Fourth Form of Madness

A few years back I became fascinated with instinct. I had watched a show on various insect instinct and had became intrigued with how, for example, a certain type of moth knew to automatically eat the egg it was hatching from the second it broke free. Science had found that if it didn’t do this, it would die minutes after birth, but science had not been able to find out how the moth knew to dine on this egg meal first and fore most without any instruction from any other being. Some people might easily dismiss this wonder of the world with the words “That’s just instinct, they know to do this”. Such wonderful tautological replies do much to kill the wonder of the natural world and little to expand our exploration of the unknown. Whilst we may never know the unknown we shouldn’t stop exploring it playground.

To let your mind go where it doesn’t ordinarily go in the course of a normal day (or at least my day :-)). To stop in-between remembering your shopping list, rehashing the argument with said loved one, wondering how you are going to get everything you need to get done completed, and to really notice something in your environment, anything, be it a flower, a crack in the pavement, the sky, the ocean. To just look and notice the absolute wonder it really is, just as it is. Even to contemplate the marvel of it’s beginnings, and how it came to be, even if you will never know. I believe this helps open us all up to all kinds of wonder. Allowing us the possibility of never having to give an answer, never having to get a tick in that box of understanding that the masses so often demand, is liberating and a kind of “final frontier” that the soul thirsts to explore.

Some time back, someone advised me that all the wonders of the world and ourselves are already ours, we don’t even need to ask for them. However, we do need to work for them, in an indirect way. There are many ways and many different kinds of work as there are people. What is right for one, might not be the way for another. The only guide is instinct, and it has to be your own, not projected onto you by others. We all have instinct, whether we have learnt to feel it and listen to it or not, it is there. This means everyone has a shot at the wonders of the world and knowing themselves. You can’t get a more built in equality than that! I believe in that kind of equality instinctively.

I love yoga but for most of this year I have pretty much had to force myself to do it. I’m going through my “I can’t be arsed” phase and believe me, my extra 10kgs highlights this fact nicely. So off I go this morning to hot yoga. 37 degrees which actually when you are moving feels more like 50 degrees. I haven’t always done hot yoga. In fact to be honest my mind used to shutter just at the thought of it. My favourite saying was “you live in Australia, go do yoga outside”. But then my favourite yoga teacher installed infra red heat at her studio and a gentle flow sequence and I trust her instinct so off I trundled. I wouldn’t say I embraced it to my heart the first few times, in fact, there was a lot of soul searching done on whether it was for me. The first few times I felt like the wicked witch from the east and as I stood there in a puddle of my own sweat in warrior 1 it was hard not to scream out “I’m melting, I’m melting…..”.

However, if yoga has taught me anything it has taught me to persevere, one breath at a time. I was reminded of this fact the other day when I was cleaning out my bedside drawer and came across and old journal I had started writing in a few years back when I was going through probably the worst time in my life. A melt down in hot yoga is one thing, a complete melt down of your whole life is quite another. I think the moons must have aligned and it was just my time to endure the agonising process of self development. This period seemed to kick off with a neck and shoulder injury that was extremely painful and made it impossible for me to continue the Mysore practice that I had fallen deeply in love with.

At first I would still try to go to practice and then endure days of suffering and not being able to sleep due to the pain. Finally, I listened to my body and reluctantly changed my practice with a broken heart. However, on I worked with what I had. I adapted everything and started to home practice a lot. I never practiced anything that caused any pain. I monitored and wrote in my journal what caused my injury to flare and go into tightness or spasm and what opened up my body. I wrote my thoughts down that I had during the practice and what my mind felt like. Reading back over these journal entries I realised that this was probably the first time in my existence I had stood by life, no matter what it held and worked with it rather than against it. This prepared me to do the same with other issues that were also starting to arise in my life. I realised my heart was never broken only that my love of yoga had just changed as everything must in life and I had developed a new dimension to myself that I never appreciated before – I was a stayer, a sticker.

Once a friend had told me a story from her life that left me emotional and full of respect for her. She hadn’t gotten into the dream course she always wanted to do in life after school, photography it was her passion. This didn’t phase her, she simply went to the school on enrolment day and struck a deal with the school that if someone didn’t turn up to accept their enrolment that day, she could have their place. So there she sat all day, long into the afternoon, watching all the students come into enrol and watching them leave all signed up. On she waited, on a little chair in the hall, patiently. Finally, well into the afternoon, one of the course co-ordinators came out to give her the news that someone had indeed not enrolled and she could have their place in the three year course. She seized this opportunity and ran with it, becoming a most talented and beautiful photographer. I remember looking at her when she was telling me this story and being in awe of her determination and perseverance and realising I really didn’t possess these qualities. Today through a practice of yoga and with the help of life and all it throws at you, I think I have been given the chance to develop my own perseverance and determination skills and with these I pay homage to my beautiful friend.

I recently restarted personal training because my employer is generous enough to offer this service to it’s employees (even contractors) and I love to support generosity! Other than that I actually immensely dislike the training itself. It involves running and, as a fellow employee pointed out, I run like a wounded hippo. I think his exact words were “Wow I thought with your yoga and all that you would be a really fast runner but man you are slow slow slow!” It’s true I’ve alway been at the back end of a pack in running and throughout my high school years would ensure that I never had to compete in running events. One year I specifically scheduled a foot operation to fall over the carnival period so I could do nothing but barrack from the stands waving one crutch in the air to egg on my fellow classmates. Yep avoidance behaviour started very early in me.

So last Monday, I find myself running up and down the city concert house steps. The chorus in my head is screaming “Give this lunacy up”! Then I am lunge jumping, push upping and burpeeing all over the place. All the time the training is screaming at me “Get those knees up, get that chest down to the ground, go deeper in the knees, come on sprint beat the person in front of you, beat them”. I did point out at this stage, so as to spare her vocals, that I’m a yogi, I’m not competitive and I definitely don’t care if someone runs, jumps, lunges deeper than me, but this was to no avail. I admired her persistence. And I admired mine as well. Even though I was the slowest and probably the least conditioned to it, I persevered. I was reminded of one of our neighbours from a few years back who was a captain in the military police who advised me that the only way she got through the tough physical component of her path was by putting one foot after the after and so on.

So I did this. I kept plodding along even though I was the shade of a beetroot and I was a tinsey winsey bit concerned I might be on the verge of a heart attack. I began to watch my thoughts, my resistance, my avoidance, I watched myself work up to a eminent dummy spit and then let it all pass over. I was reminded that your free to think anything but you don’t have to act on it. This is the beauty of the freedom of thought and it’s a far greater beauty than the freedom of speech. Life can push you in all sorts of directions and it will, and your mind will always chase after it, but the rest of you doesn’t have to follow, the rest of you can just keep putting one foot in front of the other, or as I like to say, taking one breath after the other.

So back at work as I sat at my desk in all my beetroot glory, I scheduled in Monday and Wednesday lunchtimes for the continuance of my training sessions. I’m looking forward to working with the trainer and the rest of my fellow employees towards more aerobic fitness and building stronger work relations. However, what I am most looking forward to is the continuing work with myself, my thoughts, my reactions and resistance to become aware how I have chosen to construct this side of myself. Wish me luck, I’m going to need it!