i am thinking about the name for my website, which will be done by Easter (now its in writing and public!) and I had the thought:
Yoga is not a noun. It is not a form. It is not a technique.
Yoga is not something you do.
Create a home for yoga in your heart.
Cultivate and tend it.
Be present and watch.
Yoga is something that happens.
Like photosynthesis.
Like the blossoming of a flower.
Like the sun emerging from the clouds,
on a deceptively cold february day.
Sunday 27 February 2011
Saturday 26 February 2011
On teaching
I wonder what khalil gibran would write on teaching. this is probably a sacrilege but it is the tone that comes to mind.
here's mine.
On teaching yoga on a saturday morning.
Your students are not your responsibility. Your own energy is your responsibility. Be neither attached to their success, nor distressed by their avoidance. They will receive what is needed when they are ready. It is their path, not yours.
Just as you let lose your words into the studio, so you let your soul. But do not be distressed if the student does not respond. For their own filters cloud their ears, and they may choose not to hear what displeases them.
Stay true to your truth, for even if you amend your statements after learning more, so you will learn more by being true then by censoring.
Do not answer too many questions, but keep asking questions. The student will easily flow forth with their own insight, but leave and make space. Throughout your teaching, create space, spaces for discovery, insight and deep breath. But guide that space with care and precision to lead it to optimal insights.
Worry not for what they may expect, because it is your duty to teach at every moment, not just deliver instructions to a vacuum. The words and instincts you are given are not from you but from the divine, so do not hold back.
Be neither authoritative, nor overly passive. Do not force your own technique nor let the student do whatever he wishes. Do not attach egoistically to your own perspective but do not accommodate the student's ego either.
DO not look at your students for validation or for praise. Make each class an offering and have no attachment to the return. The connection you feel to source is the validation you seek.
Be here now, open yourself to the flow and the flow will guide you. trust both your instinct and you knowledge.
And be grateful, for this is a beautiful job to be given.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
here's mine.
On teaching yoga on a saturday morning.
Your students are not your responsibility. Your own energy is your responsibility. Be neither attached to their success, nor distressed by their avoidance. They will receive what is needed when they are ready. It is their path, not yours.
Just as you let lose your words into the studio, so you let your soul. But do not be distressed if the student does not respond. For their own filters cloud their ears, and they may choose not to hear what displeases them.
Stay true to your truth, for even if you amend your statements after learning more, so you will learn more by being true then by censoring.
Do not answer too many questions, but keep asking questions. The student will easily flow forth with their own insight, but leave and make space. Throughout your teaching, create space, spaces for discovery, insight and deep breath. But guide that space with care and precision to lead it to optimal insights.
Worry not for what they may expect, because it is your duty to teach at every moment, not just deliver instructions to a vacuum. The words and instincts you are given are not from you but from the divine, so do not hold back.
Be neither authoritative, nor overly passive. Do not force your own technique nor let the student do whatever he wishes. Do not attach egoistically to your own perspective but do not accommodate the student's ego either.
DO not look at your students for validation or for praise. Make each class an offering and have no attachment to the return. The connection you feel to source is the validation you seek.
Be here now, open yourself to the flow and the flow will guide you. trust both your instinct and you knowledge.
And be grateful, for this is a beautiful job to be given.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Saturday 12 February 2011
innocence mission
Listening to adyashanti the other day doing my practice, it came that the next theme (after this month of forearm balances) is innocence. More to come on that in words, but in the mean time, I am playing with approaching everything in life, from the ever present overdancing thoughts, to the things I think i know, with the spirit of innocence. Wondering just what is, not what i want or need or am trying to do.
Not do, just wonder.
Nothing but the innocence of love.
New facet of the journey, and big potential.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti.
A new world is possible.
Peace.
Not do, just wonder.
Nothing but the innocence of love.
New facet of the journey, and big potential.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti.
A new world is possible.
Peace.
Tuesday 8 February 2011
aligning
Sometimes I am so precious about blogging, like everything has to be some kind of masterwork before i can post it. This one is not, it is very much about me, in process.
The last few weeks, or years, or lifetimes, i don't know yet, i have been caught in what feels like a whirlpool of thinking. that every time i sit to meditate, or go about my own life, these thoughts become so haunting, that i start to feel debilitated. I feel like I know what I should be doing, but instead get caught in patterns of self destruction, patterns of negative thought, patterns of over thinking. and what it feels like is a shadow of me flying in circles in my head, while another little me is hiding in the bottom of the closet.
I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS. Not eliminate, but not live in this pattern. What I am slowly recognizing is that I have to learn how to love. Love all of it, fully and with the greatest compassion. Love the hiding girl and her voice of fear. Love the flying witch and her insane mutteringsings, love the driven Sagittarian/Capricorn and the double sided Gemini. I don't even fully know what it means to love all these bits. But I know that that love represents coming into wholeness and growing up, and then having the beautiful life that I want.
It's difficult to say these things publicly. Really difficult. They feel big, and right away i can hear the mind chattering saying, how dare you write that. What if people...
But that is part of it. Accepting my vulnerability, and letting you see it too.
Anyway, this post was supposed to be about aligning.
The other day I was sitting at the beginning of a class, with my teacher Ana Forrest, when one of her assistants came and moved my body backwards in the simple sitting (meditative) pose. Ana's comment to me was, "What would it feel like to get your head in alignment with your power?". I suppose this echos something I have been told before, "you act with your head pointing." I think this means the same thing, that the head goes forward, sometimes too the chest and upper body into an ungrounded and over directed, unaligned place.
So I have been doing lots of abdominal work, a la Ana Forrest. I have been also chanting Har. Building the power in the navel centre for that energy to make change. But more than that, I am also learning the role and perhaps art of mental containment.
In yoga it is sort of obvious, a stage of the practice where the mind comes up with all kinds of reasons that you cannot hold this pose anymore, or you really need to repaint your fingernails instead of going to the mat or all kinds of stories that we put in front of actually doing. The class is too early, the class is too late, its too hot, its too crowded, i can't because this, that this that this that and the other. And then at some stage, or for a moment another part says, shhhhh. Go to the mat. Hold the pose, one more breath, just one.
which becomes two
which becomes another day when you woke up extra early
then another week
which becomes the practice.
For me, it goes in waves. There are moments when I feel so clearly and strongly the hushing presence. And there are other times when the mind wanders so completely on its own. And in those wanderings sometimes I forget that it is the other voice, the shhhh voice, the parent voice in the head, that must not hush the mind entirely, but look at it with the greatest love and say, no dear, you cannot have cake for dinner. no dear, you do have to go to school.
I feel like I have confused loving with a kind of self indulgence, really wallowing, that allowed sloppy thoughts, unfinished projects and self sabotage to become a habit.
This month I am working on forearm balances, in my practice and in my teaching. It is showing me many things -
the steadiness of practice needed to build up enough strength to improve
the steadiness of thought needed to maintain balance when it wavers,
the integrity of the body and mind needed to hold my sometimes floppy body as one unit
the sheer enjoyment of the challenge and how joyful it can be to grow.
So i am sitting with the intention of bringing my head heart and navel in line, the mind, the guiding heart and the power to work as one.
Here I am, work in progress.
We close the practice with three times Om to come into Harmony with each other, with all beings and with our own true nature which is divine.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti.
Peace and that Greatest Love, ever expansive and also containing.
The last few weeks, or years, or lifetimes, i don't know yet, i have been caught in what feels like a whirlpool of thinking. that every time i sit to meditate, or go about my own life, these thoughts become so haunting, that i start to feel debilitated. I feel like I know what I should be doing, but instead get caught in patterns of self destruction, patterns of negative thought, patterns of over thinking. and what it feels like is a shadow of me flying in circles in my head, while another little me is hiding in the bottom of the closet.
I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS. Not eliminate, but not live in this pattern. What I am slowly recognizing is that I have to learn how to love. Love all of it, fully and with the greatest compassion. Love the hiding girl and her voice of fear. Love the flying witch and her insane mutteringsings, love the driven Sagittarian/Capricorn and the double sided Gemini. I don't even fully know what it means to love all these bits. But I know that that love represents coming into wholeness and growing up, and then having the beautiful life that I want.
It's difficult to say these things publicly. Really difficult. They feel big, and right away i can hear the mind chattering saying, how dare you write that. What if people...
But that is part of it. Accepting my vulnerability, and letting you see it too.
Anyway, this post was supposed to be about aligning.
The other day I was sitting at the beginning of a class, with my teacher Ana Forrest, when one of her assistants came and moved my body backwards in the simple sitting (meditative) pose. Ana's comment to me was, "What would it feel like to get your head in alignment with your power?". I suppose this echos something I have been told before, "you act with your head pointing." I think this means the same thing, that the head goes forward, sometimes too the chest and upper body into an ungrounded and over directed, unaligned place.
So I have been doing lots of abdominal work, a la Ana Forrest. I have been also chanting Har. Building the power in the navel centre for that energy to make change. But more than that, I am also learning the role and perhaps art of mental containment.
In yoga it is sort of obvious, a stage of the practice where the mind comes up with all kinds of reasons that you cannot hold this pose anymore, or you really need to repaint your fingernails instead of going to the mat or all kinds of stories that we put in front of actually doing. The class is too early, the class is too late, its too hot, its too crowded, i can't because this, that this that this that and the other. And then at some stage, or for a moment another part says, shhhhh. Go to the mat. Hold the pose, one more breath, just one.
which becomes two
which becomes another day when you woke up extra early
then another week
which becomes the practice.
For me, it goes in waves. There are moments when I feel so clearly and strongly the hushing presence. And there are other times when the mind wanders so completely on its own. And in those wanderings sometimes I forget that it is the other voice, the shhhh voice, the parent voice in the head, that must not hush the mind entirely, but look at it with the greatest love and say, no dear, you cannot have cake for dinner. no dear, you do have to go to school.
I feel like I have confused loving with a kind of self indulgence, really wallowing, that allowed sloppy thoughts, unfinished projects and self sabotage to become a habit.
This month I am working on forearm balances, in my practice and in my teaching. It is showing me many things -
the steadiness of practice needed to build up enough strength to improve
the steadiness of thought needed to maintain balance when it wavers,
the integrity of the body and mind needed to hold my sometimes floppy body as one unit
the sheer enjoyment of the challenge and how joyful it can be to grow.
So i am sitting with the intention of bringing my head heart and navel in line, the mind, the guiding heart and the power to work as one.
Here I am, work in progress.
We close the practice with three times Om to come into Harmony with each other, with all beings and with our own true nature which is divine.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti.
Peace and that Greatest Love, ever expansive and also containing.
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