and dare I say spiritually.  Yet in most ways life continues on a steady course pretty much as before.

What have I discovered?  I’m surprised that the teaching of peers and “actual” students seems relatively natural.  This isn’t to say that I can  instruct, provide breath cues, present analogies/metaphors,  observe the students posture and provide physical adjustment.  But I have found is that I’m not rattled by being in the front of the room.. where are the butterflies?  Could this training actually lead to some activity beyond personal growth?

We did lots of adjustments on each other for various poses.  Not sure what I’ll actually remember about any of them except hands, feet and an occasional head can be used to encourage the direction of expansion in a pose.  It was interesting how resistance continues to get in the way of my asanas.  Just the mention of Parivrtta Trikonasana caused an uncontrollable groan.. actually wasn’t so bad, especially when my fellow student “guided” me.  Such small tactile encouragement gave me a better understanding of alignment (at least in the moment).

We also discussed the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Hindi scripture, that provides a framework for discovering the Divine within.  This is my second time reading this text and it’s beginning to seem somewhat familiar.  At least I’m not having to look up each and every sanskrit word every time.  I suppose the thing  I appreciate most is that a text written in sometime between 5th  century BCE and 1st century CE proclaims that “Those who are devotees of other gods and who worship them with faith actually worship only Me.”  I’ve never been able to deny the validity of other religions… goals are the same and each arose in a world where cultures were separated.  How could the search for God not be pursued by all humankind and the discovery be of a universal divinity?

During the discussion of our group, there was definitely resistance to the concept of religion.  I guess I’ve always looked at organized religion as a community of “good” people who coalesce around common rituals, but that probably works best in the Episcopal church that  doesn’t promote “hell and brimstone.”  There is a great deal of acceptance  of individual theology.  Mine basically revolves around the “Golden Rule” and is fully compatible with the yama and niyamas of yoga.  Never been much for prayer or Bible reading outside of the church’s walls but am beginning to get a handle on meditation..  Of course it’s assigned and I’m typically a good “student.”  Who knows what will continue when I’m totally on my own.

Namate

Spaciousness…

This seems to be a common theme for this week’s yoga classes, or maybe I’m just finally getting it. A couple of classes focused on the respiratory and pelvic diaphragms, and it was amazing how much space I began to feel in my torso. Home practice yesterday was a shoulder series that was included in my teacher’s training packet. As I went through the asanas, my shoulders started feeling very broad…Most asanas definitely were designed for the healthy shoulder not a grumpy one. Interestingly no modifications offered for Pincha Mayurasana or Vasisthansana which are  killers for weak shoulders.  Luckily I knew my preferred modifications so I could feel spaciousness rather than fatigue and aches. Alas eventually my left grumpy one started feeling achy, but it was a pretty intensive series… unrelentingly mega-shoulder asanas.  Even this mornings Anusara class (first time I’ve attended in a couple months) gave me opportunities for exploration.  Seems once I find the pose I am learning to replace effort with ease and expansion, i.e. spaciousness.

Our yama for this week is aparigraha, non-possession or non-grasping, seems to be a moral principle that can also lead to spaciousness in my life.  As I’ve begun to  relish what I have rather than thinking about might be absent, I am giving myself the opportunity to appreciate the  possibilities of my life and find some patch of spaciousness in each day.  Alas I’m going to ignore when that vision happens as I’m ignoring or procrastinating around something I’m not eager to do.  Namaste

Random thoughts

Ah to be a verbal creature. I can have great dialogues and profound thoughts in the bathtub or lying awake in bed but when I sit down here at the computer they all seem to vanish. I’ve thought about the structure of the body (even with my early injury it took looking at a photo rather than a line drawing to understand what the pelvis looks like), poses (what DID we do to relax the psoas and align the shoulders?), attitude (am I avoiding poses or honoring my body?), sexuality (of course we can’t expect someone else to make us happy but isn’t it miraculous when it happens). Hopefully my really profound thoughts will occur again when I can get to the computer in time to record them. Until then namaste (the Divine in me honors the Divine in you.)…

Musings after training

Another weekend of amazing yoga. We all taught a pose or so for a “class” on Saturday. I haven’t been sure that this would be something I would ever want to do. What I discovered is that even though my instructions felt awkward and I often had to visually look at the part of the body that I needed to talk about in order to come up with its “name,” I really enjoyed the opportunity to get out of my head in practice and verbalize what was being explored. Too bad there wasn’t time to lead my first independent group chant of OM!!!

We also took several poses to explore with the help of our fellow trainees. Three people would create the pose, we were asked to see where our eyes were “drawn” and then we were given an opportunity to comment on each person’s pose. We are learning that each pose has it’s own expression in each person’s body. The ideal cannot exist but instead we each must take our own body construction and try to follow the instructions (in our head or given by teacher) as our body makes the interpretation. There are obviously dangerous errors in interpretation that must be fixed, incomplete or out of balance creations that can be enhanced with instruction and today’s interpretation that reflects the body with it’s unique structure, alignment abilities and energy that does NOT need to be “fixed” except through self awareness of the pose. The challenge as the teacher will be to know where the student’s posture is on any given day… in need of correction or in the full expression for that day.

What do you mean?

We spent a lot of time exploring useful and nurturing language during our weekend of teachers’ training.  Not being a particularly verbal person (symptom of or trigger for my introverted tendencies?), I marveled at all the potential words that could be used during a yoga session.  The words included words specific for yoga asanas (postures), body parts, encouragement, location, feelings, and others.  We talked about when to use concrete language and when to use metaphor.  Of course I immediately started listening more carefully to Michelle and each of the students as we took turns “teaching” an asana.  In class this morning I continued my focus on recognizing the way that accurate words must be used to get the hoped for (expected) results.

This is how life has always been.  While lying awake last night, I thought about how words and their usage is so dependent on who is listening or reading.  Thirty years ago I took a graduate ecology seminar and quickly learned that writing in the colloquial speech I had acquired as a young mom was not going to “cut it.”  To this day I rarely use “it” when I’m writing.   Then later in life I took classes in social work and found a whole new language that needed to be learned.  Each role that I’ve assumed has seemed to be accompanied by its own jargon and usage standards. Recently while “instructing” a fellow student on a pose, I slipped into the language I was currently using with my visiting two year old granddaughter…”sit.”  Not particularly yogic.

When discussing this topic with my massage therapist, I was challenged with the notion that as we become more authentic to our true self we also become more authentic and universal in our speech.  We shall see.

Life happens

This period of time that encompasses yoga training certainly has not been what I expected.  I have become transformed from a person that could usually make a yoga class each day to someone who hasn’t practiced either at home or in class ( except for training) in two weeks.

Life happens, I’ve discovered yoga might actually need to take second position.  In a chapter about family life in The Tree of Yoga B.K. S. Iyengar states,
“That is what yoga teaches: first know your limitations, then to build from them.  Then even if you have ten or fifteen children, this need not be an obstacle to your spiritual development.”

Somehow I can’t imagine Mr. Iyengar ever had primary responsibility for his six children.  I have had two grandchildren (age two and seven) with me for most of the last two weeks.  I quickly identified my limitations:  need for sleep, desire for quiet and being twice as old as I was when I raised my own children.  The day typically began with two pairs of beautiful eyes gazing into mine as I awoke; it ended by my crawling into bed shortly after the older boy crawled into his own.  On a lucky night I might read 10-15 pages of a yoga book.

Asanas have just come to a screeching halt.  I thought about doing some kid yoga but didn’t have the guts to be put in competition with the Disney Channel internet games. The children left me this morning so that excuse is no longer valid.  I have house guests over the weekend but don’t feel quite so honest in using them as my limitation.

I do have visions of starting a home practice but am daunted by the suggestion that I practice regularly at the same time each day.  Ah, to be a morning person rather than a reluctant riser.  I know people who have made this change but don’t envision it in my own life.  Onward….

What have I started???

I’ve been “coloring away” in my anatomy coloring book coding the muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones in the pelvis.  In my youth I would have been making out 3X5 cards knowing the test would be sooner than I’d be ready.  Now I’m taking a much more personal approach knowing that familiarity with my own body (and maybe students one day) is the real goal… not memorization to get through an exam.  It has also been timely since I’ve been able to better understand why my tush is still aching.

Just reflecting and feeling comfortable with the  anatomy has made me  realize why the homework seems so daunting.  The answers for all other portions of the assignments are mostly subjective not those definitive muscle names, origins and attachments.  I have to think about each reading, digest new terminology and consider new ulterior goals for life. What do you mean that my goal is NOT  being able to access my core so I can finally do Bakasana but instead to find Samadhi ?  I’m supposed to have a mind devoid of form rather than a form that boggles my mind.  As they say… go figure.