Darshana in the Arctic Circle

I think my handstand coach must have some advanced degree in psychology, he reads me so well. His latest drill for me is what we came to call ‘enjoying the view’. A kick up to the wall, time here simply feeling the wonder of my body upside-down, knowing my alignment is good and my body strong; then a gentle slow descent ‘enjoying the view’ as I cruise through balance point without any struggle to find it and hold it, just noticing it pass by, knowing that’s all I need to do. Enjoy the view!

This the practice I need. Of course I still want to have a lovely long hold, but that’s not the work right now. The work is enjoying how far I’ve come already, pausing long enough to relish the view, luxuriate in the efforts it took to get this far. Time just like this, resisting the temptation to look ahead for challenges yet to come.

Be here now.

Enjoy.

I might get a t-shirt printed 🙂 Life’s better upside-down.

Practices have a habit of coalescing or we find resonances between them to make sense of our experience. I’m just back from a week of retreat and the practices there fitted so well with this mentality. We pretty much did 4 hours of restorative yoga each day. Except that this description might undersell the depth of teaching on offer, the riches of philosophical insight, the contemplative inner enquiry offered so gently alongside the anatomical subtleties. There was no place for rigidity, the softness of the practice allowed my body to rest as never before and me to practise acceptance of my whole self as I felt ‘seen’ by the teacher.

We had some wonderful moments between classes, a brief but deep intimacy such as I don’t usually allow. She felt like a sister. I’m not used to this kind of relationship with a teacher. My own teachers seem remote to me, a little forbidding even. The father figure and the mother figure who appear austere in their commitment never to praise or to be anything less than serious, from whom I sense a degree of impatience as they look upon my combination of precociousness and rigid protectiveness with some frustration. I look to them for answers, even as they might wonder what’s holding me back.

With the retreat teacher we shared the intimacies that come from concentrated practice time together, and came to joke about my habit of resistance as it arose in different contexts. In conversation she made light of it — “badass yogi” and “yoga rebel” — with transatlantic ease and familiarity. Yet she also found a way to reassure me: my cautious response was natural, something arising from years of protective survival, which I might do well to acknowledge and embrace. It’s not bad, it doesn’t make me a bad student. It’s uniquely me. Something to work with, not against. Can you actually resist resistance?

And we talked together about joy. The joy of having a body, moving it, inviting stillness to it, allowing the breath to pass through it. We practised visualisation meditation and tantric placement of deities in the body. And I didn’t resist these practices, although they were difficult for me.To invite joy in, to allow my experience to encompass every emotion available (not just the expected ones that tend to the negative) — that was also a practice of enjoying the view, enjoying the panorama even, as my awareness broadened and different possibilities became apparent. Maybe savasana and handstand have more in common than meets the eye?

It helped that we were in a beautiful setting, surrounded by sea and mountains. The actual view was always worth surveying. And I was not just viewing it, I was also in it. I hiked up the steepness of the mountain and positively gambolled my way down, sure of my footing and the strength of my body even over rocks and on scree slopes. I plunged into the water of the harbour, feeling the breath knocked out of my body by the shock of cold, and the simple absurdity of trusting my body in arctic waters thrilled me. I took a nighttime boat ride to a small island luminous in the midnight sun, where I chanted the gayatri mantra to myself as I wandered along the beach, picking up the prettiest shells. All these were joys.

It’s called a retreat and in some ways it was, being in an essentially closed community for a week, living a simple life of yoga and walking, eating and sleeping. Yet in other ways for me it was an expansion. A time of expanded view and glimpses beyond my usual near horizon. I came looking for a greater sense of myself, desperate for a renewed confidence in my practice and in myself. To drop some resistance, perhaps.

Darshana: seeing or making oneself seen.

I think through my own change in perspective and seeing myself through the eyes of this teacher, I come closer. Now I can better appreciate the view from where I am. It will be an ongoing practice to remain with this more open view. I have my handstand drill to help me embody it. I doubt that fits strictly with the tantra philosophy as it was taught, but I think it will serve me well enough for now.