our-yoga

we recommend you to buy some goods below for comfort, safety and ease of your yoga activities

Let me start by saying that I am not known for travelling light. Seriously. The excess baggage gods of the world must love me, given the amount of tribute I regularly pay to them.

So, as I embark on a 3-week trip to DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) to do some work for UNICEF there, I am particularly proud that this is the entire total of my luggage - all carry on!! Note the ultra-light travel yoga mat, which I'm excited to try out on my travels.

There is something incredibly refreshing about travelling light. It's the feeling of walking off the plane and not having to wait for your luggage. It's the feeling of knowing that you don't actually NEED tonnes of "stuff" in your life: clothes, shoes, accessories, toys. It's so good to release yourself from the material world that we are so heavily rooted in, and practice the yogic concept of aparigrahah, usually understood as non-grasping or letting go.

I'll be scheduling a few posts while I am away, dear readers, but if there is a bit of a lull in this blog I hope you'll understand!

Now, let's see how many bags I come back with... ;)

we recommend you to buy some goods below for comfort, safety and ease of your yoga activities

Sometimes I hear people say: "I've accepted that I will never be able to do that pose", or "that pose is just impossible for me."

In fact, I've probably said exactly those things. I've "embraced my body's shortcomings" or "accepted my limitations" more times than I can count in yoga. I've said things like "well, my arms are just too weak / legs too long / back too crooked to be able to do that pose".

And I thought it was pretty yogic, you know? "Letting go" of my attachment do being able to do a particular pose. "Accepting my body the way it is", with its "too long / too short / too weak / too crooked" limbs or joints or regions.

But it wasn't. Yogic, as in "rooted in and therefore justified by yoga philosophy." I was not being philosophical, I was being escapist. I was not being "enlightened", I was being defeatist.

Because what yoga philosophy really says is: try anyway. Don't worry about what you achieve, or don't achieve. Don't worry about too short / too long / too weak / too crooked. Just try, and then try again tomorrow.

Of course, that is easier said than done, because we are human beings and we want results. Not results next year, but results next week. We want movie-musical-montage kind of progress, where within the space of 2 emotionally stimulating minutes set to a swelling score, we overcome obstacles and achieve the hitherto unachievable. But there's a reason that those scenes are done in a montage, and that is this: the reality is very, very dull. Monotonous even.  There are days, and weeks and months, and probably years in which you don't "achieve" that impossible pose.

But from the philosophical sense, that doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter where you get, or how quickly you get there. What matters is that you DID - because doing is infinitely preferable than restraining from doing.

Now, that doesn't mean getting straight on your mat and attempting headstand in your first week of practice. Or your second. Or your first year. Or your first decade. What it does mean, is keeping an open mind that ONE DAY, you may be able to do headstand. That's all - you don't have to do it, or even consciously work towards it - just don't rule it out. Whether it happens or not is another story, the outcome of which you needn't concern yourself with. Just as long as you never give up on yourself and the potential that lies within you.

You may be quick to point out that this approach has obvious limitations: a person with compressed vertebrae should not be believing that they could do headstand. Or should they? Because you have probably already realised that this philosophy is not really about the physical practice of yoga, but our approach to our everyday lives, our infinite potential in terms of relationships, career, love, life and happiness. The physical practice merely offers us the opportunity to put it into practice every time we get on our mat. Not giving up. Believing in our potential.

So next time you are struggling with an "impossible" pose, say to yourself instead: "this pose would be possible, when..." and identify one, or two, or three things - no matter how small! - that you can work on, that will set you on the path towards that pose, and do those instead. So you are not setting yourself up to fail, but rather, you are setting yourself up to succeed at steps along the way.

For instance, if your impossible pose is handstand (mine was), you might break the pose down into: arm and wrist strength, open hamstrings, and confidence being upside down - and work on those instead.  You might VISUALISE yourself doing the full pose, while integrating into your practice the little steps that might eventually get you there. You might set yourself on the path, and make it about the journey, and not the destination (it will be about the journey, in the end, regardless).

Don't surrender to self-prescribed boundaries of what's impossible. Don't chain yourself to results. Surrender to possibility, and let the outcome surprise you.

we recommend you to buy some goods below for comfort, safety and ease of your yoga activities

Well, it's been a while since I posted as I have been settling into my new home in Whistler, BC. It's hard to express how lucky I feel to have a few months to just be in this beautiful place, nestled amidst the snowy mountains. I get to spend my days outdoors skiing through magical white snow, and my nights curled up next to a fireplace. Amazing.

As much as these few months are a time-out from my regular life, they are also tinged with uncertainty - where to next? What city, state or country will I be in when winter ends and spring rolls around? My partner and I are looking for jobs and the world is our search frame. I could end up literally anywhere.

In my last post I wrote about change, and the metaphor of the ocean seems appropriate: a sea-change is never a smooth, instant transition. There is always an in-between period, a slow and turbulent shift; wind over waves, tides turning, the surface turning choppy before settling into a new rhythm. Being in the middle of a sea-change, I am both delirious with possibility and anxious at the uncertainty of it all.

Thankfully, years of yoga (and life) practice have taught me to breathe into both extremes, to be in the moment, and to just sit with where I am now. Let go of the past, let go of the future.  And so my two words of 2013 are:

Transformation to represent the (chosen and unchosen) changes that have, are and will occur, and acceptance to represent letting go of what I can't control, being open to possibility, and accepting whatever comes, whether it's what I hoped and intended, or whether it takes me completely by surprise.

Readers, do you have words for this year or for what's going on with you at the moment? I'd love to hear them!

we recommend you to buy some goods below for comfort, safety and ease of your yoga activities