Happy Diwali

It's been ages since I posted something about yoga. I often think about writing about yoga or about a particular experience in a class or a random thought that somehow I manage to connect to my practice, and by the time I get down to clicking on "New Post", I lose that spark or that energy that I was so full of a minute ago. And I don't like writing for the sake of writing, hence the absence from this blog for so long.

I've said this before, but I'll repeat it, off late my practice has taken a softer dimension. I still appreciate it for the awesome workout that it is, hot ashtanga at Hom or even a hot vinyasa at Pure still leaves me sweating (and it's not just the heat) after 60 minutes. But what I appreciate more and more is the way i feel after a class, and it's not the exercise high that leaves you high strung after a workout. For me, lately, it's been how open my heart feels after a lovely yoga class. I feel capable of so much more goodness, like I have all this love that I can now share with everyone I meet, like very few things or people or instances can take that openness away from me after my class. I feel rooted, almost as if the earth is holding me, like there is no way I can stumble or fall, because my feet are one with the ground that I stand on.

My asanas feel more like a dance, like my body is an instrument and I'm playing it, with my teacher conducting the orchestra. Even in the most static and non-dynamic of classes, I can see myself dances through postures. To a large extent, it's to do with what I've been reading also. I'll write in detail about the books I've read about embracing the real you (however cliched that sounds), about letting go -  things that don't serve you, and I am better off for it. I wasn't this person who would forgive so easily, or take things as they come or appreciate life, people and situations for what they are and not compare them to this idea of the 'ideal' that I had in my head. My practice helped me be humble. If you listen to your body carefully, it tells you things. There are days when I can do a perfect standing bow pose and there are days when I can't even seem to stand in tree for half a second . Or irrespective of how many ever times I do an asana, i will always learn something new about it from either a new teacher or a new studio or just even a new day on the mat. It's humbling that experience, of always encountering things you don't know. There's so much out there in the world that you  can learn from.

A part of me also wonders if this stability and grounded-ness comes from my universal mandala practice. Thanks to pure, I do a lot more of it. And Michael is a great teacher, his teaching style forces you to feel the subtle parts of your practice and not just twist your body into a hundred-thousand asanas. In fact, most of his classes have a single set, that we repeat some 10 times. so when your body knows what it's doing, your mind doesn't have to focus all it's energies on concentrating on the instructions and so it's free to relax and calm down for a change in life. I love it when I'm in that zone during my universal practice. I'm no where close to being decent at it, leave alone good, but that will come, with continued practice, that will come. What i am happy about is the mental space it takes me to, the minute we start flowing.

This spiritual sense of yoga also in some way comes from the fact that I do a lot more meditation and breath work (pranayama) with my practice at Pure. That's one thing I wish Hom did more. It seems such a beautiful place to meditate (as compared to Pure), because of the small size, but somehow chanting and meditation is not Hom's philosophy it seems, so we hardly do it there.

In fact one of the things we did do, which was brilliant was this candle light flow with Leigh at Hom at the Orchard  studio. We did repetitions of a particular set, right, left, right left, right, left and then did some back-bends & forward bends and that's it. and It was such a beautiful class. I walked out of that class feeling I had woken up from a 2-day sleep :) The room was dark except for tea-light candles near the windows and around the corners of the room. And it was by no means an easy practice, i was sweating profusely by the end of it, but it was just absolutely lovely. There were a couple of other things that revealed themselves to me in that class and I remember making a mental note to go back and jot them down either here or in my yoga journal, but didn't end up doing it :(

There was this other time, when I walked into Michael's Universal class (not mandala) and we again did 6 sets of a particular flow, very basic. In fact I think it was the classic traditional sun salutations and then we sat down to do some pranayama and  then Michael started telling us stories, his experiences and philosophies and theories about yoga, life, meditation and the asana practice. And then we ended up doing a little meditation and chanting. And that's it. In a 90 minute (what's supposed to be a physically intensive class) we did 20 mins of asana practice and the rest was just listening to what he had to share and meditation. And I loved it. I won't say i did not miss working out, but the class had given me so much more than a regular "yoga class" . So i had this huge smile on my face when I walked out. And when I met Michael later as I was heading out of the studio, he asked me how I liked the session  and I praised him for a wonderful class. But he seemed dejected, because there were loads of folks who hated the class it seems. I mean, I can see how you can be disappointed if you came in expecting a workout and ended up listening to stories from ancient times. But then, the whole point of yoga is to live in the moment, to learn as much as you can from what time is teaching you here and now. I feel sad because those you didn't like the class must have spent 70 minutes wondering how bad a class this was turning out to be. And what could have been an enriching experience, ended up being a negative one only because you judged the situation and then stuck to your judgement and throughout the class, your mind kept reinforcing what you had fed it in the first place.

This is something else that I learned in the books that I read, a common theme in all books, seems to be how everything, all our feelings, actions, thoughts, words are all caused by this one initial stimulus and once you've come into contact with that stimulus, your mind immediately starts working on how to categorize and judge and box this new information into compartments and fields that you already have in your mind. And then post that, any interaction with this new experience is colored with your perceptions about it. So then you are not really living the experience, or "living in the moment"  but just re-living your perceptions, albeit packaged differently.

The other book that I read, took it to another level to say, that everything we encounter is impermanent. It's here now and it's gone the very next second. And supposedly this concept of impermanence disturbs people. I mean, I understand how and i can see why so, but when I was reading about it, I felt like it's the natural thing to happen. Every inhale, has to be followed by an exhale, the pulse in heart rises and falls and then rises back, only to fall again. The time that just went by, will never come back. And eventually life will end with death, you'll go on to another world or not (depending on what your beliefs about afterlife are), while the people you leave behind on earth, continue to exist. I've contemplated death, and in one of my other blogs have written about what my last thoughts would be if I were ever confronted with death. But I don't take away "acceptance of death as a natural inevitable occurring" as my learning from these works. Instead, what I did seem to connect to was the broader understanding about the impermanence of things. Stuff like, how what causes you to be angry or upset or hurt at one particular moment, will eventually pass and you'll be fine again. I also feel like I relate to it in the sense of "this too shall pass". I'm obviously at a phase in life where I am looking for these things maybe, which if why I find myself relating to these concepts, or seeking for these concepts in everything I encounter. Whatever the cause/phase, it helps me realise the significance and the insignificance of it all. About giving my all to what I am doing currently, but also knowing that what's important to me today, may not mean anything to me at all tomorrow.

This post is turning out to be everything that i've thought about in the last couple of months coming together, in not the most coherent of ways!

The last thing I will talk about is my class with Leigh Khoo, my teacher at Hom yoga yesterday. It is Diwali. The festival of lights and I had signed up for 2 yoga classes at the Hom Raffles place  : Yin and Hot flow. I woke up in the morning with a smile on my face, I love Diwali. My love for the festival definitely needs another post, all I'll say here is i look forward to it, the way i look forward to my birthday in the year. Yes, I'm superficial like that. My birthday is a HUGE moment in the year for me. I'll be happy throughout july, like how I'll be glowing all through the month that houses Diwali. So i woke up and reached for my phone and played some of my favorites songs and then made myself a brilliant cup of tea, got ready for yoga and set out. It was raining, but I didn't care. I had an umbrella, but I didn't need it. It was almost like the rain was lifting me up yesterday. I waltzed  into the yoga studio with a song on my lips and smile on my face and a loud "Happpy Diwali". A friend, who joined me for yoga eventually, shared this with our yoga group on WhatsApp :

"The festival spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance good over evil and hope over despair."

And then my practice had a new meaning. At the start of the class Leigh also shared this quote by Martin Luther King Jr. with us :

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that"

Her theme for the day was opening your heart up to everything that is positive and good in the world and sending out as much positive energy out into the world as we take in. Yin was lovely of course, Leigh's Yin can only be so. My muscles and connective tissues were nice and open before the hot flow class with Leigh later. The weather  in Singapore was so beautiful and the Raffles Place studio is a beautiful venue to do a non-hot class in, because you can open up the windows and the air wafts in hugging you as you flow through the asanas. So I thought what if we did a vinyasa flow today instead?!  The combination of the RP studio, Leigh's class, Vinyasa Flow and the rain is just too good to be true. Sigh. Unfortunately, you can't randomly change classes as you wish, so since the schedule said Hot Flow, we had to stick to doing hot flow. But she made it less like a hot class and more restorative as well. She started again with the quote from above. And then she asked us to do something, which I believe changed my practice for the day.

Usually before she begins the class she tells us to set an intention or dedicate our practice to something. But yesterday she told us to think about something, someone or an instance in life that makes us warm and happy from inside, that lights up our being and drives away the darkness, fear, pain and sorrow. She asked us to hold onto that feeling and that thing/person and flow in our practice with that. To breathe in that beauty and glow and breathe out everything else. And I did. I held something in my heart and flowed. And at some point it stopped feeling like a hot class. Nothing mattered, except me and my mat and my practice and what I had in my heart. I could feel the warmth and the glow inside me, I heard my breath go in and out, and I danced, with joy. Haha, even the dreaded chair pose seemed effortless. Now that is an achievement.

So that's it, my post for the day. Journey, sometimes seems like a very cliched term, but since I started this blog literally with a 'journey', i am allowed to use it as much as I want in my posts. I'll end this one by saying, my journey continues, teaching me new things everyday, every second i am on the mat, and sometimes off it too.

namaste.