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Alignment in Yoga

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Photo attributed to Thenix

Photo attributed to Thenix

I know I have been talking a lot about Yoga for the past few days, and I promise this is the last of the series for a little while. If you are interested in reading more, you can read here about movements in between poses and here about the moments in between poses.

I go to a Yoga Teacher’s class at Moksha Yoga Downtown, and I wish to talk about something he said in class. He’s an amazing teacher, with a lot of insight to offer in class, about yoga and life. He doesn’t preach, but just talks about a lot of random things as if he were talking to a friend. I do not usually like male yoga teachers, but he is calming, and about yoga, rather than building up strength, doing a lot of chaturangas (push-up position in yoga) and power, power, power, which I find a lot of male yoga teachers concentrate on.

He does a Yoga class on Saturdays at 10am, that has a series of Yoga Nidra, that was particularly inspiring to me. It helped me relax my body as never before. My arms and legs were so deadened, that it truly felt like I was in corpse pose for the first time in my life. After the class, I had a hard time lifting up my hands to put on a pair of pants, or open the door of the studio to leave.

But this blog post isn’t about extolling the virtues of this teacher – but about alignment. Something he said, that made me laugh, but also think, was the following: Yoga is all about alignment. Otherwise, all you are doing is standing on one leg, with very few clothes on, in a really hot room, waiting for the pose to end.

Humorous? Yes! But, think about alignment. How often do we go into a yoga pose, and stand there doing the pose badly, waiting for it to end. Even worse, how often do we go into a pose, and go really deep into it, screwing up balance in another part of the body. We wish to prove to ourselves that we can. We can do it. So our body, our poses, our alignment, all have to suffer, to bow down to the greatness of our thinking mind.

How can we prevent that? Careful alignment into the pose, by going into each pose slowly, as slowly as possible. Not rushing into the pose helps, but what else helps, is just paying attention. Notice yourself, and every part of your body as you move into a pose. Are your shoulders hunching up? Is one hip over the other? Is your jaw clenched? Are your eyes in their sockets? Have you not blinked for the past 5 minutes? Notice everything, and fix. Take your time.

This yoga class is about you, about your body being in alignment and balance, not about some mysterious goal that you somehow have to reach in your head.

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Do Not Go Swiftly Into The Next Pose

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Photo attributed to flickr user rosmary

Photo attributed to flickr user rosmary

When I am in a yoga class, I try to stay within myself and my own practice. Of course, being human and curious as hell, I always want to look around. I want to keep the comparing down to a minimum, but I like looking around to see what people are wearing, how people are doing their poses, what their faces look like, etc.

It is one of the ways I entertain myself, for a few moments in a yoga class, while I am holding a pose. Of course, that always, always causes me to lose my balance, so next time, I swear to myself, no looking around in class. But I always falter. Being imperfect is human. That is not what this blog post is about, though.

I wanted to talk about moving from one pose to another. I was observing a few people in class, and I noticed that they moved into the pose that was coming before the yoga teacher actually spoke about it. I have been guilty of that motion several times myself. Whenever I’m in a class, that I have taken a hundred times before, I know how the teacher moves through the class, I know what poses she does. I am tempted to move into the next pose before the teacher even starts speaking about it. Every single time I do that, I feel guilty and ashamed, because the whole point of yoga is to stay in the moment, and not to rush into the next moment that comes. Of course, feeling guilt or shame isn’t the point either, but you get what I am saying.

I also notice that the way I move from one pose to another, reflects very much and translates into my life – if I am rushing through the poses, eager to move to the future, I’m the same way in life – rushing through the present, and eager for the future to come right now. I feel like a petulant child even just writing those words down, but that is how I behave on a regular basis.

Now whenever I am in class, one of my goals, is to stay within the pose I’m in, in the moment I’m in, and not rush into the next pose or moment. This also has the added benefit of relaxing me, and my mind. I’m not wondering what is coming next, instead I’m letting the teacher guide me, which is what her role is in class. I am supposed to be relaxing, while she takes care of the rest.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to BrownVagabonder and connect with me on Twitter.

Standing Still

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Photo attributed to flickr user JRFoto

I was speaking to Thenix a few days ago and we were talking about the gargantuan pile of projects that both of us had on the go, his was more electronics based, mine was more writing/saving based. Whatever it was, we are busy. We are busy saving up, we are busy motivating each other to stay strong, we are busy doing things to progress forward, we are BUSY.

As is everyone else on this little planet. The important thing in all of the busy-ness is to remember the final goal in your life. Why are you here? What do you want to accomplish by the end of your life? What do you want your life-hours to represent? Why are you spending hours working at a job, or doing yoga, or playing with electronics? What is the vision here?

You have to remember not to let the little things on your to-do list take over your life. You have to especially remember to not let busy-ness seem like you are accomplishing your goals. Just because you spent 5 hours hunched over a computer screen today, doesn’t mean you were being productive towards your goals. Especially if those five hours were interspersed with Pinterest, FaceBook, FMLife, or whatever else, you like browsing when you are bored.

Just because your days are occupied with random activities, doesn’t mean you are doing something useful. Make sure that you are spending your time on stuff that will move you forward, so that a year later, you are not still at the same spot, you are at right now.

You can look back at the week previous, the year previous, the decade previous and see visible movement forward, be it internally or externally.

Meeting the edge

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Photo attributed to Thenix

I have been thinking about comfort zones for the past few days. I have wanted to write something about it, but nothing materialized. On Sunday, while sitting in a yin yoga class, the teacher spoke of meeting your edge when you are doing yin poses. But of course, everything about yoga can be applied to life in general, or anything else you can think of.

We are used to living in our comfort zone. We want life to be easy and simple. We try to remove all obstacles from it because we want to make sure  we do not have to think too much. We live in that zone where we do not have to rock the boat, and cause too much attention to fall upon us. We are at ease.

The real learning and movement forward happens when we move out of this ill-fated comfort zone. ‘Meeting the edge’ was a term that really triggered that for me. Whenever you are meeting the edge of your limits, you are growing and learning. It will be immensely uncomfortable. You are going to hate every minute of it, and that is alright. You are supposed to hate it. For anyone who’s done Yin Yoga, they know it is a slow practice, but do not mistake for a second that it will be easy. Pain and pleasure intermingle in this practice, where you are constantly kissing your edge, and then coming back to center.

Wouldn’t the constant movement towards edge get tiring, one might wonder? Of course, it would. You could burn yourself out with this constant movement towards the edge. Eventually, you will get addicted to this edge, and not be able to live in the centre, leading to the power-hungry, fame-hungry society of ours, that is destroying their home, planet and relationships to get to the top.

Comfort zone is sometimes the place you need to be in, when you’ve had a hard day and you just wish to rest. The situation demands, and you provide. Flexibility is key. Change accordingly.

Weekends of nothingness

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Photo attributed to Thenix

When I started a new weekend, on Friday night, in my previous unformed years, I would literally panic if I didn’t have all of the hours packed with things to do. It would send me into a deep spiral of depression, because I would feel unwanted and unloved. If I was liked, I would have every single second of my weekend and my weeknights packed with people and things to do. I literally didn’t feel like I had any time off, and I liked it. It is when I had a night with nothing to do that I floundered about the house feeling useless and meaningless.

I tutored Maths and GMAT courses on the weeknights and I partied till dawn Friday and Saturday night, dined or lunched with friends during the day and went to yoga in the mornings. There was no rest, and a lot of activity. But there was also no time for contemplation, no time for reflection, no time for staring off into space, no time to ponder the mysteries of life. No time for anything except meaningful/less movement, depending on how you looked at it.

As I began to do a lot more yoga, I felt the need to slow down. to pare down the activities in my life, to say no to people and activities. I removed my second job from the picture, I didn’t really need the extra money, I just spent it on meaningless activity anyways. I removed meaningless dinners or lunches. I only went out to eat once every two-three weeks, and I made sure that it was at a place I really wanted to try out, so it would be special, it would have some meaning. I started cooking some more, which slowed me down, because cooking in itself is a very Zen activity.

I slowed down and I found that just the act of slowing down added a lot to my day. To my life in general. I felt more in control and I felt more alive. I had more meaning, because I had more time to think about the important things. I had time to contemplate my navel or stare at an empty wall or ceiling. It felt really good.

What happens as you get older?

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Photo attributed to flickr user Fitz C.

I find that I have been surrounded by a lot of people in their 50s and 60s in the past few weeks, as I have family over from India, and family friends over from Qatar. They are all amazing individuals who have worked hard to do the things they need to do, to get their children the best education and easiest lifestyle possible. They are the typical hardworking Indian parents. They put their children first and themselves even below last.

I have been thinking about this for the past two or three weeks since they started staying with us. I noticed how they never smile, and how their body language indicates defeat. Their shoulders are drooping downwards and forwards, and they are hunched over themselves, as if they were trying to protect themselves. I was wondering to myself, is this what people look forward to? Is this why people work so hard all of their lives, so they can enjoy the benefits of it never? So they can mangled in their old age, and be too tired to do anything fun?

Do older people get this way because of broken dreams and dashed hopes? Is it because they haven’t fulfilled their dreams from days gone by? Or were they hoping for a different life that never came? Is this what we all have to look forward to?

I know this post seems depressing, but I think it is extremely important to learn from the people around you. And I am choosing to take the lessons from their lives, and resolve not to repeat the mistakes. I have to resolve to follow my dreams, and my path, and not falter. That is the key in my mind. It is when people give up on their dreams in the moment, to do something and postpone that dream to the far-away future, I think that’s when people start losing hope in life.

If you do not have your dreams, you have nothing, in my opinion. You need the dreams in your life to keep on moving and dancing.