10 things I should have been told in my early years of Ashtanga

Reposting something another practitioner shared with my teacher Denise!

10 things I should have been told in my early years of Ashtanga.

1. Ashtanga Yoga is a lifetime commitment.

2. Pain (paining) is your spouse for better or for worse.
3. If you practice warming-up (stretching) you'll get better in warming-up not the practice itself. So just practice straight then the practice itself in the long run would be like a warm-up.
4. But some would say, "Warm-up/stretching is to avoid injury." Injuries OCCUR whether you do warm-up or not. That leads me to the next one.
5. If there's one thing that needs warm-up/stretching. It's the mind.
6. Ego + Yoga Asana = Injury
7. Humility (mandatory). Don't step on your mat without it.
8. Acceptance is the only new asana you need.
9. Being judgmental is a reflection of your frustration towards your practice and/or life itself.
10. Mindbending is more important than backbending.

What my body has understood - at the Dharma Shala London

Not to judge people by their yoga mats.
Not to judge people by their poses.
Not to judge myself.

(I'm still working at this last one!)

Practice Journal

I had forgotten how much I enjoy solo practice. I moved last week into a new room that finally has a space for me to roll out a mat and do a sun salutation without whacking any furniture.  My first few practices here have been wonderful, under a skylight and with no pressure of comparisons. My energy is generally quieter and cooler. My body is calmer and listens better. I do feel like I have my best focus when I am alone - just as when I started going into my practice in earnest in 2012 with my little travel mat while on tour.
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Two days ago this came to me in practice:

Body: Your most treasured achievements will come not from desperation but from steadiness.

Then I sat down today with the delightful little yoga philosophy handbook by my current teacher Hamish Hendry, and this jumped out at me from his selection of his favourite Yoga Sutras - "Sthira sukham asanam" (Steady comfort posture - in postures as well as in being)

And more on being in the moment - after I told my friend J about my recent observation about not living in painful moments of the past, she added on a paraphrase from a Contact Improvisation workshop she had taken with Robert Anderson:

"You can't be *here* if you're trying to be over there!"

Increasingly I am convinced that practice is a way to receive accumulated human wisdom.
(Upanishads in 2000BC, Yoga Sutras in 100AD, up to the contemporary wisdom of our teachers and friends!)

What my body has understood - Practice journal

This morning I thought that this could be a good time to document my sporadic practice journal from my Ashtanga practice over the years.  I often get the sense that my body is understanding something that my over-stressed brain has not figured out.  They are usually blindingly common-sense kind of things.

Today and recently:

Body: Use this practice to be in the present.  You are not your distractions or your flashbacks of humiliating moments in your life.  You are the present, here, on the mat.

Body: All you need to do today is stand on the ground.

Some old ones:

Body: Don't practice yoga to lose weight.
Me: But that's why I started.  Ashtanga is yoga+workout.
Body:  If you want to lose weight go for a run.  Your practice will give you other things.
Me: Oh.

Body: All you need to do is breathe.  All you need to think about is breathing.
Me: This is hard!

Body: Breathing just happens whether you think about it or not.  Just let it happen and listen to its rhythm.

Body: Remember ten years ago, one of your yoga teachers said "Soft mind, soft body".

Body: Moving your body will train your mind. (Just like your teacher has said.)  This isn't about what series or pose you are doing, whether you achieve the bind.  This is about coming back to the same place every day.

Body: I will always be here with you.

Practice

"You should not be practicing to have a 'good' practice, but instead to keep steadiness within yourself. Practice happily regardless of whether it is 'good' or not. Sometimes some postures will not be possible, but when you accept the good and the bad and everything becomes equal for you, that is yoga."

- R. Sharath Jois

Why I dance III

This morning I finished my yoga practice and realised that I have come to these interrelated body practices - dancing, yoga, improv - probably because I have needed them so much.  They have been literally exercises for the physical but more importantly for the mental aspect.  My practice has gotten me through a lot of challenging and stressful times in my life.

I had to learn patience with my body... and having an older and inflexible body in professional training needed a lot of patience, and perseverance! It was patience with my body that got me to learn patience with myself, and finally patience with other people.  Not just the kind of patience that prevents me from losing it and being nasty to people, but a patience to try and hear others out even when I really don't agree, and understand why.  I still have my temper and my moods of course; they will always be a part of me.  But I do find that I want to bite people's heads off less often.  And I can recover my emotional balance more quickly.

Both in my improv practice and yoga, I am dedicating time to observing and listening.  Not just with eyes and ears, but with touch, smell, awareness of space, time, energy.  Maybe that's why I never watch TV anymore - I prefer to spend time listening to my breath, my time, or other bodies'!

In a way this lesson worked in the reverse to the patience lesson.  It was through other bodies in contact improv that i discovered what it was to listen and to be present.  Not in the combination, not in the corrections, not in my expectations or anticipations, but just here and now.   Realising that this made a huge difference for how I worked as a performer and particularly as an improviser, and that it is also perceptible to other dancers and my audience.

An amazing question that I received recently was "how do I know I exist?" In fact it came incidentally twice, in the two unrelated great workshops that I took in April with Karen Nelson and Joerg Hassmann. (How's that for a sign!) Both Karen and Joerg talked about how other bodies and encounters allow us to discover ourself.  So observing and listening came to me from the outside... and I am now learning to apply it to myself and my body.

In another context completely (group therapy facilitation practice!) I also recently received the idea that we go through cycles of experience but we benefit most when we take the time to integrate them.  I guess this is a moment of integration.  I don't know how long I'll be here, when I might move on or need to retrace my steps.  But for now I have a sense of gratitude for what I am receiving.

It's making me enjoy my practices more and more. Hopefully they also make me a better dancer and artist, if incidentally.  I suspect that in these very small ways, they're also making me a better person.

#whyidance - I had a vague memory that I'd been writing on this title some years back.  Looking through my old entries, I have been doing this even more than I thought!  So I've created a new tag if you want to look back in time with me.

EnricKoan photography 2011.

What not to look for in a class

So their towels are fluffier, the studios more spacious and less endowed with shoe-grease and sweat. But that's just not enough. I'm hanging up my towel and swearing that I will no longer judge a studio by its looks.

Especially not when it has nasty clauses against breaking your year-long expensive subscription, and especially not when my favourite teachers have left and only ditzes and grumpy drill seargeants are left teaching my yoga classes and time-slots of choice. Especially not when they go out of their way to make sure that it is excruciatingly inconvenient to not pay them. Need I even think twice when the erstwhile polite sales staff inform me that to cancel my giro when the contract expires, I must show up at the studio in person and sign a form? (i.e. so they can make another crude sales pitch) I am going to cut them off at the bank. Goodbye Pure Yoga.