The yoga of connecting; simple is enough

Hello dear readers,

Technically a blog has no obligation, but every time my life gets away from me and keeps me away from my blog, I always feel the need to apologise! So readers, I'm sorry for the long absence from this space, and I'll do my best to keep the posts coming for the next little while.

True to my gypsy name, I am traveling at the moment, this time a long work trip that will keep me away from home for 3 months. I'm once again visiting the half-island nation of East Timor - long time readers will remember that I used to live here. It seems that my fate is entwined with this place, for life keeps drawing me back. With a whole world out there, incredibly I am sitting in an office that is only a few doors away from the very first office I sat in 9 years ago when I first came here. Perhaps some places are truly magnetic to our souls, or there is some karma that I have with this place that I have yet to work through.

Morning commute ;)

This time I have the wonderful opportunity to be spending most of my working hours traveling around the country and talking to local people. I will be on the road a lot and my yoga physical yoga practice will most certainly suffer from it, but there are other kinds of yoga. The yoga of connecting to people is one that we so often neglect. The yoga of getting to know other human beings, of asking for their perspectives and listening to what they have to say. We get so engrossed in our personal practice that we forget that the real practice is how we live our lives, minute by minute, day-by day.


Being back at a desk job is also a shift for me. Gone are the long, leisurely morning practices that I have had over the past few months. Now, I am rising in the hot, humid darkness, stepping on my mat still half asleep, swatting mosquitoes. Every step between bed and the mat is a struggle with myself, trying to keep the fire of tapas, discipline, burning long enough to get me to the first breath. But once I am there, everything flows. One breath turns into another and before long a thin sheen of sweat has sprung to my skin, and my body moves into life.

These mornings feel like a homecoming, an echo of years worth of morning practices. To do them (and still be at the office by 8am!), I have stripped back my practice to the basics, trying to get the most out of my limited time on the mat, and it has surprised me how well this simplified practice "fits." It's as if I have stripped away everything that was not serving me, and am left with a practice where every breath, every asana, meets a need. Nothing is extra, no energy is wasted, no thoughts or emotions flung into attachment to "goal poses" or the length of my practice. The reward: I am calm, focused, and (I think!) pleasant to be around. I can go about my day of listening to people with ease and relaxation. I notice a huge increase in my productivity at work on the mornings I do yoga, and a huge loss of focus on the mornings when I trade my practice for an extra hour of sleep. It's nice to be reminded of the transformative power of a simple practice and to remember, in the midst of our complicated lives, that simple is enough.

Dear readers, I promise shortly a return to our regular programming, with some highlights from trips around East Timor thrown in as a bonus.

For now, go on, get on your mats - or get off them - and see what happens. :)

Tips for the traveling yogini (re-post)

[Originally posted on December 2nd 2009... slightly updated since then to reflect bits and pieces that I've learned along the way! By the way, this mainly applies to long-distance travel where you can't simply throw everything into your car, and every added pound of luggage matters!]

My luggage - all of it! - on my recent 3.5 week trip to Congo. I loved how light the travel yoga mat was - but I wish I'd put it in a mat bag, because it got pretty dirty along the way!

More and more of us are traveling in this day and age, for work or for pleasure, or both. And like everything else in our world, travel today is faster than ever before. 100 years ago, it took weeks or months to travel from, say, Europe to America. Now it takes only a few hours. And as anyone who has experienced jet-lag knows, this puts a heavy strain on our body and our metabolism. Our sleeping and eating habits are disrupted, and our bodies can be confused by sudden changes in climate.

With all this going on, maintaining a regular practice while on-the-go can be very challenging: strange cities, foreign languages, jet-lag, busy schedules, cramped hotel rooms and smelly old hotel carpets are only a few of the limitations! All this assuming that you are able to practice on your own, away from your favourite classes and teachers.

If you are planning an upcoming trip, here are a few simple questions and answers that might help you prepare to take your practice on the road!

Before you go

How many yoga outfits should I bring?

Ok, if you are like me, packing is a serious exercise in making tough choices. But from my experience: Pack yoga-light. Unless you're going on a yoga retreat, realistically you'll only need one set of clothes (gasp!) for your holiday practice. However, with how stylish yoga clothes are getting, if you are going to be doing a lot of sightseeing or hiking you might be able to create other outfits with your yoga gear, too. And don't forget to think about the climate where you are going - if it's different to where you came from, you may want to pack a yoga outfit that you can layer up or down. 

Should I bring my yoga mat?

Ok, the hard answer to this question is: probably not. A yoga mat is a real pain to lug around when you are on the move, and unless you are a SERIOUSLY committed yogi or yogini who maintains your daily practice even if it means missing the bus to go see the Acropolis, you probably won't use it enough to justify carrying it around.

However, if you do have a home practice, I do recommend investing in a travel yoga mat! One that I have used is the YogiToes skidless "yoga-towel", which to me is a great compromise. It's not perfect on hard floors, but laid out on a hotel carpet it's fairly grippy and a lot easier to pack. Plus, easy to wash!

Recently I did a 4-week trip with the Lululemon Travel Mat, which was also pretty good. Again, it doesn't give you any support on hard surfaces, but weighing less than 1kg it was pretty great given that I was traveling on small planes where the maximum weight limit is carefully monitored.  I liked that it feels like a regular yoga mat and is just as grippy. It weighs about the same as the yoga towel, but it's not as easy to pack or to wash.

How will I practice?

If you don't have a regular home practice, it will be worth spending time to write down a sequence you can practice while you're away. Use your favourite book or DVD, or ask your teacher to help you - I would advise aiming for a 45min-1hour sequence. If you do have a regular home practice, see the next section.

While you're there

How much will I practice?

You can practice yoga every day, but your holidays may only come around once in a while, and you want to make the most of that time!! So be prepared to modify your practice and accept that you probably will not practice as much as you do at home. A rough guideline based on my experience when traveling as a tourist is half as often, and half to 3/4 of the usual length of practice.

What kind of practice should I do?

Travel can be stressful to your body, and we all carry that stress in different places. Be prepared to listen to your body's needs and modify your practice accordingly. If you are carrying heavy bags, you may want to focus on poses that loosen up your back, neck and shoulders. If you are doing a lot of walking, you might want to go easy on the standing poses and practice a sequence of restorative forward bends and some inversions to give your feet a rest. Feel uprooted from the air travel? Try solid, grounding standing poses that open up your hips and, hopefully, your mind.

How will I squeeze my regular asana practice in?

When it comes to asana on holiday - practice non-attachment! Yoga is much more than just doing your asanas. Engage in the Yoga of action as you see new places and meet new people. Allow yourself to be open to the other types of transformation that a voyage opens up in us.

All the new sensations, sights, smells and tastes you encounter when you travel to a new place can be overwhelming! Try to make time in your busy schedule for meditation or a restorative practice, or keep a journal of your trip. Whatever works for you, give yourself some you-time to process all your new experiences.

When you get home

Sometimes it can be hard to get back into your regular routine. My advice: start straight away (or as soon as your jet-lag permits)!

 
Sometimes, returning from a trip is also an ideal time to start a new routine, maybe something you've been meaning to do or let slip along the way. Again, the best time to start is as soon as you get back, before you get swept up again in your old routine.

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Those are a few things that I've gleaned from my travels - as always I would love to hear your experiences, comments and feedback! Have you done 

Brief hiatus while I... move to Australia!

Yes, dear readers, the Gypsy is on the move again! You may have noticed that my posts have been a bit scarce of late, and that's because, as the title of this post suggests, I'm in the middle of moving... to Australia!!

Yep, I have packed up my worldly possessions (again), and am headed for the sun, surf and sand of Sydney! Needless to say I haven't found a lot of time for blogging with all that going on... But I do have some reader-requested posts in the works including: preparatory poses for Warrior III, relieving jaw tension, and yoga for people with hyper mobility or hyper flexibility. So stay tuned!!!

To keep you busy, while I'm away I'll be re-posting a few older posts purely for your enjoyment - and I'll pick back up in a few weeks at the most, maybe less. :)

Meanwhile, this last week I had the chance to relive a little bit of my personal history by driving through the Canadian mountains from Whistler to Kamploops, British Colombia. Here are some pictures of that stunning countryside that makes my heart sing.

Maybe I'll always be a gypsy, but there is nothing like the homeland to make my heart sing. Farewell for now, Canada! I will miss you.

3 weeks away, or, how to fit your life into hand luggage

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... ;)

In pictures: Langkawi, Malaysia

True to my gypsy name, I am in my third country in as many weeks... Visiting my mom in Langkawi, Malaysia! Apart from some wonderful mother-daughter time (including yoga - remember last time?), Langkawi itself is a beautiful island with much to offer.

For those of you who aren't familiar with this part of the world, Malaysia is a country that includes a peninsula connected to South-East Asia (south of Thailand), as well as part of the island of Borneo. Langkawi is a small island just south of Phuket. Predominantly a muslim nation, Malaysia has three main cultural / ethnic groups, mainly Malay, Chinese and Indian, making for an diverse tapestry of local life! Here close to the Thai border there is a lot of Thai influence as well.

Anyway, the other day Mom and I went up to the Friday market (because it happens once every Friday!) and I used my Leme Cam app (it's free!) to take some snapshots.

Enjoy!

The Friday market is the place to be after evening prayer on Fridays!

Fresh, local (mostly) fruits and veg - yum!

Malaysian tofu delicacies

Busy shoppers

Girls being girls...

The beautiful new mosque around the corner

Our friendly tree frog (one of about 4 who live in the house!)