Begin again

Back when I met with my teacher regularly, I used to enjoy telling him what I was working on in my practice, what was interesting me, what I perceived as the challenge to address, how it evolved over the months until it turned into something different. The sharing of it was a key part of my motivation, my accountability, a means of critical reflection and a source of inspiration and encouragement. I don’t have this company any longer and I’ve found it almost impossible to make up the lack of it from my own resources. It’s been hard, really hard.

For a year or so now, practice has been reduced down to a maintenance kind of effort, with little joy or obvious reward. I haven’t had the heart for more. Every time I started asana practice, I could hear my teacher’s voice in my head, recalling his guidance through a particular pose or being reminded of the broader themes of our discussions over the years, difficulties shared, solutions or accommodations somehow worked out in words and movements. Had things turned out differently for us, had they ended differently, I might have drawn on this inner voice and felt courageous from the ongoing suggestion of companionship. But all I really felt was grief and loss, a lack or direction or purpose.

In the absence of my teacher and his support, I’ve quietly drawn on my own students for my motivation. I have to practice in order to guide them; I need my body to be capable of demonstration, I need it to remember the practice in a physical way in order to communicate it well as I can, and I have to keep some connection to the ongoing nature of practice in order to lead them with any sense of authenticity. Anything less would be unworthy of them.

I am grateful to have this. Teaching feels a blessing as much as a responsibility.

And now we’re getting to the point where I need to change. It feels time now to ease myself away from the heaviness and the doubts and sense of loss. It feels time for a bit of freshness and renewal. The new year offers such promise if we can tap into those feelings of latent possibility, of excitement almost. I am seizing on the change of calendar to create a bit of momentum for something I know I need to do and feel (almost!) ready to do. For sure, I am quite daunted and uncertain of my way, what my practice will come to look and feel like in this new chapter, yet…. I’m also getting more comfortable with the uncertainty — that in itself shows me how far I’ve come and how much I’ve learned and how capable I really am.

So just recently I’ve started embracing my asana practice a little more, coming back to my personal practice, not just the go-through-the-motions teaching-focussed practice. It’s early days and it feels shaky, these new roots don’t feel very deep. I feel I need a simple anchor that will be available to me no matter what. Experience has taught me that mantra provides this well, better than asana which seems weirdly ephemeral. So I’ve started up a Ganesha mantra practice. And it feels good. I practice either in the morning before the day starts or in the evening before my asana practice, if it’s not too late in the day. I like the feeling of mantra work, the subtle shift in my whole being, the energising quality and feeling of “I can” that is the residue, a residue that builds up day by day. I feel cautiously optimistic, not quite elephant power and elimination of all obstacles, but just enough courage to keep going.

As extra accountability (as I doubt myself so much right now) I planned to offer a new year workshop, teaching a chant and offering some other grounding practices and reflection time to help my students connect with their own sense of new year and new possibilities. The coupling of personal intention with teaching commitment was working nicely….

Until I got sick! For 10 days now I’ve had a bad virus. I am just croaking out short functional communications to Hubby before I am overwhelmed by the most awful cough I’ve ever experienced. I’ve been spending my days dozing on the sofa, listening to the radio, eating tiny snacks with little appetite, and trying to take in fluids as much as possible. That’s it. Just one very gentle asana practice that left me shaking and weak, no breath or voice for mantra.

I cancelled my workshop.

And I’m disappointed by that, and frustrated, and also (painful ego moment) quite taken aback by how quickly the studio found a substitute teacher! But I’m also suddenly aware that I don’t actually need to do this for the sake of my own practice. My recent mantra practice was enough to remind myself how it works, that it does work (mysteriously) and that it is a good tool to stabilise myself in relation to my broader practice. My job now is to get well and then to begin again. Again.

I’m grateful for the teacher who stepped and I hope the students got what they needed from the workshop. Perhaps there will be an opportunity in future for me to share what I’ve learned from my experience too.