{Event} 5/16/10 Ashtanga Yoga + Chakras with Mary Flinn

Sunday, May 16, 2010
Ashtanga Yoga + Chakras with Mary Flinn

10:00am-11:45am
Bandhas & Breath + Half Led Primary Series of Ashtanga Yoga

12:00-2:00pm
Chakra exploration

Location:
Greenpoint/Williamsburg, Brooklyn
1 Monitor Street, L to Graham Ave

Register here:
Ashtanga Yoga Brooklyn

I am and I can

As I began my back bends, in the back of my mind, I knew that I didn't want to do ankle grabbing. "I" could have been my body, it could have been my mind. Who knows? I usually enjoy the exhilaration of back bends, but this past week has been very difficult. I waited for a long time for Saraswati to help me with drop backs. She is on it though. There is probably 70+ students in there, and she is jumping from one person to another without skipping a beat. I don't mind waiting for drop backs. Today I had these sick head rushes that I've had at different points in my life and I had forgotten about them until today. It was nice to just be able to stand there, shuffle my feet, hold my head, and scream from the inside.

I waited for a long time. Part of me wanted to say "forget it" and sit down to start finishing. But another part of me said, "just wait. Just keep waiting. You'll be okay." When she came over, I said, "please no ankles today, my back hurts." (I said "hurts" because it gets the point across quickly even though that wasn't really the problem.) Saraswati smiled and nodded and latched her hands firmly onto my hips. One, two, three times back half way.

"I think it will be okay, actually," I said. She already knew. I went back the fourth time and took my breathed. When I stood up, I wanted so badly to give her a hug, but I didn't. I think she probably would have been okay with it though. In the past, Guruji would give you a hug for a little while after deep back bends. I swear she lingered a little longer than usual in the paschimottonasana stretch (which helps counterbalance the back bend).

Later as I thought about these few moments on the mat, I realized that this whole trip has been a slow, steady process of learning, painfully at times, to let go. And here, practicing like this, the relentless demand on my body and on my mind, there is nothing left for me to do but surrender. I'm slowly letting go of the need to absolutely control what I eat. I'm okay with eating with my hands. I don't freak out when ants are the place mat my plate is resting on. I'm brushing my teeth with tap water. I'm okay sitting on a wet toilet seat (this is huge). But in other ways too, I'm learning how to be softer and be easier with myself. In many ways, life has been like this. A gradual process of unpeeling layers, getting closer and closer to my true nature. I don't know what that is, but I feel on one hand I'm closer than I can ever remember, and on the other, part of me is ready to believe that maybe I am already that.

It seems strange to say that. That I don't know my true nature, or that I can't recognize it sometimes. Maybe you don't go through that. Maybe you've never thought about it, maybe you have. Maybe you've figured it out. Maybe no one ever will. But I feel that many painful moments I have come when I lose that vision of myself. In many ways my friend, Rachel, is exploring this in a book she's working on. (Check out her blog: http://www.embodiedmovement.blogspot.com/.)

Often I notice how I forget that I am here inhabiting physical space. John says that small children think from their bellies (when they have an earache and a doctor asks them where it hurts, they will often rub their bellies). In this way, I think that whatever I'm going through emotionally is hanging our in my stomach.

The stomach is the location of the 3rd chakra (pictured), which is associated with how we feel about ourselves. (This site has a lot of really useful info on this!) It is also where we store the energy we need to take charge of our lives. One damages the third chakra by harboring anger (even if we don't know its there), or by wishing "our lives were different without taking any action to change circumstances". An underdeveloped third chakra can manifest itself in having "a fear of life, in general". (It might not seem like it, being as I'm in India, but it took a lot for me to get here. I never thought of myself as fearing life, but the more I think about the way I usually do things, the more I realize that I have a giant condom over my body. I feel like slowly this has been less and less, but it is still there.) A malfunctioning third chakra can show up in mid-body obesity (that has always been an issue, relatively speaking), intestinal disorders, and liver problems.

Okay, so what to do if your third chakra is out of whack?

Realize that you are where you need to be.

Be your own best friend.

realize that nothing is permanent, that you are not stuck.

Realize that dammit, you are not fat, so stop asking!

Do the things that you really want to do.

take the necessary actions to make our dreams come true.

Realize that I am here, alive, and healthy, surrounded by good people, with food, and a place to sleep. But really really really realize it.

Truly let go of anger and the comfort in being sad.

Laugh.

Back in New York, earlier this year, I had a small breakdown in class. I had just come up from grabbing my ankles when I was filled to the brim with an overwhelming feeling of, "I can't". I'm not sure if you remember what this feels like when you are a small child. I didn't until that day. It is absolutely paralyzing. You are so frustrated you want to scream, you want to cry, you want to rip off the soles of your feet and scratch holes into your cheeks. I was filled with an intense, childlike feeling of, "I can't". I waddled to the back of the room , threw down my mat, lied down and fought back tears. I laid there for a few moments, then sat up and walked out. Just like that.

I probably was under the impression that that moment was in the past, that I had gone through it and that it was gone. But based on this last week, and today's resistance in particular, I think that this is not the case. It is so strange feeling like I have no control over a thought like this. Maybe it needs to just come out and I should sit in my room and cry about it and let the frustration happen so that it is out once and for all. Maybe.

And here we are, back at the same realization that keeps on coming up:

Yoga is the cessation of the thinking mind. Then the seer abides in his own true nature.

(yoga sutras, book 1, numbers 2 & 3)

Its a beautiful day outside. I think I'm going to go volunteer at the school. I'm not sure what they do. I think they teach english. I think it would be good to get out of my head, and into the world...

Tomorrow is a moonday, so there will be no classes held.

For Eric, who I miss terribly:

Thinking, thinking

Sharath: "Too much thinking" (taps temple)

Me: "What?"

Sharaht: "Back bends easy no thinking."

Me: "huh!"

Sharath: "Now take ankles"

Me: "huuuuhn!"

Really works, too...

This is an excerpt by Charles Benson from Mysore Style Photographs by Graeme Montgomery

Thinking, thinking, always thinking. My entire practice was us here *points to head*. Its funny how we do not see ourselves how we really are. For instance, physically, I don't really know what I look like or how I take up space. I run into walls sometimes. In practice today I kept telling myself "this is so hard" and "I feel so weak". And in the next breath something inside me said "you are crazy. You do this everyday. you are very strong. You are here doing it. This is all in your mind. Just breathe. Just breathe."

This little check in held me off for a while, until back bending. Things can often run, but can't hide. Back bends are very honest. Everything was fine until ankle grabbing. I just gave up. Sharath took me to my calves and was inching my hands up to my knees, he was pushing my elbows toward each other, but I was struggling. My feet were turned out very far, my knees were bent. And then I just let go and stood up. I gave up. "Bad day" I told him as I sat down to get squished.

Now that I think about it, I was thinking through the entire practice. Not thoughts about how I looked or about people around me. No, these were thoughts deep inside my muscles and bones. Who am I ? Where am I going? What am I doing? What am I going to do? etc. All these thoughts were swimming in my body and when I went into the ultimate back bend, there wasn't enough space to stretch because all the thoughts were floating around making the skin over my front body tight.

I've heard of this posture also being called chakrasana. A chakra is an energy center.. You have a few of them running up your spine. Each one is associated with different aspects of your being. Sometimes you are really open and your chakras are really clear, but usually, you have some sort of issue in one or another (we're only human, right?). So you could imagine that in this back bend, all the chakras are opening up like huge pours. But imagine that the chakras are clogged and that was me today feeling them getting squeezed. But these are very difficult pimples. the kind that look like they are ready, but you couldn't get them just yet. Maybe tomorrow.

I pulled up my mat and weaved through the other students who were practicing. I opened the door to the women's dressing room, which was completely dark. I rolled out my mat, rolled out my body and felt the tears welling up in my eyes. I wasn't in physical pain. Well, if we are human, than we are physical, and so I suppose that technically, all pain is physical pain, but this was not a pain that I would go to a chiropractor for. The feeling that you get in your throat when you're about to cry is what I felt in my back. A dull ache filled with water that you know you must release.

I wouldn't recommend ashtanga yoga to anyone. It is hard, it is painful. (I once read that David Swenson would never tell anyone to practice ashtanga, but that if people came for it, he would teach it. I didn't understand that until today.) It isn't about asanas or getting the perfect body. What happens is that you are given a pipe cleaner and a bunch of fun looking poses. So you do the poses and when you're not looking, the pipe cleaner goes about cleaning out any baggage you have stored in your body and in your mind. Sometimes you notice a little but don't really mind, sometimes you don't notice at all. But then there are those times that you wake up and realize that the poses were just a trick and now you are completely vulnerable and stuck in a posture and the pipe cleaner gets to reach all those places you don't ever want to face. Its like when you go to the doctor and they tell you to look the other way but you know the bastard is trying to give you a shot in the arm. Sometimes this practice is like volunteering for a bad trip on LSD.

Practice is really easy when you're not thinking. It is really easy on days when you are happy. On days you are not, those are the days when you need it the most. I think Sharath knows this. I think he can see what we are going through by the way we are inhabiting our bodies. That is the magic of ashtanga. You are doing the same thing every day, but every day your body is so completely different. Sharath has been back bending me almost every day for 2 months. He had to feel the massive change this week in my body.

You've seen those commercials about depression. There is that one "cymbalta" commercial where they talk about how depression hurts. "Depression hurts, cymbalta can help". It is true. Our bodies store different emotions.

Many yoga teachers tell students that we store memories in our hips. But we store other things in other places. Int that Ashtanga Yoga: Practice and Philosophy book I told you about a couple days ago, Maehle says that anger is stored in the hamstrings, extreme stiffness is because of mental rigidity, extreme flexibility is an inability to take a position in life and to set boundaries, and emotional pain is stored in the heart. (Symbol of heart chakra on right). The more you get into ashtanga, the more you'll hear about people crying in back bends. Maehle says that the emotional pain stored there leads to the crying. I thought of this as I sat on my mat with the dull ache of crying in my throat.

Maele writes:

"Since our body is our vehicle and the storehouse of our past, we want to practice asana to the point where it serves us well, while releasing and letting go of the past that is stored in it."

Sharath is right. Thinking makes back bending hard. Some days it is easy to let go of our thoughts. Other days I feel like I'm being dragged behind a carriage led by 12 horses. So what to do? "Practice, practice, all is coming."

The worst horse

Pema Chodron writes in The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving Kindness that there are three horses. The best horse moves before the whip ever hits its rump. The okay horse moves when it feels the whip. The worst horse won't budge until the whip has made cuts. Most people want to be the best horse. She writes,

"what I have realized through practicing is that practice isn't about being the best horse or the worst horse. It's about finding our own true nature and speaking from that, acting from that. Whatever our quality is, its our wealth and our beauty; that's what other people respond to."

I am the worst horse. Today at practice was again struggling to stay focused, struggling to hear my own breathing. After setu bandhasana (pictured), I moved into urdhva danurasana position. The second I came up-bam! Low back ouch. I've been dealing with this for some time, and back in New York, poses that stretch the psoas and quads in second series have been really helpful. I tried my best to lengthen and yadda yadda, and then moved into a really sloppy stand up. I tried to warm up a bit by doing half ways before the full drop back, but after 2 really out of wack drop back, I gave up. Feeling embarrassed for almost running into someone, I sat down and took a couple of breaths in forward bending before hustling off to do finishing poses with a pout in the dressing room.

I threw down my mat and laid down, swimming in the angry little thoughts soaking in my mind. "Stupid ashtanga with no stupid moving on for a month"

"This is so dumb, I should go somewhere else where they'll let me do my practice"

"I should just finish my practice in here"

"stupid back with the stupid pains"

"All these people coming from all over and now I can't get new poses because its crowded"

etc etc

I thought of Alex, who has been here for 6 weeks and has only just started doing the poses that she got from her last trip. I thought about how I'm the only one who doesn't look completely blissed out right now.

I took 10 breaths in each pose (usually I take 25). I huffed and puffed and threw myself into resting and closed my eyes tightly. I laid therefore for a short while, trying to tell myself to relax, and then shot up, rolled up my mat, and got dressed. Outside my coconut tasted as sour as my mood. Coconuts have been like mood rings for me, I've noticed.

At breakfast, I was talking to Nuno about practice today and how really this is what its about. Doing without knowing, giving up on the ego, practice practice all is coming. It is so much more about the mental in this practice than the physical. And yet, none of this is new. Its funny how things come up to the surface. Even at age 40+, you might find yourself with a pimple.

The sugar boycott is going well. This morning I went to Tina's and had millet toast (its homemade and wheat free!) with cooked spinach and tomato chutney. I also had a banana, soy, cinnamon, and peanut butter smoothie. Very nice!

The plan for today is to get a house! I think I'm going to try for Saraswati's. I've got to pick up some rupees though and some bedsheets.

Yesterday I had a little adventure in waxing and threading...

Part of me thinks that back bend troubles and mental troubles have to do with my bowels being on strike. Part of me thinks that the bowels being on strike has to do with not being grounded at all, no stable living space, and missing SO (1,2,3 chakra issues)...