Svadhyaya: Self-study

The following are the words of my teacher Sharath on the above Niyama:

Svadhyaya means studying what we have learned from our teacher: not only trying to understand what has been said, but deepening that understanding and expanding our knowledge by reading manuscripts and thinking for about the subject we are learning. Self-study is to engage out mind, to further our studies. It is out duty to do our homework, to practice and review what the guru has said, to go deeper into whatever yoga subject we are learning, and in understanding and experiencing the self and the divine. the teacher cannot push, he or she can only guid. If he or she shares who Ganapati is, the remover of obstacles, it is up to the student to find out more about Ganapati and those obstacles.

For some reason this has been on my mind today. Partly because I know my students never do this with what I say to them, I'm hard headed and draw hard headed people to my Mysore program lol. But, have I been doing this? The biggest advice Sharath has given me personally is about my diet. And so I have to think about that. He obviously thinks that is where the bulk of my work needs to be done. I overeat, for sure. I try to put the best things in that I can, but I don't cook and so resort to eating out and have to make the best choices I can on where to eat with what my body is needing at that time. But I also love pizza and lots of stuff that doesn't react well with my body anymore. Plus the quality of the food here isn't great, even at most of the restaurants that I will eat at. So for the next month I really need to pay attention, I've been prone to eating far too much these past two weeks and too much stuff that I know affects my stomach badly, and now my back is out again. Hmmmm...

Okay, I'm paying attention, I truly am.

Seeing things differently...

It's odd to be driving around, seeing things that I've seen hundreds or even thousands of times and recognising them, but also feeling like I've never seen them before.

I feel like since I've decided to leave St. Louis this is exactly what's happening to me. I'm sitting in this room in a friends house on a futon that I'm sleeping on that's unfamiliar to me. It's damn comfortable though lol, but not mine. In a room with not too much stuff in it but only a small amount of books in the corner and clothes in the closet are mine. Oh, and this lamp I bought when Tom and I moved in together back in October of 1999. Somehow this damn lamp has followed me from that apartment to Collinsville, to when I lived with Hugh and Steve, to my own apartment, to all five places I moved around to last year and is still here with me. My car is gone, so I'm driving a friends car that's very comfy and has ac in it and so I'm feeling foreign as I drive it around, it's nice in this heat to have ac too, don't get me wrong, I've just not had it in my car in over 8 years!

So all of my circumstances are altered and so I am seeing things, the same things that my mind is acknowledging that it recognizes, from the most different perspective than I've had before. I've lived here for a very long time and had the same "stuff" for a very long time, so have always recreated the same sort of little comfort zone in each place I've lived in these last 16 years. But I've swiped that rug out from under myself.

All this root chakra stuff being stirred up has also helped my very low back go out, which is no fun. It went out on me in Mysore as well my second trip, that was even worse! But to have it go out just when your practice was soaring sucks. I was very distracted and thinking of things instead of lifting my pelvic floor and the deeper inner muscle actions that affect moola bandha and crack, crack, crack. Three cracks. Now it's a mess. I'm feeling better. Had a chiropractic adjustment that got the nerves freed up, they were being pinched, and now it's just cranky. So I'm practicing less and slower but it's working in getting it all where it needs to be. We learn from injury, especially when it was something we did to ourselves! I'm learning, and learning and learning. And will be better for Mysore this time around than maybe ever.

So that pain adds to the surreal quality that life is already taking on around me, giving things more brightness, more color, making scents stronger and sensations warmer, or colder.

I read this passage this morning in one of the books I'm reading about experiencing the heart space. It also was an exercise in going deep within, feeling the void that exists at your centre, at the centre of all things, and then when I came out of the exercise I was also seeing things from that quiet, empty, dark space. Not that things were darker. They actually were brighter, the heat from the sun that was beating down on my flesh didn't feel hot and wasn't making me sweat anymore. The bright green of the surrounding trees and the grass was slicing through me. The smells of the creek at the park I was at were intense and took me away to the Ganga, which I've been thinking about so much.

It seems source is coming through me more and through the experiences I'm having in life this week I'm becoming more and more aware of source in every situation I find myself in. It's very interesting. I'm enjoying it. These new eyes. Or should I say this new vision, same old eyes, but seeing with a new vision. Feeling with a new depth. Experiencing with a different gauge.

I taught a private a couple weeks back and mostly focused on the breath with her, which is really the ashtanga way to do things, but then introduced movement along with the breath and when she left she was teary eyed and spoke of how she was seeing all the things in the neighbourhood differently. Colours were brighter, the sun was lighter, just everything. Maybe I'm experiencing a new level of this, which happened to me many years ago when I began living this yoga we call Ashtanga.

I want to bring this quality to everyones life, are you in? Come see me soon!

Lots of thinking going on...

I haven't written too much lately, been thinking way too much. I hate thinking! Well, maybe I don't hate thinking. I'm just the sort that can get caught up in those thoughts and never come back to being present. It's a pattern from my youth, get lost in my head and not feel things anymore and navigate from my heart, which has really changed my life and opened me up.

I'm leaving for India in just about a month and a half, give or take, and I'm intending to teach and travel from there. I have one four month gig lined up already. Thinking I could go and cover peoples Mysore programs maybe, but also am open to it manifesting however it will.

I also have a lot of money to make before I leave, and that makes me anxious. I also am having lots of feelings about leaving, not the kind that will make me stay, just the kind that will make me nostalgic while I'm here which can again lead to the thinking and then that fucks me up.

Then there's this election and if you know me, I never talk about politics and I've been talking about them. I never even usually think about that stuff, but Trump has me scared. And I actually just had my first discussion and unfriending of someone because they were a Trump supporter. And I'm not the kind of person to hamper anyones opinions of that kind of stuff, but it's what I did.

I also just watched Looking: the movie, which used to be an HBO series that I liked and they kind of left hanging after three seasons, or two? Can't remember. So they made a one shot movie to settle up on some things from the series. Again, like the series used to do, it made me emotional, but also made me think a lot about the past. When I used to have a lot of gay friends and we used to drink and dance and party all the time, not where I am anymore. But after I quit drinking and going to bars almost all of my gay male friends stopped contacting me, and that makes me sad. I do still have some gay friends and even some I've met in Mysore and keep in contact with, but almost none here that I'm in contact with regularly and can hang out with. Not that I need that, but its just like I always say about being in Mysore, hanging around with only Ashtanga yogis is nice because there's that shorthand you don't have with other yoga practitioners, same with gay male friends, its just a shorthand you don't have with your female friends, or straight male friends. Who knows.

I just know that it's been very hot here, actually more humid than anything, and that has been making me stay indoors more and I'm not and indoors sort. So its making me a bit depressed. I think its supposed to finally cool off this weekend with a storm that's coming through, we'll see. I also don't feel totally depressed, I'm just ready to leave. I'm ready to be in Mysore and its not time yet, so I'm feeling a bit held back...

I'm supposed to go to this big Laksmi puja at the Hindu temple, right about now actually, but I'm not sure if I want to go now. The service I usually go to is normally at 6:30, its an abishekam, where they bathe the murthy and chant and have parsed, but its been moved to 5pm and they're havoing a 2 hour celebration after that for a bit holiday celebrating Lakshmi and what she stands for. This is something I would normally love, but again, the heat has me not wanting to go. I don't have air conditioning in my car, so driving all the way out there is a big suffer fest! Oh, I'm so dramatic!

Ok, off here to figure out what it is that I want to do and go do it. Enjoy your evening and weekend!