A practice reimagined
I read a quote this week on Instagram. A yoga teacher that I follow with curiosity. I love what he and his wife do. A very joyful approach to practice.
It said something like, ‘you practice what you bring to the mat’. So many of my classes I prompt my students to drop their expectations of the time ahead. Clear out the next 60 minutes. Be present.
It made me wonder that despite all of the efforts I made to ‘let go’, and help others do the same, was I practising this myself and were there things that I was unconsciously holding onto?
This line of self-enquiry or Svadhyaya, since I’m talking yoga, took me to examine my practice. In his glorious book, The Heart of Yoga, T.K.V Desikachar explains that the word is made up of Sva, meaning ‘self’ or ‘belonging to me’ and Adhyaya meaning ‘inquiry’ or ‘examination’. The practice of Svadhyaya allows us to become closer to our true self with curiosity and self examination.
In my early days of practice, I berated myself for not practising enough. I wouldn’t ‘progress’ if I didn’t keep practising. Completely related to the physical aspects of yoga. It didn’t take long for me to include myself in an exclusive club reserved for injured yoga students. I recall the first pull of a hamstring, a lack of time given or space afforded to fully recover it, followed now by years of repeated weakness. Compounded I might add, by my on off love affair with running. (or is my running hindered by yoga? Thoughts for another time perhaps)
In those early days, there was little consideration in my practice for the other limbs of yoga. Seven years on from stepping on my first yoga mat, my practice has changed of course, as a teacher it was bound to. But sometimes what I teach I realise, I do not practice.
My enquiry took me back to the quote. What had I really been practising on my mat? As it turns out, many things, but mostly, a lot of fear. Fear of being injured again, fear of the pose that exposes the weakness, fear of never progressing into a place that feels ‘accomplished’. I hold onto it in the whole of my body. In my home practice I hold back from facing into the fear, another teacher’s class has my mind racing to the ‘what if’s’ of the poses that expose my weakness, those that will challenge me, those poses that might ask another student to look on and wonder about my abilities as a teacher. How tiresome.
Fear, from the perspective of yoga, feels quite existential, translated oftentimes as the ‘fear of death’, or the ‘fear of suffering’. As I started to unpack Abhinivesa, one of the Kleshas or obstacles in yoga, I started to understand that fear has a source that we can trace. Fear of course acts as a barometer to protect us however it is important that we don’t let it become the ruler, else we become stuck in our growth. These obstacles are to be eradicated in order to experience yoga.
As I continued to pursue this line of enquiry, I came back to the quote, ‘You practice what you bring to the mat’. A practice of fear had echoes in other places in my life. My coaching practice, my ability to speak up without worrying about what others thought, my conviction in my teaching. I have become stuck.
So what do I do with this self-enquiry? I turn it toward quality action.
Being aware of my thoughts as I approach the mat. Recognising the threads of my thoughts back to their source. Understanding that where I place my attention an effect is created. That the work of eradicating fear, brings me closer to that oneness with my self.
After years of berating myself for not practising enough, knowing that here, in this realisation, my practice is enough. As I pursue my physical practice, leaning into the fear with compassion and knowledge of my limitations and listening to the echoes in my life where this fear shows up.
As Desikachar reminds me; ‘Yoga is not passive. We have to participate in life. To do this well we must work on ourselves’.
