Category: personal

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Workshop with Sallie Sullivan

This weekend, I attended a yoga day with Sallie Sullivan and I really enjoyed her teaching. She taught in a way that inspired more reflection rather than just giving instruction. She encouraged us to explore the connections between poses and the connection between the actions of a pose and the breath.

She had us do the following sequence 3 times:

  • Utthita Parsvakonasana (hand in front) directly to Utthita Trikonasana (hand behind)
  • Virabhadrasana II directly to Utthita Trikonasana
  • Virabhadrasana I directly to Utthita Trikonasana

The first time, she didn’t offer much guidance other than to observe the connections and how each preceding pose changed our experience of Utthita Trikonasana. The second time, she gave some clues about what we might have noticed (perhaps the extension of the trunk, the movement of the tailbone, or the awareness of the back leg), and the third time she had us see how each of the preceding poses affected the breath in Utthita Trikonasana. Each time through, I felt as if my mind was able to move more inward and be more reflective.

Utthita Trikonasana
Utthita Trikonasana
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Workshop with Marios

Prasarita PadottanasanaThis past Saturday, Marios Argiros taught a yoga workshop in Southbourne. (Only about a 5 minute walk from my house!) His teaching was very clear and challenged me to work with my legs with more awareness and much more action.

The concepts he presented were familiar– I’ve heard it from all the teachers I’ve had the pleasure of studying with– but his presentation was slightly different which gave me another way to feel the actions of keeping the hamstrings broad and the hips compact. Some of the imagery he presented was that the femur heads are like dials that you rotate up on the front and down on the back while maintaining the broadness of the back thigh. Just once he used the instruction “spin faster!” meaning increase the “dialing” action of the femur head, but hearing it that way made it feel much more dynamic. Even with the most basic actions I feel like I’ve “learned,” there is always more to do and feel. Just changing the verb in an instruction can shift the awareness completely.

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Labels and the Mind

This past month has been emotional— many, many citta vrttis. Turnings of the consciousness. Or as my dear friend Rose puts it, mindstuff flux. The goal of yoga practice is to still the fluctuations, to give a sense of serenity, to become even-keeled. Even my new teacher Mary has commented on my “over-active” mind.

I haven’t been employed for the past 7 months– which at first was really nice, a break from my workaholism, what felt like an extended vacation/holiday. My attitude has recently shifted. I applied for a resident visa about a month ago, started exploring where I can start teaching, getting the “game plan” all set.

What has been interesting to observe, is how all of this affects my mind. In a way, actually engaging with the prospect of working again has made me hungry to get started and more than a little impatient.

I then started reflecting on how I define myself, and how attached I’ve become to living up to the labels I’ve given myself. I am a yoga instructor. I work hard. The truth is, I haven’t been teaching and I haven’t really been working all that hard. This creates more than a little internal dissonance.

The kleshas as defined in Mr Iyengar’s translation of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are “the afflictions which disturb the equilibrium of consciousness.” The five afflictions are ignorance, ego-ism, attachment to pleasure, aversion to pain, and fear of death.

So one of the kleshas afflicting me presently, persistently, and obviously is ego-ism. Ego isn’t only pride, but also the sense of individuality and separateness we create in our minds. Labels we give ourselves are just one way we create “separateness” and believing that your identity is defined by them will only lead to suffering. This mis-identification with our labels, our perceived uniqueness, is also a form of another klesha, avidya or ignorance. It is an ignorance of the profound nature of our being, which is stable and true, regardless of how the ego wants to box it in with labels.

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On Yoga Props

Props, props, props.

The props we use in Iyengar yoga classes in England are a little different than what is typical in the US, mostly because teachers (in my area at least) are not teaching in equipped studios. Instead the students bring all of their own props to each class which are held in a wide variety of settings: community centers, hotels, schools, gyms, church halls, etc. Most students bring one blanket, one belt, 2 bricks, and 4-6 foam blocks (not to be confused with bricks) that when put in a 2 x 2 grid make a shoulderstand lift. The foam blocks are much lighter and more compact to haul around than blankets. I purchased a special yoga prop bag into which I can easily fit my props and my kindle. I only bring my bolster if I know we’re doing pranayama. (I can mimic a bolster with my foam blocks and a blanket for most things.) Some venues have folding chairs, but they aren’t modified for yoga. All of this means that the class content is shaped somewhat by what props we have at hand.

Though there are downsides to this arrangement, I believe there are some positive aspects as well: 1.) Classes are held all over town. Within a 5 mile radius there are loads and loads of different locations with a variety of teachers; 2.) Teachers are more easily able to start new classes in new communities since the initial cost of props isn’t a factor; 3.) Students here invest (literally) in their own practice. They have to not only pay for classes, but also for the equipment; 4.) Students have everything on hand at home, and perhaps are more likely begin practicing independently earlier on; and 5.) Nobody takes a well-equipped studio for granted.

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Blossoming

Welcome to my new website and blog! Thank you for visiting!

My plan is to write about various yoga topics including asana (poses), pranayama (breathing), and philosophy as well as personal stories and thoughts about yoga practice and teaching in general. My hope is that this blog can become a forum for yoga discussion– a whole community of yogis, coming together to learn and share from each other.

After teaching yoga in Texas for 11 years, I moved to Bournemouth in England and am rebuilding my yoga teaching career. It feels very odd to start completely over–exciting in many ways, but challenging nonetheless! Of course I miss the support of my teachers and peers, the comfort of the familiar, and the closeness I feel towards my students. We had invested a lot of energy into the yogic journey together and i definitely have conflicting feelings in moving on. The difficulty lies in my egoism, my attachment–that my identity is in some way linked to their happiness and progress, while the sweetness lies in my full knowledge that all of my teachers, friends and students share the joy in our lives’ journeys.

Change is not something that we should fear. Rather, it is something that we should welcome. For without change, nothing in this world would ever grow or blossom, and no one in this world would ever move forward to become the person they’re meant to be. ~B.K.S. Iyengar

The future is bright and I hope to build a new yoga community in my new home. I feel so very grateful to be a yogi.