Shiva's Turn

There is a similarity in the cycle of all things.  There is a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Creation, sustainance, dissolution. 

In yoga, we learn of the Hindu deities who represent these things.  

Bhramha is said to be the creator.  He is the beginning of the beginning. The one who sparks something out of nothing. 

Vishnu is said to be the sustainer.  Vishnu's job takes the longest.  He's responsible for the middle. This is where so much work happens.  

Then comes Shiva, the destroyer.  Shiva is said to signify endings.  He bounces in and leaves a wake of destruction

When I first learned of Shiva, he sounded terrifying.  But, Shiva has just danced through my life and I have come to fully appreciate the power of his destruction.  Without the endings, there is no room to experience that moment of stillness before Brahmha gets to work again. 

Last week, left a job where I had been for over 7 years and finished yoga teacher training all at the same time.  It has been the culmination of a stressful working environment and the tremendous amount if energy that goes into the birthing of a yoga teacher.  For now, I appreciate this breath of peace.  The new job will undoubtedly become busier and I will, hopefully, get busy balancing practice and teaching obligations. Without the dissolution or destructionof life as I knew it, there would be too much noise to hear the subtle and glorious OM of silence. 

Is that land?

When I started Yoga Teacher Training, I was POSITIVE that I would blog throughout.  I clearly had NO IDEA how time consuming it would be.  I was bold, naive and oh so very wrong.

Like a sailor who has been out at sea for many months, drifting with the winds and waves, I've almost forgotten what solid ground feels like.  But, I'm beginning to see birds in the sky, which means that land isn't far off.

Jai!

Street Talk

"I choose to be with him.  I choose to be happy."

Walking out of a parking structure, I overheard a woman say this.  She was talking on the phone.  There was no context or body language cue, so I don't quite know what she meant.  In honor of Valentine's Day, I am going to choose to hear empowerment and sweetness. <3

Yoga Teacher Training is...

Hard

Fulfilling

Exhausting

Energizing

Time consuming

Rage Inspiring

Really Hard

Awe Inspiring

Beautiful

Fear Inducing

So Much Work

Burning

Sacred

Opening

Present

Perfect

Oh my aching...

"What would you like to work on today? Any body parts or poses that you are really dying to practice?"

Some yoga teachers ask this at the beginning of class.  It sounds all welcoming, but it's a trap. One of the skills of a great vinyasa yoga teacher is sequencing.  There are some styles of yoga where the poses are always the same and in the same order.  In some of those styles, how you get into a posture has no bearing on the posture itself.  Vinyasa yoga is different.

Vinyasa means to place in a specific order.  In vinyasa, the order in which the teacher places the poses is called sequencing.  The transitions between the poses matter just as much as the poses themselves. Planning a vinyasa yoga class requires skill and care.   For an experienced teacher, this may not be an incredibly long process, but it happens nonetheless.  So, when a teacher asks those fateful questions,  "What would you like to work on today? Any body parts or poses that you are really dying to practice?", we know that they are open to getting a little creative and maybe a little daring.  My muscles start to ache just thinking about what might come next.

In a recent class, the results were hips, core and inversions.   Those three parts actually go together quite nicely and the teacher was somewhat of an inversions expert, so it turned out great.  Then the next night at yoga teacher training, we spent three hours working on teaching poses that work the hips and core in preparation for inversions. It was awesome, but man, it made my everything ache!

ABC's and so on and so forth

First attempt at writing the "alphabet" in Devanagari!

This is the equivalent of writing your ABC's.  It's the beautiful written script of Sansrkit, which I have butchered enough for one evening.  So fun!

Grounding Muladhara

 Chakra. Cha-kra. The first sound  is like the ch in cheese.  As my sister noted, "I always thought it was shakra."  Me too, sister.

As part of teacher training, I am reading Wheels of Life by Anodea Judith, PhD. It's a thick volume in which Judith takes us on a journey through the swirling energetic centers of the body. She starts with some of the basic theories about what chakras are, how they function and where anatomical features overlap with the chakra system.

This book has been the first that has really made me wonder if I want to drink the Kool-aid, or rather challenged my own belief system. I am skeptical about anything that implies that there is a spinning ball of energy controlling different aspects of my life.  That sounds like a nice little pile of happy horseshit. But, I can't help noticing the places in the book where I go, "Woah that's creepily familiar!"

One of the places that this books really resonates is the discussion of the root chakra, called muladhara. This is the chakra that is closest to the earth, located at the base of your sacrum. This is said to be the energy center for all things grounding and safety related. 

Judith talks about your right to be and your right to have.  This is such a common issue for so many of us.  Although we may have the self-awareness to know that we are struggling with taking up our own space and feeling that we have a right to have certain things, it's an intangible quality to work on. Working with the chakra system, there are tangible access points to work on these qualities.

Even through my Western lens,  I can see the benefits of exploring this system.  At best, the chakra system is, as described.  At worst,  I've found a new way to interact with my body and spend some time consciously aware of grounding and feelings of safety.  Either way, there is something to be gained from studying the chakra system.