our-yoga

Yesterday (Saturday), I went to morning mysore practice at my friends Derek and Brenda's studio in downtown Fargo, ND. Derek and Brenda have been running this mysore class, which meets once a week (Saturday morning at 9 a.m.), for close to 4 months now. Now that I'm talking about it, I should also give it a little plug: If you are ever in Northwest Minnesota/North Dakota on a Saturday morning (why would you be? But that's a question for another day...), please think about stopping by and practicing here. I try to go whenever I can make it; since I mostly practice at home, it is quite a treat to be able to go practice with others at least occasionally. I always feel that I build up more heat and tapas when I am practicing alongside others.

After practice, I chatted with Derek for a little bit. Brenda and he just had a baby girl a couple of weeks ago, and Derek was sharing with me about how they have been sleeping rather irregularly, waking up whenever the baby wakes up (I'm guessing that those of you out there who have children might be able to relate to this...), and squeezing in an hour or even a half-hour of practice when the baby takes a nap. He also said that they might even bring the baby to morning mysore in a couple of months. Now that would be pretty cool, wouldn't it? I mean, when was the last time you saw a baby in mysore class? :-) And just imagine what the earliest memories of this baby would be when she grows up... ("My earliest memories are of mom and dad bringing me to this funny room smelling of incense, where people do funny things like jump back and forth, fold themselves into half, and put their legs behind their heads. And then there's this little picture of this little old Indian guy (Guruji) at the front of the room...")

Anyway, as I was listening to Derek, it also really struck me how his present practice experience really brings into sharp relief the nature of the practice. If you have been practicing Ashtanga for a little while, you will know that it is only a little bit of an exaggeration to say that Ashtanga yoga is the yoga of "no": The practice confronts you with limitations everywhere you turn. Whether you are a relative "newbie" who is working on the standing postures or whether you are an "advanced" practitioner in the depths of third or fourth series, there is plenty in the practice to challenge you physically, mentally and emotionally: By bringing your body to places that you did not previously imagine it capable of going, subjecting it to postures that you may not even have previously imagined it capable of attaining, your ability to maintain equanimity and a spirit of humble acceptance is also being pushed to the limit.

The demanding nature of the practice becomes even more apparent in times of transition or major life changes: These can range from physical practice-related issues such as injuries or pain, to big life changes such as having a new member of the family. During these times, the limitations that the practice throws at one becomes even more pronounced: Over and above the inherently challenging nature of the practice itself, one also has to work with the pain or discomfort imposed by these changes.

So why do so many of us continue with the practice in the face of all of these challenges both inherent to and outside the practice? Well... one possible answer is that we are all suckers for pain and punishment: Perhaps it is really true that dedicated, "hardcore" Ashtangis are all a bunch of sadomasochists; a bunch whose numbers are increasing all the time, by the looks of it (as they say, "A sucker is born every minute")...

But I personally prefer to believe that there is much more to this practice than just enduring pain and punishment. In particular, I like to think that there is great value to be found in voluntarily and courageously confronting our limitations on a daily basis. In her latest post, Magnolia Zuniga shares this quote from the I-Ching:

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First, a few words about practice this morning. This morning's practice was a "good" practice, backbend-wise: In Chakrabandhasana, I succeeded in grabbing my ankles and holding them for five breaths before coming back up to standing. Over the last week or so, grabbing the ankles in this posture seems to be something that happens on a "good" day. On a "not-so-good" day, I might succeed in grabbing one ankle, and then pop back up to standing like a jack-in-the-box when I try to grab the second ankle. And it doesn't seem to make a difference which ankle I grab first: Whether I grab the right or left ankle first, the odds of popping back up to standing are about the same, statistically speaking.

What does seem to make a difference, though, is the quality of the breath. I have noticed that on days when I am successful in grabbing both ankles and holding them for five breaths (like today), the quality of the breath is different. Different in what way? Well, for the last couple of weeks, whenever I walk my hands to the feet to get into Chakrabandhasana after the third drop-back, I always try to imagine my breath being the anchor that anchors my hands to the ankles: The deeper and more steady the breath, the more stable it will be as the anchor that "roots" the hands to the ankles. Conversely, the more shallow and hurried the breath is, the more likely it is that the body will be "swept up" back to the surface (i.e. back into standing) by the "currents". I'm not sure if this image of anchoring the body in the backbend makes sense to you, but don't you think that backbending is a little bit like deep-sea diving; after all, we do speak of deep backbends, don't we? :-)

A couple of weeks ago, after reading about the pain-body issues that were so clearly manifested in my pity-party post about the prospect of going to Singapore (yeah, I really have issues), Claudia sent me a copy of Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. It's been a very interesting and fascinating read so far (thank you, Claudia!). I would like to share the following passage from the book:

"Form means limitation. We are here not only to experience limitation, but also to grow in consciousness by going beyond limitation. Some limitations can be overcome on an external level. There may be other limitations in your life that you have to learn to live with. They can only be overcome internally. Everyone will encounter them sooner or later. Those limitations either keep you trapped in egoic reaction, which means intense unhappiness, or you rise above them internally by uncompromising surrender to what is. That is what they are here to teach. The surrendered state of consciousness opens up the vertical dimension in your life, the dimension of depth. Something will then come forth from that dimension into this world, something of infinite value that otherwise would have remained unmanifested. Some people who surrendered to severe limitation become healers or spiritual teachers. Others work selflessly to lessen human suffering or bring forth some creative gift into this world."

Citing an example of overcoming severe limitation through uncompromising surrender, Tolle relates his meeting with world-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. Hawking is widely regarded to be the world's leading theoretical physicist; as you also probably know, he has motor neurone disease and is almost completely paralyzed, and can only speak with the help of a voice synthesizer. Tolle describes his meeting with Hawking thus:

"...when I held the door open for his electric wheelchair to come through, our eyes met. With surprise I saw that his eyes were clear. There was no trace of unhappiness. I knew immediately that he had relinquished resistance; he was living in surrender."

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