the art of balance

well, i don't know about you, but as much as i love yoga and continue to be inspired by it, i never think i am my only teacher. that's right, i still go to classes, and all the time, too! I find it insightful, inspiring, great perspective, and a chance to just practice with others. chanting, too. I love that so much. In India we all practice together, as a community. A great way to release, have fun...not have it be all instruction. Just experience a flow other than your own, someone else's rhythm. It's nice. I have begun to make myself do that in the last year when I started teaching; I wanted other perspectives.
Well, my current fabulous teacher, Michelle, went and studied with a shaman in Peru these last few weeks (what an inspiration), so I find I am going to my closest big  neighborhood yoga studio, an ashtanga studio in white river junction. Okay...so I am not the greatest fan of ashtanga, but I will say it was my first language of yoga...how I learned my building blocks. I was attracted to the challenge, the language of sanskit, and how strong I became...it was the intro to yoga for me.

Later, as I learned more about myself, I learned other styles are necessary for healing, and for different times of your life...well, at least for me. I like to keep it varied. I haven't done a decent ashtanga  challenge like that in some time, not since my stint of living in Ann Arbor, but I've always enjoyed it. So I go and take the primary series as a little valentine's day gift for myself.  Lots of forward bends and twists and binds, more so than in my personal practice. So it's nice to get that. Working on some cool arm balances are always fun, and I can be too much of a yoga wuss to try them at home some times. I dig strength the most about my body, and my endurance, so ashtanga appeals to that. Wonderful. Been great food for thought on my mat recently.

AND the teacher, susan, has just gotten back from chilling in hawaii for a month and practicing primary 2 times a day. she's teaching poses I never knew existed in primary, and 4 different stages of it.
I had to feel bad when I went this past monday when she told me she didn't have any students last week, and then this week it was just me. while it was lovely having a personal session, i had to ask myself why she didn't have anybody. Is it because of vacation, or is it because people think it's too hard, like what she thought?

I mean, why? Are we afraid to push ourselves so much so in our practices? I mean, I am all about going easy on myself--hence why i don't frequent ashtanga daily or anything, but I can commit to a once a week class.  and i really didn't want that class to heave ho just yet...I thought it served the public somehow. like those who could commit to a challenge at least once a month would have that class to go to. I guess i overestimate most. but i just wanted to send  a little shout out there. hey everybody, something's waiting that's in danger of being lost that you feel you should do, so just do it. and now.

well, enough of my shoulds...the real reason i am posting today is that I gained a bit of insight into my personal realm of balance, as well. the poses I had the most difficulty with were not inversions, arm balances, no, not the hard stuff....(well, again, don't get me wrong...it was challenging) but balancing. Holy cow. Rule number one of a good practice, and I have some serious trouble with it.

Balance is what I politically and financially ground my philosophies in; yet I cannot do it within my own body. It's something I gloss over on my way to looking rad in suspended lotus. who am i kidding... but as a building block, so instrumental. and i hold my five breaths and move on..sheesh. amazing how that was difficult for me, so I have been resolving to do more in practice. it has a profound effect on mental, breathing, you name it...holding steady, holding your center... what results, and fast, too! it begins with a strong foundation with a link to the entire core, it's lovely. releases the neck, focuses the gaze...big reminder to relax jaw and shoulders, too...really bringing your awareness to the core and your center to hold your chest up. if you want to go into doshas, it's a (ha) balancing regime. It works for me due to my fiery yet earthy nature....as fire can burn brightly on the earth or in the air, it has more control and more power if it's burned on the earth; not the volatility of air to lose control of that flame.  so stable foundation and strong core sounds about right. Vrksasana (tree), garudasana (eagle). Know it, live it, work it.

so...bring balance to your lives, don't try to perfect them. have fun and be focused. be calm and assertive. the value we bring to it definitely has a step with how we live our lives, so focus on that.

how else can you balance your life, if not on the mat? by creating, feeding your head with great books, by listening to music, by loving on nature? think about that.

hari om tat sat

om namah shivaya

 patience.

always had a problem with that one.

I think it's because i am restless; or maybe, because of the fact i long to experience everything. this desire to experience makes it hard to live in the present, a phrase commonly used as the cure all in yoga. be more present. love this moment...well, it's kinda hard when you want all moments right now, right? so i have often chalked this one up to the fact that i have no frame of reference of what 'present' even is.

but in my meditations as of late, i realize that it isn't because i don't have a frame of reference, but more or less because I am trying to get somewhere else. Always have; true confession. I practice yoga everyday as a means to get more okay with being present; but the fact of the matter is that i am 'trying' to be more okay with the present, and oddly enough it's working in some capacity. i now realize that it works so well because it engages my body to pacify the mind.

the body can reflect a daily practice; muscles become stronger, body becomes leaner. my mind, however, is still trying...even when my body is saying that i am already there. my body is even, in its own wisdom, expressing growth my mind refuses to accept; it still feels like it has to 'try' to be something else...hell, anything else. a different job, house, mate, experience, whatever. and because of my ridiculous belief that i have to try, my life is a series of attempts.

not that i am saying that my life is terrible, it isn't; but to be more at peace with myself in terms of accepting my present state of affairs in which i can only see the negative most times is a bold statement. and not just thinking about the positive things in my life, that's not quite it either...but more of a feeling of being at rest, which i think most people would like more of in their experience of living.
i have a feeling that much of my programming resulted in me taking only negative experiences in life to cause radical positive change.

but what if i decided it wasn't like that? i have systematically have been fed up with one situation to trade it in for a better one, but what if i was just at peace with what came into my hands, and continued making positive change because i wanted to?

honestly, it scares the hell out of me because it's such unusual thinking. the other day i told my fiance that having my ego was a good thing because it caused me to never look back and never go back to where I had been before. That's a statement most people would agree with; however, this ego problem is also keeping me from making certain goals a reality because I am so damn stubborn to not take a step back for the greater good, perhaps making dreams i never imagined possible for myself... so there you go.

so making positive change in my life just because i want to is a terrifying thought for me. it results in a lot of trust in the auto pilot that exists in all of us, as it is unfamiliar terrain belief-wise that i am not sure how to navigate.
it's just this habitual method of living my life has been that if anything happened that was positive it was because i had to fight my way through it, like the perpetual warrior i feel i have to be. part of my sad story I identify with, the sad story we all have that we turn to in our lives as a method of direction. for instance, i have a sad belief that struggling through my life to obtain things i want will make me appreciate it more, make others respect me more, or worse, nothing good will happen if I don't continually focus on changing...but the truth is that it's just programming. I don't have to struggle, I can just flow. Almost an unbelievable statement if it wasn't for the fact that there are people out there that do live their lives in effortless abundance in whatever capacity they wish; and through programming I have been taught to (insert negative adjective here) them.

so my goal for a bit is just to rest in what exists and to focus on what i want, and not put this ridiculous pressure on myself to try try try. i think that moment of rest i have been 'trying' to obtain through my yoga may be lying there in the center all along, and that auto-pilot i have been afraid to let handle the wheel knows a lot more than my cognitive mind does.

ooh, happy maha shivaratri! om namah shivaya, your presence is felt indeed. shiva, the great game changer...i asked, and listened...and he delivered in blog form.

bless!
-sarah