I had a great group come along for class yesterday afternoon. We did a practice designed for the legs and the âpana. We all had a good go at some standing balances, with a transition between two postures. And mostly everyone fell out of the poses at least once.
Teaching a class is a dynamic, fluid thing. I usually have drop-in groups, and of varying levels of experience. The skill of a teacher depends on being able to tailor the practice to the group and make it enjoyable and useful for everyone, while never straying from the essence of the teachings. This is called “pedagogy” and is the art of teaching.
I used the falling out of the poses to teach some yoga philosophy. I used the Sanskrit words “Ahimsa” and “Santosha” to help people understand how to deal with things like falling out of poses.
Ahimsa means non-violence. I use this word in the context of not allowing violent self-critiquing thoughts to arise. It is common to sigh in frustration when we can’t do something, say to ourselves “I always fall” or “I will never get it” or “I am useless”. We use ahimsa, which is one of the five Yamas of yoga, to practice peaceful, non-harming inner (and outer) dialogue.
Santhosha is one of the five Niyamas and of my favourite Sanskrit words. It means contentment, enjoyment more or less. Fall out of a pose? hahahah! Use Santosha to not want what others have, ie: don’t compare yourself to others, and be content with what you are.
I say:
You see, it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it. Fail and take it lightly, step wrong, then do a little shuffle and get back on the beat. Use non-violent inner dialogue to correct yourself, but not castigate. Use good humour to just take it as a little joke. Don’t put that strenuous face on in yoga, have fun.
Taint What you Do, It’s the Way That You Do It, as the old song goes. Here is a delightful live version of that old song, recorded by Sedajazz just up the road in beautiful Valencia.
I read this article today in The Independent: Americans who practice yoga ‘contribute to white supremacy’, claims Michigan State University professor
The professor says that the way that yoga is practised in America today amounts to culture appropriation and an offshoot of colonial culture. Ouch.
I don’t live in North America, but I have read a lot on the yoga blogosphere about how yoga over there is much divorced from its spiritual or its philosophical roots. I am not the best one to comment on this. The professor says:
They can be aware of the history, roots, and magnitude of the practice and give credit where credit is due. Humility, respect, and reverence go a long way.
I agree 100%. Anyone who comes to my class knows that I will bore you all to death by closing the class giving thanks to my teachers, who taught me how to teach. For the record, my teachers are Carmen Sánchez Segura, Claude Maréchal and TKV Desikachar (although I never received direct instruction from Desikachar.).
Enjoy yourself a little yoga mix over on mixcloud. Get on your mat and breathe deeply. When you find a sliver of light, a slice of joy within, share it, connect the joy that resides deep within you to the joy that resides deep within others. Hey, they need it just as much as you do.
Up in the early morning on Saturday, I chanced to spy the alignment of the heavenly bodies. Sun, moon and star traced a straight line in the dawn sky, casting their reflections on the calm surface of the sea. As the heavens sang their coloured glory and the birds their joyful chorus, I was given a reminder of my own insignificance. It felt great.
When I see the planets align, feel the Earth turn upon its axis, watch the days break and then later fade away, I realise that I matter little, if at all. I am a speck upon a speck, hurtling through space and time infinite.
In childhood, we believe the world revolves around us. Much of our long-lasting angst arises in childhood when we somehow think that we are responsible for everything that happens around us. Parents divorce, must be because I didn’t put my socks on that morning. Vacuum cleaner broken, must be because I left that dirty little candy paper on the floor. Etc etc ad nauseum.
Growth, maturity, is reached, I believe, when we lose our sense of self-importance. When we realise that we won’t save the world, that our scope is limited, we see that our only duty is to be as good as we possibly can be within the tiny scope of our lives. This is actually much easier, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not that difficult to decide to walk in the door of your house with a smile on your face despite your soul-destroying day at work, now is it?
We are all specks upon a speck, hurtling through space. We don’t know what we don’t know. Life is a huge mystery and probably none of it matters.
Yoga taught me all this. Yoga taught me to be still, quiet, and find that quiet place within myself. I often close my classes with a discourse that goes along the lines of “that stillness that you feel inside, right now, was always there. It’s just that you didn’t know how to reach it. Yoga gives us the tools to reach that still point, that quiet place, and to do so repeatedly and reliably. That is what yoga is, a series of ancient and well-tested tools that help us find our true selves, our quiet, calm, detached peaceful centre.”
We are specks upon and speck, hurtling through space. We probably matter not at all. And that’s ok.
Happy Monday, dear souls. Be joyful.
-Rachel
Yesterday morning dawned rainy and grey. Around these parts, precipitation is a present, a gift. The chill in the air was invigorating, and the light reflecting on the wet cobblestones a portend of danger, for they are slippery when wet.
Sophie and Laurence and I warmed up with a white tea before class, then ventured upstairs to el Cielo, which means “Heaven” in Spanish, for yoga class.
There was a chill in the room, so we doubled up the yoga mats, and distributed nice, warm, hot pink wool blankets. When we reached the floor phase of the practice, I noticed that the chill was starting to bite. Feeling protective of my students, I hoped and prayed for some warming rays.
As we began to practice dvipada-pitâm (“the two-legged table pose”), the sun burst through! Suddenly our little greenhouse of a room warmed up! Joy! We finished the sequence with Dolphins and headstand prep…energies were moved, smiles dawned upon faces and yet again, yoga worked its magic.
Thanks to everyone who came to class, it is a honour and privilege to be allowed to teach even a little bit of this ancient system. Thanks to all the yogis and sages who kept this oral tradition alive for us to employ now, in 2018. Thanks to my teachers, Claude and Carmen, for dedicating your lives to teaching teachers. Namasté.
authentically ok
The first time I ever practised yoga was in January, 1999. That is 19 years ago. How time flies. I knew from the very first class that I wanted to teach yoga, that it was my path. So, why did it take me so long to start teaching? One word: Authenticity.
I had for the longest time the feeling of being an imposter. Imposter syndrome is the persistent feeling that you are a fraud. In the five types that are listed there, I would say I am a Natural Genius and a Rugged Individualist. Oh, with a bit of Perfectionist thrown in, for good measure. It’s a high bar I have set for myself.
In yoga, the stakes are high. You are not playing with people. You are doing serious work. And lest we forget, you can only teach what you know, so the most serious work you are actually doing is on yourself.
It is not easy to start off with the Yamas and Niyamas, the codes of ethics that underpin all serious yoga practice. Non-harming, purity, self-study, contention…it is a long list, and very hard to adhere to 100% of the time. Add that to six-days-a-week practice, and an evolving practice at that, not stagnating, bringing new things to the mat. Phew.
It is easy to fall into the idea that you are never good enough to teach yoga. Or rather, for me it is. Evidently, for others it is not so difficult. There are plenty of people out there who, a year after discovering yogâsana are on a 200-hr course and then teaching a few months later. This is not a criticism of such people, it is a reflection on my inner process, my evolution.
I could not allow myself to do such a thing. Maybe it is simple enough to say that my baggage was too heavy, my inner world too murky, my compass skewed. Who was I to teach anyone how to live happily?
And yet, slowly, progressively, I oriented myself, I shed my baggage, I shone my light. The interesting thing was discovering that we don’t have to be 100% perfect and clean. But, we need to love our own flaws, our own pain. When you learn to love your pain, you become whole and when you are whole you can hold space for your students to learn to love themselves, in their entirety. When I got that, I started to teach in earnest. Now, it is my passion, my absolute passion!
A lot of marketing in the holistic world centres on authenticity. How can we tell the real from the false. I dunno, I don’t have a simple answer. I think it’s intuition, I think it’s a feeling. All I can say is that I think I am authentically ok now, I think I am. I hope I am cos goddarn I am not going back to that place where I was before! So, if you feel like checking out my classes, meeting me to ask about how I teach, having a conversation, you’re already here on the blog. Take the next step and get in touch.
Love, Rachel
In yesterday’s post, I hardly had time to get started. Talking about the balancing act between prâna and apâna, I likened it to the accumulation and ridding of material things. I wanted to finish the post by discussing the IN and the OUT of yoga practice.
Most of us arrive at a yoga practice carrying a lot of impressions (samskaras). When used therapeutically, yoga helps us to unpick the essential from the superfluous. Let’s use fear as an illustrative example. A healthy amount of fear, or caution, is necessary. Otherwise, we might try to fly off mountainsides, or jump into strangers’ cars at 4 in the morning. But too much fear can stop us talking to interesting strangers at parties, travelling to unknown lands or otherwise enriching our human experience. So, the continuous practice of yoga, especially challenging postures that elicit a certain amount of fear (say, backbends, breath retentions) allows us to watch our fear response, get to know it intimately and then, ultimately, control it at important moments.
So, yoga can be used to unpick the essential from the superfluous. When there is a dominance of prâna>apâna, there may be a tendency to flightiness, an abundance of ideas without the capacity to distinguish the good ones from the mediocre, and an inability to realise/materialise one’s own ideas. Somatic manifestations like headaches, twitching eyelids, tooth grinding, jaw tensing, ear ringing, panicky breathing, neck and shoulder tension, pounding heart, tingling fingers and nervous habits like skin picking, smoking and nail biting are all related to prâna>apâna. (please bear in mind that prâna and Prâna are two different things. The lowercase version refers to the vayu that dominates the upper body. Uppercase refers to the universal energy that sustains all Life.) When prâna is in balance, our thoughts are fast but not fleeting, we have good recall and can crosslink ideas as well as exercise intuition. When prâna is overactive, we are nervous, irritable and irascible. When it is underactive, we are forgetful, fretful and worried.
Of course, we need adequate prâna to sustain life. Likewise, we need adequate apâna, also. Apâna dominates the digestive organs and pelvic region. When it is out of balance, all manner of digestive troubles may ensue, as would varicose veins, swollen ankles, heel spoor and other foot disorders, cellulite or peau d’orange as well as general sluggishness or tiredness. When apâna is strong, we are able to rid ourselves of waste material (urine, faeces) but don’t excrete too much (frequent urination, irritable bowel). When it is weak, we may have flatulence, constipation, diverticules and pelvic prolapse.
Of course, should anyone out there reading this believe that yoga alone can cure any of the above named disorders, I have to do the responsible thing and state this this post is for informational purposes only and should not be used to diagnose any medical problem. Go to your doctor, FFS. But, if they can’t put a name on what ails you, as often happens, ie: you don’t have a diagnosed and named pathology, then maybe some self-care in the form of yoga can prove helpful.
How to balance prâna and apâna? Coming soon…but Krishnamacharya would probably say apanâsana and dvipâdapitam…
Namaste and may you be filled with joy. JSK.
In my last post, I described the pericardium and offered some information about how it may be affected in breast cancer survivors. Here are a few suggestions for sequences that could go into your own yoga sequence and help focus it on the diaphragm/pericardium practical pericardium
Harlequin Mandala
Radiation therapy (RT) has improved life expectancy for many cancer patients. However, it is well known that RT has long-lasting side effects that can range from mild to severe. Breast cancer patients treated with RT are at risk of damage to any of the structures near to the breast. This includes the heart, lungs, pericardium, skin, lymphatic vessels and nodes, and skeletal muscles. Today we are going to talk about the pericardium, what it is, how it may be affected/damaged in yoga therapy students, and how we can present a hatha yoga class to benefit and rehabilitate the pericardium.
What is the pericardium?
The pericardium is “a fibrous sac that attaches to the central tendon of the diaphragm and fuses with the adventitia of the great vessels superiorly.” The great vessels are the large blood vessels that carry blood to a from the heart. The adventitia is the outermost layer of the wall of a blood vessel. So, the pericardium is:
A fibrous sac (two-walled, in fact, with fluid in the space between).
Attached to the central tendon of the diaphragm (the main muscle of breathing).
Fused with the outermost walls of the big blood vessels of the heart.
What does the pericardium do?
The pericardium has four functions.
It protects the heart from infections,
It protects the heart from knocks and jolts (this due to the fluid in the space between the two sacs),
It lubricates the heart and
It prevents excessive swelling of the heart in the case of a sudden increase in blood volume, which is usually associated with other illnesses or problems with sodium levels in the blood.
Unsurprisingly, given its roles, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the pericardium is also referred to as the heart protector. The pericardium meridian runs down the inner arms, between the two tendons of the inner forearm, crosses the palm and then runs along the middle finger, terminating at its tip. Anyone who has treated secondary lymphoedema of breast cancer will observe that the affected areas coincide spectacularly with the pericardium meridian…
What happens to the pericardium during cancer treatment?
Fibrosis is the thickening and scarring of connective tissue usually as a result of injury. The injury in this case is a radiation burn. Bear in mind that there are diseases that cause a primary fibrosis (cystic fibrosis, for example). We are not talking about yoga therapy for such diseases here, although some of the underlying theory may be applicable. We are discussing yoga therapy for breast cancer patients who may have pericardium fibrosis caused by RT. This would be a secondary fibrosis, just at the lymphoedema seen in breast cancer patients is secondary to lymph node excision or what have you. RT has a tendency to burn the surrounding tissue as well as the tumour. The pericardium is already defined as a “fibrous sac” and the fibrosity that can develop as a result of radiation burns is our main concern here. Bear in mind that different RT techniques will have greater or lesser probability of damaging the pericardium. I observe that women with deep tumours often have RT tattoos on the other side of the chest, meaning that at least one ray had to cross the chest the get to the tumour. Shudder. Indeed, this article (from 2010) says that 20% of oncology patients who have had RT in the chest develop constrictive pericarditis. This is called “radiation-induced constrictive pericarditis.” Constrictive pericarditis is a medical condition characterized by a thickened, fibrotic pericardium, limiting the hearts ability to function normally.
Let’s also take a moment to recall that chemotherapy often damages the heart.
Yoga poses for the pericardium.
Spinal extensions, backbends, outwards arm rotations, held inhales, arm raises with inhales and basically anything that stretches the chest and moves the diaphragm will be therapeutic for the pericardium. However, as usual, there are limitations and contraindications that must be considered. A glance at this page is useful in that it demonstrates a number of poses that quite frankly could not be used in the classes that I give.
Firstly, recall that fibrosis is not reversible. It can be improved and loosened, but under normal circumstances, it is chronic. I mention this to help you pace your program and not expect miracles. I also warn strongly that overwork and tears are not desirable. So, work within your students’ limits.
Referring back to the last page I mentioned, the “puppy dog pose” could be modified to a cat-cow sequence, breathing out with rounding the back and in when arching. Another typical viniyoga sequence is moving slowly between cat pose and child’s pose. cat-child’s pose sequence
Another typical sequence is alternating between standing on the tiptoes with the arms reaching up (keep to shoulder height in some cases, elbows may also need to bend, ideal is palms facing at the top) and a half-squat with a spinal twist. If you alternate sides and breathe in when you go up and out when you go down, you get a really nice loosening effect in the mid-trunk without really running risk of injury. twist utkatasana – tiptoes sequence
What can be interesting is using breath retentions to increase the lung volume and mobilise the intercostal and the serratus anterior muscles. Next week I will post a sequence that I use and love. Right now, I have to go. It’s been a long post and I think that I have communicated what I set out to.
To yog is to live. Keep at it!!!
We usually think of child’s pose, sometimes known as bheki, as a relaxation pose. It figures in yin yoga and restorative sequences and is generally used as a counter-pose after more strenuous work. However, what seems an easy pose actually represents certain challenges to the breast cancer patient.
Firstly, the classic arm positions in child’s pose – arms alongside the legs or extended and next to the ears – can be challenging for these students. To lay the arms alongside the legs suggests that the person is low enough into the pose (ie: backside is sitting on the heels) so that the upper arm is on the floor. My ladies aren’t all able to do this. Also, anyone with serratus-flap reconstruction is going to find the required rounding of the shoulders hard on the affected side. The extend the arms taxes both serratus anterior and trapezius. There are some people who just can’t lift the extended arm that high. This calls for a modification! Read on…
The ankles can present a problem in ladies of a certain age. If there is undue strain on the front of the ankles, the pose becomes unstable. A simple solution is the prop the ankles on a tubular prop, or simply roll up the end of your mat and use that.
If there is a bit of belly – and let’s face it, with all the cortisone administered in chemo, most students arrive a bit on the heavy side – we need to make room for it. Simply separating the legs helps the body settle comfortably into the deep forward bend.
In people who carry neck tension – and most mastectomized and reconstructed ladies do – you will see that the cervical curve persists in this pose. Do your best to bring attention to the dorsal zone, instructing students to separate the shoulder blades on the inhale. Tell students to pull the chin down towards the sternum. (For those who are comfortable on the pose, you can suggest a little breath retention after each exhale.)
Arm Modifications
Take the arms out to the side, just above shoulder height, with the elbows bent. Keep a slight pressure between the forearms and the floor. Splay the fingers and keep a slight pressure on the fingertips. Keep awareness at the fingertips. Child’s Pose- modified for breast cancer yogis
The shoulder joint is the joint in the human body with the greatest range of motion. To keep the shoulder joint stable, we have the wonderful rotator cuff, a group of small muscles below the armpit and shoulderblade. Sadly, these little muscles are ofter under-developed, leaving the shoulder unsupported and prone to pain and dislocation. This little sequence is very healing for shoulders. I learned it from Claude Maréchal, the head of the Viniyoga lineage in Europe. But, the shoulder-drop to the floor with the arms at vertical is pure Rachel…my little contribution to the sequence to make it more healing…Try to do this six times, twice a day.
