What a magical and inspiring summer 2007 has offered us here in New Zealand!
I hope that all of you have enjoyed a joyful and nourishing holiday season with family and friends. I look forward to seeing each of you soon and sharing the practice of yoga together in 2008. More very soon!
With gratitude & love,
Katie
Our own body is our best teacher. In the midst of injury, limitation or physical weakness, this is a difficult thing to remember! My life injuries have taught me more about my body, my emotional response to challenges and difficulties, and my ability to persevere with both faith and self-compassion, than any outside yoga teacher, yoga training, workshop, or book.
As a dedicated yoga teacher, I am diligently committed to ongoing training and continuing education. Each year, I travel overseas for a few weeks to study with my main teacher and with others on the path who inspire me. However, at the same time, what I offer in class is not just the result of any one specific training, memorized sequences, or alignment principles from a manual but it is the product of my OWN experience of being a body, mind, and spirit that practices this yoga every day.
And, every day, MY yoga changes. This body and its needs shift moment to moment. This week, I found in my practice a very troubled knee. My familiar and favorite postures, comfortable from years of dialogue with my body, of wearing into them gently like a favorite pair of shoes, were all of a sudden more of a struggle. Balancing postures on one leg, almost impossible! And, if the physical struggle wasn't enough, then the ego speaks: No time for this now Katie! You're hosting a workshop next week. Body needs to be in peak condition!! These inside voices are very hard to quiet.
I made a choice to back off my usual active yoga practice and spend some time in quiet contemplation with my breath. Letting my breath dissolve back into its natural, undisturbed, unambitious rhythm, I found that I was prepared to better listen to my body. And with this new body and new intention, I pulled out my "mental" toolbox of anatomy, alignment, and therapeutics techniques and went to back the drawing board. In sketching the shape of my practice anew not only was I able to find some relief for my knee but I was reminded again of the profound and precise healing capabilities of the Anusara alignment principles and the heart oriented, self-honouring approach to practice that I try to teach every day.
Within the beautiful flow, softness, release, and flexibility of yoga, there IS a quality of precision. Precision has two aspects. First, there is awareness. We survey the inner and outer landscape, opening our self up to what this moment (this body, this mind!) is offering. Second, there is clarity of intention. On a physical level, this involves setting the foundation of a pose in a way that will best open AND support the body and the heart. With awareness and clear intention, we can make the active choice to align our body in a way that better allows us to have an experience of freedom.
Many people think of yoga as a practice that involves only the manipulation of the physical body in various shapes and acrobatic flows. However, we must remember that this outer "shaping" and outer framework is there to support the opening and flow of the inner channels, the inner body. We don't practice yoga to tear our bodies apart. There must be integrity, cohesion, even the setting of boundaries and limits on movement in order to better and more deeply expand inwardly.
In life, many of us choose to commit ourselves to just one person. Most often, we share a physical living space with this person. And, by making this choice, we certainly limit our personal freedoms. It is no longer always an option to do what we want, when we want, with who we want. However, within the context of this limited cohesive relationship, we find inside a greater capacity for intimacy, abiding respect, deep friendship, deep trust, and persevering love.
May we joyfully embrace and celebrate the limits that come with this embodied experience of life! May we find on our yoga mats a way to explore with openness and curiosity those limitations of the body that naturally arise and those limits that we create for ourselves in search of better support for our expression! May we use precision in our practice to not only to heal and prevent injury but to always connect back to the clarity of our intention--to draw together rather than pull apart!
As a lover of stars, fairylights, candles, lanterns, and anything that twinkles brightly, I have always been intrigued and inspired by the beautiful Indian celebration of Diwali or Deepavali, the Festival of Light. The Sanskrit word Deepavali can be defined as "an array [or row] of lights that stand for victory of brightness over darkness." During the five day celebration, people light earthenware lamps, decorate their homes with candles, and burst brightly coloured firecrackers at night.
Although the festival is marked with the lighting of external flame, the esoteric celebration of Diwali is the deep honouring of the inner light, known as the "atman". The part in each of us that is beyond the body, the part that is pure, infinite, and eternal. When we remember and celebrate this inner light, we awaken to our truest nature. We recognize that there IS something within us that is unchanging, always good, full of beauty, and ever present!
My main yoga teacher John Friend has always stressed two main reasons for practicing yoga. First, to remember our innermost spirit and our deep connection to the universal. What a practice this is itself ! How often do we walk through our day remembering this... and 2) to then fully participate in this life in a way that celebrates and honours our universal nature.
In my classes, I often use the term inner body bright to describe the soulful feeling of expansion, lift, and vitality that gives the heart a buoyant fullness. It is not something that can be felt by simply puffing out the chest, drawing the shoulders back, and lifting the chin. It is an inner remembrance of a deep truth--that we have something beautiful and worthy inside us to joyfully express, fully experience, and to share with others.
It is this remembrance that gives your backbends that awe-inspiring and painfree arc, that lifts your shoulders away from the earth in forearm balance, that floats your spine effortlessly skyward in Warrior II. And it is this remembrance of inner light that you see shining out from eyes of classmates and friends at the end of each yoga session.
I think it is a fair assessment that most of us feel like we just don't have enough time in our lives these days. We struggle to balance obligations at work and home and wonder how and where best to fit in time for ourselves. Sometimes we believe that it isn't even possible!
Although many students rarely miss their weekly class, they tell me that finding the time, inspiration, and energy to practice at home very challenging. While acknowledging they feel more relaxed, more spacious, more positive, and really recharged after our yoga sessions, they struggle to carve out the time to make yoga practice a regular part of their day.
The beautiful thing about yoga is that you don't need to spend an hour and a half practicing each day in order to feel its benefits. Even a short practice of a few minutes--with a small selection of poses, mindful awareness of the breath, and a short relaxation--done regularly can shift your whole perspective, giving body and soul a boost!
I'd like to share this "practice parable" from A Flock of Fools: Ancient Buddhist Tales of Wisdom and Laughter From The One Hundred Parable Sutra (an English translation by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt).
PARABLE 1: WHY BOTHER PRACTICING AT ALL?
A man decided to go walking in the heat. He quickly became lost and dehydrated. He continued walking, and the more he walked, the worse he felt. Soon, he was so tired and dehydrated that he began to see mirages of water. He chased these mirages, desperate for relief. The more he chased the mirages, the worse he felt.
Miraculously, in his wanderings, he stumbled upon a real river. He sat at the river's edge, and looked at the water longingly. Another wanderer passed by, and asked the dehydrated and exhausted man why he did not drink from the river. "Clearly you are thirsty," he said. "Why don't you help yourself?"
The dehydrated and exhausted man said, "Oh, this river is far too much for me to drink. I could never finish it."
We don't need to drink the whole river in order to quench out thirst!! A little bit of practice that soothes and satisfies the soul serves us better than waiting until the "perfect" time, "perfect" body, or "perfect" inspiration presents itself.
I recently had the opportunity to study the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali with Kausthub Desikachar in Wellington. Early in my yoga career, I was profoundly affected by his father's (TVK Desikachar) simple and brilliant work, The Heart of Yoga. This book is a beautiful introduction to the history, practice, and philosophy of yoga as taught by Krisnamacharya. Kausthub is Desikachar's son, grandson of Krishnamacharya, and an insightful, provocative, and jovial teacher of yoga in his own right. The workshop was a wonderful meeting of many passionate practitioners and teachers in New Zealand.
There were many insights that I took home but one in particular keeps resonating with my own experience of life: Yoga is a practice of choosing how best to respond. Often, we are not able to control the people, circumstances, situations, or even the emotions that arise to shape and affect our lives. However, through faith and continued practice, we CAN learn to see clearly with an open mind and heart-- actively choosing HOW best to respond to what arises.
According to the Sutras, yoga is a self-empowering process where we are given the option (and responsibility!) to take charge of our own happiness or suffering. In this model, as Kausthub offered, "life does not happen by chance, it happens by our own choice."
It is easy to suffer from the martyr syndrome, with the insistent "Why Me?" arising in the midst of crisis. I often struggle when I imagine or visualize the "perfect" practice and "perfect" life that I would like to have but look instead at the messiness, imperfection, and inconvenient emotions (indecision, anger, sadness) which might be the reality of my day.
What do you do when situations that arise in your daily life make the living of a spiritually connected life seem a far away dream?
My favorite sutra has always been 1.20 (here without proper Sanskrit pronunciation marks): shraddaviryasmrtisamadhiprajnapurvaka itaresam. According to Desikachar, this translates as, "Through faith, which will give sufficient energy to achieve success against all odds, direction will be maintained. The realization of the goal of Yoga is only a matter of time."
This sutra tells me that the "stuff" of our daily life is not at opposition with our yoga practice. In fact, this "stuff" of our lives becomes our practice! On the mat, we practice virtues like compassion in seated forward bends, courage in urdhva dhanurasana, trust in supta baddha konasana. BUT how more powerful to find the means to practice these same virtues in the midst of LIFE! In trying times with children, conflicts with the boss, or when faced with hurt or betrayal by a loved one.
Pema Chodron writes, "There isn't anything except your own life that can be used as ground for your spiritual practice. Spiritual practice IS your life, twenty-four hours a day."
The beautiful lotus blossoms out from the mud! Beauty arises up and out of the earth with such shape and fragrance and colour that we do not even notice the dirt underneath. Thank you Kausthub for the beautiful metaphor and gentle reminder!
I once read that, "we teach best what we most need to know". How often this statement rings true for me this year! How often does it ring for most of us?
Lately life has thrown me quite a few ups and downs. I am besieged by indecision. My emotions have been as dependable and as certain as our local Christchurch weather! And although I try to keep "going with the flow", this practice brings challenges much deeper and more trying than the garden variety handstand!
Looking at a calendar that is already planned through mid-December, I wonder where my year has gone. And, for me, this simple feeling of overwhelm leads to paralysis! I'll admit I am one of those annoying people who sits undecided at a good Thai restaurant...With extensive options and each so tempting, how can you decide which dish is just right? How do I make a sure and definite decision without regret?
Reading Jack Kornfield recently reminds me of something that I often stress to my students. "In undertaking this life, what matters is simple: We must make certain that our path is connected with our heart...Does what we are choosing reflect what we most deeply value?"
Discovering what we really value involves opening ourselves up to our heart with an honest and a genuine willingness to listen. What we hear may fly in the face of accumulated notions of who we think we are and who we think we should be. This honest listening requires real courage and a tender compassion for our own experience of living this life. Again and again, I encourage my students and friends to seek this path and it is one that I also find challenging to walk!
Kornfield shares a story from Don Juan (visionary and teacher of Carlos Castenada): "Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone one question. The question is one that only a very old man asks...Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use."
May we all find the courage to choose and walk the path that truly touches and softens our heart.
