Thanking my teachers

I started my first day of yoga teacher training today. Leading up to it, I've been thinking about how lineage is important in yoga and how you thank your teachers and the teachers before them for bringing you this practice.

And so I have been thinking about my teachers.

Mel is my ashtanga teacher and I have been studying with her for nearly two years. Someone asked me today what it is about her, why I gush when talking about working with her. I think it's because I trust her implicitly. Her confidence and calmness in the practice rubs off on me and if she thinks I can do something, I start to believe I can. She's patient, and just the right amount of push. 

I can say, hand on heart, that I wouldn't be where I am today without her as my teacher. I don't think I would have even considered yoga teacher training an option or an idea.

There's also Ruth, who covers for Mel when she is off in Greece or Goa, and who is totally different and who pushes and cajoles in a totally different way. I like having the dichotomy of the two of them.

There's Robert, whose class I took at the gym down the street from us on Isabella in Toronto. There's Miss Irene, Miss Karen and Miss Judy, my dance teachers from long ago, who taught me about movement and discipline and trained my body in a way that I couldn't really comprehend then but understand so much better now.

And the countless teachers who I've had for a class or a week or a month who have made an impact on me. Even those who didn't, or whose class I didn't enjoy. All those moments with people who stood up to teach me something. Whether I learnt it or not.

I guess what I'm saying is thank you. 

When something difficult becomes easy

When I started doing mysore ashtanga in 2012 I couldn't bind my hands in marychasana B with my foot in lotus. After awhile I put my foot in lotus but didn't get into the bind. Then I started to do the bind with help from my teacher. And then I didn't need as much help to get into the bind. And then I started to only need help occassionally.

And somewhere along the way between then and now, my body learnt how to bind my hands in marychasana B with my foot in lotus. 

And it became a thing that I just did. Not something that was hard, or even remotely noticeable. I just breath through it now and hardly notice. But the other day, while my brain was thinking about the more difficult postures that were coming up (I know, bad lady, mind wandering) and how I sucked at them and how I'd probably never get any better at them and I'd never see the end of the primary series and I'd just have to make my piece with being rubbish at yoga, another thought popped into my head. My nose almost touched the ground in marychasana B and I remembered how I improved bit by bit, little by little, over time, to get to a place where I could bind marychasana B and what seemed like a miracle at the time was now not  a big deal.

It got me thinking about all the little things that you take for granted that were minor (and sometimes major) victories at the time, but when the glow of success wears off you push that moment to the back and you blind yourself with the next obstacle. And I lose sight of everything i've ever accomplished and only see the impossible and feel like a failure at EVERYTHING, not just the silly obstacle in front of me. 

I've been working on bhujipadasana for over a year now. I have definitely improved, but it's not elegant or efficient. And my teacher has me started on kursanasa, which is difficult and I can't quite get my shoulder beneath my thighs so I can't quite go all the way and and and and clearly I'm terrible at this and I'll never get it.

But if yoga over the past 18 months has taught me anything I think it is patience with myself. I still need to remind myself of that (often) but the lesson is there.  Noticing, and remembering the little victories, and remembering that they took time and dedication, and repetition, and that, ultimately, it didn't really matter, because no sooner had I conquered one mountain when I put my sights on the next, makes me a bit kinder to myself and a bit more patience.

Yoga is the art of making the impossible possible and the possible easy.

On robbery & yoga

Last year in May while waiting for the bus on Hackney Road a kid in jeans, a black jacket and a grey hoodie stole my phone out of my hands and ran off with it. I ran after him, screaming and cursing like a sailor but after a few moments I realised that I didn't know what I would do if I did catch him so I ran home to call the police.

On Friday morning, around 7am, on my bike on my way to yoga, two kids on a scooter drove up behind me and plucked my bag out of my bike basket, then drove off laughing.

The difference in how I feel a few days after the latest incident, and how I felt after having my phone stolen in May is amazing. I'm still sad, I lost some lovely things. I'm annoyed at the inconvenience and at the feeling of having my space invaded and my boundaries crossed by malicious strangers. But I am calm. My heart isn't so filled with anxiety that I start at every person on the street and am distrustful of everyone. Last year it took me months before I felt safe and I am still very cagey about using my iPhone in public. It's only been a few days since the incident, but I feel ok. I feel calm. I can think about those two boys and while part of me wants them to run their scooter into a wall, part of me feels pity for them. Because stealing things isn't a great career choice and if that's your option and your path then you have bigger problems than I do.

I think this change and this ability to handle crappy situations so much better than I used to is down to (somewhat) regular yoga practice and (somewhat) regular meditation practice. It's been just over a year since I started meditating (almost) daily with the Headspace app and it's just about a year since I started regular yoga but more specifically Astanga Mysore with Melanie at the Life Centre in Islington. I sleep better than I used to. I am not nearly as generally anxious as I used to be. I am better at recognising a situation and being ok with it. Life's not perfect and things still throw me for a loop, but I am much better at my LIFE than I was a year ago.

On Friday morning, after the police finished up and dropped me off with my bike, I decided to keep going and do a short pratice at the studio. I told Melanie what had happened, did twenty minutes of  yoga, shed a few tears, built myself a yoga couch for my sivasana and breathed. Afterwards in the change room I was talking to another teacher, Lisa, and she asked me how my practice was. I told it that I had been mugged that day but that I had still come to yoga and that I felt good for that. I told her it this story, about how a year ago I was robbed and this time was so much easier to handle. And that it was almost a year since I had started yogaing. She gave me a hug and said congratulations on my year.

Isn't it wonderful how yoga helps us handle the good and the bad, and how sometimes you need the bad to show you what you've got in you and how far you've come.


Happy ending: A lady walking her dog in the park found my daybook and some of my clothes strewn around. She collected them and called me. I'll pick them up from her tonight. 

Blue Moon

There was a Blue Moon on Thursday night. I think a blue moon is a lunar event that only happens once or twice a year when there is a second full moon in a calendar month. I think. I could be wrong but I am not going to go look it up on the internet because I like this simple idea and I don't care if it is correct or not. I want to think that it is something that will happen occasionally and it will be special and I will note it and be able to take a moment to go take a look and think of my dad.

C and I went up to the roof on Thursday night because we couldn't see the moon from our flat. We laughed and whispered "where is the moon?" like Emily's nephew. And we stared up at the moon and if you looked at it long enough it was blue - the chromatic aberation between the big bright moon and the darkness around it made it look like there was a ring of blue neon encircling the moon. Hence blue moon. Because this aberation only happens with the Blue Moon. Which is a rare, but not impossible event.

This isn't true. But it doesn't matter. Truth is a weird thing. And if your truth is different than mine then neither are really truths are they?