Stillness and contentment

One day my friend and colleague, Cherise, loaned me a little blue book, the Art of Stillness, by Picot Iyer. "You'll like it", she said. I did.

Being still I catch the scent of gum blossoms.
Photo credit: Vittala K Shettigara

As I read it, and sat with it, I reflected how stillness is something really precious to me, the greatest treasure being when I gain an ongoing sense of stillness, no matter what my activity or what is happening to me or around me.

I practise opening to permanent Stillness. Slowly it is coming.

To write a column like this I need to find stillness so that what wishes to be expressed can make itself heard. So today I have paused, and sat, asking it to come forth. Iyer's thoughts expressed in that little blue book are with me. Stillness is here.

And I recognise what else is here, things that arise through the gateways of my senses. Green tea on the palate. The tinkle of the courtyard fountain. The mid afternoon light a glare through the blinds. The scent of gum-tree blossoms floating in through the open windows.

The loud sounds of excavations across the road as an empty block of land is readied for construction are not disturbing me, they are just there.

As I progressed through Iyer's book he talked a lot about monks going off and spending years in isolation in monasteries and doing nothing. But that is not the life that is available to most of us. Yet I know that those of us who live in the world are not doomed to be caught up in all its motion.

I too love to stop and be quiet. In a few weeks time in early April I will be spending a week in silence sitting with my teacher on retreat. And in June I am offering my students a retreat, partially silent, for three days. Retreat gives us the opportunity to immerse and heighten our sensitivity to the Stillness that is always there. Retreat helps us to carry that flavour of stillness with us back into the whirring activity of everyday life and to continue to experience it there as well.

Iyer also reaches that point in the little blue book, eventually.

"The point of gathering stillness is not to enrich the sanctuary or mountaintop but to bring that calm into the motion, the commotion of the world."

Stillness is a quality of  Being Awareness, a vastness that through practice we come to recognise is who we are, as much as we are the body and personality we inhabit or the thoughts and emotions that we experience.

Contentment is also a key component of stillness. When we can be at peace just with what is here, recognising that everything is arising and subsiding in and from a vast stillness that is Awareness, contentment is also present.

Contentment is the second of the internal practices, or niyamas, described by Sage Patnajali as the second limb of yoga. Yoga Sutra II.42 reads"From contentment there flows the most excellent happiness and delight." (Translation Swami Venkatesananda).

When we are not in connection with Stillness, Contentment is difficult to attain. Yet when we begin to practice the mindfulness that leads to Stillness, Contentment also arises. Discontent is a restlessness of mind, body and spirit. As the restlessness is stilled, through our practices of mindfulness, body and breath sensing in movement and in still and silent practices such as meditation and yoga nidra, so too the discontent, and we are content with things just as they are.

Relieving deep exhaustion with yoga

As I lay in the Big Relax last Saturday, I began to let go. I had begun the session by leaping up to assist Cherise, helping students to set up their blankets in that wonderful art of blanket origami that is a part of the art of restorative yoga.  Then I began to recognize what I had not been taking time to acknowledge.  I felt deeply exhausted.  I began to settle into the practice. soaking up the deep relaxation of just being. It may sound odd but after two hours of restorative I still felt really tired.  I listened to this, I went home, had dinner, did no more work that day, and had an early night. And woke enormously refreshed.

This all happened after a week during which I had been pushing myself to take advantage of every waking hour to do more.

I have a friend who had an extremely high pressure, powerful but stressful position; and then she stepped back from it.  Discussing that later I asked her how she was finding it.  She told me that as she took on more and more she hardly noticed the increasing pressure.  Like the proverbial live frog in the pot in which the temperature is rising who doesn't jump out, she had simply absorbed.  "Now I have stopped" she said,  "I am exhausted.  I didn't know how exhausted, until I stopped."

The lesson is that we do not always recognize the symptoms of our deep exhaustion until it erupts as illness. But we can be wise and take steps to give our body and mind the true rest it needs.

This is what restorative yoga does. We support the body really well, and feeling that support, the body can finally relax. When the body relaxes, so can the mind and all of our organs and all of our cells can be flushed and refreshed with blood.

Donna Farhi, writing in Yoga, Body, Mind and Spirit said it more eloquently.

"In a restorative posture that has been well propped, one feels absolutely comfortable with no intense stretching sensations. Don’t mistake this, however, with a mild result. It is the graduated nature of the position that will allow you to stay for much longer periods of time than you might normally if you were practicing a posture more actively. This longer stay allows the key organs and glands to become drenched with revitalizing blood. Because the action reaches deep into the nervous system, the practice of these postures can dismantle chronic tension patterns, improve immune function, and bring the body and mind back to their original state of equilibrium."

We can learn from the suggestion of Judith Hanson Lassiter, author of Relax and Renew, "practice at least one restorative pose every day, at least one full session of restorative yoga every week, and one full week a year doing nothing but restorative yoga".

If you attend classes and learn restorative yoga from a good teac her you will learn to finesse your setting up to attain "impeccable standards of comfort" (Neal Ghoshal). But here is one pose you can always rely on.  It doesn't need a lot of props and you can do it almost anywhere.

Easy Rest, or Constructive Rest position is a pose you can do for ten minutes every day. Lie on your back on the floor and feel the spine laid along the floor.  Bend the knees and rest your feet on the floor. The fussiness in this restorative pose comes in the exact positioning of the feet. They should be hip width apart, with the weight evenly distributed underneath them. so sense the weight under the feet. try lifting them up and putting them back down again and sensing that weight beneath them.  If they are too close the weight will be more in the toes. If they are too far away the weight will come into the heels. If the feet are too wide, the knees will want to collapse inward, if they are too narrow the knees will want to collapse outwards. So shift the feet around a little and find that just right position.

You might find that your body greets this position with a deep "Yes". Close the eyes over and just rest here, watching your breath, for ten minutes.

To come up, roll over to your side and stay there awhile and then come up giving weight into your hips, supporting yourself with your hands and let your head arrive last.

(Picture credits: Babbling brook - http://www.yogaforgriefsupport.com/blog/restorative-yoga
Constructive Rest position - http://www.coreawareness.com/articles/the-one-muscle-that-does-not-need-strengthening/)

A decade of teaching

With Guest blogger Cherise Vallet

Celebrating Cherise's ten years of teaching at Yoga Spirit Studios


My birthday more or less coincides with when I began teaching at Yoga Spirit 10 years ago. Birthdays mark the passing of such a solid unit of time – a whole year. There, bam. Like a kilo of apples. An acre of land. A hundred dollar note. Another year. Then those years click together, side by side, and another chunk of time with a bigger thunk – a decade. And I’m still here.

First thing worth noting – I’ve never worked at any other job for 10 years, though I suppose this isn’t technically a ‘job’. More a delight. An opportunity.

The experience has been an ever-changing one and maybe why I’ve stuck with it so long is because of the variety that teaching offers – stimulation and challenge on all levels. Emotionally – facing fears, facing my ego. I’m sure students had no idea that there have been times I’d go home after teaching a class and wake up in the night full of self-criticism for some way I’d taught, how I’d missed explaining this or showing that, or that I allowed too short a time for savasana. I used to worry why my class numbers could be so low for awhile, and then high for a time – was I not teaching well? Over time I have learned to let go of that thinking for the most part – I know the way I teach doesn’t appeal to everyone, but I’ve found that the students that come back again and again are coming because they receive something from me, and I from them.

Cherise enjoying beach yoga in WA

I discovered Yoga Spirit Studios (then known as Torrensville Yoga Studio) in 2003. I had been doing a short yoga practice a friend had shown me several years previously, quite faithfully on most mornings up to that point. It only took about ½ hour and once memorised required little thought, just breathing and moving. This had become my routine while living in the beautiful southern countryside outside McLaren Vale. It was a few minutes that gave my body some nice stretches and maintained some strength, the breathing offered a particular sense of calming and balance that was fortifying during a period of immense change in my life. Then I moved back into the city in early 2003.

I missed the countryside so much once I came to the city – I could feel my whole being crying out at the loss of all that space and beauty. I saw an ad in the local Messenger paper for a 6-week Introduction to Yoga course and decided that could help fill the gap. The course was magic. Suddenly my body was invited to consider more deliberately the conscious thoughts of the mind, and even include awareness of the heart and what my body was feeling. In the first class I remember having tears stream down the sides of my face while reclining back into Savasana, soft little drips landing on the mat under my head. My heart felt so happy. My body felt so alive – I was aware of it all – the humming thrum of blood moving through my veins, the swelling of my abdomen and chest as I breathed, the weight and length and breadth of my body and a profound sense of nourishment, happiness – coming home. And so my association with the Studio was born – first as a student, then as a teacher trainee, and then as an ongoing student and teacher for the past 10 years.

I’ve taught the Tuesday evening Experienced class for around the past seven years – a long time to teach one class, and there is a reliable core of people who have come to that class all that time. I feel connected to this little community of steady practitioners.

My classes in the McLaren Vale region where I have since moved back to have also attracted a small but loyal following. I’d love to be roaringly popular I suppose, but that’s not happened as indicated by large numbers of students. The wonderful people who come regularly, however, do bring such presence. And this helps me see that it’s not all in the hands of the teacher – the students who come along in such a steady way have a deep impact on the tone of the class, providing a sense of continuity and make it easier for me to build on themes/approaches etc.

Cherise does headstand in Spain

Every time I enter the doors of the Studio I get this sensation – I’m home. My body has a memory of that first night, I’m sure. When I do yoga these days, it’s less regimented, not aligned with a set of postures I repeat daily, though sometimes I’ll have weeks of spending time in particular postures, then gradually emerging into another range of postures. My faithful body is a good guide, and some of my most wonderful experiences of practice are when I simply follow the prompts of my arm moving, my leg wanting to stretch, the energy to move vigorously or desire to rest. It is food for my being, this yoga I know. A practice in consciousness, noticing the rise of impulse from my body, the long sigh of an outbreath, the way my arms support the weight of my torso in a particular pose, and my legs in another. In a yoga practice, my body is less of a robot and more of an alert animal, seeking the clearest line, the most delicate balance, the release of breath and stretch and softening. I come home to my body daily, and in this moment, in this practice.

I count myself very fortunate to have seen that Messenger ad for the Introduction to Yoga course so long ago. The path that first tearful savasana put me on has opened continually over the past decade through this experience of teaching yoga. It is a great privilege to be able to share these gifts of yoga to enhance life for myself and others. When I seek to enhance the lives of others, I am automatically nourished, I automatically receive the gift of my kind intentions. It’s quite a foolproof way to create happiness. And happy is how I feel to still be teaching yoga after all these years.