Category Archives: Yoga Teacher Training

Letting Go in a Different Way – A New Perspective on Yoga Classes

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The class I observed on Wednesday, and the class that I took today (both excellent classes – thanks Eric and Micki) have me thinking about in class behavior, and my own responses to it…

Many many months ago, I wrote a blog post about yoga “rules.” At the time, I was really thinking more about the big issues of yoga than the smaller “how to just be a good class citizen” kind of rules.  But, I remember that one of the things that had gotten me started on that post was recalling just how much some behavior bothered me back when I first started taking public classes.

Having done all my yoga at home, my first few public classes were quite an eye opener.  The poses were challenging. I had a hard time keeping up.  We were all really close together.  And, some people were just not all that polite.  The lack of politeness ranged from the snotty looks given to new students, to arriving very late and making much commotion setting up, to ringing cell phones, to space infringement, and so on.  I was surprised, having somehow expected yogis to all be very spiritual and “good.”

Over time, I became much more focused on what was happening on my mat, and that helped me to let go of what everyone else was, or wasn’t, doing.  Sure, I still noticed the person who wandered through the room talking loudly when everyone else was in seated meditation, but for the most part, I was in my little zone.  Even when I did notice behavior that I thought wasn’t so cool, it seemed like it wasn’t my issue and that letting it just pass by me was the best course of action (or non-action).

Recently, however, things have changed, because I’m in teacher training.  Suddenly, I’m seeing class from a different angle, both literally (as I observe classes and take my turns doing little mini-teaches in training) and mentally (as I begin to consider what is going on from the position of a teacher).  And, I have found myself newly annoyed by things I thought I had gotten over.  Now when someone comes in late, chats with a neighbor during class, won’t follow instructions, doesn’t maintain space rules, and so on, I feel bothered, not so much from my student position, but from the perspective of a person teaching the class.

To a degree, I suppose this is appropriate and expected, because there will be things that I have to manage as a teacher that I don’t have to as a student.  The pair on the side who just cannot stop chattering will have to be dealt with so that they don’t completely disrupt the practices of everyone else in the room.  The person who is insistent on doing poses in his/her own way but who is actually engaging in risky physical behavior will have to be addressed.

And yet, even from the perspective of a teacher, I will need to be able to let go of some things.  Someone (and maybe the same person many times) is going to be late.  Someone is going to be a little overly enthusiastic with the “sounds of relaxation”  (yeah, you know the sounds I mean).   Someone is going to decide that he/she just needs to do his/her own thing and be unmatched with everyone else for the whole class.  There may always be a little part of me that finds such things bothersome, but I will need to be able to let them go, or risk getting in my own way and thereby disrupting not only my equanimity, but the mood of the practice for everyone.

It’s interesting to see how my perspective and position has evolved over time.  While at first I was ignoring problematic behavior just out of politeness (one way of letting it go), later I was just not really noticing it much due to my focus (a different way of letting go), and now I’m consciously deciding what can be overlooked in the spirit of the positive energy in the room (another way of letting go).  It’s not exactly a fish becoming a mammal, but its certainly my own little evolutionary process 🙂

Namaste,

L

Isvarapranidhana and Siddhartha

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In yoga teacher training this week, we discussed the final niyama, isvarapranidhana.  Isvarapranidhana refers to the idea of surrendering to the divine.  Coincidentally, the day before I had read the book Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.   In this novel, the main character, Siddhartha, embarks upon a quest to find the divine, and to establish how he might best surrender to it (that’s quite the bullion cube explanation of this story, but it works).  As we talked about this niyama in class, and as I considered it afterwards, and during my time observing a class today, I thought about the book and how I might utilize it to work through my own understandings of isvarapranidhana.

For those who haven’t read the book, a little synopsis (plot spoiler ahead).  Siddhartha is the son of a Brahmin (not to be confused with Siddhartha Gautama – or the Buddha, though a contemporary in the story), very skilled in the practices and philosophies of the Brahmin and a “star” of the community, but he is not confident that what he has learned has really allowed him to fully see, or surrender to, the divine.  So, he leaves the family seat and becomes an ascetic, giving up all of the pleasures of the physical form.  Eventually, after much time passes, he encounters the Buddha and his teachings, and, though compelled, feels that what he perceives as the dualism of the philosophy is ultimately unsatisfactory.  But, this encounter convinces him that the ascetic path is not helping him to reach the divine either, and there is something to be said for the glories and wonder of the physical.  He becomes a trader (and lover of a very “learned” woman) and enters a worldly and refined life.  This too proves to be not the answer for which his heart is searching.  In confusion, he leaves the city and wanders, finally alighting in the company of a simple ferryman he had met years before.  As he stays with the ferryman and becomes his apprentice, he finds the answers he has been seeking in the voice of the river and the way in which it speaks of the unity of all things (the Om).

The story is interesting to me as a story, but also as a parable of the life of seeking “TRUTH” and the divine, and the ultimate slipperiness of those ideas.  As Hesse writes in the text, “When someone is seeking…it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything…because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.”  This feels right to me.  When we hold on to one TRUTH and one reality, how can we hope to learn anything beyond or in addition to it?  If I already know what “bliss” or “enlightenment” will feel like, what happens if I’m wrong and I actually achieve bliss?  Will I even notice that I have?

While the point is made in the text that we have to stop looking so hard for what is the divine, because it’s not something we can find and claim and own, in the end, the experiential world provides Siddhartha with some clues about where divinity exists in unity.  “The river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth…in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future…Siddhartha the boy, Siddhartha the mature man and Siddhartha the old man [are] only separated by shadows, not through reality…Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence.” Nice.  Time is a human concept. We put labels on things and place some in the past and some in the future.  What if it isn’t a line?  What if all that was and all that will be is now?  Then the beauty and unity and wonder of every thing is in every thing. Yes?  The divisions between are ours – our constructs.

(lifting a stone) “This,” he said playing with it, “is a stone, and will, after a certain time, perhaps turn into soil, and will turn from soil into a plant or animal or human being. In the past, I would have said: This stone is just a stone, it is worthless, it belongs to the world of the Maja; but because it might be able to become also a human being and a spirit in the cycle of transformations, therefore I also grant it importance. Thus, I would perhaps have thought in the past. But today I think: this stone is a stone, it is also animal, it is also god, it is also Buddha, I do not venerate and love it because it could turn into this or that, but rather because it is already and always everything– and it is this very fact, that it is a stone, that it appears to me now and today as a stone, this is why I love it and see worth and purpose in each of its veins and cavities, in the yellow, in the gray, in the hardness, in the sound it makes when I knock at it, in the dryness or wetness of its surface. There are stones which feel like oil or soap, and others like leaves, others like sand, and every one is special and prays the Om in its own way, each one is Brahman, but simultaneously and just as much it is a stone, is oily or juicy, and this is this very fact which I like and regard as wonderful and worthy of worship.”

So yeah, what can it mean to take this idea and apply it to the notion of isvarapranidhana?  Well, that’s a challenge, because, as Hesse also says (through Siddhartha), as soon as we put such ideas into words they loose something (which I’m definitely experiencing as I write this post).  Something here speaks to me, however.  It’s the same something, though expressed in a different way and with more emphasis on detachment and less on love, in Buddhist teaching.  While I struggle with the idea of giving up my efforts to any particular god or gods, there is something in this notion of unity and oneness and completeness (yep, having trouble finding words for it because all of our words are based on temporal reality and division).

As Siddhartha reaches his ultimate state of understanding in the text, we learn that he is “one who is no longer confronted with conflict of desires, who has found salvation, who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrendering himself to the stream, belonging to the unity of things.”  That, I think, I can get behind.  Of course, maybe the question is how.  But, maybe it’s not, as well.  Because in seeking a way to surrender, perhaps we fail to really surrender…

Something to ponder (or not).

Namaste,

L

Svadhyaya – Sad Yogi

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Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.
~ Carl Jung

This week in yoga teacher training we are focusing on svadhyaya, or self-study.  I will admit that self-study isn’t much of a stretch for me, which you probably already know if you read this blog.  I’m prone to a (maybe excessive) level of self-reflection and analysis (and I suppose my characterization of it as maybe excessive is sort of meta-svadhyaya).  So, I wasn’t shocked to find myself thinking today a lot about where I am emotionally and trying to observe it.

The last few days I’ve been feeling sad.  Some of it may be due to work-related stress, but I know that is not all it is because I’ve had more stressful days at work that didn’t affect me like this.  Some of it may be due to the cold; I’m not at my best in the darker/colder months.  Some may be related to just hormonal cycles or the effects of recent medical treatments.  Whatever the reason, I’m sad.  I have found myself near tears on several occasions.

There isn’t anything particularly interesting about the fact that I’m feeling sad.  As Jung correctly notes in the quote above, sadness is a part of our lives.  It’s inevitable.  What is of interest to me today is that, when I feel sad and I don’t have a really good reason (like someone being really ill, losing my job, a family tragedy), I also feel very silly and guilty.  Hmmm… (more svadhyaya – I say hmmm a lot when I’m not sure what else to say and I like parentheses).

Why do I feel so guilty about being sad?  I don’t feel guilty about being happy.  Both are just emotions and neither is worse than the other, right?  My best guess is that it is related to cultural and family socialization.  I grew up in a culture dominated by a “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” philosophy that doesn’t have much use for being down and tends to treat it as something that must be fixed – just watch television for 60 minutes and see how many commercials you see for psychotropics.  “Bad” emotions are suspicious.  I also grew up in a household with an adult who experienced serious and prolonged bouts of depression, resulting in hospitalization on several occasions.  Even as child, I knew that wasn’t considered normal, and saw how people pretended not to notice, suggesting to me that not only was it abnormal, but it was shameful.

Yeah, so I internalized all of that and I’m not good with sad.  I’m not even good with other people’s sad, unless they are very small people or it’s related to something specific.  It’s something to work on, and by “work” I don’t mean doing something but doing nothing, just observing the emotion and letting it go.

How do you respond to your own blue periods? (Yes, that’s a Picasso reference, but you get extra credit if you are thinking about the Smithereens right now)

Namaste,

L