my yoga journey
“Go to the limits of your longing... Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final” (Rilke) Practice at the moment is an experience of longing. I feel a deep yearning to be more fully with myself, to let go of the past, to feel the reality of the... Continue Reading →
My teacher very rarely offers any comment on the quality (or qualities) of my yoga practice. I am never sure how to read this, never really sure how to read him as a teacher. Is he paying me a massive implicit compliment not imposing his perspective on me, trusting that I'll figure it all out... Continue Reading →
Telling stories. Telling stories. RE-telling stories I was formally trained to study the past. I used to be an archaeologist. My academic training taught me that there's usually more than one interpretation of the evidence and if you follow the more radical post-modern theories the past is unknowable and all interpretations become equally valid... Death... Continue Reading →
I sit with the teacher a little before class. She talks about the weather and birdwatching, we talk about mundane weekend plans and what we're having for lunch. We also talk about the non-sense of 200 hour YTT programmes, how little they equip anyone for the reality of teaching. We consider the difficulty of assessing... Continue Reading →
I haven't written in an age. Did you notice, really? I haven't felt drawn to share much. A web of physical pain and some emotional (let's call them spiritual) entanglements and confusions, some quiet disillusionment about modern yoga -- all threatening stagnation in my practice but ultimately providing shitty fertilizer which has allowed for some... Continue Reading →
I'm learning the optative in Sanskrit. My textbook tells me "the optative is a verb form that indicates possibility. It can be translated as 'should', 'would', 'could', 'ought' or 'may'. I found sentence 3 in the first exercise ironically amusing: "The teacher ought to be content". After all, the last time I had met with... Continue Reading →
One of my teachers seems to me to be indomitable. I don't know her well personally, but from what she shares publicly I know she's been through a bunch of sh*t. Most recently she underwent pretty serious surgery and from a distance I followed her steps towards healing and mobility with a sense of awe.... Continue Reading →
"I'd like to hold your heart; is that OK with you?" My new life-in-yoga constantly suprises me and this was certainly a question I'd not been asked before. It kind of freaked me out and I said so. "It's OK, take your time; you can tell me when you're ready". So no escaping the heart-holding... Continue Reading →
What does it mean to hold someone in your thoughts? I wrote a condolence card to a friend recently, a Christian friend, and I offered some words like this. I couldn't say I was praying for her in her distress and grief since that's not part of my practice but I am holding her in... Continue Reading →
