Last week I was blessed to take part in a workshop with Manju Jois.  This is the 8^th year that I’ve taken part in this Ashtanga Vinyasa intensive and teacher training with Manju but this time, I’m not actually teaching and I’m probably doing my most ‘advanced’ practice yet.  Not ‘advanced’ in many people’s eyes because in terms of actual postures, due to the ‘concise’ nature of my practice, you’d be forgiven for thinking that I hadn’t been practicing for long.  My practice is short, focused and doesn’t contain that many postures at all.

I’m mostly doing just primary standing then a mixture of primary and intermediate twists, bridge and a seated closing sequence.  I have to really focus on not allowing myself to go to my default place which is over stretched and over worked and too deeply into the pose.

This is the most disciplined I have ever had to be as I’m in a room full of other teachers who are all practicing more asana than me (it’s hard not to get swept along with everybody else and their energy) .  By day three, my back was feeling 80% better.  It was interesting that there was a real temptation to do more.  So the discipline is in NOT doing more, just because my back is starting to feel better.  It’s not easy to finish your practice, and lie down when everyone else is carrying on around you.

So for the week I spent with Manju, I’ve really tried to focus on my own practice (improving the health of my lower back so that I can be pain free) and only doing enough (as opposed to more than I need).

I’ve been focused on putting the integrity back into my lower back.  So there’s a little bit of lightly tying the sit bones together and never going too deeply into any pose.  Just ‘being’ in each pose.

This week, my teacher has re-introduced some of the helpful second series patterns that I need to further improve my back.

Suddenly, I have so much more awareness of which muscles need to be ‘involved’ when I’m moving around off my mat, just in daily life.

Today, I’d say that my back is 90% better and that this is very much a ‘work in progress’.

It took me 11 years to over-work those forward bend patterns so I’m not going to redress the balance overnight.  It’s going to take some time and effort but the most important aspects of this part of the journey will be discipline (in not doing too much) and awareness (on and off the mat).

Why is it that we have to reach a breaking point or crisis before we are ready to learn a lesson?……

I went along to class today, just as a lady who needs to fix her back, not as a teacher who needs to maintain a practice despite being in pain.  My teacher has suggested ‘mind games’ to encourage me to get the right muscles involved but not over working (which is my default pattern).  So instead of saying, ‘draw the sit bones towards each other’, which would usually start me doing just that, but over doing it and working it too hard, and only focusing on that, saying ‘don’t over stretch’.  This way, you encourage the correct muscles to be ‘involved’ but not to overwork.  This got me thinking about my attitude towards this whole thing.

Before today, my mind-set was that I was ‘unwinding’ my body from the injured place that it’s at now.  Coming out of the practice that I’ve been doing, the reverse of the way I came in and undoing the patterns that were too strong. 

This mind-set, was making me feel as though I’m trying to fix something that’s broken, which isn’t a great feeling.  But today, Denise got me to see it a different way.  So rather than undoing the already existing strong patterns, trying to fix a broken thing, I’m just ‘ploughing new furrows’ so that the patterns that I need are brought into balance with the existing ones.  So this approach is concerned with bringing something into balance which is a much nicer thought than trying to fix something that’s broken.  Doh!!!!  

Despite everything I’ve learned about awareness and everything I thought I knew about my own body and mind, I was still looking at it in a way that wasn’t helpful.  In my own mind, I was trying to achieve balance for my body and I knew that I was working towards bringing the stronger patterns and the required patterns in line with each other to achieve equanimity, but it was with a rather ‘glass half empty’ approach.  Today the penny dropped and suddenly the glass is half full!

This is all to do with my physical asana practice…. the problems with my back have made it very difficult to sit for meditation which has unbalanced me further.  I’ve experimented with various sitting positions and have managed to find one that is comfortable at last.  So
now I should be able to start bringing my whole self back into balance….

For about the last six months, I’ve been feeling ‘unsettled’ with my Yoga but I didn’t really know why.  I’ve been teaching, studying, running Yoga Bliss, running my teenager around, trying to keep on top of my own Yoga Practice, even though my back is really painful.  I’ve been in pain for some time now…. A few years probably…

Various suggestions have been made about my age and whether or not Ashtanga Vinyasa is the right practice for my body, but there’s more to it than that.  I’d already adapted my practice to suit my energy levels and to balance with the rest of my life.  Following various investigations and prolonged enquiries with my teacher and my Physiotherapist it transpires that the ligament laxity that gave me such amazing flexibility throughout my life, has allowed me (I know, I know… I did this to myself) to have the most extreme forward bends and extremely open hips.  HOWEVER, the muscles surrounding these too-long ligaments didn’t even know they existed and they didn’t realise that they had a job to do too.  I didn’t realise either.  If there were ‘warning signals, I was not aware of them, there was certainly no pain, until it was much too late.

So, there I was –  teaching, practicing, running a business, with the pain getting worse, my physical practice getting more confusing and the pain in my back preventing me from sitting for meditation.  Nothing was working for me…

I’ve been an Ashtanga Vinyasa practitioner for eleven years and teacher for 5 and the mistake I made for a long time was putting my faith, 100% in the system but not as it was meant to be used but from the Western understanding or ‘misunderstanding’ of the practice as I received it.  The second mistake I made was not taking responsibility for my own practice.  It’s easy to do exactly what your teacher advises without ever actually making your own enquiries and discoveries.  It’s easy to get on your mat and go through the motions without ‘awareness’, and it’s easy to blame someone else for your mistakes if you haven’t taken responsibility.

So the first lesson we’ve learned is that just because there is a ‘series’ of asana, whether it be Primary, Intermediate, third… whatever, doesn’t mean we have to do all of it.  Just because it exists, doesn’t mean ever body needs every pose.  It was never meant to be used in it’s entirety.  To cut a long story short, the body I rocked up to the mat with, didn’t need all the years of Primary series.  My hips were already open and I could already access my spine easily in the forward bend and lateral hip rotation patterns.  Who knew?

I can’t tell you how much pressure I have put on myself to maintain a certain level of practice because I teach.  So, the upshot of all of the above realisations is that I am taking a sabbatical from teaching.  I need to balance my life and I need to do my Yoga Practice for me, selfish aren’t I?  I need to repair my broken body and my dented ego.

When I go back to teaching, I’m sure that this learning experience will make me an even better teacher.

My practice is much more focused on the asana I need to awaken and strengthen the hitherto lazy muscles that will give me some integrity in my lower back again.  There’s a lot of back bend patterns – surprise, surprise.  There’s a little bit of lateral hip rotation pattern but only to maintain the hip ‘opening’ and not combined with a forward bend (well, maybe a slight one with heart lifted but nothing more extreme than that)  It’s a bit of Primary and a bit of Second with a few Pilates exercises thrown in.

So, it’s time to be an ordinary student again.  It’s time to rewind and undo some of the unhelpful patterns that I never needed to develop in the first place.  It’s no good wishing I knew then what I know now.  This was all part of the journey and all part of the lesson.

Since I last wrote, the approach to our asana practice has changed a lot. 

Before these changes, it may have gone something like this…..

• Start by feeling guilty – because there’s other stuff that I should be doing instead of being on my yoga mat.
• Continue with the feeling guilty because I haven’t been on my yoga mat enough.
• Just for good measure, some more guilt because I MUST do at least an hour and a half asana practice, sweat, get all the way through what I’ve been working on, new poses from second series included before doing anything else.  If I do anything less, I am lazy and a failure and I won’t be able to teach!
• Sit on my mat quietly for a few minutes finding banhda and Ujjayi breath
• Come to standing, chant and off I go….
• Spend the entire time focused but with thoughts popping in like, ‘when will this start to feel easier?’, ‘will I ever be able to do this pose?’, ‘I wish I had a practice like John or a body like Jane’, ‘I’m so rubbish at this’,  ‘How can I teach this when I’m so crap at it myself?….. I could go on and on!
• Lay down at the end full of endorphins, feeling great but exhausted
• Spend the rest of the day tired
• Spend the rest of the day feeling more guilt at having spent so long on my mat.

 After we’ve made some changes and have a more sensible approach, it goes more like this. 

• Start by deciding how much energy and time I have for my practice today and that will be no more than an hour and fifteen minutes asana in total including closing.  Today, I’ve got a business to run, Christmas preparations to make, a friend from University who’s over from New Zealand and staying with us this evening, washing, ironing and looking after my nephew, oh, and I’m quite tired today.  So, I’ve got maybe an hour in total, no more.
• Lay down in Savasana and find diaphragmatic breath, then Makarasana, for more focused and calm breath.  Go through a series of stretches and getting in touch with my natural breath to ensure that my body is relaxed and my mind is calm, all based on the Himalayan tradition practices that we’ve been learning. 
• Stand, chant, find Ujjayi breath and banhda.
• Series of spine mobility work to address the ‘flat spot’ in my spine that I have avoided for 10 years.
• Suryanamaskara A x 3, Suryanamaskara B x 2.
• Today I chose to do a ‘one breath’, flowing standing sequence up to Parsvottanasana.  I chose ‘one breath’ as I needed to feel energised.
• Hip opening work (as I wasn’t going to do the poses that usually give me that opening today)
• Hip flexor lengthening and strengthening (again, I wasn’t going to be doing the poses that give me this today) and shoulder opening work.
• Back Bends
• Full Closing
• Savasana
• Pranayama – Nadi shodanam
• Meditation practice

So, that was a lovely practice.  I feel peaceful, calm and rested.  I feel energized not exhausted, I’ve addressed the physical openings that I need to maintain and I’ve done a practice which is guilt free and doing just what it needs to.  I haven’t messed with the order of the poses, full respect has been given to the Ashtanga Vinyasa system, but I’ve taken from it what I need to take from it for today.  Tomorrow will be different again and will depend on how much time and energy I have and how I need to balance my day.  Having settled the mind and body with the Himalayan sequence, I’m less likely to perpetuate old physical and mental patterns, not just because I’m starting from a relaxed, neutral place but because I can be more ‘aware’.

So the key words are ‘balance’ and ‘awareness’.  I feel so much better taking this approach.  I’m not as tired.  Life feels more balanced, I feel more balanced and I’m learning to let go of the guilt, which, let’s face it was a ridiculous hang-up anyway!  So I am no longer forcing my body through more than it needs or is capable of.  Does that make me a lazy person or a bad teacher?  I’m a 46 year old woman with a very busy life, not a teenage sannyasin or a circus performer.  I’m not finding this easy, it’s hard to accept
that you’re not Superwoman and it’s hard to accept that you’re not in your twenties any more, but does this approach make you feel better?  If you balance everything so that it’s right for you, and do so honestly, I’m sure you’ll notice a difference. I urge you to try it and see.

Sending you love and wishing you all a Happy Christmas and a Peaceful 2012

My teacher, Denise has been deepening her study and understanding with Swami Veda Bharati and Swami Nityamuktananda, with whom I have also been privileged to study.  As our teacher, in whom we have complete trust; Denise is leading us toward our own deeper understanding.   We are each on our own Spiritual Path, but without a guide, we could be going astray or around in circles.  To use an analogy coined by Matt Wales, my teaching colleague at Aware Yoga, without the teacher, we are groping around in a dark alley.  It is the teacher, who ‘shines the torch’ for us and shows us the way.

 It is possible for us to justify or make excuses for any behaviour or recurring ‘pattern’ that we might have learned and repeated over the years, whether on or off the Yoga mat.  As teachers, having recognized some of our own ‘patterns’ of behaviour, we are privileged to be able to observe these ‘life’ patterns in other people’s bodies and Asana practice.  It has also been our privilege to see these patterns change over time (or not) as our students develop more awareness and understanding along-side us.  Our teachers are the ones who, having deepened their understanding, then begin to share their new understanding with their students.  They are ‘taking a risk’ when they do this, in that we, their students, may not choose to follow in their footsteps.  This in itself doesn’t cause a problem for the teacher personally.  However, if you’re a teacher with a studio, with rent to pay and a Yoga community to serve, there is most certainly a ‘risk’ that you may ‘lose’ some students.  As students, we should admire the courage demonstrated by our teachers.  It takes courage to share new knowledge and insight and at the same time, we should recognize that, this sharing is an expression of ‘Satya’, the truth as it has been revealed to them.  It would be hypocritical to say the least, if your teacher practiced and had faith in one system, but taught another because paying the rent was more important than the truth.  It would be dishonest  if that teacher were to continue giving the student ‘what he or she wants’ rather than giving them  ‘what he or she needs’ in order that they receive the greatest benefit from their Yoga practices.

This Yoga path is challenging.  It makes us look at ourselves, and this is uncomfortable but, if you can laugh at yourself, it can be frequently amusing.  Some students won’t be open to the challenge or the change that inevitably comes with it, and there’s nothing wrong in that for them at that juncture.  For us, as students of Yoga who put our trust in our teachers, we should take a moment to recognize and honour the courage it takes to be leading the way.

I am privileged to be able to combine my knowledge and experience of the Ashtanga Vinyasa system with the Yoga Philosophy and Meditation of the Himalayan Tradition. This has given rise to a much greater level of ‘awareness’ in terms of what is beneficial to myself, in my personal practice and the students with whom I share the practice. My teacher, Denise Martin-Harker, is guiding me along this path. A great ‘shift’ is happening. With the change in the season, darker nights, colder and damper weather, we now have a greater ‘awareness’ that has led us to realise that a ‘full on’ Ashtanga Vinyasa practice, for most of us with busy lives and responsibilities, can become something that depletes our energy rather than restores and revives us. So, we’re taking the ‘less is more’ approach. Making sure that we have a balanced Yoga practice where we do less Asana, with more awareness and integrity and more Meditation and Yoga Nidra. This more realistic approach has been difficult for many of us as we are wrestling with our ego.  Letting go of being able to put your leg behind your head or ‘wanting’ that next pose……WHY?  So often, we talk about practicing ‘Ahimsa’, non-violence, but we often forget that we need to practice Ahimsa with ourselves when we’re on our Yoga mat. So, the theme for the Winter months and those of us who are more mature, is ‘quality, not quantity’ and being aware of when something is energizing us and doing us ‘good’ and recognizing when something is giving us a short lived endorphin ‘high’ but in fact could be depleting us. So we are taking the awareness that we find in our Himalayan practices and using that awarenss to give us a more effective Ashtanga Vinyasa Asana practice.  Be kind…..

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