Fourth Form of Madness

Travelling is all about expanding yourself.  It often reminds us constantly to let go and accept what comes your way as you embrace and celebrate different ways of doing things and different ways of seeing the world.  One of the most valuable qualities I believe travel promotes in us is a realisation that we rely on a good many people to exist and operate in this world and that at some point we need to trust in others to make the world work.  Of course, if you have watched any of the Wolf Creek movies this may be a lot harder for you.

Right from the start you are deeply emerged in a world of trust.  From the moment you park your car at the airport or take a cab (see I’m getting very American these days)  – you are relying on others. You are relying on the airport carpark attendants to look after your car or on the cab driver to get you to departure on time and in one piece.  You board the plane, you are reply on the pilot and the cabin crew to take care of you and to get you to your destination in one piece and for your fellow travellers to leave at least a cm of overhead luggage space for you to store the 30 kgs of items that you couldn’t  fit into your suitcase that you have managed to smuggle past the ground crew.  Then you rely on your fellow travel buddies to not steal your inflight pillow or blanket, not to snore, not to talk incessantly about the latest series of The Bachelor and to flush the plane toilet properly so at 3am somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean you are not greeted with a sight and smell that will have you in counselling for the next 12 months.

When you land you are then greeted with a barrage of would be supposedly easy normal everyday actives that have somehow gotten a whole lot more difficult in the last 24 hrs.  Take ordering breakfast in the USA, a fairly ordinary task.  Suddenly I am lost in a world of a waitress reciting my 20 choices of how to have my eggs – none of which I understand. I feel like I am at Subway where every usual mundane item you order now comes with 20 life changing decisions for you to make.  I have to rely on her recommendation for just about everything I eat.  As a side note, I would like to thank all the waitresses and waiters I must have already annoyed in the States.  You are amazing and deserve big tips for all your hard work and hospitality.  How you can keep smiling and laughing when I ask for the 5th time to go through my list of choices is beyond me.

Then there is the mammoth leap of faith in your fellow human beings that is required when you arrive at one of the USA intersections that has a four way stop sign.  Yes you heard me a four way stop sign – let me break that down for my Aussie peeps.  Each side of the intersection has a stop sign.  This means that you need to be aware of who got to their stop sign first as they have the right of way to go (umm if I have this wrong you can just imagine the mayhem hubby and I have been causing on the roads over here so far).  From what I have observed up to this point, this creates a somewhat total state of confusion in all drivers involved and pretty much everyone just stops and is unsure of who is going to go first.  If driving on the wrong side of the road wasn’t challenging enough and remembering to get into the correct side of the car – there is now the four way stop sign just to keep things fresh.

Then there is the everyday interaction with the locals that builds on your ability to trust each other and with the Americans you are in really good hands.  I have been to the States three times now.  To Washington and Virginia when I was 21, to Houston only a few years back and now this time where we have already driven (perhaps causing a wave of mayhem in our trail) through California, Nevada and Arizona.  In all these States I have found the same thing.  Americans are really friendly and helpful people who seem to have strong moral code.  I really love them.  I sneezed in the Bagel Cafe we went to breakfast this morning and was greeted with a “God bless you” before I had even managed to reach for a tissue.  Whilst waiting in a line that appeared to have no end at a popular buffet in Las Vegas, my husband and I were given the buffet highlights and tips from a lovely couple in front of us that had been to this buffet before.  They even wished us a happy buffet experience.  Later when I was struck mute and motionless in the midst of a thousand people and even more calories, the husband of the couple saw me and led me towards the famous crab claws and even showed me the much coveted and closely guarded secret of how to get them steamed.

The trust that travel builds in us is invaluable in a world that often presented to us as cold, hard and uncaring.   This can build fear and mistrust of our fellow human beings and really help to manifest a feeling of isolation and aloneness.  Fear and feelings of isolation and aloneness sell a lot of products and insurance policies.  We need to constantly question this belief.    In all my years of travelling all over the world I have many, many, many times had to rely on the kindness of strangers and they have not let me down.  The world is filled with kind, caring and generous people that will help you and you them.  That is how the world works best.  All in harmony and balance, each contributing your natural talents.  It’s time to review the competitive model that has silently crept into our lives and started to dominant often without our consent. It is becoming an outdated and an anti-social concept that is limiting our very existence.  Through yoga I have been lucky enough to have been told a lot of people’s life stories.  Each time I am struck by the key thing that gets most people through some really tough times.  It’s more often than not the support given by other people.  I am very encouraged by this and always deeply moved.

Nothing is more beautiful than the kindness we can show to each other, particularly to people we do not know.  This is why travel is so important, it gives us a chance to trust deeply and openly even when we might be feeling a tad exposed or vulnerable and it gives us a chance to receive and give kindness often on a daily basis.  These are great attributes to practice.  There is a real truth in one of my favourite quotes I read a long time ago and I will leave you with this now….”We are all one winged angels that must embrace each other to fly”.

When I was eight I broke the tip of my right elbow.   I was devising and participating in a monkey bar challenge where you were only allowed to swing from every 2nd bar as you made your way across.  As it turns out it was a bit to challenging for me, and I found myself on the ground with my right arm over a metal railing.  My arm began to throb and swell and as the bell signifying the end of recess rang it was all I could do to pick myself up and cradle my now swollen arm into my body as I made my way to class.

On this particular day it was religious studies after recess.  I was new to the school and when I was younger and in primary school I was a relatively shy kid.  I was actually quite terrified of how mean people could be to each so I was always quiet so to not evoke attention.  So there I sat in my seat in religious studies with my swollen arm and teary face, sniffing quietly to myself trying not to attract attention.  Even so I don’t think I was exactly in “stelth” mode and reflecting back as an adult now, I think it would have been clear I was in some sort of distress.

The religious studies man wasn’t  a regular teacher at the school, in fact, to be honest I was new and young and had only been at the school for a few weeks so looking back now I am not sure where he blew in from.  But he loved his religious text, man he loved that text.  He loved the text so much he completely ignored me and my suffering and obvious physical distress to talk to the class about stories of caring for your fellow human being and neighbourly love.  Even at eight and in immense pain the irony of what he was teaching and the absolutely incongruent nature of his actions did not escape me 🙂  Nor did it escape my regular teacher who upon entering the classroom just at the end of the session laid eyes on me and my enormous arm and proceeded to scream at the religious studies man whilst ushering me out of the room to the school nurse.

The gap between our words and our practice can be huge and we can be blind to it.  Where there exists theory without practice or even practice without theory usually you will find dogma.  A repetitive empty loop that long ago was emptied of it meaning leaving just the form to fend for itself.  The forms best defence is usually rigidity.  Rejection of change and of anything different, anything that threatens it’s self created concrete view of the world.  Dogma can not abide fluidity.  Fluidity is dogma’s kryptonite.  The ability not to have to give an answer to everything, to believe in the magic of this world, this life and not to have to be explained how the mystery works but just to trust in its magic.  To be able to accept and work with what ever life brings and to realise there might be one question but there are many answers creates an environment that dogma simply can not survive in.

An excellent source of fluidity comes from the balance of practice and theory.  Where each is used to shape and constantly develop the other. Each is used to keep the other accountable and to keep the other in check as the growth of each is facilitated and nurtured by the partnership.  The process is continuous and innately limitless as long as the two are balanced.

So how on an everyday level can we practice fluidity?  One of my favourite practices I learnt through philosophy and my husband constantly reminding me of this bad habit of mine 🙂 It is a simple practice.  Every time you hear yourself say “I know………”, challenge yourself to prove to yourself if you are justified in using the word “know”.  “Know” is a big word.  It means you know without any doubt, any doubt what so ever, that you are right.  That you are in truth.  When we start to examine when we use the word “know” often what we find is that we are using the word “know” in place of “think” or “believe” or even “current research”- these are different words.  So maybe set yourself a challenge for the next week to catch yourself every time you hear yourself say “I know……” and ask yourself “Do I really?” or even “Can I ever really know in the true sense of the word?”.  Don’t drive yourself crazy but have fun with it and let it melt the rigidity of the concreteness that often accompanies the world “know” from your very heart and soul.

For about a two year now I have been sitting next to the same elderly gentlemen most mornings in on the train.  I first sat down next to him as he caught my eye as I boarded the train.  He sat, eyes downcast, shoulders hunched and hands together and wedged between his knees.  The fragility and brokenness of his body posture and spirit moved me.  As I watched everyone else walk past him and find alternative seating, I sank into the seat beside him and thus began our train relationship.

After about two months of choosing my seat beside him on the mornings where our train trip aligned, I started to give a “good morning” smile when I sat down beside him and occasionally our eyes would meet.  I noted early on that he likes to keep everything the same in his life as much as possible.  He sits in the same seat every day and wears the same outfit, black pants and an old slightly worn motorcycle sweater.

Perhaps six months pass and we are up to a verbal “Good morning” and eye contact with a warm smile as I resume my seat beside him on the morning train.  He always gets off a stop before me and this is at this point still done in complete silence.  I move first, so he can leave and he shuffles past me with downcast eyes and spirit.

At around the year mark, we have built our relationship into a warm “good morning” and a cheery “have a nice day” on departure.  But things really reached a pinnacle about a month ago when the elderly gentlemen initiated conversation himself.  It was cold May morning, and just happened to be my birthday.  I boarded the train, we greeted each other warmly as usual and as I started to pull out my book to start reading he said “Cold morning isn’t it? You have to rug up to keep warm now”.  I agreed and we shared a warm smile and another joke about the weather.  He went back to staring out the window as he loves to do and I sat pretending to read my book.  But I couldn’t read as I was too touched at the connection that had just occurred.  It might not had seemed much to anyone else but the elderly, shy and withdrawn gentlemen had chosen to connect on his own terms.  And that was a very brave and courageous act for someone that appeared so fearful of life and other people.  His courage moved me deeply.

As I rode in that morning glowing from the warmth of our connected little community of two we had created on the train, I looked around at the rest of the train commuters.  Everywhere people were together and yet alone  and I felt a heavy sadness.  Why does disconnection from others feel like the “norm” and connecting with others, with people we don’t know, has become the almost “abnormal, frowned upon by society” behaviour?  Why does connecting with unknown or people that are different from our walk of life now make us feel uncomfortable and fearful?  What would the world be like if we could reverse this fear and we started trusting and believing in the innate goodness of others again and we started choosing to connect to each other.  What would the world look like if we could all share the courage of this elderly gentlemen on the train and chose to connect despite our fears.

I believe that Carl Jung was onto something when he spoke of synchronicity.  The state where all things seem to repeat a theme or concept or idea all connected by a common meaning. The world seems to be singing out a message for you to sense and/or at least acknowledge.  I am sure we have all had many occurrences of synchronicity in our lives.  They remind us that there is much mystery to life that we need not understand to experience it. Oh the beautiful mystery.

It’s easy to forget the beautiful mystery that surrounds us or worse still feel like we need to explain it.  I have often felt myself get unusually agitated with myself and other people when I hear them having to give explanations for things that are unexplainable.  Recently when I was out to dinner with a friend, she started to explain enlightenment to me from a book she had read.  Unfortunately for her I had already had two daiquiris and was on fire for a debate.  I really should lock myself away in a cupboard when I am like that.  Instead, we were so engrossed in our somewhat heated discussion on my part that we missed the next two tapas dishes and our partners ate our share for us. Which I thought was ample proof that life is better to live than discuss, in the discussion you miss the good stuff.

The next day I mentioned the heated discussion with a Zen Priest I was meeting with for an introduction to Zen course.  I was troubled that I was so annoyed by my friend’s statement that she knew what enlightenment was now from reading a book.  Something he said turned out to be very enlightening to me 🙂 hee hee “People love to read things in a book and say “oh I get that and understand that now” it lets the ego feel great.  The ego says I understand it, I am smart, I am wonderful, I am better than so and so.  But everything remains the same. The sun still rises and sets, life goes on unaffected by the “new knowledge” gained”. It’s funny certain things that people say can just be said at the right time in your life.   For me, his words just turned my way at how I look at and live life and approached learning completely around.

Why did I start this piece with mentioning synchronicity because my whole path to Zen has been my most recent example of synchronicity in my life.  I have always got goose pimples up and down my arms when I would see Zen mentioned and I have no idea why.  At the beginning of the year, Zen just seemed to be everywhere, people around me were mentioning it in conversation, books I was reading would take wide diversions on the topic I was reading about to mention Zen, the whole world just seemed to be about Zen.  This prompted to me to remember that about 7 or 8 years ago when I was first starting my yoga journey I had also visited a Zen temple.  It was actually my husband’s suggestions, there was some sort of relationship between the martial art that he was doing and the Zen temple.  I went along and fell in love with the whole experience, my husband not so much but then he got hit with the Zen stick for not having a straight enough spine when sitting which I must admit still makes me smile 🙂  However, it’s best to court only one love at a time when first learning (until you realise they are pretty much the same love) and I was so head over heels with yoga that I didn’t want to do anything else that distracted my learning and experience of that love 🙂

Eight years on I looked up the same Zen priest and began another avenue of learning and experiencing of love.  Even though the world was singing to me to explore this path, it wasn’t until the last session of the introduction course that I was certain this was definitely a path worth exploring for me.  On this last day, I sat with my teacher in the temple and we chatted like normal about stuff.   Then he told me a story about the last Zen meditation “technique” he was going to teach me.  He spoke openly about spiritual crisis experienced by people when on certain paths and how one infamous fierce Zen teacher had devised this meditation technique he was going to teach me  in an effort to stop losing students.  By losing he meant dying.  Quite a number of people it turns out on spiritual paths experience quite literally spiritual melt downs and it kills them. You don’t see that in any modern day yoga brochures do you 🙂 I know this sounds funny but it was quite refreshing to speak about stuff of this nature so opening and matter-a-factly.  On the last count the fierce Zen teacher had lost ~ 160 students from this and their graves are still on the island that he used to teach on.

So with every cell in my body intrigued I sat on the edge of my meditation cushion waiting for him to teach me this method.  He began to speak and as he did the last biggest piece of synchronicity fell into my lap.  The method involves a much softer meditation than the usual styles of Zen.  It involves sitting and imaging a warm liquid start to spread from the crown of your head right down the entire outside of your body to your toes. Slow and warm the liquid oozes down the outside of your being, time and time again.  It really is a magical meditation.  The thing is quite a few years back, in the mist of time of great suffering in my life, I had been having a night of great doubt and fear.  I was not in a great place spiritually to say the least.  And then it spontaneously happened, as I lay there in the dark gripped by the greatest fears and sorrows that life has to offer, a warm liquid started to slowly ooze down from the top of my head to the tip of my toes and a feeling of complete serenity engulfed me.  Well complete serenity engulfed me only after I was able to let go of the fear that I was not having a stroke and trust in whatever was happening.  I never forgot that experience, it wasn’t rational, it wasn’t easily understandable, but it was real.  I asked a few people I knew that wouldn’t have me committed about the experience but none of them was able to explain it to me or offer any advice on what it was.  And here I sat many years later in front of the Zen priest, the Zen priest that was telling me  that it was just a meditation technique and in true Zen style – it was nothing more and nothing less 🙂  That was a great moment, I was totally blown over by the coincidences that occur in our lives and totally emerged in a beautiful unknowable mystery.

So as we live our days all connected and together in this mystery, it’s really healthy and harmonious to remember from time to time – that no body knows.  Not the true sense of knowing.  It’s a health check to come back to yourself and checkin with yourself and your experience of life and your ability to sit in the mystery of the gorgeous abyss we all find ourselves in.  And let the synchronicity of life lead the way and be your greatest guide.

Why is it that generally the less people have the more they give and the more people have the less they give?  This has always puzzled me about people.

I first started noticing and thinking about this question whilst I was backpacking through Asia with my husband when we were in our early thirties.  I still think of this time fondly when we just packed up our home and headed off with a vague plan and our belongings on our backs.  It was a time of freedom and adventure but most of all about learning.  I learnt a great deal about my self on that journey as their is nothing like travel for unhinging stubborn misconceptions you have created about yourself.

Anyway on these journeys we took a great many bus and train rides.  One of my favourite bus rides was on an old school bus in Lao (no “s” – the French added that not the people of Lao).  It was an old retired school bus, the seats were tattered and torn and some barely holding on.  It was a sweltering day and the only form of air conditioning were windows that would not stay closed.  The bus was packed to its capacity with locals and their chickens and pigs when we stepped on, I was just wondering where we were going to sit when out came the ‘little red chairs’.  Little plastic mini chairs that perhaps a skinny 5 year old could fit their butt on.  Down the aisle these little plastic chairs were placed and we all squeezed past each other to take our place.

I was mentally agitated by this as it was quite early in our journey and I had not yet become acclimatised to the different ways of different countries.  I was just completing my silent “health and safety” check in my head when the bus started up and began it’s eight hour (plus) journey down a bumpy dirt road.  Apparently the old school bus had no suspension as well based on the bumps and dips that were launching my little red chair precariously into the air.

I was in the midst of one of those culture shock travel moments, really stuck and struggling when suddenly a hand was thrust in front of me.  In it was some chicken, cooked and brought along for the journey by the kindly looking local to my left who had been early enough to secure a grown up seat.  We didn’t speak each others language but we didn’t need to.  For the next 30 mins or so, I got offered all the goodies they had packed along for their journey.  They offered all their foods with such simple and stunning generosity to me, a spoilt, grumpy westerner, grizzling about how her butt didn’t fit her seat.  It was a humbling moment and an often repeated one in our travels.  These people with just so little were just so willing to share what they had with us.  Drawing on my experience of bus and train travel in my home town this was a surreal experience.  Where I am from more often than not people do not even offer seats to pregnant women.  Generosity of spirit is a beautiful choice.

And then there was the time in Cuba, a country that suffers greatly from embargos placed on it by other countries.  I was an idealist sociology student heading off to experience a different way of social structure, a way I was intellectually certain (never a good assurance) was better than what I was used to.  My husband and I were backpacking through the country from the bottom to the top doing home stays here and there.  In this particular home stay, even the taxi driver didn’t want to let us out in the area it was so rough and run down.  Clinging to the old adage that “appearances are often deceiving” we ventured forth.  On the first day there, dazed and confused by the relentless intensity of the sun, I drunk the water offered to me at a local ice cream parlour.  Going for ice cream is a big pass time in Cuba and on this day it seemed that more than half that town had come to the parlour at the same time we did to escape the heat.  Instead of escaping the heat we waited out in it for at least 2 hours before we got inside.  The glass of water offered to me was my oasis in the dessert and I happily accepted the illusion.

There was no illusion of the effects of the water.  Within the hour my stomach sounded like it was tuning up for an orchestral performance and the instruments were way out of tune.  The next few days were not pretty.  I had taken all the supplies we had with us in our travel medicine kit and still there were no signs of cease fire.  The people we were staying with had very little.  Of all the things that were in shortage in the country at that stage pharmaceuticals were one of the hardest hit by the embargos (this opens up a whole ethical debate but for now I will not go there).

Just as I was trying to recall where we had packed our travel insurance medical emergency number the family we were staying with offered me their kick arse secret stash of anti-biotics they got from an uncle in the States.  I could not get over the generosity and kindness of these people.  All that had been denied and refused to them as a country, as a people, and still they gave to others in their time of need.  Such magnitude of spirit.  I was working for stockbrokers at this time in my life, they were some of the monetary richest people I have ever worked with.  Unfortunately for them, most of their spirits were suffering a perpetual drought.  Just one good drink of water and they might have been revived but as the old adage goes “… you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink”.

Generosity is a choice.  It is a choice of either selecting to connect or disconnect from a another being.  I truly do not believe that generosity of spirit is based on what you have and what you can spare for if that was honestly the case most people  would be giving a lot more.  And yet they actively select not to.   In fact, most get angry or agitated when you even talk of giving, like you have impinged on their “rights” and “freedom” and to make decisions of their own “free will”.  Does anyone know what those abstract words really mean?  If we give nothing else, we really owe it to ourselves and all other beings to at least give the gift of self study and really examine and ask ourselves what honestly stops us from giving?  Now there is a journey worth taking……….

So I am at work the other day, having a social chit chat conversation around the water cooler.  One of my co-workers has hurt his knee and will be unable to exercise for over 10 months.  I feel his pain, I once had an injury that took me away from doing something I loved very much and I was amazed how much it challenged my identity.  In the end it turned out to be a god send but it didn’t feel like that at the time.  So there we are, he is lamenting over the effect this is going to have over his fitness and my gaze temporarily clouds over.  Fitness.  What a scientific term.  It was in the name of fitness – that very visible, measurable, scientific term that he ended up in this state.  Overtrained, over competitive and over focussed on the ideal body (ideal – hee hee I can’t help laughing every time I hear this word – do we every ask who’s ideal?).  I no longer hear his individual words, I just feel the concept of unbalanced.

Fitness….such a masculine term.  I’m thinking to myself, as in this social forum I would never feel free to express my thoughts, whatever happened to wellness over fitness?  Fitness is, by it’s very nature , physically focussed in our commodified world.  Fitness is easy to sell to people who don’t have the time to work on wellness but can squeeze 30 mins in daily for a run or a cycle to and from work.  Wellness is more metaphysical.  The physical is so easy to sell.  Wellness, she’s a harder sell and you may never look like popular culture would like you to, but that won’t be your focus.

Each time I have been at my fittest in life, it has, and I am not sure if this is even a coincidence, been at the same time the rest of my life was at it’s shittest.  Over worked, not enough time for key relationships either with myself or others, and living in full throttle habitual living.  Phenomenal stress keeping me separate from myself, keeping me separate from others and more importantly from my innate spirituality.  No-one will convince me that this wasn’t hell.  But as one of my favourite sayings goes “If you are going through hell, keep going”.

See wellness requires you to be a pioneer.  You need to leave the pack behind and dare to venture out on your own even when you may appear slightly crazy, argumentative and damn right odd to others.  Wellness requires you to make decisions that others will not understand.  Wellness isn’t about having the best physical appearance or best recovery rate.  It reaches far beyond that scope.  Wellness is your totality, it is in every thought you have, every decision that you make, in every word you speak and every action you take.  Wellness is not for the lighthearted or easily led.  There is no formal training or education for wellness. Wellness is accessible to all and that’s why I like it so much.  All wellness requires is for you to listen, not so much to the external prompters but to your internal.  Listen again to your breath, to your innate rhythms and to your aches and pains and joys and your thoughts for those will lead you home.

It was to my surprise the other day that my mind started to repeat a mantra that came out of no-where but hasn’t returned there yet. I couldn’t get the word “wellthy” out of  mind.  At first I thought I was just thinking of wealthy but then realised it was loudly and proudly wellthy!  I realised amongst the vibrational repetition of the word that my whole definition of wealthy had changed, without me even consciously realising it to, wellthy. Well-me!  I’ve always been a great one for list making.  So I sat down and wrote what I believed to be the top 5 requirements of being wellthy.  These are in a very significant order of priority:

1.  Sleep

2. Relationships with yourself and others

3. Passion

4. Code of ethics and knowing why you think what you think

5. Well rounded eating and exercise that listens and follows the rhythm of your body (this will be very different for everyone)

I have much to say about each but that is for other blogs.

When I was in Bali last May I did my first Bikram yoga class.  I have practised many beautiful hot yoga classes but these are slow vinyasa styled and though are about still practising to your edge,  all are about nurturing and becoming more attuned to how different mediums change that edge.  Just as you don’t go out and run around till you drop from heat exhaustion on a 40 degree day with little water, nor should you employ this mentality in a yoga practise.  Bikram for me was one of the most informative and yet terrifying and offensive experiences of my yoga journey.

Let me pre-face this piece by saying I am not a big believer in the new age yoga mantra that has infected her.  This attitude of not commenting on what you believe to be wrong under the guise of “non-judgment”. The problem with this ideology is that you have to be extra-ordinary at ensuring you just don’t slip into apathy.  You don’t think Gandhi didn’t exercised moral judgment when he took action against the British government’s decision to tax the Indian salt.  Or that Mother Teresa hadn’t judged for herself that it was wrong to let people starve to death in the streets alone.  Some of the most appalling atrocities in this world have happened and are still happening due to this apathetic attitude.  Sound judgement is  one of the best health responses you have in an unsound world.  But like all good characteristics, is something that has to be practised, daily.  You need to understand what you believe in and how you got there before you can even have the choice of just “letting it go” and if it should just be “let go of”.  Sometimes we have to act as part of our experience of life.

My experience of Bikram began with being surrounded by women in the change rooms in bikinis.  “How nice” I thought, “There must be a pool at the studio that I can swim in afterwards to restore balance”.  What a beautiful restorative idea.  I floated up the stairs to the studio on that idea.  Then I opened the big, chunky wooden doors that led into what appeared to be the studio but was the temperate of a desert, and saw wall to wall bikini clad peeps already sweating.  Oh and checking themselves out in the wall to wall mirrors.  I think of running screaming from the building but realised that would not be very open or courageous of me.  Life is in the experience after all.

So we begin with an aggressive pranayama practise that I am guessing would harm the necks of at least 50% of the people in the room.  Actually I’m not guessing, I have studied a lot of anatomy and physiology and most seated office workers who type away at a computer all day, would find that first opening breathing practise rather taxing on their necks and shoulders.  Muscles are wonderful living organs with a memory.  They remember getting held in fixed positions at desks for really long periods.  All of a sudden you ask them to stretch and relax in manners they are not accustomed to.  They are confused.   As was I at this stage.  You have to have many wonderful deep conversations with your muscles before they should be moved like that.

I try to not partake in this practise in the least obvious way which is hard when you are surrounded by mirrors.  Next thing I know the instructor is standing next to me speaking in a loud and harsh voice telling me lift my chin to the sky and generally employ a range of motion that I know from many years of practise is not within my range.   I say “no, I will find an alternative thanks”.  I feel like she labels me a trouble-maker and someone who’s ego is to be broken.  I don’t get this attitude which I have seen play out in other studios around the world.  No-body needs to be breaking anyone’s ego. Life will do that quite nicely by itself, and is a far more skilled practitioner at it.  Life has at it’s centre indifference, people don’t.  They are always usually clouded over by some belief or dogma which does not put them in the right place to be dealing with such meta-physical structures, such as ego.

The class continues.  The class moves at such a cracking pace I feel dizzy and feel like all the aspects of me that make me aggressive are being directly spoken to.  I adapt my practice to calm my body and my aspects of being so I am not heading in that direction.  The instructor is back at my side again urging me to push harder and to stare at myself in the mirror in front of me.  I had done most of the class with my eyes closed at this point.  I did it for survival and to listen.  I needed to turn her down, so I could listen to what was going on in all facets of my being and adapt my practise to that inner listening.  I think this might of annoyed her a bit as I didn’t get a moment’s peace from that point on.  If I dared to blink longer than she thought necessary I had her at my side yelling at me to stare at myself.  Any adaptation I tried to do that suited my anatomy better she advised me I was doing wrong.  We are all built differently.  An asana does not suit everyone’s anatomy.  I have two forearm bones that are exactly the same length.  This is rare.  But it means my elbow joints do not quite articulate like other people.  I have adapted to this in my practise.  I suggest here that others might need to adapt to other people’s adaptions when approaching their shape.  An asana is not about perfection, isn’t that why we call it yoga practise 🙂

At the end of the class, I return to my bungalow which thankfully was right next door and did have a really big pool.  My fellow travelling companions tried to talk to me by exclaiming “What the hell happened to you?”.  It was true I was quite the sight with my beetroot face and by this time, angst expression, I  kindly shut down any communication with “Don’t talk to me until I’ve sat in water for a bit”.  I needed to allow the fluidity of water and all her healing properties to restore and release me from the mental and physical rigidity of that class.

Later whilst I sat in a body of water, floating with the whims and the tides of the gentle pool ripples caused by other swimmers, I reflected on the class.  I am happy to say I do not like Bikram yoga and believe it is just a  form that has been emptied of all it’s meaning.   There are many examples of this commodification of life.  I had just hoped that yoga wasn’t going to be one of them.

I blame it on the moon but all I have wanted to do this weekend is chill out and stay in my pjs and read and watch films 🙂  Okay so that pretty much is me most weekends but this weekend I felt it more than others.  Admittedly I did manage to get out of bed to go to yoga both on Saturday and Sunday then it was pretty much home to my pjs, books, with electric blanket on 3 and my constant bed companions, my dog and cat, at my feet.  Total bliss, though my resemblance to Proust is getting troubling!

I am now in the closing stages of my degree and am doing a unit I have wanted to do right from the start – Film and philosophy.  Prior to philosophy and yoga, I loved film.  I have always loved how a film can transport you into another world for an hour or so and suspend you in an alternative reality where you can ‘experience’ the experiences of others, walk in someone else’s shoes so to speak.  This can promote self-reflection and a chance to question what you believe about the world.  This self-reflection is so attractive about both philosophy and yoga, no matter if it is a joyful or painful discovery (though if I am to be really truthful – bring on the joy, those painful discoveries really do suck however much they maybe required).

Over the years I have been on the receiving end on numerous occasions of  people’s opinions that philosophy is a waste of time and an activity for only those that have the time and money to sit back in a big armchair and think up arguments to stifle or stump anybody else.  I have never thought as philosophy as this (though it is true I have thought that other philosophers may think as philosophy as this usually when I am stuck in argument about determinism and quoting the Matrix just isn’t cutting it with them).  To me everyone is a philosopher and we are all prompted to be one when something in our life causes us to reflect on an aspect of ourselves and our existence.  In other words, philosophy is in the doing not the theory, not the words.  You can read about philosophy as much as you like but if you never pause to reflect on your reasons for doing something, to still the waters of the social construction of yourself and take a really good look, then you maybe a lover of theory but not a lover of wisdom.  And wisdom is the ultimate love and love the ultimate wisdom.

I believe, it is through this self-reflection, whether of your own experiences or the experiences of others, that cultivates empathy and compassion to flow to all other beings.  In a world where individualism is increasingly promoted and the often misquote war cry of “it’s survival of the fittest” seems to be an increasing popular mantra, anything that promotes unity and it’s extension, community, is a gift to be cherished and more importantly practiced.  And by community,  I do not mean localised community, but the globalised kind.   To reflect is to understand our connection to all and everyone that makes us what we are and gives us the jewels to become what we can be.  To reflect is to participate in living, actively not passively.

Whilst I was doing the mopping this morning I started to realise why I never do housework 🙂  It’s hard work!  But lately I have been feeling more connected to my house and garden and having some sort of order.  Now it is true if you look under my bathroom sink or hallway closure you still might just nominate me as a candidate for the Hoarders tv show but I am getting there.  Back to mopping.  So there I was sweating it out with the mop trying to restore a feeling, an energy about the floors that was more pleasant to live with.  Then I noticed my breath had become jagged and laboured and irregular.  Interesting.  If I was practising yoga right now I would rest until my breath returned to it’s slow, regular rhythm  🙂

It was this rhythm of the breath that made me fall head over heels, intoxicating in love with yoga in the first place.  The kind of love that shows you joy and sorrow share an entwined structure  like a DNA strand.  When I first started yoga I was living on the extreme  edges of stress and misery.  I  fondly call it hell.  I don’t even really know what made me sign up for the ashtanga beginners course maybe it was the result of a haunting dream I had a few weeks earlier that left me feeling like I was missing something vital.  Half way through the first class, I knew this was something special 🙂  Hook, line and sinker I was gone.

Many more practises on, I was in the flow of practice when I began to really connect with the expansion and retraction of my body as I breathed.  Not just my belly, not just my ribs, but my totality, expanding and retracting.  I let this rhythm lead my practice for the rest of that day.  Off the mat, I contemplated this natural  rhythm of the body that we all have. This beautiful expansion and retraction and how similar it is to the expansion and retraction of every atom making up every substance on this planet and perhaps universe.  I remember feeling so connected to something so much larger and comprehensive than myself and yet also so vital to it, as we all are.  It made me feel like I belonged, a feeling I never really felt in life prior to this.  A rhythm that is there for everyone at anytime.

There are many rhythms we can become a slave to in this lifetime.  I was quite fond of rhythm of stress and anxiety there for a while.  Some rhythms are life sustaining, some life withdrawing, some a little of both.  But if you are going to be a slave to a rhythm in your life, let it be to the rhythm of life, the rhythm of the breath.

My mother is an amazing gardener.  She could make anything grow and thrive even in the most challenging soils.  This gift seems to have skipped a generation as I am of the gardened challenged variety. Many a pot plant has met an early grave in my household including a few cactus which is quite the achievement.  But recently I have started to re-engage with the garden and nature.  I think I kind of shut down there for a while and lived in a kind of denial but what is the point of living a life you weren’t meant to live? So I asked for my mothers help and she was only to ready and willing to assist.

On a recent weekend when she was staying with me I came home to find my veggie garden, previously overgrown and wild, all fenced in with freshly laid wire and weeded so I could once again see the vegetable plants and soil.  It was beautiful.  Tomato plants which had survived the dark ages of my gardening skills were staked and standing tall.

The next time my mother stayed with me, I came home to find all my empty pot plants filled with succulents of all shades and shapes.  I loved them on sight and felt connected to them right away.  Encouraged by the fact I only needed to remember to water them once a week, I commenced my journey into gardening.  Each week I have seen them thrive and grow in all dimensions.  Something from nothing.  It still amazes me every time.  I think perhaps the best cure for lack of amazement in life is to watch the progress of a tiny seed into a plant.

And then came my favourite gardening discovery.  Suddenly I have a plum tree!  I had another tree in my back yard that has beautiful purple leaves and occasionally pink blossom but no fruit.  About 3 years ago another little tree shot up from the ground and I never wanted to pull it out as I appreciated it’s plight.  I thought it’s leaves would turn purple too and I would have another beautiful little purple tree.  But the other day as I was having my morning coffee and a walk around my garden with my dog, I noticed three plump red fruits on the little green tree.  A taste test established these as plums.  Plums out of no where, how incredibly amazing.  Okay so not totally out of no-where – it must have been part of the root stock of the little purple tree but to me, it’s still a very gratefully received gift from the garden.

This beautiful plum tree graciously bearing it’s fruit, for no other reason than it is a plum tree, still brings a smile to my face and an example of how to live my life.  Thank you little spontaneous and miraculous plum tree.