Christmas fun conundrums..

Well Christmas is fast approaching and I've done exactly what I set out not to do - I've let it slip.

Yes, there have been little slips, tiny trips, when you're heart skips a beat for a moment, and there have been big comedy slips, straight up into the air and down onto the bottom, à la  cartoon banana skin stylee...

I won't go into the details but naturally, as I slip, so has my yoga practice.

I ended up going along to the class in Paddington today with Eileen, but I spent the entire practice feeling guilty... Guilty for having had one glass of red wine more than I'd intended which spiralled into a paranoia that Eileen/my mat-neighbours, who are all but 4 inches away from me, would be able to smell my mild intoxication - not that it was from last night but from the last few nights which have just been building and building.. I am so ready for a rest, for a few days off... But then it's Christmas and we're going away and then we've still got Christmas celebrations to come, and then it's New Year, and honestly - it seems not to stop, but then I love it, but then I don't want anymore.  My mind flips between feeling like a reluctant teenager who has just been dragged onto the dance floor by my uncle.. Let it stop! But the next I'm hands in the air, like I just don't care, letting looooose....

So do I just embrace it, let it go? Or do I try any reign it in...?

It's fun, okay dancing (with or without your uncle) is not necessarily fun - a sore fact which I learnt at my staff Christmas party on Thursday - I might be able to get my legs behind my head, but I have zero co-ordination. I can't dance for toffee and I feel paranoid and I don't like not being good at something, a fact which my dancing efforts showed me - I thought Christmas was meant to be fun...

But I digress.. slightly

These few weeks are what they are, after all. At least I'm doing some yoga, still managing to get some work done, walk the dog - I'm just not doing it with quite the same 'purity'...

It's like everything is tangled together in this great connected ball. When all these aspects are falling into place, and I feel connected to what I'm doing, I'm feeling productive, practising well, eating healthily, drinking less, writing my blog posts and I'm bringing all of me to it, it's like the ball rolls smoothly; when things get knotted, out of balance, the ball jumps around, unpredictably. My ball is a bit jumpy right now, but that's okay. Mostly it's happening in my mind anyway, from the outside I think my ball is rolling okay.

Christmas is fun, so I'm gonna embrace it.

Dealing with disappointment

It's not easy being disappointed is it? Especially when you're disappointed over something which you can't really blame anyone for (blame = negative emotion anyway so should not be doing 'blame') but at least with blame you can feel somewhat vindicated. That loser messed things up for me. Or I blame myself, which kind of makes the sting a little less stingy.

But in this instance there's nobody to blame - not even myself.

I was planning on going to Mysore to study at the Ashtanga Yoga Research institute. THE place to study my yoga in India. It's one of those 'must do' pilgrimages of the ashtangi and I was perfectly poised and ready to go in March (you need to give four months notice of your intended stay). Except that I logged onto the site today and they said, 'SHALA FULL' - so literally if I wanted to go 1st of March I should have  sent them an email on 1st November.... what's the date today.. 9th November. I was 9 days too late.

The thing is I guess i was hoping to 'do' this before I get too old, start having babies, whatever. The timing was perfect, but I guess these things are here to teach us that life doesn't always go according to the little plan one cooks up in one's little head.

In some ways it's quite liberating when the ball doesn't bounce where you're expecting (my head is packed full of doggy metaphors these days so bear with me) - it shakes things up and forces you to try other things, make quicker decisions, throw yourself into another path.

I've realised I don't deal with disappointment very well so this is maybe my chance to learn from it.

Out with the old

Yet again we're moving! It seems every year we up our stumps and it's that time again.

This week is gonna be c-razy with packing and boxing and organising and changing details and sorting and trying to fit in some work as well. I'm afraid I may be a little quiet this week alas blog.

Started off the packing yesterday and could see myself going into ruthless mode, I've already chucked six handbags, three pairs of jeans and seven pairs of shoes in the direction of Vinnies. I love it. It's a very cleansing sensation to purge, to rid yourself of clutter, although I do get a flash of.. will I need those shoes again one day...? I'm not too attached to my things though, luckily. My problem is more papers, books, I really find it hard to throw out magazines and stuff I've been sent by banks and other institutions... it kind of sends me into a mini panic, what if I need that at some point. But no, it's a pure lesson in detachment. I'll make do without, we don't need all this crap, we really don't.

Can yoga help me love cockroaches?

One of the downers of living in this Australian paradise are the brown, scuttley pests which set my nerves all jangly and arouse my instinct to kill as they flee into one of the many ready-made kitchen hideaways under the fridge, between the cupboards, behind the rice etc. Oh yes, that loveable Aussie character, Mr Cockroach, who, over these past few weeks I reckon I’ve seen in every possible shape and size manifestation: from the dreaded large dried-pruney ones to the little scatty antsy ones. It’s taken me a while to realise that it’s not just the odd one here and there, but a cockroach breeding factory has set up shop and, most delightful of all, its HQ seems to be in my dishwasher. It’s pretty common not to like them but I’m sh*t scared of them, they give me the heeby jeebies and I don’t really know why. Back in the day I thought nothing of zapping them with cans of magic toxic spray and large WARNINGS to leave the house IMMEDIATELY after spraying. 

But now… it’s not as easy as that. Spraying is not just environmentally unsound, but I’m starting to feel a little bit guilty about killing these things. Maybe yoga can help?!

In fact I just need to look at what the yogis call the ‘kleshas’ or the five causes of suffering which arise from what’s known as avidya or ‘incorrect perception’.

Let’s hear what Desikachar has to say in his excellent book ‘Heart of Yoga.’

“We often determine that we have seen a situation correctly and act according to that perception. In reality however we have denied ourselves and our actions may bring misfortune to ourselves and others. Avidya can be understood as the accumulated result of many unconscious actions, the actions and ways of seeing which we have been mechanically carrying out for years.”

Sounds familiar?

So let’s break it down:

1. Ignorance (avidya): My attitude towards our scuttley friends is based on my samskara (or habitual pattern of behaviour/thinking) which says ‘cockroaches are evil’. This is irrational and is therefore a misconception of the truth. If we remember Kino’s words from my post earlier this week, the goal of yoga is to free ourselves from these patterns of behaviour. 
2. The ego (asmita) causes us to feel separate from others and most commonly results in negative patterns of behaviour such as the need to be better than so and so. Now I’m certainly not trying to be better than that so and so Mr Cockroach but I do feel separate from him, I just don’t understand him. Maybe some compassion is required here, he’s just doing his thing breeding and trying to make ends meet like we all are.
3. Attachment (raga) and rejections (dvesa) I’ve rolled these together because they’re related. Attachments are like the extra cup of coffee/glass of wine you don’t need but that mechanical attachment causes us to really want it. Rejections or ‘dvesas’ are the opposite and here’s where Mr C comes in. When we have a difficult experience or find something unfamiliar we tend to reject it, assuming (incorrectly) that it will always cause pain.
4. Fear (abhinivesa). Mr C is causing me to suffer from an irrational fear. When has a cockroach ever hurt me? In fact there are plenty of substances/activities/relationships which I’ve indulged in time and time again which have caused me far more pain in the past.

So, as you can see yoga has some fancy terms to explain my fear and after this quick diagnosis I’ve definitely got a bad case of the ‘avidyas’ here. I need to bring compassion and understanding towards cockroaches, I need to practice ‘ahimsa’ and not harm another living being. I need to see my fear/ego/rejections for what they are: the result of my flawed faculties of perception. It sounds pretty easy right? 

Alright Grandma

I feel like I've retired! Sitting here in my winter woolies and snuggly boots, lapping up the orange glow of my brand new 24KW electric heater I am happier and toastier than a freshly baked Granny.

Well, the Sydney weather took a nippy turn last week, so after a couple of days typing in my stripy gloves (one day they’ll invent keyboards for paws) it was time to go shopping.

The heater was bought in a bit of a flurry from David Jones. Not knowing much about portable heaters (central heating is fitted as standard in darkest England), I asked for some no-nonsense advice. Well, the shop assistant worked me out straight away and shot back: "I don’t know exactly what you’re after but old folks love this one." so naturally I snapped it up in two shakes of a tartan slipper.

So, heater buying aside, it’s been an eventful few days. Hubby has been in New Zealand on business so the whole concept of time has ceased to exist for me. I can literally wake up whenever I want, and sleep whenever it calls (hang on, this is what retired people do isn’t it? I’m always calling my Mum during one of her 2pm naps…) However, thankfully some deep-rooted sense of life’s purpose has let me resist hibernation and get on with all these funny little projects I’ve set myself. This isn’t sounding very eventful is it? Well, I assure you, by Grandma’s standards, it has been. This morning my website went live! Minus the logo/branding and some little tweaks it’s ready to be rolled out to the masses (my 3 followers, thank you guys)! So, taa dah, here she is: You’ll see at the moment it’s just a wee Baby Bear site, you know just some basic information and contact details. In time, as my technical (and small business) skills grow, hopefully we’ll be seeing a bit more of Mummy Bear…

So back to my eventful week. With the thoughts of last week's post fresh in my struggling yogi mind, I have been very conscious of resisting any attachment to outcomes, whilst still following my goals. For instance one of my ever-so-casual-not-bothered-too-much-okay?! goals is to become a yoga teacher. And this week I saw some outcomes (should I be happy about this, I mean I feel happy but is that an attachment? Anyway…) This week is looking pretty busy folks, as I am due to teach seven classes, two of which were last night due to unexpected sickness (hooray! – sorry, but it was only a cold!); one private class this morning; a community class at Lululemon; and another couple over the weekend.

The school I taught at last night have a philosophy to restrict numbers to a maximum of six per class, thereby letting the teacher give more personal attention and specific modifications to individuals. Both were quite mixed classes so this approach was particularly appropriate; and each had an older chap who’d just started yoga. It’s interesting when you teach people like that, (so accustomed as I am to Ashtanga classes which are mostly full of fit young folks, leaping and floating around the mat like spring lambs) and I sometimes wonder to myself if they are getting as much out of the classes as the more advanced practitioners. But then I considered my early experience of yoga, (when on a physical level I couldn’t touch my toes let alone understand what a deep ujayii breath was) and I remembered how it felt. What a sense of achievement! As my private student texted me this morning to say, “Thanks for the class, I felt quite smug for being up at 5.30am” yoga feels like it’s good for the soul. There was a subconscious sense that it’s awesome to be up so early, moving about; a vague idea that you're making some quality, nourishing time for yourself. Now that I am up early most days, practicing or teaching, I sometimes, rather guiltily, feel I’ve lost that sense of the amazing power of yoga and I’m grateful for the class last night and my student this morning (also a complete beginner) for reminding me.