Teaching...

I'm finding out more and more things this month of teaching. There are many things that I'm not sure how to word just yet but lets see how this all comes out.

Okay, I'm loving teaching again, that goes without saying. I wrote a lot about how I was missing it and this is confirmed by the amount of enjoyment I'm getting.

I was told by one student the other day that she just loves the way I'll sit and watch and hold the space for a long period of time, that is when she feels the best in the room. I really always feel like I'm doing something because I'm watching everyone so intently that it feels like I am "doing" but moreso I am being and allowing them to be, unless they need my help that is or I see somewhere I can help them and maybe they don't really want my help lol, but I give it to them...

I always remember watching the videos of Guruji teaching, and in them he was often teaching people doing the advanced series, so you'd think he could relax a little, but he always watched them so deeply and made sure they were doing everything just right, so I made it a goal to do the same many years ago. That holding the space is something not everyone understands either, it means your intention, your practice and your focus is strong and sets the tone of the energy in the room. And people can feel that even if they're not so in touch with energetic sensations, but they just know something is different. So I guess I got that skill honed since others are noticing it now, good. Doesn't mean I can relax, its always a work in progress though!

I also noticed that when you have a led class once a week you should not really allow drop ins on that day only. A led class should ideally be for the people who are regularly coming to Mysore style classes. Now, if you're not doing all your classes traditionally then maybe this doesn't matter, but if you are and you are stopping people when they need to stop to work on a posture, rather than just allowing them to go on until they feel like it, with variations that really aren't preparing them for the work of the postures that follow, then newbies shouldn't be allowed to come only for that one led class a week. For one, with me not seeing you in class regularly I don't know what you're working with, what's going on in your body or knee or whatever issue you may have and so I won't have begun to understand how to help you work in your daily practice with it and then in led class when I see you and see you not doing something but have no idea the reason, then I'll stop you, you'll get mad or rather your ego will, and you won't come back. That doesn't serve anyone anyway. And to me it doesn't matter so much that you don't come back because you aren't committed to the practice anyway, but if you then you'll come to other classes as well and be working on something.

I'm not trying to be a dick here, but do you get what I'm saying? It's too hard as a guest teacher to help someone in led class when I haven't seen them also during the week, but they may not understand if they're only coming sometimes anyway.

That is why a month commitment is imperative in an authentic yoga shala, now I do know people have lives and sometimes life gets in the way of coming to a shala and so that's different. But if you want them to understand this method of yoga, not just asana practice, but yoga, then the commitment is needed. And that will automatically take care of that, and if you want to do a separate led primary class you can and allow them to come to that...

There's more but as I mentioned its not all formulated in my head just yet, so I'm not going to start on them and maybe let them become a disaster, so I'll leave it at this. Love you all, hope to see you on your mat or at a meal, or somewhere, anywhere soon!

Unlocking of self...

So I was watching all the students on Monday of this week, it's Wednesday now. I do this daily but that day I really got an insight. It was after the room got full, maybe 15 people in it, and they were all moving, some in Surya Namaskaram, some in Marichasanas, some in closing, all at different points in the series and I realized that this is like a DNA code of sorts.

We are all doing this sequencing, which like a DNA sequence, can unlock you. What does that mean? Who knows, maybe unlock your physical body. I've always thought of it as a sequence that opens up my body in a certain way and when you're ready and doing a different series you've opened up to a new level. Or the mind? Yes, also the mind. Within the sequencing an unlocking also starts to happen in the mind, which is the real and true work of yoga anyhow. In the emotions? Yes, the emotional body definitely has much benefit from the asana practice. In one way it affects the endocrine systems and balances out the hormones produced from each gland in doing so.

There are many levels of unlocking going on. But first being such a physical practice, that level is what we might notice. I certainly did, some might notice other things first and I think there is no one hard and fast rule to it, but once my physical body was more relaxed and open, then the deeper inner work was able to start. My back was really bad and now is not so much.

The biggest thing I see shift in others is on the emotional and energetic levels. Many doubt these things about a yoga practice, but I've experienced it within my own and have seen it in my friends who I've gone to Mysore with and students I've watched over time. It's also the most beneficial because this is where much of our "stuff" lies. Our issues get stored in our body and then through the vinyasa system, the specific placing of the body in a way with deep breathing unlocks us on that deeper level, perhaps on the DNA level and our buried things are no longer happy being pushed aside and want to be front and centre, so keep coming to the forefront of our mind until we work through the root cause of it.

It's all good, and I don't have some major thing to say. If you want that you can look up John Scott's interviews at Purple Valley where he even gets into the vinyasa count and how it affects everything, quite brilliant, but I've just had my own mini aha moment so was happy to share it even though it's only a little bit so far.

I see the connections more and more in things these days and just now realised John Scott had said all this some years back and that it connects to my moment as well, it's so interesting all this stuff. Really all this yoga stuff I mean.

How it works, how it feels, how it changes, how you change, how you see those around you change, how you feel about the change, how your mind is calmer, how your body is more soft and relaxed, how, how, how... I could go on forever. There seems to be no end to the shifts and growth that happens just from doing this strange stuff, but I love it!

Why fearing...?

The above saying which is a famous one from Guruji, K. Pattabhi Jois, and now used still by his grandson who is my guru has been on my mind a bit lately.

I do a lot of things in my life that would stop many people because of their fear. And I am afraid often when I'm doing them, so how am I able? And why do I dive into my fear so easily, rather than avoid it or run away from it as many others do?

This yoga for one. Ashtanga Yoga if you listen to all these people who never practice it will hurt you, shorten your life span, blah, blah, blah. All sorts of bullshit spouted off about it all the time. So when I discovered it and realised it was for me I was afraid and yet I still went forward with it. I did end up hurting myself a lot in those first years, but it wasn't the asana practice that did it, it was my pushing and my lack of bringing the full idea of yoga into my asana practice.

Traveling is what has really been on my mind a lot, and especially today when I've spent a lot of time alone I've been thinking a lot. I'm walking around in a foreign country, which really is no longer foreign to me as I lived here for four months earlier this year and now I'm back again for a month in this town that I'm so familiar with and two months in a town two of my favourite people live in, Frankfurt, after this. And I don't speak the language here, but I'm used to that after those four months and now I do really hear many words in conversations that I recognise and can piece together what is being talked about.

I spend many months each year, and in fact consider India my home, in a culture that I don't speak the language of but as above I've started understanding enough words that when I hear a conversation I can figure out what is being talked about. There the difference is that most often they realise I am from abroad and come to me speaking English often before I get the chance to try my rudimentary Kannada or Hindi on them. Unless I'm dressed a certain way, wearing a lungi or such, then they assume I"m from Kashmir. This last 6 months in India I was taken for a native more times than I can count and that makes me happier than I can ever explain, my heart is there and one day I hope to be an official citizen.

But here in Germany I look like I am German, in fact much of my heritage comes form here so they're not wrong, but I don't speak the language and I realise it when they come up and just say things to me because I then realise I know very few words, but when I look blank and say sorry, they realise and speak English to me.

I go out around town a lot too and still have fear about this but I can't let that stop me. I am a social creature half the time and the time I opend at home I don't have to worry about understanding the culture or knowing the language.

I do have to say that I think I love living in the fear. And in feeling this way I no longer believe it is fear, but maybe a better word would be in awe. Awe of the common ground we have as humans and how even though they find out you're not really one of them they immediately feel like they want to take care of you and explain things or help you figure out where you're going or what som word means on a menu or on a placard in the market.

Being alone in all this makes it feel even more exciting, or full of awe. I almost wrote awful but really that isn't understood as the word I think its supposed to mean as I now look at it after having typed it. If something is awful, isn't that a good thing?!? There is a Hebrew saying that I learned when I was studying Kabbalah which means fear of god, but the word is escaping me at the moment, but when translated by my Kabbalah teacher it was in awe of God, or just in Awe because everything is god. I wish I could remember that word or phrase because it was powerful. And according to him it was the state we want to live in, in awe. And maybe as I'm writing this I realise I am living in that state.

So does that mean that living outside one's comfort zone is the key to living in awe?!? Maybe so, or rather probably so. There's that famous meme that has a small circle with comfort zone written in it and outside the circle which is a very large space it says where the magic happens. This is true, within the comfort zone some amazing things can happen but true transformation of the inner being seems to only happen outside that circle. Hmmm, this is exactly where I've been living especially this past year and some months since I left St. Louis.

When I would go away to Mysore, or wherever I went (I've been traveling alone since 1991 when I took my first plane to Cincinnati on my own, began my sojourns to Chicago alone that same year, drove all over the country in 1997, to Florida, to Colorado, to many other places, all by myself) I would have this amazing growth experience and expand in ways I could never make anyone understand but once I got home I'd fall back into my old patterns and get comfy again and lose much of what I'd learned, until yoga. Then I though I'd go to India immediately and did go to meet Pattabhi in five months. But never went to India. I think innately I realised that I'd never be able to be the same again, and even when I came back each year I often kept many of the changes that happened but realised after that third trip when I came back the fourth time it had to be for good.

SO then Germany came up and back to India and now back to Germany, both uncomfortable places that I've learned to love and have built families in. So I think going back is for sure out of the question, and if and when I do it will be known that its not for good because I don't belong there anymore. I belong wherever I am at that time, which maybe back home for a visit sometimes, but not permanently. And it definitely is in India, especially Mysore, but it's for certain to be in teaching this yoga.

This week in only three days so far of being back to teaching I've realised in a big way that this is to be a part of my life and that I can't go without it or for so long again. It's part of the yoga for me. I do my own practice, stuff comes up and as I'm teaching and getting out of my head about things they are allowed to flow away and it seems that when I let them go during this time they don't come back up again. Yes, it's nice.

What a great life I've created for myself. If you can get out of your own way and stop trying to do things, then universe will be more free to deliver the things you want to you, maybe in ways you don't understand at first, but for sure in ways that will be beneficial.