A yoga holy-day

What happened to your practice over the holidays? Did you remember to unroll your mat or were you thrown by the blissful dishevelment of your usual routine?

Do you relish the bliss of your practice or is it yet another chore to tick off your to do list?

The word holiday means holy-day, these are days to pay attention to. Days to be honoured, moments to realize the utter miracle of our existence. What better way to worship than through our yoga practice?

I like to litter my writing with questions, that you, dear reader, may become involved in what you are reading. It is my dialogue with you.

Why do you practice yoga?

I practice because it is my appointment with myself, not one I can be absent from. It is my return home wherever I am in the world. It is a space of utter curiosity, of wonder: a reunion with my inner child. It is a time to recognize all that I am holding and to realize that I can let it all go; just like that.

Can you let go of your asana practice? Sit still and observe quietly the racket that the ego makes. Can you pour your breath into your lower ribcage that it may fill the lungs invisibly? Can you let the inhalation move you? Can you continue to practice yoga in those moments you are given? On those holy days?

Would you like to take yourself on a yoga holiday?

our October dates are sold out but we still have space in November, please contact me for details and to come on a yoga holiday with me!

The 'San Benito'

Ingredients:

one slice of good quality bread, wholemeal

organic garlic

local honey

organic, extra virgin olive oil

sea salt flakes

Okay, so I'm going all OTT on the organic, extra virgin, good quality... but I have just inhaled a book that has revived my awareness about what we buy and what we consume. Unfortunately it is not yet published in English but for the francophones and spanish speakers among you; look up Christophe Brusset at your peril.

Shopping locally seems to be the answer, and looking at the ingredients which few of us do regularly. If you are unable to be all organic with the ingredients, never mind, it still beats a pre fab, processed, "treat" as a snack any day in my book.

Method:

 First toast the bread, enough that the surface is rough. Then slide the garlic sliced in half over the rugged surface. Depending how strong  you want it, one or two passes should suffice.                    Drizzle generously with olive oil, sometimes stabbing the toast a bit with the fork first avoids rivers of the stuff pouring onto the plate/your forearm. Smear with honey and scatter salt flakes on top.

Cultivating equanimity: the practice of Yoga Nidra

Through the practice of yoga nidra we have the ability to heal at a very deep level, or rather to unveil the natural healer in ourselves. 

Unlike when we take a journey to a therapist or even when we go to the average yoga class, through yoga nidra we consciously , progressively and skilfully peel our way through the layers that separate us from the deep pool of bliss that is at our core. We do it for ourselves.

As with most healing modalities, yoga nidra largely consists of letting go. The first thing we let go of is a notion we hold dear: that this human form is solid. We let go of the idea of the body as a solid object, but more importantly we experience the immediate freedom that such a recognition supposes. 

Such mental focus is required particularly in the beginning when we set the scene. We let go of those untruths about ourselves that we rarely, if ever, question. As we progress we start to pay attention to the feedback from our senses. It becomes a sensory awareness training over a mental exercise. How refined can our sensing become? can we begin to perceive that most subtle of holding, in the very energetics of our being?

Our intention is never to achieve a particular state but to be aware of the state we are in so that it loses its hold over us. The aforementioned bliss state is simply the realization that we can accommodate all states. Our awareness is all encompassing: we need simply to awaken to the facts.

So much of our suffering is brought about by the conflict of seemingly opposing forces, We are scared and also bold, trusting yet sceptical, loving but so defensive. We balance joy with sadness when that joy has come to an end, when some external factor disturbs the precarious existence of our so called happiness. 

When we come to realize that opposites can and do co exist all of our experience takes on a richer hue, a sense of truly being lived. Embracing is the only answer, all that arises is welcomed by this embrace of awareness. 

The practice of yoga nidra could be considered as nothing less than a journey back to the true self. Awake to it all. 

Right & left          man & woman        earth & heaven         dark & light        

The body & Liberation

How does modern day yoga differ from the traditional practices that are its origin?

For as many years as I have been practicing I have been alternately revolted and enthralled by the calisthenics of yoga.

How can this universal path of liberation have as one of its requisites wrapping a leg around the back of your neck? How can I find merit in practicing 108 rounds of surya namaskar when I know full well that this body of mine is not me at all.

At times, especially in the digitalized world we live in, drenched in filtered images of physical perfection, it seems like the yoga community as a whole is intent on communicating the blissful state achieved through rigorous, persistent coaxing of the body into increasingly sophisticated forms. It is enough to throw ones arms up in despair at the paltry effort one is making. How can my daily offering of uttanasana, trikonasana, tadasana provide even a fraction of this bliss state?

The body, if not attended to, becomes a source of great distraction. We attend mindfully to the body in our asana practice in order to get to know it better, to know its ways. But as we get to know our body better there is a parallel journey occurring, we are going deeper within, to the subtle realms.

We attend mindfully to the body, knowing that the body is not what it’s about at all. The vital energy that animates us cannot flow through a body that is dull, lethargic or stressed and uptight. It is hard to have the mental focus to trace the breath let alone deepen it.

When we have awareness of breath, true awareness, moment-by-moment awareness, we begin to welcome the experience of now. We begin to let go of past impressions. We shape our future in each moment.

‘The Inner Tradition of Yoga’ by Michael Stone is a practical, heartfelt book that brings us back to the heart of yoga. With his death the beautiful mystery of the world becomes apparent. Liberation is not for those who practice perfect physical asanas, nor is it for those who don’t. Liberation is for all who live and die, for all beings, great or small, for all beings everywhere.

Liberation is not an intellectual feat, the body shows us that time and time again.

Thank you to Michael Stone for sharing his enlightened views. May his writings continue to inspire.

the voice that became me

Setting up for my practice the other morning; unrolling the mat, drinking water, straightening the mat, brushing dirt from my feet and tuning into the texture of my breath when all of a sudden I heard it: the voice in my head. It caught me by surprise.

Now if you’ve never heard the voice in your head I may sound crazy, I had never been so acutely aware of it. The crazy thing seems now to be that we believe this voice to be us. I’d go so far as to say that actually recognizing the voice is one of the first steps towards being not so crazy.

The second of Patanjali’s yoga sutras states that yoga is the non-identification with the movements of the mind. i.e: the voice is not me.

Humans have learnt to harness nature. We mastered the incredible art of knowing it all. Even predicting the weather is something we’ve become pretty accurate at. The amount of data collected provides a picture of what is to come. The minute percentage of inaccuracy will only be corrected when we learn the laws of chaos. In other words: never. 

So it was a little moment of chaos that brought on my latest revelation. I now look for those moments in the pauses between breaths.

I see clearly that this voice has been honed, polished, even its tone is similar to what I think that I sound like, the vibration is ever so familiar. But its narrative is mundane and overwhelmingly negative. The voice is critical and if my behaviour deviates from what the voice intones there is a maladjustment, an awkwardness. “Do not go against the dictates of the voice”, it seems to say.

But what does the voice know? The voice knows only my experience thus far. In its attempt to mold the present moment to its habitual grooves it misses out on a vast source of inspiration. The voice is mostly deeply mistaken.

I heard the voice and the experience of freedom that followed was vast. To be free to be oneself, not to conform to the narrative of the voice, this is true presence. To respond to the moment in a way that has not been pre defined, this is happiness.

Another name for the voice might be the ego. Don’t allow the ego to follow you in your practice. The ego is in the foreground but let us not ignore the background. True wisdom arises when we listen to the present. When we are free from the tethers of the past, the fear of the future.

In the postures, relax the brain and feel your mind sit in your heart.

Yoga & Food. A special retreat

Food is one of life’s greatest pleasures, part of our daily life and so often a source of confusion and even torment.

To eat well, in abundance and in a way that provides energy and joy is difficult in this age when desire and pleasure are confused.

This Autumn part of the focus of Hill Yoga will be on exploring small changes we can make in the way we eat.

My sister Gioconda has travelled the world fuelled by her passion for real food. Italy, Lebanon, Argentina and the USA, Hong Kong, India and especially Spain are all cultures that have defined her approach to food.

Having dedicated the past two decades to sharing her joy for food she now joins me as I share my passion for yoga on a retreat that will be both unique and life changing.

Please contact me for more information. Early bird prices before the end of July

Intimacy

There are moments in life when we give up the struggle and sink back into the soft core of our being.

Savasana can be one of these blessed moments. We surrender to the force of gravity and release tensions, some deep seated, some unconscious, some just hanging out on the surface as a result of strenuous asana practice.

The way we perceive the body shifts in savasana. The seemingly solid contours of the physical shape melt into the ground and what is hard is allowed to be soft. Solidity itself is revealed as a concept and not a reality.

In savasana we pay attention to softening and releasing the inner ear. It has been highlighted that through the sense of sight the world seems solid and unchanging but through hearing we perceive things as they truly are, in constant flux, ever changing.

The boundaries between the internal and external space may dissolve. We quite literally become one with what arises in every given moment. There is no longer a difference between what arises internally and what arises from the outside world.

Non-duality being one of the long-standing tenets of my yoga practice; I am constantly searching for this softening into reality. I seek to become aware of the resistance, the habitual holding, the tensions. These attachments are often rooted in the way I perceive the world at times, as threatening and violent. Some are deep seated, habits of old.

When the violence of the world overwhelms you, take to your practice; channeling the emotions into the asanas and then surrendering to the sweet release of savasana.

We are not solid beings. Solidity is resistance to softness. Violence often stems from resistance that in turns becomes the cause of inaction. We want to be warriors of peace, we want to help, to heal and to sustain a vision of oneness and harmony but we need to start and continue with ourselves.

In savasana allow yourself to be intimate with the present and let presence reveal itself to you. Know that your relationship to your body is your relationship to the world and to the present moment.

To finish, a quote from the Tao Te Ching, the last word on the way of softness and immediacy:

A man is soft and weak when living.
But hard and rigid when dead.
The myriad creatures and grass and plants, when living, are soft and fragile.
When dead, they are dried and withered.
That is why the hard and the rigid are the disciples of death, the soft and the weak the disciples of the living.
Therefore an army which is inflexible cannot win.
A plant which is hard will break.
The strong and hard will fall.
The soft and weak will overcome.

my spa blog post

For the last couple of days I have been staying with a dear friend at an old fashioned spa in the countryside. I never thought I would spend vast quantities of dosh on something so luxurious but I’m here to tell you it was worth every penny.

Everything, everything, everything was taken care of and for the duration of our stay we could flop about in dressing gowns and slippers and wander from one bodily experience to the other seamlessly being pummeled, stewed and sunken; preened, pruned and fed, being educated by informed nutritionists, put through our paces in a class horribly named ‘legs, tums & bums’, soothed into deep relaxation by an elderly lady who resembled a wise turtle and deeply massaged by a very strong and intuitive man.  

I’m not, I’ve realized after many years thinking otherwise, actually that good at relaxing. It’s a little bit like the fable of the dentist with crooked teeth, the tailor with holes in his only jacket and the doctor who smokes like a chimney. I’m the yoga teacher who actually can’t relax. On the surface I seem relaxed, but my friend described my energy in a nutshell, she said: “you’re like the sea, calm, steady, but those waves keep coming, steady, steady, steady”.

Its like that, I can’t sit down for too long, unless I’m engrossed in reading; when I wake up, I jump up; on leisurely weekends I’m the one saying “so what’s the plan?” but thankfully at Grayshott people like me were taken into account; there were scrabble boards, rubbish magazines and commentary papers lying about in the elegant drawing room. There were thoughtfully landscaped gardens with matured acacia trees, rhododendrons and wild roses competing for the senses of the lone wanderer.

I took to the outside for languid strolls where I marveled at my own impatience and found myself promptly back at the tea station drinking my fortieth mug of hot water with lemon. Its this curious blend of pausing and rushing that brought my attention to the true role of the mind in our lives. While my body was being attended to semi constantly, offered the choice of exertion or pampering, grueling exercise or plump cushioned sofas, my mind was playing a tug 'o’ war, a ‘resistance’ against all this luxury.

Many of the visitors to Grayshott are there as part of a program where their diets and lifestyles are given a full overhaul and they are over the course of a week instilled with intelligent information regarding nutrition and things like body composition. It seems that poor diet is the leading cause of death and disease in our society, more so than smoking, drinking alcohol and inactivity combined. These people are taking their health seriously and it is a heartening environment to be in, although my friend and I are not part of the program.

There is a time though when our bodies call for our attention and there is a time when they can finally have their say. Often we don’t listen and years may go by, we start to cultivate stuff like adipose fatty tissue in places where it shouldn’t be (gawd, I don’t remember if there’s anywhere it should be), we develop diabetes, degenerative diseases now outnumber infectious diseases in our culture and these can all be avoided!

But what interests me in all of this is the effect on our minds of this state of disease. Even as adept meditators we can feel a fog descending over our awareness as we practice meditation, the Tibetan Book of Living & Dying encourages us to “ Alert yourself, straighten your back, breathe the stale air out of your lungs, and direct your awareness into clear space to freshen your mind” for “If you remain in this stagnant state, you will not evolve; so whenever this setback arises, clear it again and again. It is important to be as watchful as possible, and to stay as vigilant as you can.”

Through vigilance I have noticed that what we put into our bodies has a very strong effect on our mental state. Stimulants and downers such as too much bread induce fogginess, overdosing on cheese is mucus building and interferes with a smooth breath which in turn affects the mental clarity that is so dependent on this vital breath. Its hardly news but we are what we eat.

Vigilance has also brought me to the conclusion that bingeing on rubbish magazines or simply overdosing on opinion columns can lead to a comatose state that is not conducive to the sweet sattva of meditation. Flicking through Hello magazine is the epitomy of a tamasic activity for the body, watching an action DVD could be another one. But in both of these instances the content we are absorbing is ‘rajasic’, fiery, adrenaline fuelled and glitzy. This cocktail can result in functional disorders such as chronic fatigue and depression. For more on this a look at the gunas would be of interest.

Yoga and spa going are hardly incompatible, so if you do happen to have the dosh (its very not cheap) I highly recommend Grayshott and if you don’t here’s a few ideas to have your own healing retreat at home:

- buy a ridiculous amount of fresh vegetables and fruit, it’s a sure way to be inspired to eat it

- read up a bit about nutrition (The Weston A. Price foundation is particularly interesting I find)

- pour a lot of Epsom or Dead Sea salt into your bath and soak for a good 20 minutes. Each has a different effect so go for what you need most.

- ask a friend for a 10 minute back rub, pay them back in kind

- hot-cold-hot-cold showering is very stimulating for the immune system, so take a deep breath and go for it!

- be creative in finding ways to sweat: jumping up and down on a mini trampoline is meant to be fantastic to increase energy levels.

intention

I was walking in the woods the other day when I crossed paths with a lovely elderly lady. "Are you going somewhere? or are you walking for exercise? Would you like company?" I found myself lapsing into a silence from where I had to draw an answer. It was suddenly a very hard question to answer

Why was I walking? Was it because I have walked my whole life?  because nature is my therapist? because I'm lucky enough to have this hour in the day, because I waste time in this way, because walking transforms my thoughts and orders them, walking brings harmony to the whole... because of interesting encounters along the way

"because of nature" I replied "inner & outer"

It then struck me that I was going somewhere and I was doing exercise, the reasons I walked were varied but the reason I had chosen to walk was exactly that: a choice. 

This is really a roundabout way to broach the subject of intention. There is so much emphasis on presence in the teachings of yoga that the future goal can be lost sight of. So often we come to practice in order to rid ourselves of this future driven mentality and yet it is fundamental to ask ourselves why we are doing what we are doing. Why is this question so important? because it informs the spirit of our practice. 

When we set an intention at the beginning of our practice we dedicate all the peripheral benefits of the practice to this greater goal. Then we can truly go with the flow as we know which way we are flowing. To a place of non duality. Once we have made our choice all things conspire towards it. We become active participants of our own 'dharma', our life path.

Simply through the dedication of our awareness we are choosing to wake up. Be bold in your intentions as  in the words of Shantideva "This human life indeed is no time for complacency".

where to from here?

Yoga has undergone a sudden commercial explosion which while being a boon in some respects can also mean that it's profoundly transformative effect can be trivialized. The practice can be adopted as another lifestyle choice that defines one physically but ceases to recognize the deeper spiritual impact such a practice can have. 

Many spiritual practitioners and seekers run the risk of retreating deeper into their individual identities and disconnecting from the greater community. It is why many serious students turn to teaching. Whereas introversion provides a rich breeding ground for insight and a starting point for inquiry into the true nature of being, it is necessary to continue to reach out and experience the seamless nature of humanity. 

There are multiple traditions and modes of inquiry that lead to a more connected experience of life and inspire conscious action. Personally, although they go under various names, I consider these also to be practices of 'yoga'. Yoga is after all the practice of yoking with our awareness, its outermost and innermost reaches. 

From the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism 'The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying' is one of those tomes that can completely transform a person's life. In its pages there is distilled wisdom that helps the reader uncover a relationship with the world that is truly mindful and by extension compassionate. 

There is less emphasis placed on the name, the technique, the colour or the flavour of your particular spiritual vehicle, what is highlighted is the need, yes, the very urgent need, to wholeheartedly embrace the spiritual path. To take this precious opportunity, this human life, and immerse oneself in the selfless. To merge with the Divine, to practice yoga, to be present beyond finite time and space.

It has been said that we are all spiritual beings, we have yet to realize it. I have seen countless individuals have that taste of the boundless Self, that extends beyond the physical boundaries. Each time we say 'namaste' we recognize the each in the other.

So let us not shy away, let us be radically, deeply and truly spiritual... Namaste

p.s: that lovely human being in the picture is one of my first teachers, Alexa Harris, a truly inspiring guru.