I can’t do yoga because I’m not flexible.  That’s much like saying you can’t run around the block because you can’t run a marathon.  Flexibility comes with the practice – it is not a prerequisite.  In fact, inflexibility might be your greatest teacher and allow you to tap into yoga’s lessons so much faster than flexy-bendy girl.

I can’t get up so early in the mornings.  Hey, it’s never easy.  In winter it’s cold and dark; in summer it’s warm and light – staying in bed is always comfortable and seductive.  David Swenson taught me this: just get up and put your yoga clothes on.  If you’re still tired, go back to bed.  If you make it to your mat, just do some sun salutations, and if you’re still thinking about your duvet, go back to bed.  I often use this strategy and tell myself I’ll just do the standing and finishing sequence today – by the time I get to the end of standing though, I’m awake and ready to carry on with the whole 90 minutes.  Just get up.

I can’t practice six days a week.  So don’t.  If you have a young practice or have just returned to ashtanga after some time apart, don’t set yourself up for failure.  Committing to a six day a week practice and expecting to go from zero to hero is self sabotage (again, are you going to run 20km four times a week when you currently only run 5km once a week?).  Three days a week is ample.  Allow your practice to grow organically – over time you’ll naturally start adding days and building up to that six day a week practice.

A dedicated six day a week practice is no mean feat.  In fact it usually involves some dramatic lifestyle changes – eating habits, sleep routines, relationships and perhaps even career changes.  Often these happen quite easily over time though – the more you practice, the more you change.  Allow your practice to change you.

Mysore freaks me out.  Yes, a Mysore class can be intimidating.  Or rather, the thought of a Mysore class can be intimidating.  Once you are on your mat, moving in a room filled with people breathing and practicing, this intimidation falls away.  The thing to remember here is that everyone in the room started out not knowing how to do one sun salutation.  No one knew the sequence and those people busting out the crazy postures are the ones who have been practicing their butts off for years, and most likely have the most respect and compassion  for anyone beginning their ashtanga journey.  Give your teacher and the other practitioners in the room the benefit of the doubt.  Give yourself the benefit of the doubt.

Can’t I just self-practice at home?  Self-practice is the end goal, sure, but hell it can be hard. When your practice is still young, it’s important to practice in a studio with a teacher who can help and advise you, and a community who can support and inspire you.

I can’t do X, Y, Z posture. The thing to understand here is that you’ll never be able to ‘do’ any of the postures.  Sure the more you practice, the closer to your toes you’ll get, and binding and jumping through/back for instance might become possible. But there is no end game to a posture, no perfection, only more layers to explore – slower, deeper, stronger, with more extension and consciousness.  As with life, wherever you are in a posture is exactly where you need to be – can you be okay with that?

How you are on your mat is how you are on in your life.  Do you constantly compare yourself to others, berate your body, shy away from things that are hard or that scare you?  Do you ignore your body when it tells you something hurts or is wrong?  Do you make excuses instead of doing what you know you need to do?

Treat yourself with some compassion and kindness.  Allow your ashtanga journey to teach you about yourself, to change you over time and to be your drug of choice.  You know it: practice and all is coming.

x

There’s a moment of the ick factor knowing the bodies were once real people, and then just pure wonder at the magnificence of the human body, the intricacies of the systems keeping us moving, thinking and feeling, and the importance of ‘using it or losing it’.

I was again reminded of the reasons I practice yoga (which I from time to time forget after practicing pincha mayurasana again and again for months on end ).  A strong, flexible body (and a strong, flexible mind) will go a long way to easing the path to old age.

I’m finding getting older quite a tough thing to deal with, an adjusting and readjusting of my sense of self.  The twenties are filled with feelings of immortality, brazen youthfulness and incomprehension of years passing and the body changing … until suddenly you notice a wrinkle that doesn’t unwrinkle.

It’s such a small portion of our lives that we spend young.  Here’s hoping though that with the help of yoga, I’ll spend a large portion of my life feeling youthful.

I also may have overdone it on the photos … but truth be told, it’s impossible  not to be swept away in the beauty (and romance!).

My chocolate and caffeine cravings didn’t really abate though and I do find a very early morning practice a thing of wonder when I’ve got a shot of espresso in me.  Hello focus.  Hello energy.  Hello prana.  So, you could say that I’m re-toxing (and this guy is in my kitchen’s future).

2013 has so far been a whirlwind – new job, new adventures, a feeling of things falling into place (and a whole new life in a matter of days!) – and my ever present anxiety kept at arm’s length, despite some considerable change and stress.  My ball juggling skills are at an all time high (and my to do lists at an all time extreme length), but my goals to keep some perspective and not think too far into the future seem to be mostly intact.

Deep breathing.

After the yoga/sea swimming/pool swimming/book reading/afternoon napping routine I established, I feel like I might have a handle on 2013.  The overarching theme of my 2012 was ‘anxiety’, deeply coloured chartreuse.

2013 will be light, easy and the colour of drizzly Zinkwazi sunsets – stimulating, diverse work, health, love, a lot of humour and perspective, continuing bravery, some exotic travel, and steady, seamless flow. I’m ready.

]]> http://friendswithjenny.com/2013/01/07/summer-loving/feed/ 0 friendswithjenny 2012-12-24 13.41.12 2013-01-04 17.15.37 2013-01-04 17.08.33 IMG_4496 IMG_4141 Image Image Image Image Image Image http://friendswithjenny.com/2012/12/05/dont-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out/ http://friendswithjenny.com/2012/12/05/dont-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out/#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:16:48 +0000 friendswithjenny http://friendswithjenny.com/?p=2624 ]]> 2012.  Not my favourite year.  Not many people’s favourite year.  Roll on 2013.

I enjoyed 2011.  It was tumultuous, but I felt like I came into my own, discovered myself again, got a little braver and faced up to some loss.

2012 was a slog.  I feel like I had to face ALL of my stuff, ALL of the time, backed up by a voracious pace of months speeding by, deadlines to meet, events to attend, hearts to mend and self analysis to see to.

In terms of the ‘wasn’t all bad’, I did finally stand up from backbends and drop back by myself (buoyed up by some heady love hormones which kicked the Jaws theme tune I’d been hearing for months in the teeth), buy a Gregor Jenkin table (which makes my eyes glad), see Scandinavia, practice with David Swenson and Laruga Glaser, and have many moments of happiness with my many dazzling, funny and wonderful friends, including getting lost at OppiKoppi for 7 hours and sleeping in a drunk stranger’s tent (which was a frozen, dusty hell at the time, but hilarious in hindsight).

I also then had to face some startling disappointments, deal with some overwhelming anxiety and contemplate depression (and my various feelings about being “depressed”) for the first time in many years. Some boredom-induced creative block, and some information overload and what must be over-stimulation ADHD, left me high and dry and unable to write, with just a deep down rage on the simmer.

I’ve also become extremely time sensitive with age – when I was in my 20′s months would pass with me feeling love sick and heartbroken.  Now I feel like there is no time to waste being sad … that doesn’t mean though that I’m not sad – I’m just more aware of time passing, days disappearing, with me feeling bereft in the ‘prime of my life’.  Added to this I’ve also become more aware of my body changing as I head into my 30′s, triggering more feelings of clocks ticking time away.  Tick tock.

In closing I’m hoping the Mayans were right.  Bring on a consciousness shift.

I had these on my list:

And now I just want this:

Thanks.

• Intermediate series has it’s moments of magic.  I’ve split my practice and am now going into intermediate after parsvottonasana, which was an adjustment – I felt very attached to the full standing sequence and even more attached to the full primary sequence.  The thing is though, that by the time I got to pincha mayurasana in intermediate, I was properly exhausted.  Splitting my practice has been an adjustment, with a certain amount of ego dampening (“But am I working hard enough?!’) and letting go, but I get it now.
• Intermediate series makes me nauseous and anxious and a little dizzy.  Grabbing my heels in kapotasana (without assistance, or flaring out one elbow in order to make the mad, fumbling grab) remains an exercise in patience … and a lot of talking down from a very scared place.
• Olivier had me walking up walls with my feet and building strength in both pincha and handstands (I still have visions of my shoulders turning into those of a rugby player’s).  Truth be told, my shirts are tighter over my back and biceps.  It’s all a bit disconcerting really … although it’s bound to happen, right?  Anyway, I had a moment in pincha the other day, a moment when I felt that sweet spot and did not touch the wall behind me.  Not once!  Some days are like that the very first time … others require a little more (a lot more) practise.
• I’m still struggling with laghu vajrasana … I’m either hovering my head above the floor and managing to come back up, or stuck to the mat with no hope of ever returning to an upright position. Bah.

I’m reminded sometimes (when I’m panicked or wholly distracted during my practice) when I first started primary series – when there was no space in my head for anything other than “breathe!” or “just one more chaturanga, you can do it!”.  Now it’s much easier physically to get through a practice, and much, much harder mentally to keep my chattering mind in check.

Our bodies are constantly changing, minute by minute, cell by cell.  I guess it’s this change, the impermanence, of our bodies, and the world, that is both comforting (I’ll get my legs comfortably behind my head one day), and at the same time terribly frightening.

I think I’ll just leave it as a yoga check-in for today.  The rest of my life is suffused in anxiety, fuelled I think by the run up to my 31st birthday – balancing on my forearms seems the easiest part of my day

I’m taking some measures to cultivate sanity.  They involve silencing my phone, closing tabs, managing social media perusal, and declining invites.  I’m over-stimulated, overwrought, distracted and wholly addicted to staying ‘connected’, ‘current’, ‘busy‘.

And it’s a load of shit.

The busier I get, the more I scroll through Facebook and Twitter, the more I get whatsapp’d, bbm’d, emailed and skyped, the less present I am and the more anxious.  I’m so distracted by the relentless stream of stimuli coming my way, the constant array of snippets of other peoples’ lives (with which I create long, convoluted fiction), the habitual phone checking to affirm my worth, that most of the time I can barely get my work done.  I lose all perspective; and contemplate medication to take the edge off.

The busier I am, the less time I have to think about the aching big questions, the ones that wake me at 3am in the morning, the ones that creep up on me during my ashtanga practice, the ones that trigger desolate, startling tears on the way home from somewhere in the early hours of the morning.  I’m doing cool things, socialising with people I like (and sometimes even love), solidly creating the appearance of an admirable life … and still feeling frenziedly anxious about my place in the world, whether I’m making a valuable contribution as a human being, whether I am a valuable human being.

“Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day…I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter.”

The busier I am, the more distracted by floating flotsam, the never-ending onslaught of information, the less time I have to deal with my feelings, the lumbering elephants parading through the room.  And, well, I have a lot of feelings; barely covered by a thin veneer of togetherness, busyness, importance.  The busier I am, the emptier I feel, clutching a smartphone in the hopes of connection, a confirmation that I’ve flitted through someone’s mind long enough for them to tap out an instant message.

So here it is: a Saturday night’s plans cancelled, a night in, and a phone switched off.  And many thoughts.  Here’s hoping for some perspective and clarity, a bolt of light.  Or even a spark.

xx

And then I have weeks like the last few and I realise that without yoga I’d be a public (and personal) liability.  On good days I dance with anxiety; on bad days I’m a straight-up bitch, unfocused, compulsive and preoccupied, nail-biting, temper-flaring and 3am ceiling-staring.  And although it’s fighting a big fight at the moment, ashtanga helps me moderate life’s vagaries, hurts, mediocrities and disappointments.

It’s the discipline that keeps me sane.   It’s the moments of magic that keep me coming back.