Fourth Form of Madness

Another week, another injury. This time the sacrum/lumbar region, though on examination by my rather spectacular muscle therapist/myofacial therapist (I can’t quite explain what she does but truly she is amazing) there is a lot of thoracic involvement and trigger points that are setting the whole show off. This time though I am like “Oh well another injury, I’m going to take time off from yoga”. In fact, I’m looking forward to the break, I think the “honeymoon” phase with yoga is over and now its all about negotiating how we are going to live in the most harmony, whilst conceding there are going to be plenty of rough, “hold onto your flimsy identity and all you think you are” power struggles.

This injury has occurred at a time where I am questioning my true intentions with regards to doing yoga. It has brought me to a place that I can no longer ignore that I have tenancies to always want to be a “special little snowflake” in everything. I need to feel special. I have been examining this need and I think it is driven from the in bedded belief that I am not special and that if you are not special you don’t deserve love. Um painful stuff, just ask my body! I’m sitting with this a while as it only a recent admission to myself, although I have been dodging around this painful self secret for years.

In fact, I only explored this realisation in the early hours of this morning, as I lay in bed following a rather grueling muscle therapy session and observing how my body was responding to the work and the subsequent thoughts that were arising. One question that kept coming up, “Why do you keep making decisions that go against your wellbeing? Why do you keep struggling against wellness?”. It was interesting and I am going to use this statement to examine my life for the next 2 weeks or so, and see if I can consciously identify when I am doing this process. This brings us back to yoga, I know that sometimes, okay a lot of time, when I attend yoga classes I go with the wrong intention. I go so that people can see how far I can stretch, how long I can balance etc etc – all feeding into my need to be special. Seldom do I go with the intention of solely attending the class for my wellbeing and self discovery. In fact, the only time I do this is in my very gentle and prop based home practice that I adore and try never to miss. In my home practice it is all about stillness and discovery.

Anyway, this time is good to me to examine my intentions, not only towards yoga but my life in general. I am going to embrace and enjoy this time and try to let go so that I can be guided by my new insight and questions revealed to me in contemplation to heal myself and my old thinking patterns. I don’t just want to rote learn all the right things I am meant to say and be in regards to life anymore. I want to at all times be honest with what is and what I am feeling/experiencing and then proceed with life from that point. Interesting, exciting times!

When I started practicing yoga I naively thought that you stepped onto the mat a raving, ranting stressed out wreck and at the end of the hour you glided off transformed into a vision of serenity and wisdom. Ummm no. Well not for me anyway but then maybe I’m doing it wrong. To be fair I have a lot of sessions where I do feel calm, soft and centred but I also equally have sessions where I bump into some awkward emotions/feelings that has just been waiting for me to slow down enough so they can catch up with me, like a loathsome stalker.

There have been many sessions where I am feeling focused and centred and glide on into relaxation to be confronted with a wash of tears that generate from my core, a pit of mixed being of great happiness but tremendous sadness at the same time. No amount of trying to focus the mind on the out breath seems to reduce it, so I have learnt to go with it and try and not to place my mat to near to anyone!!!! It seems to happen in my Saturday morning class the most and I am grateful to my ever graceful and gentle teacher who gently massages oil into my neck and temple and slowly places a eye pillow over my eyes and then carries on to do the next person.

I’m not ignoring these tears and emotions/feelings but I am letting them “go”, so to speak, whilst I am on the mat. There is plenty of time for self-contemplation off the mat. When I do contemplate these feelings in particular I feel that it is showing me that beauty is made up of good/bad, happiness/sadness etc. They are truly the same thing and they all are vitally necessary and must exist to have a full and balanced life and to learn.

I struggle with letting things just be the way they are, yes I am a control freak! I have this new method to try and change this. First I am practicing being more mindful. I have started with taking 5 full and conscious breaths as many times as possible a day, particularly when I catch myself slipping into uncontrolled rapid thought patterns. I try to eat in silence and with concentration on the weekend as much as possible. I have also changed my meditation to a Tibetan styled meditation where I just sit with the out breath. I also find I have been doing this in everyday life as well now and have found it very helpful for staying with the moment and not getting carried away with emotions or feelings or memories or planning. This allows me to catch myself when I start trying to change the way things are. Secondly, when I catch myself trundling along the well worn path towards my habitual non-conscious way and I am about to act, I ask myself “What way should I act to respect this moment and all that is involved in it?” Yeah it’s a heavy order and to be real, I still totally suck at it and need a lot more practice which I am certain life will provide.

Sometimes the feelings/emotions come from outside. For instance this week at a lunchtime yoga class I attend I felt like I was going to launch into confrontation with the teacher. Firstly, the class is held in a gym which is noisy and not the most appropriate setting for yoga (or at least the way I like to do yoga). Secondly it was approaching a new moon and feelings were a little haywire in the room. Thirdly, for a number of weeks the teacher has a favorite student and spends most of her time talking with him (including during relaxation time) and this situation has really annoyed me as I don’t believe this is appropriate of a yoga teacher as all students should be treated equally and relaxation time is sacred and it is extremely disrespectful to all the other students to talk during this time (but that’s just my opinion).

Anyway, the class starts with the teacher arriving in a noticeably bad mood. I get told in a rather gruff way to straighten up my mat as it was going to “do her head in” (I might be mistaken but I thought I was there for my neurotic tendencies not hers). Next she starts again rather gruffly to tell me that one of my asanas was wrong and then keeps yelling at me regarding this as I had no idea what she wanted. By this stage, when she finally approached me I am sure she could feel the anger that was in me and I was very conscious of. Now I believe that yoga gives you a wonderful chance to make friends with your ego and therefore subdue it but that day I almost screamed at her that “She didn’t have to be so hard on me, I do that quite nicely all by myself” along with “I’m so sick of this focus on the physical, when are any of you going to teach me the spiritual/mind/soul material that I have plenty of questions on also!!!” – this I admit is my own stuff I am working through. All of me wanted to roll up my mat and storm out of there……then I let go of that by breathing into it and just watching it and I was able to work through the rest of the class….. to enjoy it even. Until I got to the relaxation part and once again they talked through it. On leaving the class the favourite student remarked what a great class it was to me. I remained silent because I didn’t trust myself to say something altogether sincere or nice but I may have come off quite frosty.

Later when I reflected on this, I realised that hard teachers aren’t for me, I’m hard enough on myself, I don’t need this from others, although I do appreciate the occasionally ego check with them. Secondly, I need to practice not at a gym. Thirdly, the student that was the focus of attention, reminds me of me when I first started, all interested in mastering every position even if it hurts them and not one bit interested in the spiritual side of yoga. I realised that I was really projecting my feelings that I had about myself at that stage onto him and that I should open my heart more to this student as I understand where he is at. Mostly I realised that I should have listened to my intuition because right at the beginning of that class when I was in wisdom pose before the teacher arrived I had the greatest urge to leave yoga for that day. I really should listen more to my Self.