Fourth Form of Madness

Remember when you first fall in love with something or someone? It’s new, exciting and you are filled with sublime passion every time you think about the object of your desire. This is a wonderful stage of any relationship but this to, like all things in this world, must change. Not necessary into something less or more but definitely into something different. Love to is subject to the laws of this world and the psychological process of habituation. This process allows us to eventually operate at level where we are free to take in even more information and not be burden by that which we have already accumulated.

When I first started yoga I fell so in love with it I could hardly find anything else to talk about or do. I was giddy and giggly in love. That was probably a good thing as about six months in I went through a incredibly difficult and intensely isolating time in my life that lasted for about two years (funny I didn’t see this advertised on yoga websites :-)). A time that was so painful and challenging that if I had not had this intense passion for yoga, I would have lost my faith and most certainly would have dropped it like a hot stone. Which to be fair, was pretty much the pattern I followed in my life from an early age.

I always flitted from one thing to the next, dropping it if it got challenging or awkward. Then I met my husband, and I knew he was a keeper :-). Someone filled with so much goodness and beauty that always comes from an authentic place from within. When we first met I was a fearless, cocky, fresh from London nightclubs twenty three year old. I pretty much thought I knew it all. I wasn’t looking for anything serious. In fact I didn’t even think he was my type. He worked with my mother and seemed quiet and nice. I was used to drama and chaos. That thought lasted all but 20 seconds. I was gone hook, line and sinker the first few moments of our first date (he took me on the charity toy run) when I had to wrap my arms around him to stop from falling off the back of his motorbike. i just got the feeling that here was this incredibly soft and self contained person, who radiated so much strength and beauty. I was already trying out his surname against my first name by the time he dropped me home! We were living together two weeks later and the rest is history. I believe, I met my first great teacher that day, and boy, did he have some seriously unlearning to do on me!

Then came my second great love, philosophy. When I fell in love with philosophy I once again fell hard. It was all I read, talked about and dreamed about. If I had a conversation with my hubby, no matter what it was about, it could have been about the weather, I would steer it towards philosophy. I was officially a philosophy bore. I didn’t care, passion has a way of sheltering you from the world while you lose yourself in your topic. It’s a good way to learn. Up until this point, I had begun many university degrees but nothing held my interest or sparked an ounce of passion. I just went through the motion with this other subjects to get a tick in a box. With philosophy, I studied it because I first and for most loved it, which made it also a keeper. This passion has always made me stick with philosophy, even when it can be hard, challenging and take you places you would rather not go mentally and spiritually.

Which brings me back to my third great passion, yoga. For me I feel philosophy laid the ground work for beginning yoga, and that in a way I was practising yoga through philosophy/self contemplation, way before I stepped on the mat. I still remember my first yoga class. I had come straight from work and I had walked there, which was about a 30 minute walk. I was really stressed out and on that night I had recognised that my stress had gotten to a point that it owned me and was controlling my life. I remember looking up to the beautiful starry sky and thinking “please help me”. That was it. I wasn’t even sure who I was saying it to as I was going through my “intellectual atheist” stage. I never was good at atheism, I lacked conviction. The minute I stepped on that mat, my short and sweet prayer was answered and I have been eternally grateful ever since.

However, with all that has happened this year and with all that is going on in my life and within my self, I think I had allowed yoga to become just one more thing I have to do. Another tick in the box. That was until yesterday morning. That’s what I love about yoga, you are never sure when certain insights or certain things are going shift, but when they do, you will know instantaneously. You won’t even know you are working on them. It happens whilst I sitting quietly breathing. I’m sitting in such a beautiful quiet and still place that I literally brings tears to my eyes. I haven’t felt this beauty for quite some time and it would be impossible not to tear up with sheer gratitude. Then I am afforded a glimpse of that amazing passion that I first had when I first started and it blows me away. The innate realisations that come with it humbles me and soften me and I only now see the ways I had closed off and shut down important parts of myself throughout the year.

At the end of each yoga practice, I do a prayer at my forehead, mouth and heart. I started this early in my home practice. I have no idea where it came from or why I started it. For a long time I didn’t even know why I was doing it. Then one day the words seemed to come with the actions. They are for the forehead, “right thoughts”, for the mouth “right words” and for the heart “right actions”. When these are aligned your life is sweet. And then I bow and kiss my mat in gratitude. Yesterday, with my heart fit to burst with gratitude, I did these actions with meaning and kissed my mat with so much love, I felt I had retained some of the glimpse of passion I was afforded and had enough for the whole room.