I've been doing Satyananda yoga for twenty years. More. Since 1991. Ok, that is twenty years.
Right about the same time I stopped doing University level Maths I started doing yoga.
I've never really been committed to it, I'd go to a few classes, love it, then would get interested in a boy or a book or a boy who liked books and I'd stop.
I recall my first class, I didn't want to go as I thought I was as too fat and unfit to do yoga. I was 68 kilograms and rode my bike 7kms to and from Uni. We had to lie on the floor and imagine we were cold, well, of course I burnt up, and then imagine we were warm and I froze.
Turns out that I'm quite flexible, that one's size has nothing to do with one's flexibility, and the really cool thing about satyananda yoga is that it is non-competitive, most of the class is done with one's eyes closed.
It took me 15 years to cotton on to the fact that I don't need to be better or worse than anyone else in yoga, I don't even have to compete or motivate myself, all my teacher asks is that we stretch ourselves, mentally and physically, but not strain.
At the end of last year, after 20 years as a beginner, my teacher, the fabulously young and wonderful and quite strict Mel said, you are ready for intermediate now Catharine.
I panicked, I wrote her emails about my knees and my lap band and my work schedule and my shoulder and my asthma.
She was wonderful and didn't respond. Until finally one day she replied that she thought I would be fine, but I could go back to beginners if I felt uncomfortable.
Guess what? It is harder and it does stretch me more,
And I love love love love it.
I think that yoga, intermediate yoga, with it's focus on meditation and slightly stronger asanas -postures - is really helping me with balance and is distilling a quite repose in me that I've not felt, ever, but I think I've been seeking.
Meditation, when one is deep into the practice, is amazing. Your mind and body are still, your breathing almost imperceptible, and you are in a place where you can no longer feel the sensations in your body, and there are no thoughts, no feelings, you are completely aware, and yet detached from the whole body. It's kinda like orgasm, without the build up and release, but you know that moment just before release and just after, taking away all the heavy breathing and the collapse its kinda like that stillness. Where nothing else matters. And everything is blissful and possible and clean.
And the meditation is allowing me to see my life as an observer, rather than reacting and judging and having over-opinionatedness, it is just allowing me to accept and be.
Well, I'm not Zen like all the time. In fact, most of the time I'm possibly the antithesis of Zen like. Today, for instance, I woman rang me up for the recipe for the fruit cake competition and I snapped at her that it was on the website.
She is 97. And really a sweet woman.
But, I am becoming more serene, especially between the hours of 6 and 8 on a Wednesday night.
Right about the same time I stopped doing University level Maths I started doing yoga.
I've never really been committed to it, I'd go to a few classes, love it, then would get interested in a boy or a book or a boy who liked books and I'd stop.
I recall my first class, I didn't want to go as I thought I was as too fat and unfit to do yoga. I was 68 kilograms and rode my bike 7kms to and from Uni. We had to lie on the floor and imagine we were cold, well, of course I burnt up, and then imagine we were warm and I froze.
Turns out that I'm quite flexible, that one's size has nothing to do with one's flexibility, and the really cool thing about satyananda yoga is that it is non-competitive, most of the class is done with one's eyes closed.
It took me 15 years to cotton on to the fact that I don't need to be better or worse than anyone else in yoga, I don't even have to compete or motivate myself, all my teacher asks is that we stretch ourselves, mentally and physically, but not strain.
At the end of last year, after 20 years as a beginner, my teacher, the fabulously young and wonderful and quite strict Mel said, you are ready for intermediate now Catharine.
I panicked, I wrote her emails about my knees and my lap band and my work schedule and my shoulder and my asthma.
She was wonderful and didn't respond. Until finally one day she replied that she thought I would be fine, but I could go back to beginners if I felt uncomfortable.
Guess what? It is harder and it does stretch me more,
And I love love love love it.
I think that yoga, intermediate yoga, with it's focus on meditation and slightly stronger asanas -postures - is really helping me with balance and is distilling a quite repose in me that I've not felt, ever, but I think I've been seeking.
Meditation, when one is deep into the practice, is amazing. Your mind and body are still, your breathing almost imperceptible, and you are in a place where you can no longer feel the sensations in your body, and there are no thoughts, no feelings, you are completely aware, and yet detached from the whole body. It's kinda like orgasm, without the build up and release, but you know that moment just before release and just after, taking away all the heavy breathing and the collapse its kinda like that stillness. Where nothing else matters. And everything is blissful and possible and clean.
And the meditation is allowing me to see my life as an observer, rather than reacting and judging and having over-opinionatedness, it is just allowing me to accept and be.
Well, I'm not Zen like all the time. In fact, most of the time I'm possibly the antithesis of Zen like. Today, for instance, I woman rang me up for the recipe for the fruit cake competition and I snapped at her that it was on the website.
She is 97. And really a sweet woman.
But, I am becoming more serene, especially between the hours of 6 and 8 on a Wednesday night.
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