Packing for a yoga workshop

First published in "On the Mat", the newsletter of Yoga Spirit Studios.

During a training I recently attended, my buddies were amused and amazed at the things I had brought along to keep myself comfortable. They asked for my packing list. So this is for all of you, but especially for Lizzie, Susannah, Anna and Bev!

When you are going away on a yoga retreat or training, chances are you will need to bring along your own gear. This is tricky, especially if you have to travel by air. So rule number one is to always make sure your ticket will include a checked bag for your yoga gear.

Some time ago I bought a large wheelie duffel bag especially for the purpose and have never regretted it. Usually, most of my clothes will fit into a carry-on bag, leaving the checked bag bag for my yoga gear. The first picture shows my bag with only my yoga gear in it, and there is still room for a few clothes or toiletries that don't fit in the carry on.

Into it I pack a bolster, a sticky mat, one blanket, a block if it is an asana retreat/training and a meditation cushion. On this last trip I also borrowed a little camping seat which was so useful I have now ordered myself one online - they are sometimes available in camping stores but never when I go looking. I also pack a little bag of extra bits that I use in my practice. It contains a super-ball for rolling my feet on, two flannels for fine tuning of restorative poses, a strap, a rolled up towel to make a "sushi-roll" for selfie back massages, a hand fan for when the room gets too hot, an inflatable gertie ball for all manner of releases, my still-pointer balls for a quick relax, yoga toe socks and sticky wedge gloves (could stay in my room for a matless practice when needed) an eye-pillow, two silk sarongs, useful for a little extra warmth during relaxation or when the air conditioning is too chilly. If it is winter time I would probably also stuff my zebra stripe snuggie in too, perfect for a toasty relaxation. If you are going to a workshop with Donna Farhi, count on packing a large bath towel as well for the famed "wonton head wrap". I also have an inflatable bolster that I might also pop in if I thought a second bolster would be good to have.

It’s all about being prepared.

Navigating Asteya in modern life

Asteya, it's the third yama, the five constraints or external ethical practices recommended by Patanjali as the first of the eight limbs of yoga.

"Steya" is to take something that doesn't belong to you, that is to steal. "Asteya" is the opposite, not stealing, avoiding anything that could remove from someone else what is rightfully theirs.

First reaction - oh that's easy, I'm not a thief. Meaning, I don't break into houses, steal cars, shoplift, or create email scams to do people out of their money. OK, so how do you do on these questions?

Do you only ever pay for music that you like to listen to, or do you think its OK to take a friend's CD and download it to your device?

Are you one of those downloading Game of Thrones?

Would your default position be to try to get concession tickets you are not entitled to instead of paying full price? Would you get your six year old into the show as an under five year old for free?

Or even trickier .....

Do you turn up to events on time, or is it OK to you to be late and thus steal the time of others?

Perhaps you never even thought of it that way. But as we begin to really consider the depths of this undertaking of Asteya, we discover that there are many ways that we may be prone to "steya" that are not crimes, like turning up late.

This third yama, so easy to commit to at first sight, actually leads us into deep self-examination. For example, do the products I purchase result in damage to the planet and the stealing of habitat of other creatures, or were they produced with slave labour, stealing the right for a free and healthy life from other people? It is really complex and a life-long undertaking, if we truly try to practise Asteya, but isn't all of yoga deeper and life-long when we really start to embrace it?

Our modern life certainly makes it difficult. For a start, desire is the root cause of stealing. Therefore if we can overcome desire, Asteya follows.  With desire comes a sense of entitlement and we convince ourselves that the world owes us in some way. If others have more than me, then they will not miss what I am taking.

Our economy is based upon creating desire in us so that we consume more. The sophisticated marketplace that is enticing us everywhere we go is persuading us to want more. And the ways in which products may be stealing (habitat, lifestyle, income and so on) can be quite masked behind seductive gleam. Furthermore we live in a world in which technology makes it so easy to download and copy that which is not ours.

Yet we can all make a start, make a commitment to try, and begin to examine what we do in the light of Asteya.

Discussing ethical issues is helpful in developing our ethical sensibilities. Would you like to discuss this? Use Comments to share your thoughts on practising Asteya in daily life.

The Egg

As it is Easter I have been reflecting on all things Easter. Naturally eggs came up. I have always wondered about the place of eggs in the Easter story. A Sunday School teacher once told me it is to represent the stone that was rolled away from the tomb. Others naturally point to its new life symbolism, and that Christ's resurrection is a new life and it offers us a new life too.

The egg is a symbol that occurs across many faiths and traditions, often featuring in cosmology or stories of creation as well. It seems to come into the Christian tradition from earlier practices, reinterpreted. Red stained eggs, to symbolise the blood of Christ, were used in the early Eastern church, and there are stories that accompany this. But we know that coloured and decorated eggs were also features of other and earlier societies as well, including in the ancient Indian Vedas, the source of yoga itself.

The Brahmanda is the "cosmic egg", the totality of the universe. "Brahm" means "cosmos", "expanding", "biggest" and "creator". "Anda" means "egg" (pronounced with a long first a - aanda). The cosmos is conceived of as a giant egg, a giant, expanding egg.

This has a rather lovely resonance with modern scientific cosmology.We now know that the universe is indeed expanding, knowledge which came out of Einstein's theory of general relativity, predicted by Alexander Friedmann and observed by Edwin Hubble, There is also the notion that there was at some time a point of singularity, a minuscule gravitational dot out which the expanding universe arose, expanding in all directions, and continuing to do so. In the Vedas that would be called the "bindu", or it might be the "anda" at its smallest.

Science has yet to offer an explanation for the big bang that set all this expanding off.

Brahmanda is seen as simultaneously the bindu, source of all, and the macrocosm, all that is manifest. The manifest arises out of and within the whole, which is Universal Consciousness, Awareness. Yoga's goal, the union that is right there in the name "yoga", is our ultimate recognition of our being one with that Universal Consciousness.

So the egg in yoga can also symbolise a new life, awake to the full grace of Awareness.

Hari Om Tat Sat.

Patience, perseverance, optimism and faith

Ram Dass wrote in his book Be here, now: "If you think you are enlightened, go and visit your family." The message is that the road is long and the potholes many if we are applying ourselves to our personal growth, the spiritual journey.

I often disappoint myself! Just when I think I am making progress, peeling off the layers of conditioning and learning to respond from the supportive home ground of Being, I bump up against my limitations and I react. Rats!

No point in cursing. I just have to welcome the limitation and get back to the meditation, and practise, practise, practise. Keep on dipping into Awareness, practising meeting what arises with welcoming, and repeating the heartfelt desire expressing that I am not limited by all of that conditioning.

I remain hopeful and am grateful for the fabulous tools that yoga teaches us. It can take some time to find the tools that will resonate for our unique vibration. I am also grateful that I have found the tools of iRest® Yoga Nidra, with its core principles of Well-being, Welcoming and Witnessing Awareness, and its delectable practises.

Your path may be different. Yours might be fishing or walking and the meditative experience that gives you! Whatever our path, at the end of the day we need patience, perseverance and optimism to stay the course.  We might fall off, but we can always jump back on.

We also need faith.  Not blind faith, but faith that we do have the tools that will serve us well and guide us home. I wish you all faith in your path. Om shanthi.

The meaning of hatha

I was recently asked about the meaning of hatha in hatha yoga. 

"I've read it means sun and moon" my questioner said. 

"I've read that too" I replied, "But I don't think it is true."

However that is as far as I could really go at the time as my memory failed me on the derivation of the word, or where indeed these ideas about sun and moon come from, or indeed why I felt my doubt so strongly in my belly.

So of course, I had to come home and look it up.

Hatha is the style of yoga we say we practice. The fact that all yoga of asana is hatha yoga is a confusing point when folk say, "I've practiced Ashtanga, but never hatha" (or Iyengar, or Dru or any of the other names of styles and traditions that yoga goes under. "Well actually" I might say, "You have been practising hatha yoga all along, and there are many different traditions and styles within hatha."

So what is "hatha" in fact?

Look it up in a Sanskrit dictionary and you'll discover that it means forceful.

Oh, and the pronunciation of the th is not like the th in that, and the a sounds  are not like the a sounds in that  either. If you say the hat like the English word hut, then say it again without the ending t, repeat this and speed it up, you'll arrive at something like it should be pronounced.

Hatha yoga is forceful yoga. Bearing in mind that yoga is union, and in the ancient philosophy yoga is a path to and the result of the path, to a transcendent union with Highest Consciousness, sometimes characterized as God.

Different yoga paths are described in the ancient literature. The Yoga of Patanjali is the called Raja Yoga, the King Yoga, and is a path of meditation. The Bhagavad Gita describes four types of yoga, Karma Yoga, the yoga of selfless service, Jnana Yoga, the yoga of knowledge, Raja Yoga, the practices of concentration and meditation, and Bhakti Yoga, devotion to God.

In later times Tantric practices brought a more body centred awareness into yoga practices. It was seen that physical practices could manipulate the flows of energy in the body and forcefully create shifts that would break through psychoenergetic barriers to union. Thus the physical practices came to be called Hatha Yoga, or forceful yoga.

In response to the constantly arising claims we read that  hatha means sun and moon, I decided to probe further by seeking in the Sanskrit dictionary the meanings of the syllables on their own. Many meanings came up for ha,  and there amongst them was "moon", even though many of our yoga sources say in authoritive tones that ha means "sun"!. I was very excited and fully expected tha to turn up "sun", and finally solve the puzzle.

It did not, instead, amongst various other meanings for tha, was also the meaning of "the disc of the moon".

So at this stage, though it might seem desirably poetic and redolent with meaning for the word hatha  to contain the meanings of opposites as in sun and moon, I have not yet found evidence that it does, apart from all the yoga sites saying so.

If any readers can shed more light, please do let us know.

Sankalpa - Recipe of the month

This article was first published in the Yoga Spirit Studios newsletter "On the Mat" in December 2013

At this time of year you might be feeling that you have had enough food to last awhile. So, this month I am stretching the definition of "recipe", and the Sanskrit word "Sankalpa" meaning "intent or resolution" - taking Sankalpa to be a recipe for successful living. 

 When we make a New Year's resolution, it tends to be something that identifies a perceived shortcoming in ourselves resolving to do better in the coming year.

If I say "I will lose weight", "I will exercise more", "I will give up smoking" I am really saying "I am inadequate and there is something I need to do to be more deserving".

The Sankalpa of our yoga practice is a little different to the New Year's resolution.

"You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny."
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.5 tr Eknath Eswaran

The Sankalpa may take some meditation to discover, but once you bring it to the surface, and repeat it often, it will inform your will and thereby your actions. By identifying it, it becomes your reality.

That is why we always phrase the Sankalpa as if it is our present reality, affirmation style, and we identify how it feels in our body when it is our present Truth, thus affirming not just in words but with our whole body and mind.

So the Sankalpa is a deeper resolution than the typical New Year's Resolution. How to find it?

It will reveal itself to you as you practice the niyama (personal observances of the Yoga Sutras), Svadhyaya, which means "self-study or "self-inquiry". One way is to not stop at "I hate myself because I am over-weight, so my New Year's Resolution is to lose weight - again", but to inquire of yourself, what lies beneath all of this and what is the real deep, driving desire that may be manifesting in the conditions that cause your body to be at greater than optimal weight, and your aversion that makes you wish your body to be other than it is.

Let yourself become really quiet to allow this self-inquiry to unfold.

Underlying the New Year's Resolution statements there may be additional layers, such as "when I am overweight (unfit, smoking) I do not feel whole and healthy", so the real intention could be rephrased as "I will be more whole and healthy". So perhaps your Sankalpa might become "I am whole, healthy and perfect just as I am".

Strictly speaking a Sankalpa would remain unchanged until it is fully realised, when a new one might be set. But as it might take some inquiry to really discover your Sankalpa, you might take the one that immediately arises as the working model, but it may yet change as you also continue your self-inquiry.

Affirm your Sankalpa at the beginning of your day, your yoga practice, your meditation, but also invite your Sankalpa to re-emerge at the end of the day or practice. Listen carefully to the way in which your Sankalpa presents itself when you are in deep meditation or relaxation. As it bubbles up from the depths it will have Truth and power; it may present a little differently, and it is good practice to take careful note of that and adjust your Sankalpa accordingly.

So why not this new year, start working with Sankalpa as an alternative to a New Year's Resolution.

Restorative Yoga - why it is an essential part of yoga practice

Article first published in the Yoga Spirit Studios newsletter on 1 March 2012

Our modern life is full of stresses, and our mind and spirit steadily become more wound up. I have noticed a trend these days towards a market place demand for more and more power yoga - yoga done fast and furious, working up a sweat, as if yoga were just another aerobic exercise regime.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a regular aerobic workout to get the heart pumping and to build fitness. In fact it is highly recommended for most people. However, to me the practice of yoga is so much more; it offers an opportunity to move out of the stress response and into a more wholesome relationship with myself and the world. It also opens and stretches the body, but for that the practice needs to slow down a bit.

Restorative yoga really comes into its own in this regard. Practiced with the assistance of props to allow the body to slowly open in a long held position, restorative yoga switches the autonomic nervous system on to the parasympathetic - that aspect where we relax and de-stress.

At least one session of restorative practice is recommended per week in your yoga regime. More good news is that it is so wonderfully yummy that it is easy to love, and it can be practised by beginners as easily as more advanced students.

It is also a very good idea to become familiar with restorative practice so that at times of stress or ill health in our lives, we have the tools to turn to for powerful help and healing.

Having blankets, bolsters and other props at home so that you can practise there is a very good idea, but to learn the art of restorative practice it is advised to join a master teacher in restorative work. At Yoga Spirit Studios we are blessed at Yoga Spirit to have Vanessa teaching this beautiful healing yoga every Wednesday evening at 7.30 pm in the studio room. If you haven't tried it yet, please treat yourself to a regular class with her and learn how to really take care of yourself. And once a quarter you can join a longer, two hour practice at our Big Relax.