New body...

The title of this entry refers to a famous quote from K. Pattabhi Jois, "new body, new body, new body is making..." Which referred to the fact that yoga, maybe this specific practice even, changed you on a cellular level. Your body sweats, detoxifies and evolves as you practice. Even most peoples diet and approach to life change from it. So as cells go they replenish more quickly with all the excess sweat forcing the old cells off the epidermis. Your muscles change, they get strong but also longer and more pliable, along with many other things. I tend to get here and sweat so much here, more than in my former home, and break out. The zits only last about a week but they are annoying and painful, then boom, gone, it may happen again if my diet falters while I'm here but again, goes away fairly quickly. My hair and nails grow faster here, I believe because of the energy flow of the place, there is a LOT of prana here, both in the shala and outside of it. But this is maybe the first time I've experienced the feeling of a new body. I have practiced this path we call Ashtanga Yoga since March 1 of the year 2000. I began primary series and didn't really complete it for two years, when I was on the island of Maui studying with Nancy Gilgoff and Guruji for a week as well. Nancy immediately started me on intermediate series and then began me on advanced A during my time there. Maybe during those weeks I was in less pain, but for the majority of the time I've been engaging in this practice I have hurt. I hurt myself as well and that is why I quit in 2008 and studied Kundalini Yoga and Anusara Yoga, to heal, physically, but also emotionally and spiritually. When I came back to Ashtanga Yoga I was safer, studied with many certified and authorised teachers and began my yearly treks to Mysore, India to study with Sharath, who had taken over guiding the lineage once Pattabhi left his body. But even then, I still hurt all the time. I felt better when I was practicing at home because I would take an extra day off here and there but when here and having to do this 5-6 days in a row each week I was just sore, joints, muscles, one season my SI joint went out, this season I'm having a wrist issue, etc. But this is the first season that I am not sore all the time. I've always been jealous of those people who can just get up daily and practice, no matter what. This is another issue, no segway, sorry. I always have a battle of internal dialogue telling me how awful it is to do this daily, that I'm going to kill myself or worse, going to lose my mind! haha, as if... And the soreness always made my mind choose to do the same as I was doing back home, takes extra days off and such. I felt justified for following my body's needs, yay for me! But was I? Or was I just telling myself that? In some ways both. But this season I'm here, I'm practicing 6 days in a row (okay those in the know, yes I still sometimes skip the Saturday led class to avoid the crowds, but I did go once, but I've practiced at home all but one!) and my body is okay with it. Dare I even say my body feels better than it ever has? Yes, I dare. Because it does! I will also state that Sharath still has me doing mostly only primary series. He's always talking about how important it is for the basics of the body, and now I finally believe him. When I was practicing the first go round I love intermediate and after you practice it you feel just ethereal almost, although I hear this isn't so when you're doing it daily. I was on Nancy's regimen of primary one day, intermediate the next, back and forth. Which was pretty good, so we'll see how it goes if I ever get there again. But for now doing mostly primary and adding on pasasana and the backhanding, it's working and making my body feel great, and my mind feel strong and I'm feeling more open than ever, heart-wise and mind-wise. And I will say I love feeling open, even though I fought hard against it for so many years. No, now it feels great. So whether or not you agree with this, that's fine, but from experience let me tell you to keep practicing. Things change, eventually, physically of course (even though that took the longest for me) but emotionally and mentally especially. Then that's when you can enjoy life a little more. I enjoy going out around town with people, or by myself. Or staying in with people, or by myself. Eating, or not eating. Reading, writing, watching tv shows, scanning social media. All of these things, or none of them, I enjoy doing them, or not doing them. Just being okay with whatever comes up, that's a new thing for me. But yogascittavrttinirodhanah, right?

The hard and the soft...

Now, those of you who know me well will likely think the title of this entry is sexual. I do like my potty humour and have a terribly naughty mind, but alas, I'm sorry to disappoint that it has nothing to do with this.

I've been really thinking, most of the summer actually, about the hardness of this practice. The intensity really, which seems like hardness. It comes across to those who don't practice it that it's all about pushing further and further and forcing yourself into these postures that don't seem natural.

In fact, its the exact opposite.

If you try to push yourself into these posture you will do nothing but hurt yourself. I used to do that when I was first practicing Ashtanga yoga, hurt myself a lot while teaching myself third series (I'd previously learned primary and Intermediate with a teacher).

The key to this practice, which already brings a strong yang vibe in its intensity with all the focus on the breath, bandhas and dristhi and the sheer amount of jump backs, jump throughs and posture sequences, is to allow it to happen. Is to soften and just breath without a lot of muscle tension or mental tension to make it worse. It's to find the softness, the feminine energy, the yin, within all that yang.

It took me coming to Mysore and having Sharath poke me with his toe saying relax, relax, relax, thirty times each practice to realise the maybe he wanted me to relax and not push so hard, not focus so much on my alignment, which I'd gotten into with the study of Anusara yoga, and just breathe. Breath really is the softest thing we can offer ourselves, and it changes our postures.

It slowly seeped into my practice that I'm meant to just practice, not thing about everything while I'm practicing. They've given us enough to focus on during our sadhana, so just breathe and do it and look at your nose and do it and just do it, do the next posture! hahaha...

So, I feel like this trip is really going well because I've integrated that softness by now, my fourth trip here, and my back feels great, my wrist was hurting but keeps getting better and my mind I'm mostly able to shut off during the asanas.

I ran across someone I've seen around at the shala on Facebook and found out he does Thai massage, which I also do, but that I never have the opportunity to receive. So decided to contact him about getting some bodywork, even though I didn't really need it, I've been craving that human touch and was following my instincts and they'd told me to contact him.

I must say it was the most bizarre massage I've ever had, very strange techniques that I've never encountered, but my god, it was also the best bodywork I've ever had. I feel better than I've felt in a long, long time and he mostly focused on the wrist, but using the whole body to get the energy flowing to the wrist, and everywhere. But the one thing that stood out is what he said to me after the experience. He told me he felt that I've worked hard on myself and I've achieved a lot but there is some last bit of resistance and that is whats affecting the wrist. I also felt this so agreed and now need to figure that out and let it move on through.

But he also said that he so much appreciated my softness. He could tell I worked hard to get to that point and it was a pleasure to work on someone who received so well. How masculine it is to be with and admit your softer side, rather than harden up (as we're taught to do so intently back in the midwest, maybe everywhere actually) and he appreciated it.

So, I'm soft. I've always wanted to be and I guess I have achieved that. But my hardness comes out a lot as well, as it has in pissing a few people off this week via social media. So it's always a balancing act, isn't it? Finding out when to comment, or not, and if you do to deal with the consequences of it, good or bad. But then good or bad are just labels, and I'm so tired to death of labelling everything.

Put that way, aren't hard and soft just labels as well? They are also ways of being I guess but labels to those ways of being still. Maybe one day I'll learn to just be, to just be content and at peace with whatever comes, as the sutras state. Maybe not. For now I'll be who I am and sometimes I'll remember to back off, and sometimes I won't and Ill make that comment, and sometimes when receiving bodywork I might tense up, but sometimes I'll be able to relax and fully receive it and just breathe.

Those who know me and love me get me either way, they may get irritated when I'm a bit too hard edged, but they know that underneath it I'm just a big soft teddy bear. Now I've spilled the beans and you all know it huh? Oh well, maybe that's part of it too. The catharsis of letting you all know my secrets, or maybe not having secrets at all? Ahhh, I like that...

Practice, practice, practice...

This trip has been very different for me, not sure of all the reasons just yet, but they are there. One thing is my wrist is jacked up, but its slowly healing. Have to take care with that one, we use our wrists A LOT in this practice. So my ego has been poked already around what I think my practice is supposed to look and feel like, which has so far been a good thing.

One thing that's surprising to me is how much I'm looking forward to practicing each morning. I just like being in that room and there is a whole different group this year, well, not all different, but there are many new faces and they seem to be much better behaved than the other groups I've encountered in past trips. Including going in at the gate each morning, it's been not a heart wrenching nervous system jarring experience, it's been quite pleasant and calm mostly, even on led days. And speaking of led class, I'm enjoying them for a change and have been able to get in the room each time, not just been relegated to the change room.

People here seem to be socializing a bit less, less people in the cafes most of the day, not including Santosha in the mornings which has been busy. But not as much going out and about, and that's okay too.

I've taken to visiting the area temples more this trip, much like the end of my last trip. And am getting a lot out of it, more encouragement and welcomeness from the locals too. Not they ever made me feel unwelcome, just looked at me like wtf? lol, but not this time, it's been amazing.

Also, I'm eating less. Not interested in being super full and eating things with more nutrients I think has helped that too. But I feel much more energized, maybe putting that stuff about diet I learned back in the US before I came has been helping that too, interesting to use my body as the experiment and seeing where it takes me. I like having more energy and I like not feel super full all the time, or excruciatingly hungry, as I used to.

Not much more to say right now. Not a lot of deep stuff coming up for me yet, not that it won't, it usually does, but that I'm in a different place so its not affecting me as much maybe? Or maybe I've just not dug deep enough yet? Or maybe I should just enjoy it either way...

Mysore, again...

I've been terrible about writing in this blog this summer, and now that it's fall back in the US and I'm in India again I'm finally feeling like I'm ready to start again, maybe... Let's see how it goes.

I've been here about 2 weeks now, just starting my second week of practice with Sharath again. It feels like home, and like I never left. I truly did not want to leave last time, so much so that I vomited all the way to the airport in March when I was leaving. Well, maybe not all the way, do you remember Katie? It was miserable. And it took me a while once back in St. Louis to shake off the icky feeling of not wanting to be there. In fact, I don't think I ever shook off that feeling. I think I just embraced it and felt that way.

But being back here and with most of the same friends who come with me each time from around the planet, it feels right. And walking into the office to register for classes with my teacher and his "oh, it's you again..." helped it feel even more right, haha. I love India and it feels correct to me to be here. Even though I can't wait to travel around and see more and more of it and it's culture and decide eventually where I want to live, yes I'm planning to live here.

But that's for another blog, at another time.

This past week it has been Dasara, more popularly known as Navaratri. Nine nights of the goddess. Which somehow becomes 11 days, really 10, but the big procession was today and it's the 11th of October. After worshipping different aspects of the goddess for the last 9 days.

I took part in a homa, a fire ceremony, on the 8th day, which according to my astrology was the proper day and version of the goddess for me to be involved in. There was a sankalpa, an intention, to start the ceremony and it was in Sanskrit and beautiful. Asking for guidance and knowledge to be able to follow the path that I'm supposed to. From that I also god a great reading of my chart telling me many things that are meant to happen, not all wonderful, but many not so shabby. In this system you can also change the karma of the future by tapas, mantra or some work on yourself that cancels out the stuff that could be coming your way. So I've been assigned a mantra to recite 1008 times daily, yes that many, even more if I can, but I'm finding that to be quite enough for now. It's amazing how I feel after that.

I'm also having wrist problems, but they seem to be a part of this process of clearing shit out and making way for the new ventures in my life. And there seem to be many coming my way, and that I'm quite ready for.

Practice is hard with the wrist thing going on but I'm able to do it at my own pace and Sharath has been supportive of it, and also he remembers my name now! That alone made me feel great, and it only took 4 extended trips here, but I'm not complaining.

Mostly I feel very grateful and appreciative of the path that has led me here and those who have played a part in it. I'm ready to move forward, in life, in this practice and in embracing all the things possible, rather than feeling like I'm blocking them off. It's time to open up my arms and say yes, rather than cross my arms across my chest as I normally would and say, mmmm, let me think about it, or no.

Well, off to do my japa for the evening, take care, see you soon!