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Look! a sense of place

I started practicing ashtanga yoga unaware of the rich tradition I had suddenly stepped into. Like a river, ashtanga had been floating all around me when I put my toes in to test the waters. Like the ocean, those waters ran deep. This was yoga, but nothing like the yoga I had been accustomed to practicing. Soon enough, I came to recognize ashtanga as an elite practice, and it suited me well with my athletic bent. Maybe too well. I became obsessed, which seems to run counter to the nature of yoga, but, then not at all counter to the nature of being imperfect and human. While I would naturally prefer to describe my ongoing ashtanga practice entirely in terms of devotion and loyalty and steady advancement, now, six years later, I can also say that I have experienced my share of drama and disillusion and disappointment. Of course, the late Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, the father of ashtanga yoga, would say that all of this is going as planned. I am where I am meant to be.

 "Practice and all is coming," is Pattabhi Jois's most familiar axiom. In a nutshell, it means that everything we experience in our yoga practice is part of the plan. The devotion as well as the disappointment. And we have to keep showing up in order to learn. In my continuing journey with ashtanga, I am learning that it is not the practice that has changed, but the practitioner. Somewhere I think I hear the Buddha laughing because, this, after all, is the whole point. The practice of yoga is intended to change the practitioner if in no other way than to help her identify all those places and parts of herself that are still stuck to old habits in all realms physical, mental and spiritual. According to the yoga sutras, there are five veils, or kleshas, that inhibit the light of our divine natures from shining. By bringing awareness to these kleshas, we are able to dissolve them and subsequently bring forth our divine light. Briefly, these kleshas are: avidya, innocence of our Divine nature; asmita, undue trust in the individual self; raga, excessive fondness of fleeting pleasures; dvesa, excessive avoidance of unpleasant experiences; and abhinivesah, elusive awareness of immortality.

This past week, I have allowed myself a brief vacation from the rigidity and discipline of my ashtanga practice and have participated in some vinyasa flow yoga classes. (It is summertime, right?) Vinyasa flow yoga comes out of the ashtanga tradition, but allows for more flexibilty and freedom in terms of its structure. Unlike the Mysore ashtanga classes that are practiced individually, vinyasa flow classes are led by a teacher who is the sole proprietor of his or her particular sequencing of movement for that particular class. I have followed my body into these classes this past week because I needed a reminder of the playfulness that is part of yoga. While I did, indeed, discover  playfulness, I also discovered the rigor and discipline inherent in this practice, too. As luck would have it--or more appropriately because the student was ready--I also learned some lessons I was poised to hear.

In her poem entitled Hummingbird Pauses at the Trumpet Vine, poet Mary Oliver aptly observes our human penchant for forgetting not only our divinity, but our ability to be happy:

Look! for most of the world
is waiting
or remembering--
most of the world is time

when we're not here,
not born yet, or died--
a slow fire
under the earth with all

our dumb wild blind cousins
who also
can't even remember anymore
their own happiness--


How easy it is to forget our sense of place. How easy it is for us to slip into that time in most of the world "when we're not here." This week in my vinyasa flow classes, I was reminded to be present. I was told that vinyasa is another word for place. In the movement between breaths, the inhale and the exhale, we have the opportunity to be present in that place within movement, neither waiting for the pose to happen Now!, nor remembering the same pose when we were perfect in it last week. I was reminded that between balasana (child's pose) and savasana (corpse pose) in a yoga class, we live out an entire lifetime. Within the lifetime that transpires in one class, we have the opportunity to accept who we are and where we are and what we are able to do today in this one class as good enough.

One of my vinyasa flow yoga teachers this week has been teaching yoga for more than 40 years. That's a whole lot of chaturanga dandasana. This particular teacher was recovering from shoulder surgery, and he was kind enough and selfless enough to share with us that he had let his ego get in the way of his practice for many years, practicing when he might have needed to rest, pushing when it would have served him better to have let go. Hence, the shoulder surgery. So, he was giving us the benefit of his hard-won lesson: Accept where you are with your practice today. Do not ask for more. In essence, like Oliver's poem, he was exhorting us to remember our own happiness. Now! He used the following anecdote about the golfer Tiger Woods to illustrate this lesson of happiness. Tiger Woods is an exemplary golfer whom few golfers can touch in terms of skill and dedication and talent. And yet, given all of that, Tiger Woods is not happy about his game. It is not where he would like it to be. He laments that his game could and should be better. Now! Our teacher told us to use Tiger Woods as our example that day. Tiger Woods, an incredibly gifted golfer, is not happy. Our teacher told us that if Tiger Woods could not be happy with his game today that he would never learn to be happy. Because one day, Tiger Woods was going to be 60 years old, and his game, naturally, would look different from his game today. If Tiger Woods could not learn to be happy about his present game, he was going to miss out on ever being happy about it.

This story reminded me of my own routine protestations and lamentations--my own brand of waiting and remembering--about my yoga practice, my climbing routines, my work, my parenting and how far I have fallen short or could have been better, etc, in each. I have used all manner of excuse to perfect my forgetfulness about being happy. I am grateful for the reminders this past week about acknowledging and accepting my sense of place because it turns out that is where happiness resides.


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