“YOGA IS A BIG ADVENTURE WITH LIFE

Right now, I am confused. Yet at the same time I am absolute in my understanding. It is a paradox and it makes no sense, but does it need to make sense? Do I need to fully grasp everything or can living in a place of confusion allow me the freedom to move, to be and to explore without being bound by the chains of my all knowing?

There is much about life that I am able to change, there is much about life that I am unable to change – how do I discern between the two? How do I create within me the fluidity to be able to move from one polarity to another? How do I develop within myself the wisdom and discernment that lets me see what needs to be seen, to face what needs to be faced and to have the courage and humility to explore it all. In any given moment everything is in a state of flux, that I know for a fact. But what is real and what is an illusion? If my yoga practice’s sole purpose is to help me discern between the two and if we know that nothing ever stays the same, then surely my practice must not stay the same. Surely my practice must reflect my ability to move, to flow and to be.

For years I have sought to align myself with a teacher, I have yearned to find someone to attach myself to, feeling that perhaps without this I was less of a yogi, lacking in discipline and commitment. What I now know to be true is that the teachings matter more than the teacher, that the teachings are a constant, teachers will not always be. That teachers can only invite you to experience their perspective of the teachings and there is a very real and worrying pattern that has emerged in teachers seeing themselves as all powerful, all knowing; laying down the rules around how they feel the practice should be felt. When rules are made, they are in essence saying “if you are unable to meet this requirement, then you are a lesser person because you have failed” and we have to really understand the trauma that this does to the human psyche. Would not the kinder thing to say be “Try it out, see how it feels, notice what is there”, does that not give us the space to be present to whatever is going on in our body and to explore how changeable our world is. The problem starts to arise when we start to tell people how they should feel, as if we can crawl in under someone else’s skin and experience it ourselves, which we can’t and so what gives us the right to assume that we can?

So much is going on right now and many are waking up to the painful realisation of how dysfunctional and un-balanced the world has been, people are finding their voice and are speaking out. This is amazing. This is incredible. This impacts every spectrum of the world that we inhabit. It is easy to feel depressed at the state of our world, leaders are corrupt, climate change is a mess, people have more pain and more anxiety than ever before and yet there is so much else going on that is extraordinary to witness. I feel privileged to be living during this outpouring of people standing up for who they are, refusing to suffer under the abuse of an invisible power. I am hopeful for where this will lead.

Of course no where is immune and the world of yoga is also being forced to take a long and hard look at itself. Yoga has grown exponentially and the numbers of people practicing yoga is unbelievable, and yet this is not unsurprising. Humans are designed to live in relationship with others and as the world becomes more disconnected people are seeking to make connection in other ways. Yoga is relationship and so draws people in, it helps people to feel good, it reduces their suffering and their pain. But somewhere along the line the commodification of yoga meant that yoga has become something that it is not. It became an image on the cover of a magazine that enticed people in because of their lack of self worth, it pulled them in as they hoped that maybe they too can look like that, be like that. Heads up people, this is not yoga. This is an invisible ball and chain which will bind you to more suffering, to the sense of not being good enough and will make you believe that you need to just try harder to meet these unreal expectations of the self.

What is Yoga then? Yoga is relationship – relationship to the breath, to the body and to the experience. It is through this relationship that we can be comfortable and at ease with whatever is there, however hard it maybe. Yoga must be adapted to you, to the unique nature of your body and who you are. We are not made on straight lines and no one body is builtt to the same specifications as another. What works for one, will not work for another. Your yoga must fit you, it must feel like wearing your favourite pair of jeans. We do yoga so that we may fill ourselves up with energy and allow ourselves to relax into being, we do not do yoga to bring more struggle into our lives, we have enough of that already.

Which brings me back to my confusion. My confusion that used to originate from my sense of lack, my sense of not being good enough because I had no guru at my alter. Now my confusion is about my day to day witnessing of my breath, my body and the experience of this human existence. Let us not think that confusion though is a bad word, confusion to me is about not knowing and I am choosing to be totally fine with that. Confusion is about letting the questions arrive before receiving the teaching, because we can only really understand our unknowing from a place of quiet and peaceful curiosity. Through this I am witnessing within myself some pivotal moments of seeing and understanding my own past traumas and fears, seeing how they have impacted me and my life. Seeing how my practice can offer me the ability to find more ease, more steadiness.

STHIRA SUKHA ASANAM – because that is Yoga.

In peace

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