This is my yoga

The smell of rain.
Brushing my cat.
Being a good friend.
Getting lost in a moment of underwater magic, watching the life of fish.

Flowing through a vinyasa.
Getting a better understanding of a pose.
Balancing.
Falling.
Adjusting a student and seeing the pieces fall into place.

Vocal harmony,
Massage.
Stroking the skin of person I love.
Spending time with friends & family.

Sailing - the rush of waves, the power of the wind, the ocean all around, pulsing.

Kirtan.
Mantras.
Sunrise.
Sunset.

This is my yoga.  What is yours?

The Gift of Embodiment: Part II

My body is a gift.

My body breathes (oxygen absorbed, transferred, delivered, bonded, unbonded, CO2 bonded, released, inhale, exhale, wow).

My body moves.

My body makes popping noises, poofing noises and other funny noises!

When my body laughs hard enough, my belly hurts, my eyes run and more noises ensue. Glee!

My body tells me what it needs, my body eats, drinks and digests.  My body gets rid of what it doesn't need (why can't I do the same?!).

My body sleeps so I can dream.

My body stumbles and recovers. Sometimes my body falls, my body hurts, my body bleeds, my body heals.

My body heats me when I'm cold, cools me when I'm hot.  My body runs when I'm afraid, jumps when I am startled, stands still when I don't know what to do.

My body makes funny faces, has funny habits, twists my hair, rubs my nose.

My body grows all the time, skin, hair, fingernails toenails!

My body gets butterflies in its tummy when my eyes meet the eyes of someone I love.  My body gets tears in its eyes when I'm sad, and crazy big smiles when I'm happy, and faraway looks when I am far away.  (But I always come back).

My body puts one foot in front of the other.  Day in, day out.  Never fails.

My body allows me to experience the physical world.  My body loves to touch fluffy things, stroke silky things, press palms into smooth, warm wood still vibrating with the memory of trees.

I digress.



My body is healthy and whole, and for that I am grateful.
My body is a gift.  My body is a home.  My body is amazing!

Does anyone remember "The Big Orange Splot", by Daniel Pinkwater? 

"My house is me, and I am it, and it looks like all my dreams."

(It's alright ma) It's only yoga

It seems that a lot of yoga practitioners feel a sense of pressure to live some kind of extraordinary life.   And when we're not busy feeling pressured to do more, we feel guilty about the things we are doing.  And as if that weren't complicated enough, we then feel longing for the things we aren't doing because we feel pressured or guilty enough not to do them!  I mean, whew, how do any of us even have time for yoga amidst all that?

I mean, isn't yoga supposed to liberate us from all that jazz?  All those chitta vritti (cheeky monkey?) thoughts that keep pestering at our brains like buzzing mosquitoes, homing in to attack us, all those doubts and ideals and, well, all of that?  After all, we are in this to find calming thoughts, centeredness, groundedness, self-awareness, self-confidence, cures for our illnesses and hopefully a bit of muscle tone to boot.  In short, we are in search of perfection.  Through Yoga.  Right?

Ah.  Is that what it comes down to?  Are we so convinced that somewhere out there, there is One Thing that will make us happy, that we are willing to give Yoga it's 5 minutes of fame to see if it does the trick? Nope?  Oh well, back to money, fame, fortune, weight loss or whatever else is on the list.

Sarcasm aside, my teacher taught me about renunciation.  When we look at yoga philosophy, we encounter notions like Ahimsa, non-harming, and Aparigraha, non-grasping / moderation.  Our first reaction is to immediately pounce on the material implications of these yamas, or restraints.  So, we practice Ahimsa by giving up eating meat because it harms animals.  We practice Aparigraha by giving up potato chips, or that pair of jeans you've been wanting.  Or we tell ourselves we didn't really want it anyway, because that wouldn't be yogic, right?

So our immediate reactions to the yamas are reactions of renunciation.  Giving things up is long acclaimed in our culture.  I mean, nobody loves a good martyr like we do (ok, well maybe some people do, but anyway, the point being, we love a good martyr like anybody!)

But, my teacher reminds us, the second Yama is Satya, or truthfulness.  And these types of renunciation which are accompanied by a sense of sacrifice, which are done because of an expectation of the result of the action or done because of how the outside world will perceive them, are not in line with Satya.

The difference is choice, and how you embrace it.  When we give something up, we go into it with the mentality that we are sacrificing something in order to attain something else.  Meat or jeans for yogic goodness.  Etc.  But according to my teacher, if you spend every day wishing you could eat meat, or have chips, or wear those jeans, then you are not living your satya, not living truthfully to yourself.

He believes that somewhere along the line, as you gradually reconnect with your true self, non-harming and moderation become things that become natural to you.  Instead of renouncing material goods in hopes of winning brownie points, you will reach a point where you truly no longer want to buy more things.  Instead of giving up eating junk food because you think you're supposed to, you just stop buying it out of a real desire to feed your body non-processed food.  Instead of wishing you could have those jeans, you become deeply disgusted with consumerism and the inequality of sweat shop labour.  In short, you live your yamas because they feel right, not because you have a desire to Be Right.  And when you do this, negative emotions like guilt, jealousy, and martyrdom will fall by the wayside, because you will be living in balance with yourself.

I feel the same way about the physical practice of Yoga.  Today while I was on my mat, I was practicing away, wondering how long I should practice, and what, and thinking how I wish I practiced more, and all kinds of other things, and then it slowly crept into my head... you know what?  It doesn't matter.  It's only Yoga!

I know - Gasp.  Right?  But there it is.  It's not life or death, it's not family, it's not love, it's not any of the things that really and truly I can't survive without.  It's not how I want to measure myself or define myself.  I am not the successes or the limitations of my body.  I am not my practice.  I am not my asana, pranayama, pratyahara or the rest of it.  Yes, I love my practice, and  yes, it makes me feel good.  But it's not the be all and end all of my day.  It's not how I feed myself or what keeps me warm at night.  It's only a body on a smelly mat.  It's only Yoga.   And that is liberating.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

(From Bob Dylan's "It's alright Ma (I'm only bleeding) )

A little slice of eco-paradise?

Somewhere in the south Indo-Pacific, there is an island. In legend, this island was born of an old crocodile, who came to his final resting place here, laying down his head and turning into beaches and mountains. In more recent history, this island went through the turbulence of colonialism, war, independence, civil war, occupation, struggle and liberation, eventually resulting, 10 years ago, in the creation of the half-island state of East Timor. My home for the past 6 years. (Photo: children on Atauro playing in the water on a Sunday afternoon - in the background, about 20 miles away, is East Timor.)

Geographically, the island of Timor lies on a diagonal to a chain of islands running east from Java, Indonesia. In this little chain, East Timor has one outpost: the tiny island of Atauro (spelled on Google maps as "Atouro" - go on, you know you want to...). Atauro is a steep, mountainous island surrounded by a ring of beaches and coral reefs. It is a dry place, with only one source of fresh water on the island, which must be painstakingly brought to the inhabitants of its several villages by a system of overland piping. It is a place of intense beauty and great scarcity, of extreme tranquility and also of poverty. In the 1980's it was a prison camp: thousands starved there, wasting away as part of the occupation to which Western powers turned a blind eye (and which was made possible in great part by their weapons and political support).

On Atauro there is a place that is one of my own personal sanctuaries: the eco-village of Tua Koin. Set up with the help of an Australian woman, Tua Koin is now a sustainable, community run tourism venture. Unlike many places of that name, Tua Koin is truly an ecological marvel: its simple facilities are constructed of completely local materials (bamboo and palm fronds), it has composting toilets and at night energy-efficient lights use solar energy gathered during the day to provide light. To conserve water, its outdoor showers use the 'dipper' method: dipping a small scoop into a tank of fresh water and pouring it over your body. (Photo: sunrise from my bungalow).

Over the years I have been there many times, with friends, family, and loved ones. It is like a breath of fresh air in our hot, dusty world to watch the sunrise from the porch of a bamboo hut. I have many memories there, and as all things transitory, they are bittersweet in the savouring. The thing that always strikes me the most is how simple life is there, and how that simplicity makes my heart soar and my soul feel more free. Rising with the dawn, birds call. Slipping into sleep at night, I am lulled by the sound of the waves on the beach, like the world is breathing. It is not a romantic simplicity: life there is hard and marked by isolation, scarcity and poverty. The nearest hospital is across the water on Timor, and if the weather is bad you can't get there. Women die in childbirth, babies die of diarrhea, children go malnourished and many will die before the age of 5. (Photo: sun salutations at sunrise!)

So, the notion of this 'simple life' is not to be thrown around lightly, nor does it necessarily equate ahimsa (non-harming), as we might like to think. Yes, it is eco-friendly, but not necessarily people-friendly. What it is, though, a glimpse of a world in which there is no pollution, no traffic, in which everything is used and re-used and re-used again, in which children are overjoyed to go to school and the little ones spend days splashing in the shallows, in which the passage of life is marked out in tides and moons and rains. A dying life perhaps, one more akin to the lives of our ancestors than to our childrens'. And yet my heart longs for a balance. Isn't there a way for us to have it all? To have simplicity without poverty, to be close to nature without it causing so much suffering?

Perhaps not... But a yogini can always dream, I guess.

(Tua Koin village)

(The 'dipper' shower)

So(u)lstice

As most of you probably know, December 21 - 22 is the solstice. For the northern hemisphere, where I am from, it is winter. For the southern hemisphere, where I currently live, it is summer. For the tropics, which I am right in the middle of, it hardly matters.

We don't have the same seasons here as those who live in the higher latitudes. The tropics move to a different beat: hot-and-wet, hot-and-dry. At the moment, we are in the middle of the wet. Every day, the humidity is 100%. In the mornings, the sun beats down. In the afternoons, the grey clouds move in and hang heavy over us until hopefully, finally, they break, and with a fit of thunder send their downpours crashing to earth. Rain on tin roof, that terrible din! Rain floods the streets, turning every pothole to a massive puddle, every garden into a paddy. In the tropics people don't hide from the rain - young boys play football (soccer) in the streets, gleefully splashing.

Last night, due to a mix-up with the conference room we use, I taught Yoga outside in a child-care space. From that sweaty, crowded space, you could hear the rain coming down softly amid the hum of engines and the shouts of children. As it grew dark, I lit candles to teach by. It was one of those classes where about 8 new people show up and you can see them struggling to keep up with the regulars, and it was hot outside, so I paused often and in one of those breaks we took a short seated meditation. I mentioned that it was the solstice and asked people to reflect on what it meant to them, and to think of all the things that may have happened or changed during this year, and things that they would like to have achieved or changed by this time next year.

Which gets me thinking, of course. So here are a few answers of my own.

*What does the solstice mean to me? The passage of time. I also like the solstice because it is a day humans have celebrated for thousands of years, since long before any of today's major religious holidays came to be celebrated at around the same time.

*What has happened/changed during the last year? This has been a big year for me! Getting my teaching certification was a huge dream that I had wanted to pursue for years. Re-connecting with my Ashtanga practice. Starting to teach regularly again. Finishing a job that I enjoyed and felt satisfied with. Moving on to a more free (self-employed... for now!) lifestyle that lets me make my own schedule. It has also had its share of sad events, with deaths both expected and unexpected, and happy events, with many new babies coming into my extended family of relatives and friends. And so the cycle continues. :)

*What do I hope to achieve by this time next year? To keep up my yoga practice and my teaching, and add more classes to meet the needs of the growing yoga community here. To hold workshops (already in the works for Jan/Feb!) and retreats. To keep my self-employed lifestyle while still managing to keep my bank account balanced!

What about you? :)