Same Same But Different

Sometimes practice is hard. We would all like it to be easy, but realistically this is not always the case.

We have a student who comes to us intermittently. He is an artist, and a yoga teacher, and has a loving free spirit. After working through some strains and sprains, aches and pains, he asked us if his practice would always be this difficult. He was referring to the many struggles he was having with discomfort in his body: "Isn't yoga supposed to be all about bliss?" he asked. Physical suffering can be hard on us psychologically, and our motivation to keep up with the practice can decrease.

It is a great question though, "Isn't yoga supposed to be all about bliss?"
I guess the simple answer is NO! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out however. We need only to observe the nature and the truth of our existence. Pain comes, and pain goes. Pleasure comes, and pleasure goes. There is an arising and a passing away. Yoga is the ability to keep our mind steady during the rise and fall, the ebb and flow of life, and the successfulness our practice shows up in our ability to deal with the changes, great and small, that manifest within us and around us in every moment.
The most difficult form of satya, or truthfulness, starts with our own self. One good question to ask of ourselves is this: "Am I being serious or sincere?"

Our teacher Tiwariji encourages us to be sincere, as seriousness is an expression of the ego. When I get "serious" about my practice, I push too hard, I tend to move out of a balanced state and into an ego-driven state, and I increase the potential for injury. Yoga practice is difficult enough, without creating more obstacles with our ego. Finding the balance beyond pain and pleasure, and creating steadiness of mind and body to help us move beyond the dualities of existence, is an essential part of our quest. Searching for "bliss" results in a constant disappointment. To crave bliss is really a craving for misery, as all sensations, pleasant or painful, are conditioned by our temporal existence, and so are always impermanent and changing.

I am reminded of what my friend David Swenson says, "If at first you find this practice hard, don't worry, it gets easier! And if at first you find this practice easy, don't worry, it gets harder!" In my opinion, David is one of the great Ashtanga Yogis of our day, and what he said pretty much sums it up: Sometimes practice is hard, sometimes it is easy. What is important is not to crave the easy, energetic, light, enjoyable practices, as this is a recipe for disappointment, but we must strive to keep our equanimity during both the pleasant practices, as well as the difficult ones.

Satya - Bringing Truth to the Mat.

Satya or the second yama arises out of ahimsa. It is a continuation of the foundational practice of non-harming, as it is the application of truth in our lives. It not only refers to being truthful with others, but it also includes the awareness of being truthful with ourselves, and this means meeting ourselves each day on the mat as we are, as we practice.

We had a new student came to our Mysore class this week to begin learning the wonderful practice of Ashtanga Yoga. His wife practices with us, and so he was familiar with the practice and brought with him many pre-conceived ideas, expectations, and concerns about what a yoga practice should look like, and how long it needed to be. He was worried that he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the other students, and that he had to do it for over an hour every day. I think he was pleasantly surprised to find out that this practice "truthfully" can fit into his busy schedule and that it doesn’t have to be a long and laborious activity, and that when practiced with awareness it could add value to his life.

This brings up a few questions though: Are there times when the practice truthfully doesn't fit for us? Are there times when the practice is too much for our day-to-day schedule? Can we approach the demands of life, and the demands on our time in a truthful way and still make the effort to find the middle path between laziness and egoistic ambition? I believe we can.

Finding this middle ground is vital for us. Our yoga practice should be
something that creates more balance in our lives not further imbalance. We must find ways to integrate our practice into our daily living without increasing the stress we already have. Only in this way will the practice be maintained over the long term, and can we hope to find the true benefits of a yoga practice. Patanjali says: "Sa tu dirghakala nairantarya satkarasevito drdhabhumih" – which means: “Only after a long time of continuous practice with sincerity will the benefits of yoga be achieved.”

This then must be our aim. To be truthful with ourselves and our capacity each day not only when starting and integrating yoga into our lives, but also when sustaining the practices we have already established, and in doing so we will gain all he benefits that come from a daily practice of Ashtanga Yoga.

Patience Grasshopper...

This week one of our students was frustrated with supta kurmasana and was clearly disturbed when we kept stopping her at this difficult posture. She, like so many of us, was restless and itching to move forward in her asana practice; and again like so many of us, she wanted results and had become impatient with her progress.

This reminded me of what our teacher once taught us about impatience. He said that impatience is a subtle form of violence or hostility towards oneself. (Of course then he looked directly at me and said that if a student is impatient they have not understood the the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Busted again!) So, for one more week lets keep with the Yamas and the Ahimsa theme.

You see according to Patanjali only one eighth of this classical yoga path is asana, and in his book he speaks about asana in only 3 of 196 verses. His emphasis makes it clear for all of us that in this practice of yoga there are some other limbs that we must attend to.

Whether it is on or off the mat, if we are "practicing impatience" in our lives we have omitted a first and vital step in our yoga process, and quite possibly our yoga progress. In the Yoga Sutras the chief Yama (the first limb of ashtanga yoga) is Ahimsa. Ahimsa is an action centered attitude of "non-harming" or "non-violence," and it is a vital, but very difficult, practice. It deals with our actions towards others as well as ourselves. We must cultivate this practice in ourselves and radiate it out to others. As always the mat becomes the great mirror, and if we are willing to look, it will reflect back to us our true progress on this path.

Ultimately, this comes back to choice. We must make the conscious choice to practice ahimsa: to be gentle with ourselves, to approve of ourselves, to have patience with ourselves, and after taking action, we must leave the results to God. Of course in this practice if the struggle of this daily existence overwhelms us... you can always do what Sri K. Pattabhi Jois tells us to do: "You breath You!"

Om
Be Blessed! Peace, Out.
J

Snow eh!

I was excited it was only -8 degrees Celsius! The deep freeze we were living in was unplugged a week ago, and I was looking forward to actually getting on the mat without being frozen; even more so to having a long lingering practice...

Then I looked outside... Now maybe if you are melting in Thailand it looks like a winter wonderland, but dang the extra 15 minutes I thought I had for my practice was just re-assigned to snow removal.

With no one around and a feeble grumble I started sweeping the car clean.
I was reminded of what my teacher would say, "the mind wants to be negative," and in the snow that morning it wasn't hard to watch this mind gravitate towards negativity... (especially when I can remember loving days like this as a kid).

There is no debating that in Canada we have 4 seasons. In the winter season things slow down, even our practices, and so it becomes even more important to remember ahimsa in our interactions. This ahimsa, "non-harming," or "non-violence," applies equally to ourselves as it does to anyone else that we interact with. To practice Ashtanga Yoga, we must bring attention to all the limbs and luckily asana helps us with this.

Of course in the end, seasons come and seasons go, postures come and postures go, stiffness comes and stiffness goes. To dwell in impatience and criticism of ourselves or others, or the situations we are in, is to misunderstand the necessity of practicing ahimsa, and to miss out on a great opportunity to practice yoga more fully in our lives.

But Dang! I'm looking forward to spring!
Until next time... Be Blessed! J

Canadian Winter

Dang!! It's cold here in Canada!! ... It was 3:00 am and -49 Celsius (-56 Fahrenheit) the last couple days when we were making our way to the shala to practice, now for those of you tuning in from Thailand for the first time, that is like living in your freezer. Public transit wasn't running because the doors were freezing open or closed, if you could start your car the wheels were frozen more square than round and bumped along for the first 10 minutes of your drive, and if you had any uncovered skin exposed it would freeze causing frost bite in under 2 minutes... Even the "momma deer" wanted to bring her baby inside...


Oh, how we were missing India and Thailand...


I guess you can't help but question your life choices when it seems more sensible to hibernate than to crawl out of bed from under piles of warm blankets. Even in the heated room of the yoga shala my body never wanted to get warm and I felt the the mental resistance to doing my asana practice.

Oh, the tricky mind, it wasn't to hard to see that I had formed a strong attachment to the warm climates of India and Thailand, developing a craving for the internal heat that makes me feel so bendy, and the desire to "perform" asana rather than "practice" asana in the moment. Patanjali who gave us the eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga tells us to achieve our goal we must practice and be non-attached or non-dependant.

This week it is the Canadian winter that is reminding me to take heed of Patanjali's words, to practice with sincerity and detach from the results. Yoga is so much more than asana, and it's clearly time for me to review the Eight Limbs of Ashtanga Yoga.... but more on that in a couple of weeks...