Fourth Form of Madness

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.