Going back to my sankalpas with equanimity

Wow. Its been ages since I've written something on this blog. Actually, it's been ages since I've written on any of my blogs. A combination of things : being busy with work, travel, hunting for and moving into a new apartment, more travel. Fortunately my practice hasn't suffered all that much. On some days, I go only once (instead of my usual twice a day practice), but I made sure I get some yoga in. As always, I'd stumble on these massive realisations during my practice and make a mental note of sharing some of those eureka moments here or make a story out of it for my other blog, but I just didn't around to doing it. I also didn't bake as much and that actually would prick me. A part of me knew I was unsettled to a certain degree, because I wasn't baking as much, well I wasn't baking at all. And since I consider it my meditation, in a way I wasn't meditating. 

I moved into my new place last week, and the pic above is from my new house. It's lovely and i made a resolve to bake more. And here i am, baking one of my favourite things to bake : Banana bread. The house is flooded with a banana + vanilla + honey fragrance, my own essential oil formula :) And as usual, while i wait for it to bake, I opened my blog and decided to write (another one of my resolves with the new place).

When I look back at the year so far, i can't believe that so much happened and it was all packed into 5 months. It's almost as if, I did the teacher training and cleared the tests, and came back to Singapore as a certified yoga teacher, and THAT is when my real test as a teacher and as a yogi began. I teach a few friends of mine at work, and it's lovely to see them progress week on week and it's also lovely to see how much i enjoy being a teacher. I overcame my initial fear of standing in front of a room, listening to my own voice, guiding people through a physical, mental and emotional practice. Yoga for me, for a long time now, has been so much more than just a physical practice, so even though I am asking people to get into a certain asana, I hope for them, their mat means as much as it means to me. And it's completely ok, if initially, yoga is just a physical exercise for you, but the beauty of yoga is to slowly uncover it's true potential to change your life, for the better. I still remember when I started ripping the covers off of a regular hot yoga practice and see it reveal it's colours to me and being blown away by it. My practice was never the same after that. 

In my first few classes, I would always share a my sankalpa or my intention with my students, share a quote that touched me, something to do with my intention for the week/day, and encourage them to take a moment to set one for themselves : it can be anything from dedicating your practice to something or someone or just something as simple as, I will count until 10 whenever i'm confronted with a difficult situation before reacting. And at some point, because there was so much going on at work and my class plan ended up being a last min scribbling on paper, I didn't include the intention bit. And at the end of every class, I would think about how I could've used the class to share something, close to my heart and plan a class around that sankalpa. 

And day by day, i even stopped setting an intention for myself. Someone once told me, or it is a saying also i think : you should sit in meditation for 20 minutes every day, unless you are too busy, then you should sit for an hour. And although i have a pretty consistence practice, it tends to fall away here and there. And there is absolutely no excuse for it. absolutely no excuse. I need to get back to setting an intention. Frankly a part of me is scared, because it's almost like the universe is out there to test you. I remember once setting an intention to start accepting certain parts of my past, and that week, the world/god/universe, call it what you may, threw huge pats of my past back at me, and i was left with "you've got to be kidding me, this week of all weeks?" Truth be told, it scared me and i stopped setting an intention because i didn't know what life would throw at me. But then, where's the fun in that, the whole point in setting an intention, is to work through things that are tough for you and the fact that this higher being recognises and is aiding me and guiding me in m journey, is great and not something to be scared of.

And so, I woke up one day, and decided to take the day as it comes and deal with things with equanimity. And things were going great, I was dealing with a lot of things at work, there was a lot to get done, I also needed to go back to my old house to get get some stuff done before handing over the house, and then come back to work, finish more work and then teach a yoga class. In between all this running around, I sat down with a friend to just sit together to work, and then boom, i felt someone had taken the wind out of my lungs. Something happened and I lost all sense of balance, and had to literally close my eyes and search inside of myself for my breath, and it took me a few secs to find it in there, I caught it and held onto it like I was floating in the middle of the ocean and someone had thrown me a life raft. And when i opened my eyes, I was still as unsettled.i had work to get done, so I put my head down and kept going. And shared what i had felt with two close friends from work. And then this paragraph i had read in a book called : Meditation for the love of it, came back to me. And I remember sharing it on Google+ so I looked through my posts and finally found it. And that's when I decided that I was going to share that quote in my class that evening.

"To have the radiant, calm and unswayed balance of mind that we call equanimity is to be like the earth. All kinds of things are cast upon the earth : beautiful and ugly things, frightful and lovable things, common and extraordinary things. The earth receives it all and quietly sustains its own integrity. It is a state of peace to be able to accept things as they are. This is to be at home in our own lives. We see that this universe is much to big to hold onto., but it is the perfect size for letting go. Our hearts and minds can become that big, and we can actually let go. This is the gift of equanimity."

And it was a lovely class. When I spoke to my students and throughout the class and even through shavasana, i was speaking from within. I often step back to think about what it is that I like about teaching yoga and i realise, that in that moment, when Im teaching, im there and nowhere else. My mind, body and soul is in the class with my students, and not rushing to do other things. From the minute I sit down on that mat and ask them to close their eyes and focus on their breathing to when i get them back to that cross-legged position, with their palms in prayer in front of their hearts, I am my most true, honest, loving and pure self. And that is why i love teaching.  And even though i had regained my balance after that crazy storm i encountered, I never quite felt at peace, until i sat down on the teacher's mat and began my class that evening. That is when, I quietened my self and smiled to myself and let go. 

And that is when, I also decided to embrace my intentions and set one and stick to it, even if everything around me was trying to test it.

With that, my cake has baked : banana bread can pick me up ANYTIME! 

Namaste!