should / must and expression

(this is just a picture of the mosquito net above my bed. i just think it's cool and so it's here!)

I've stared at this blank screen for a long time today. Something in me tells knows that I want to write, but as soon as I try to catch all these different words that float into my head to put them into a sentence that makes sense, I fail miserably. Maybe because there's so many different strands to writing what's in my head right now. And I am also trying to make sure I get to bed on time and finish homework (need to teach tomorrow, so have to theme and plan a class) and write this post. So I decided to write about how Im not being able to write, and hence this start.

But I now, kinda know. Emily shared this beautiful article (the crossroads of should and must) with us before we came out here and I happened to read it on my way to the airport in Singapore on Jan 3rd. On that note, tomorrow it'll be a week since I've been here (hurrah to myself!) It's a lovely read. This lady talks about choosing between Should and Must. And how "should" is what the society expects us to do. Get a proper education, a well paying job, a house maybe, find someone to settle down with, get married, have children etc. The list goes on. It's why everyone expects you to do. As a 26 year old Indian girl, it's the questions aunties at weddings ask me, always. Must, on the other hand, is what you are born to do, or what you believe is your calling, or that tiny voice that says to you - that is the elixir of my life! The article talks about how often in life, must is not what we go for, because it is almost, well not almost, it is often, synonymous with jumping off a cliff! But how when you slowly start choosing must in various areas of your life, you realise that why would anyone be choosing should in the first place! It kinda rhymes with my themes of vulnerability and love, that when you realise the power and the beauty in being vulnerable or in seeing love in everything or in choosing must when you can, you'll never be or do anything else.

When I was coming for this training, I encountered two kinds of people. My friends from the world of yoga, my teachers and people I practiced with, my colleagues at work who have delved into meditation and its healing powers and some very close friends who have a genuine sense of understanding about what yoga means to me. The other non-yogi  people in my life and people who look at yoga as a form of exercise (which is absolutely ok btw, whatever rocks your boat!), think of my going away to Bali as a 'holiday'. And I have a tough time telling them that it's not a holiday and that i won't be chilling on a beach and walking across rice-fields taking photographs of the Balinese way of life. That I am actually putting myself through what has the potential of being a roller coaster ride : emotionally and mentally. It often makes me think of the categories or boxes we have in life for the stuff we do. Almost like, this is 'fun', this is 'work' and hence 'not fun'. This is enjoyable, and this is painful and I get through it only because it pays the bills. And I've often had a tough time relating to the phrase work-life balance. But then that might just be me. Because I am fortunate enough to be in job that I enjoy and happen to be working with people I love working with. Or maybe because I have grown up seeing my parents loving their work and diving into it with everything they have. So this concept of "this is life" and "this is work (and hence not life?)" is a little difficult for me to digest.

So I try correcting them when they use words like "vacation", "retreat", "holiday", but i think I will give up in sometime, plus, I know what this is to me, and the people I love, know how important this is to me, the rest shouldn't matter right? It ties in very nicely with what the article talks about. About how powerful and how beautiful it would be if :

                                  Your Job = Your career = Your Calling

Today at class we spoke about what the term "expression' means to us and what have we learnt of expression in our life so far. It was a part of the morning contemplation and self-practice. We had write about what expression means to us. Here's what I jotted down in my notebook:

I feel like expression is the outward projection or the radiance of the inherent beauty in everything. It is the lotus flower blooming or the sunflower facing the sun or the water cascading down a waterfall. It's in our gestures that bring out the beauty in relationships : a hug, a kiss, a goodbye wave. For me expression is when I have the freedom of doing something I really love, something as simple as laughing my heart out to baking.


I wrote a lot, because well, I love to write, but this was more or less the gist of it. Expression is allowing yourself to be the real you. To show to the world what you're feeling at a particular moment : it's in a shout, it's a smile, it's in a sigh. It can be dramatic or it can be subtle. When I've very happy, I usually put the music on full blast and dance to it, as if no one was watching. Expression is having the freedom to do that in public :) well, not public, but you know what I mean.Almost as if, if you were not allowed to do those things, you'll suffocate and die! As a teacher, it is important to understand the meaning and importance of expressing yourself through your practice and to help your student do the same. Often when I'm in a lovely mood and things are going well at work and the radio played my favorite song on my way to my studio, my practice will be flamboyant. My suryanamaskars will be exaggerated, my hand gestures will resemble a dancer's, i might even have a smile on my face as i flow through the sequence, irrespective of how tough it is! On the other hand, if I'm grumpy and feel less than open in my heart and life, I would express my asanas very very differently, my warrior poses might look angry, almost like a warrior with a sword in his hand, baying for blood. I'm not even kidding.

It's a huge part of my practice, and which is why when Emily and Nanna spoke about it today, I could relate to it completely. Expressing your asanas is the last principle in these set of principles we are studying - the principles that make up any pose. From grounding and setting a foundation, to using muscular energy to come into the pose, to use two different sets of energies to stabilize yourself and finally getting the organic energy flow through your body, letting you express the asana the way you want to.  Almost like creating a container, hugging your asana and then lifting yourself up to expressing what you're feeling there and then. Making you enjoy more fully, that which you practice! Emily tied this in to the Shiva-Shakti philosophy saying, it's so important to first set your foundation, for if muscular energy does not act as a container for the organic energy, you'd be all over the place with this outpouring of expression! So one acts as the bowl or cocoon within which your shakti can say : come take me!

The last thing i want to share in today's post is my meditation experience. Emily is slowly and steadily increasing the how much we meditate, stretching it by 5 minutes every day. Today, after the japa (repeating a mantra or the name of the divine) and pranayama techniques, I was all set for meditation, I often start sliding into it halfway through pranayama. Often when I meditate, my body jerks, as if trying to catch itself from falling forward : usually i experience it in my torso, often as if my necks is about to split into two and fall away from my body. I used to think this is a sign of falling asleep, so I would often berate myself for falling asleep, even though in my mind and consciousness I am very awake and following the teacher's instructions and definitely not sleeping! Today, someone asked Emily what these jerks meant, and she said these are good experiences, and are symbolic of the energy moving through your body and that touches your mind and brain and other parts of your body. And that it is not something we should be scared of. Well, I wasn't scared, I was just wondering if I was napping, when I shouldn't be. So, it's good to know that i'm actually working on my meditation and progressing ! It was a very good practice today, I came out of it very very refreshed and almost like waking up from a deep sleep.

The other two classes today were studying human anatomy with Chris Kummer, he is an amazing teacher. I'll wrote about it in the next post maybe. And there was voice with Octavio Salvado, where we sang and sang and sang. Again, both of these topics need individual posts for me to say everything I want to say ! You can find their bios here. And I should be getting to preparing for my class now! It's 10 pm already!

I'll leave with writing this last quote from the article I spoke about :

"The two most important days of your life are the days you were born and the day you find out why" ~ Mark Twain

नमस्ते