Looking over my scrapbook

I’m very excited that I’ll be launching my new website very soon. This one’s been good for me; it’s just time for a little pre-Christmas tidy up, complete with new shoes and hair.

What’s been so fun is going back through all of my content over the last couple of years. I get to immediately associate where I was at that time and what was going on in my life, a bit like looking back through a scrapbook.

It’s true that when we’re on this journey that we often don’t take time to look back and admire the view. That’s because we’re always thinking that we have to move forward, to get further, higher, deeper, whatever. I am very guilty of this particular desire. It’s almost as if we have to “schedule in down time” as my friend likes to call it.

That in the end is a bit like skipping Savasana. It feels like it shouldn’t really matter, however, it’s the thing which matters most, the pose which is most challenging and most transformative. Plus, it is so honest to goodness de-lic-ious.

Root to rise and rise again

In the traditional which I’ve immersed myself in we rise up the chakras. We root to rise. I make that note because not all traditions would have it that way. There’s nothing wrong or right in this, it’s just perspective.

So we start at the Muladhara chakra, the root. If you’ve ever studied Maslow’s hierarchy of needs it’s a striking similarity. We need certain things for our safety and security before move up through the Chakras. It’s like building a house if our foundation is shaky, it’s not going to be very stable or hold us well.

We tend to bypass this need in our society because we tend to thing upwards is best, we look up to people and rise up the hierarchy. What I find, however, is that everyone can benefit from going right back to the root, to what makes us human and to remember that many of us don’t have that stability in our life. You only have to look across to the Middle East to see that.

That is to say that we don’t need to get stuck in this Chakra, there is great beauty in the balance between rooting to rise. When we have a solid foundation we don’t need to be stuck there, we can start to look upwards and enjoy all that life has to offer.

Spinning the wheels...

Over the next few weeks I'm going to be taking a journey through the chakras. It's a journey I've taken before, yet with each review more is revealed in this very ancient wisdom. Chakras are said to be vortexes of energy, each having their own special feeling. Like those moments when you've been sitting in a room and someone says the most inappropriate thing. The energy suddenly changes. That's how you know you're tuned into your perception, we can all feel that awkwardness.

Once we begin to understand the chakras and how they work individually and in relation to the other chakras we can start to interpret why we seem to get stuck in certain situations. So if we can't hold down a job or are always short of cash, that's our body telling us that something is out of sync. Because chakras can be either too open or too closed, we're looking to fin balance. We can also note that they are not linear in nature, our crown chakra may be well balanced at the same time as our heart chakra is sputtering like a Catherine wheel which hasn't got going.

My understanding of the chakras first began after I was involved in an experience in which I felt as if I had literally been uprooted. That's honestly how I felt, like all of a sudden everything which I felt was solid, wasn't and I had to find a new way. In that moment I had a choice. The choice to go and plonk myself where I had always been or to go and find some soil which would nuture and support me in a way which would give me the zip and life I want.

The name's hero, super hero

I saw this cute picture last week of two window cleaners, halfway up the side of a children's hospital, cleaning the windows. It was so sweet to imagine the gaping children inside. You know that it's all some of them will talk about for the rest of the day and it will be a magical memory they'll hold forever in their hearts.

What's so beautiful is that those guys were only doing their job. Yet, that day, or maybe they do it all the time, I don't know, they took the ordinary and turned it into the extraordinary. They created magic just for those kids, just because they can.

We hold these limited views of ourselves, that we are not enough. The more yoga we do, the more we set aside those ideas and just allow our light to shine with ever more power. Because it's true, we are all heroes and not, David Bowie, just for one day. We all have it within us to change someone's day with the way we interact in the world.

Sewing the seeds

As we enter what I affectionately refer to as “vata season” I find the need to tune in and really listen to what my body is telling me, as opposed to what I would do BYE (Before Yoga Era): become erratic, run around and not focus on anything in particular.

If you’re not familiar with Ayurveda, yoga’s sister science here’s a quick run down. Ayurveda treats the whole person as an individual, we are said to be made of three parts to create our unique constitution: pitta (fire), vata (air), kapha (earth). We are born, live and die with this constitution so the more we understand about it and our propensities within it the more we can live balanced and harmonious (sattvic) existence. If we choose to, free will is a whole other discussion.

The point being, that while we made up of these essences, so we see it revealed in the nature we find around us. Autumn and spring are particularly vata times, there’s a lot of change happen, quite literally (eh-hem) a lot of wind flying around. And since I'm particularly vata, I feel this season particularly. We can feel scattered and thrown to the four corners. The beauty of aryuveda is that one doesn’t treat this as such, it merely provides us with a whole range of tools which we can use to bring more balance.

So for me that means, porridge and stews. It means warm drinks. It means a grounded, slow practice. It means time on the sofa under a duvet enjoying my favourite books and giving myself space for contemplation. Because as autumn is a time to slow down it is also the time we plant the seeds we wish to gestage and then grown in the spring. So it’s the time to turn inside and give space for your creativity to be sewn.

A small confession

I have a little confession to make... I've fallen off the practice bandwagon -*shock*. I know it happens; I’m not flaying myself with a birch branch about it and I know our practice ebbs and flows, that’s just how it is. However, I have noticed how it’s affected my life in some very specific and clear ways:
 

Goodbye energy:  I can’t focus, I’m down, my get up and go has got up and gone

Goodbye awareness: Conscious eating is out of the window, think before I speak? – not so much, getting gnarly about the small stuff is on the rise
 

Goodbye fun: there’s a heaviness to everything, a desire to sit under my mat not on it, I haven’t phoned a friend in a while

Interesting isn’t it. The thing about yoga practice is that when you start it’s like a hit that lights you up for days afterwards. Then after you get accustomed to feeling happy and bright most of the time it’s a huge imposition to not get that feeling. Then you get a bit complacent about it and think, it’s cool, I’ll get back to that in time. Then all of a sudden your mats in a corner gathering dust.

‘nough said. Less blogging more mat time.

Celebrate good times!

It's been a brilliant couple of weeks, whole montage of human endeavour and emotion which the whole nation has got behind and supported. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Now we get to hit the pause button and just celebrate a little bit. It's so often that we don't allow ourself a moment to enjoy. Hands up who's skipped out of Savasana early? Yep, me too.

So I declare this week at week to simply bask, rest on your laurels and hang out in your favourite restorative pose for as long as you please! Enjoy, there's the rest of your life for working!

Balancing on the paradox

The 12 segments of the Zodiac keep turning and we find ourselves deep within the Cancerian section of the zodiac. I take a peek at star signs occasionally to see what I can learn. Cancerians are known for being a bundle of contradictions, living life on the turn of their emotions. The yogi learns to balance these contradictions in the eternal paradox that it means to be human, which is: how can we be in the body and yet be free? That’s what spiritual practice is for.

Because, if we can find a place where two seemingly contradictory things meet, we have found the place of balance. And that’s the place where freedom resides. This is quite literally why we do yoga poses. The further away we take ourselves from where we feel centred, standing upright, to turning ourselves upside down, eg handstand we completely change our perspective and have to move into where it feel uncomfortable. That way, we can find our way back, whenever we get taken off centre, by whatever life throws at us. I love the quote by T.S. Eliot, one of my favourite explanations of this eternal paradox:

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Play time!

This week it's mainly been about rocking out on my yoga mat and everyone I meet. At least to the best of my abilities!

The Sanskrit word for this is lila - play. That’s what I’ve been doing my best to embody, why? Why not? Who doesn’t want to have more fun in their lives. The other day I was visiting my three year old nephew and his mum called him in to brush his teeth. His response - “I’m too busy mummy”. He was too busy lining up cars. I had to leave the room and take a little walk I was shaking so much trying not to laugh.

Man, I want that feeling! When nothing else matters except what you’re doing right now. Not who you were yesterday or what happens if you don’t do whatever it is perfectly. Because really none of that stuff matters, because there’s nothing you can do about it anyway. All you can do is do whatever you’re doing completely, presently and with a full heart.

Be the butterfly

It has been a week of watershed. Slightly ironic since there’s been a lot of water around for a June. There are some times in life when you have to let go of stuff. I think it’s the yoga that’s made this a lot easier than it used to be. We like, as humans to hang on to things, things which seem to define us and make us unique. What we forget is that we already are unique, every inch of amazing us.

What’s brilliant about yoga is that it gives us permission to redefine ourselves, from breath to breath and remember how special we are. It is said that the yogi is twice born, like the butterfly. The caterpillar creates itself a chrysalis and completely dissolves its form to arise as a butterfly. Human cells also replace themselves at varying speeds and are completely replaced every seven years. It’s pretty cool to think that we get a completely new body every seven years and even cooler to think parts of our physical bodies change much more frequently than that. Our blood cells are continuously being replaced. When we practice yoga each breath, each pose, each practice is like a shedding of past habits and fears to awaken to a new dawn a new part of ourselves are revealed and once it’s started to be revealed it just keeps on coming.

The butterfly never returns to being a caterpillar.

We could be heroes, just for one day

Some days it’s hard to muster up the courage to do what we know we ought. I for one am an absolute expert at finding myself things to be busy about, especially when I know there’s an elephant in the room or within my heart which I really need to have a conversation with.

This is the challenge of the yogi. Because sometimes knowing the right thing to do isn’t enough. Sometimes we need to take action. We need to stand tall in our own power and own it. Whatever it is. When we take the seat of the yogi we’re asked questions of ourselves and we get to choose how to respond. Sometimes that response isn’t easy, sometimes it means going against the status quo.

I love that the word courage comes from the French word for heart, coeur. Because that’s what yoga gives us. The courage to stand in our own heart, in our own courage, in our own strength.

That’s why I get on my mat and practice. To know myself more, to know my heart’s longing, so that when I get asked to respond to challenge I have the power. Then I get to stand up as a yogic warrior and act.

Yoga and Cancer

I'm delighted to offer this guest blog on how yoga can help with cancer sufferers...

While healthy individuals may practice yoga for fitness, mental clarity or emotional well-being, cancer patients may turn to gentle yoga classes as a form of therapy.

Aggressive cancers such as mesothelioma can cause symptoms that become debilitating if they are not properly managed. Yoga provides a simple, natural way to relieve both physical and mental symptoms. Mesothelioma patients may also use yoga to relieve side effects of other cancer treatments.

These benefits can be noted after just one yoga class, although patients may benefit the most from recurring sessions. Yoga studios, health clubs and senior centers often offer several gentle yoga classes each week that patients can participate in when their energy levels are high. 

Physical Benefits of Yoga for Cancer Patients

Patients can use yoga as a palliative therapy for several different cancer-related conditions.

For asbestos cancer patients, yoga can help reduce chest pain, promote easier breathing and relieve fatigue. Some of the most beneficial yoga poses for patients with these conditions include:

• Cobra and/or upward dog (to open the chest and improve breathing)
• Child’s pose (lessens fatigue and alleviates head, neck and chest pain
• Extended side angle (stretches the whole body, including the chest and shoulders)
• Warrior II (increases lung capacity)

Certain side effects of other cancer treatments can also be relieved through yoga.

Bridge pose and lotus pose can improve digestion that has been disrupted by chemotherapy or radiation therapy. Chemotherapy-induced nausea may be reduced by reclining hero pose. Many patients also find that a general yoga practice can help fight fatigue or stimulate their appetite when sleep and hunger patterns are disrupted by treatment.

Mental Benefits of Yoga for Cancer Patients

Yoga is also an excellent outlet for cancer-related stress and anxiety. Poses such as forward bend and cat-cow stretches can help induce relaxation. Savasana (the final pose in any yoga class) is also excellent for clearing the mind and releasing tension. A brief period of meditation before or after a yoga class can provide patients with even more opportunities to relax and diffuse stress.  

Even off the mat, cancer patients can use yogic practices to relieve anxiety. Yogic breathing (known as pranayama) can be used in a hospital, cancer center or any other location where patients begin to feel nervous. Slowing the breathing and becoming more attentive to the inhalation and exhalation process can help yoga practitioners feel calmer and more centered any time that anxiety strikes.

Author bio: Faith Franz is a writer for the Mesothelioma Center. She combines her interests in whole-body health and medical research to educate the mesothelioma community about the newest developments in cancer care.

Hidden gifts

Hanuman is one of my favourite deities. He’s the monkey god, the gods are reflections of ourselves so it’s not that surprising I’m drawn towards the monkey man.

All good things start, as my mum would tell me, with the mother. In Hanuman’s case this is Anjana. Anjana was a very devout woman who wanted nothing more than to be a mother. To this end she prayed and practiced daily. The wind god, Vayu, heard her prayers and resolved to help Anjana, to this end he sent some grains of rice with his bird friends to Anjana. As she reached into the air with her hands in Anjali Mudra the birds dropped the grains of rice into her hands. Knowing better than to question the gift she’d received, Anjana simply opened her mouth and tossed in the rice. As soon as they hit her stomach she became pregnant.

When we first start a yoga practice I would say it’s pretty normal to want everything straight away. To become a master or at least have a list of things we want to tick off, so we can say we’ve done it. Or at least that’s how I was and secretly still am. It took a long time for me to realise that this practice isn’t linear, sometimes it doesn’t make any sense and sometimes we feel confused and demotivated. The thing about yoga is that we get exactly what we need and we don’t get to decide what that is. We must, as Anjana did, show up, every day, clean the mirror of our deepest Self and accept whatever we are offered. In our society, that’s not so easy, staying in the moment with what is isn’t easy. However, when we do play in the present moment life gets a whole lot simpler and happier.

Hanumania!

My teaching has taken an interesting turn of late and moved into a rhythm of six weekly cycles. The cycle just gone has all been about the different elements in nature which we align with when we come to our practice. The next series is inspired by my great friend.

I’m going to be integrating the stories of Hanuman, my favourite deity, into my classes and seeing what we can learn from the great monkey god. It’s ok not to know much about Hanuman, that’s part of the fun. My teacher explains all of these things like they’re maps, they’re not there to tell us what to believe or think, they’re simply there to help us on this journey. It’s like when you visit a new city, it’s handy to have something to guide you, it’s not going to tell you which way to go.

I love the rich symbolism held within the stories of the deities. And Hanuman has lots: from the story of his birth right through to his stories of heroism. It is said that we are all of the characters in the story and although they have been told for generations we can know our own lives better by hearing and contemplating them from where we sit in the moment we hear them.

That’s why I never get tired of hearing the stories because each time they reveal something new. They are organic and ever changing. It’s Hanumania!

What's outside is inside, what's inside is outside

We've definitely witnessed the forces of nature over the last few weeks in the UK. Constant rain in the South East, much more like I remember in the South West where once I’m sure it rained from October to March without a break. It hasn't been glamorous, no flashfloods, thunderstorms or anything like that, just constant, damp and unrelenting, the weather the British climate does so well. It was greatly needed and greatly purifying. What I noticed most of all is the reflection in my own life. As things started to go somewhat awry for me personally, the rain came down and kept coming down. Even amidst the intensity I couldn’t help wondering if that rain was coming down to wash away old patterns, old ways of doing things, like a torrent, allowing for nothing but the new to arise.

What was remarkable was that once my personal intensity had past the sun started to poke out from behind the clouds. And now, as I sit with the sun blazing through the windows I’m grateful that not only is my situation resolving but I believe there’s been an opening for much deeper, more profound relationship to arise.

I’m not trying to say that the Universe brought the rain for me; even thinking that makes me smile a little. What I’m saying is that yoga is all about lining up with nature, lining up with those threads which join us all and seeing the shared human condition there. It’s about noticing that what is happening right now is not something which has been done to us, it’s simply the play of life and our role is to play our part and use our lessons wisely. Or not, there’s value in ignoring the rain sometimes too.

Give yourself some space

I’m approaching the end of my series on the five elements: space. The final frontier. Apologies, I couldn’t resist.

It’s a bit of a tricky concept because of the intangibility of space. Space is really the area that we occupy, however, the cool thing is that the world is mostly space... wah? My friend explains it this way: if Wembley Park were an atom the amount of actual matter would be the size of a pea. Yep, my eyes kinda dilated and my head expanded a little bit from that comment. Try this one: two objects can never actually touch, there’s always space inbetween. You think your hands are clapping together, the ball is bouncing on the floor, ‘fraid not, not quite!

Why does any of this matter except to bring about brain ache? It matters because when we have those moments, like every other second for me, that we’re not enough, we’re lacking, that the whole world is closing in on us and we just can’t break free we can remember how much space there is and carve a little extra out just for us.

Find a little more space this week by plonking down on a meditation cushion or other comfortable spot, setting a timer (or space creator you might call it) and taking a journey deep inside, to the final frontier.

Let go...

There are some times in life when it all becomes a little bit overwhelming. When the list of things to do or things to worry about becomes so much that there’s nothing for it but to throw everything into the air and pray that something comes in to help you out. The thing is, it does.

So this week I’ve been teaching that there is a beauty in just surrendering. I understand that surrender is a difficult word. It seems to makes us vulnerable and no longer in control. What I would say is that we’re not in control. No matter how much we think we are or how much human beings evolve to protect themselves. All it takes is a hurricane to dispel that myth.

What it doesn’t mean is that we give up responsibility, and therein lies the paradox. We can only take responsibility for our actions and let go of the outcome. How we are within and without ourselves does have an effect on the world, so what do you choose? I choose to charge myself with as much positive energy as I can muster so that I create that energy in my world. We can choose to do the opposite. It’s just that at some point we have to just leave for more space, more breath and more light to move into us. We can only do that if we’ve let go of the expectations we have for our life. That’s surrender.

So this week, let go by turning throwing it into the air and turning everything upside down. Literally. Do a handstand, a headstand, a shoulderstand or simply put your legs up the wall. Then let it go.

I'm on fire!

Moving through the elements we get to fire. I’m generally a pretty fiery person which is good most of the time. However, if I’m not careful I get burnt out. Quite literally. Fire does that, it can be destructive or it can be a way to bring about change. Nothing ever happened because we wished for it, at some point we also had to act.

So what does that mean when we come to our yoga mats? Because there always has something to be do with yoga, right?

From the first breath it’s the reason why we set an intention for the practice. Why we practice, why we continue to ask that question, like a match sparking. Then we really get fired up, we engage muscles so our bodies can carry that intention. After that we stoke the fire with more air by finding more space in the pelvis and shoulders. The fire really starts to roar when we scoop our sitting bones and draw the heads of the armbones back. Then the final expansion comes in as we spread our fiery bodies out from that super ignited core. No you’re on fire!

That’s in every pose, and that’s how dreams come true.

Dive in!

This week is all about the water element. It’s fun to think of our asana practice in terms of how we relate to each of the five elements, it gives us a totally different perspective on these poses we do all the time. The thing about water is that it appears to us in many different forms, from the deep ocean to the playful stream.

It holds great mystery and great danger. Energy flows through all of our body’s systems like a vast series of underground rivers, it gets stuck and stagnant so that sometimes we have to flush it out.

This week when you come to your mat I invite you to dive deep into the ocean of your own consciousness and explore the unknown within. Choose a pose, a backbend is good, that calls upon you to hold the stillness so that you can open up fully, crash like a wild wave and open your heart to this great universal flow.

Then allow everything to settle back into the river bed, the silt which you’ve shaken up to be refreshed by a new vibrancy and openness. Allow each part of yourself to be refreshed and revived. And you don’t even need to go anywhere near a beach, unless you want to.

Out of the bubble

I’ve just come back from teacher training, again. It was so much fun. No matter how much training I do there’s always something new to learn. What I learnt this time most of all is that this whole thing is a journey. We start off in the little protected bubble of the mat, being guided by our teachers and held by our friends. Then, and sometimes I’m not sure why, we step off the mat and walk to the front of the room. That’s when we get all these amazing maps and all of a sudden our mat becomes a flying carpet from which we view the world afresh.

Doing a training of any kind, by which I mean really any practice infact – from closing your eyes for a few moments, to a kickasana practice to a 108 hour TT – is much like stopping in at a rest stop. You get touch in with your journey. I’m not really concerned with where I’m going anymore, except Starbucks, that’s usually in the equation somewhere.

Sometimes we need to dust off our maps a bit or unfold that corner which got crumpled in your bag that time you forgot about it. Then to look up at the sky on a beautiful sunny day and feel so grateful you’re on this path and someone gave you some landmark and then you never want to stop seeking out new places to go.