Back to my roots...

So last week was my first week of teaching Mysore style Ashtanga in the early morning and getting up very, very early to practice before teaching. It went pretty well. I love my core group of students and most of them came daily, some it was there first time working with a teacher daily (most of them have strong home practices) and it's proving to be transformational for all of us. Myself included, as I figured getting up so very early would.

There have also been two days this week and it's still going strong, but not only that, I started a 5 week Intro to Ashanga series on Wednesday evenings that has 13 folks in it, which is also pretty good. They are strong and seem to be into it to, which is all I can hope for. So great teaching people who are interested in what you're sharing. Then I also began a chanting class on Sunday afternoons, which I love. There were only a couple attendees but we went or it and it was great.

I finally feel like I did back when I was just in the first few years of my practice and had started teaching a couple people in Collinsville at my friends dance supply store, and then that grew, and we were inadvertently practicing Mysore style because as a new person would come in I would work with them and let the others practice what I'd already taught them and then help them when they needed it. Then I go to Maui to study with Guruji and Nancy Gilgoff and discover that this is the way this system is actually taught traditionally, hilarious to me to know I was so in tune with this stuff without even knowing it!

On a slightly sad note, but all things move and shift, my friend just closed that store this weekend. I went and had lunch with her one more time over there. She's 69 and is still practicing daily and is ready to retire finally, so an end of an era. I taught there from 2001 through early 2008.

Back then everything felt fresh and new, Guruji had told me to practice in the early morning and everything would change in my life and it had, I was teaching 3-4 nights a week to a good group who were hungry for what I had to share and I was getting other teaching gigs in St. Louis. Everything felt possible and like I was on the right path, well, I'm there again. I was so hugnry for everything that I would get online and look up Ashtanga stuff all day and order books about it by diferent people and just look at peoples websites all the time. Well, I'm studying and digging in deep again, this time a little differently, reading, studying some aspects of Hinduism, rekindling my knowledge of Sanskrit and stuff like that.

So to come back around to a place I've already been is interesting, but this time it feels so different, even though it's kind of the same. It feels good to feel good and to feel like you're doing what you are lined up to do. Is that what they call dharma? Maybe so, maybe I knew what my dharma was all along and just didn't know it. I knew it was to teach and as I teach I've always felt good, but teaching this system back in the early 2000's through 2007 was my happiest time and now that I'm back to it, it feels like it's leading into another happy time, which is just fine with me. Sometimes we need to take a detour away from that to figure out what we already knew and with fresh eyes see that we knew all along where we belonged.

It feels good to be back and the Tower Grove Park class also is starting on April 11th this year so that will be back too, all good things are coming my way. Wait a minute, they are here!

The winds of change are blowing...

In 2000 after just having started practicing Ashtanga Yoga on March 1, I drove to Boulder, Colorado in August to study for 2 weeks with K. Pattabhi Jois, who I would soon call Guruji. On this trip he held about 4 conferences, 2 of which I attended (you had to sign up for them since there were so many in attendance). One of them has been held in my memory since then, when Guruji looked directly at me (and I'm sure many in the room thought he was looking directly at them) in answer to someones question about practicing in the evenings and he said "You, (pointing at me, looking me in the eye) getting up, 4am, practicing, before working. Whole life changing, whole life(doing a sweeping motion with both hands)!

So, I went home and debated within myself about getting up so early to do it. I loved the idea of it because I knew no one else I knew would ever be doing it and in many ways I love being the odd man out, in many ways I don't love it as well, but that's another tale. So it was finally my partner at the time who convinced me to give it a try, and so I did.

Boy, did my whole life change. We broke up, I moved back across the river to Illinois, I ended up leaving my full time job at a brokerage firm of 14 years and many other things. But those are not the point of this entry today.

The point is that since then I haven't had to get up that early, other than when I'm in Mysore studying with Sharath, Guruji's grandson and the heir to the head of the lineage of Ashtanga Yoga. And to say that on my trips over there my life didn't change would be an understatement. But starting Monday with a new commitment to teach a morning Mysore program at a new studio that my friend is opening, I'm also committing to getting up at like 3am to practice before the program begins at 6am and so I fully expect the changes and transformations to begin yet again.

I just got home from Mysore on February 3rd, and many, many changes have already taken place both within and without but this could very likely be a new level of this happening again. I'm not saying this with a foreboding voice by any means, but with one of interest and introspection. I'm curious what further could come about.

I've been very slowly since getting home letting go of things more and more, but also letting go of holding on to the past and by the past I also mean this morning. Not that I'm not remembering the things that happened throughout my day but that I'm not clinging to the emotions that have arisen throughout my day.

I'm moving into each situation with a fresh outlook, no judgment from a predisposed notion that may have been caused by previous experience with a person, place or thing. Not that I'm doing that perfectly, but definitely since this last trip I'm doing it much more easily and frequently. It's an interesting place to be in, one of not clinging. I know that I feel much more at ease and happy almost all the time and with that I've also been more interested in staying in touch with my family more as well as cultivating a deeper connection with just about anyone I come in contact with, making each conversation or interaction have a deeper meaning.

So, I'm interested to see what life has to bring with this new commitment to getting up super early again. In India they call this time a few hours before dawn Brahma Muhurta, the time of God. Meaning that this time there are less people, animals, well, just about everything up and about to cause vibrations or stimulation so it's easier to connect to the energy of God or what I often call source. So to practice your asanas, meditation, chanting, anything that we do to connect at this time of the morning, is much more beneficial to spiritual growth, to expansion of consicousness and just a deeper awareness of ones self.

We'll see how it goes. I'm not going to sit and watch everything strongly, that would be the watched pot doesn't boil thing in action. But I am going to be aware and notice things, hoping to make the best choices that I can to lead me in an amazing direction and to keep those around me inspired to do that same (not get up so early but to seek connection when possible).

What do you do to connect? Is there a time you find it better than others to do your practices? Do you even have practices that you do to try to connect? If so, I hope you can find new levels of connection within them as well. It's a great time of change and strong flow of energy on our planet and I believe we are all being called to empower ourselves and others. What's your belief?

Mysore magic...

A friend of mine recently wrote an article with the above title, so I thought I'd steal that idea from her, I'm sure she won't mind and if she does she can send me a personal Facebook message about it lol.

So, in Mysore many talk about the magic there and many mean it within the shala, in their asana practice, but many mean other things as well. To me it mostly has to do with the place itself, India itself. In the shala my practice is no more easy than at home even though this time I got further but I think that had to do more with the daily schedule being kept and the heat in the room from so many being in there expending their energy. But in Gokulam I found a level of peace that I'm never able to find, a level of dedication to my practice, not just my asana practice, but to my yoga practice (living and breathing it all day long) that is not easy to find and a new level of awareness just in general, about myself and everything around me. Now part of this is because there I'm not working so my work is to practice, be aware while I practice, and take that consciousness out into my day and follow how it shifts and changes throughout my day, within and without. Also using that to tell how others are feeling and be sensitive to that as well. I also because of this depth of practice during the day built a great fire inside, called agni in Sanskrit, that fire of transformation. Inner transformation but also outer because as a result of my new level of cosciousness I lost 22 pounds in India and have since lost 5 more.

Is this maintainable? Yes, I think it is. When I got home I was maintaining my chanting that I'd learned with Ranjini, I was maintaining the same level of asana practice, maybe as time moved on it got to be a little bit more work, but not too bad. I was still able to wake up super early to practice and was doing so naturally without my alarm, which here to for had been unheard of and I'm still waking up before my alarm goes off most days, even though I am setting it now. I also have been keeping my studies of the texts and culture up which I believe is adding to that fire. So on a certain level, yes it is maintainable.

But in her article she wrote about the bubble bursting at a certain point, and I will say that yes, after my last trip I had that happen but his time it was completely different. Last time I did notice a lull in my eagerness to wake up early and practice hard at my asanas, but also lost the ability to control my diet as I had when I was in India and had lost about 17 pounds and gained most of it back because I was tending to eat a lot heavier at night. This trip coming home I had the bubble burst in a whole different way.

I had moved in with someone that I thought was a friend and who had helped me out a lot by allowing me to move my stuff into a finished room in his basement and leave it there while I was gone, having that bedroom set up and ready upon my return. Which I have to say is a lovely thing because you feel so out of sorts coming home after being over there and living there for a full three months that coming home and having to move or staying on someones couch or something like that would have to be awful. It's nice to feel at home. That feeling was there but after about two weeks started to go south, although I was not quite aware of it at the level I maybe should have been. At first the person I was staying with was practicing with me in the morning, at his behest and then that quickly stopped, when then made my schedule of getting up early annoying to him and I would frequently get texts about the things that bothered him about what I was doing that morning, or walking across his lawn or other things. But I also assume he had other personal things going on that he wasn't telling me about that were getting him agitated as well because he would frequently drop out of yoga at times when things were happening, but this time when he was dropping out I was living with him so it wasn't so easy to get away from it and I believe that also was a factor in why I kept annoying him. During this time our friendship had completely melted away and we'd quit speaking unless it was absolutely necessary. So when he asked me to move out to allow his son to move in it was via email, not even in person, which was odd to me. Remember, I'd just been back from a whole different culture on the opposite side of the planet and trying to reassimilate back into a society that I wasn't even sure I belonged in anymore, so wasn't completely able to be present with all that was going on, which is how I let it get so far out of hand without talking to him about it. We had been friends so his distress was upsetting to me but I wasn't able to handle it as I had in the past because of my displacement, not that that's a good excuse, but it's the only one I've got.

But this was supposed to be about my bubble bursting, not getting into personal relations with former friends. So this was a big burst in my bubble, having to move all of a sudden. But along with this I'd let go of my classes at all the studios I was teaching at before I left and wasn't teaching anything other than private lessons and my Mysore club that meets once or twice a week (a private group I facilitate that practices Mysore style) so was having much the same kind of time as in India to just do my practice and chanting and pranayama and allow all the things to come up to come up and was able to deal with it, so was much living the same life as I had been in India. Also I was feeling so quiet and peaceful that any upheaval from that quiet inner space really threw me for a loop. And this was one of those times.

A good friend has put me up for now and I'm feeling back to my old self and keeping up my asana practice, my chanting and pranayama (even though that week I decided I had to get out more quickly that I originally thought, my practices suffered a lot, they are back on track) and able to do the inner work again at the same level I was in India.

But also I've got a new Mysore program starting up on March 23rd and I'm quite excited about that and a lot of my students are as well, so that is really feeding into that inner fire. Hosting a full program on my own is making me step up to the plate in a new way that is forcing me to be on top of my game and calling forth all this energy that I'd not known I was able to produce before. It's at a new studio owned by a friend who I'm excited to work with again, but this time in a whole new way, and will include morning Mysore sessions, a chanting class on Sunday afternoons and an Intro series one evening in the week to feed into the Mysore program. I'll also still do Intro series at Puravegan as well throughout the year to feed into the program. I've also heard from many who are as excited to give this new way of learning a try, so that feeds into it even more.

In short, or maybe not so short by now, I think it is possible to keep the magic going. Although it will for sure feel differently than it does in Mysore. How could it not? It can still feel fulfilling and exciting and keep that inner fire going. For me manifesting it through many changes in all areas of my life seem to be how it is able to be maintained this time around, but that's okay. Change is the only constant, right?

So, how long has it been since you've incited change in your life? Maybe this sort of shake up is just what you need as well, maybe not, but look at things and see how they feel. Maybe its needed. I didn't think I was bringing this about of my own will, but hen isn't everything in your life a reflection of what's going on inside, making our life our creation? Everything that shows up is upon an invitation from you, so embrace that, but also pay attention so you're not knocked off your feet when it shows up. But even if you are knocked over get back up and bull up your bootstraps and keeping leaning into it, growing, expanding, moving forward and even try to enjoy the process for on the other side of it will be some amazing stuff and even an amazing new life!