Life (and death) intervenes

It’s striking me as moderately ironic that during this World Yoga Practice Month — WoYoPracMo for those of you who are just way cooler than I’ll ever be — that the daily practice should be so frequently disrupted. This time, it was death. My mother in law died on Saturday. Bless you, Delores, for everything you gave in life.

But the last couple of days has given me pause to reflect upon the issue — what other things interrupt our practice? I’m a very routine oriented person. Practice happens to me when I leverage my keister out of bed before the rest of the family and in peace and quiet, I find the mat. Alternatively, it happens when all members of the household, save me, have shuttled themselves off to work and school. Mess with that and my practice goes to hell.

Is there any reason I can’t practice with someone else in the house? Uhhhhhhhhh, no actually, there isn’t. Is there any reason why practice can’t take place later in the day? Uhhhhhhhhh, actually, there isn’t anything stopping me there either. In fact, there’s nothing in the universe stopping me from announcing to my very supportive family, “Excuse me, Momma is buggering off for an hour to her practice. Call me if the house is on fire.” The kidlet is old enough to fend for herself and she’d respect me carving out the hour. Ditto with the husband.

So, what’s the issue here? It’s habit. I have a morning yoga habit. I enjoy the solitude and the peace of the morning. It is deeply calming and very restful. It’s important enough to me to get up long before any sensible human would rise from bed, just so I can savour the beauty of the new day. It’s my time to putter before I have to answer to anyone. I love my morning practice. This is really an attachment issue with me. This is Raga — one of the kleshas, the things that clouds my mind and are the roots of my suffering — an attachment the familiar and pleasurable that keeps me from leaving my comfort zone and moving into more unfamiliar territory.

So when did my morning practice take on this new twist? I suspect it’s probably related to ego, in some respect. Getting up at 4:15 am to hit a yoga mat before you head off to work for 7:00 am? Now that’s bloody dedicated, isn’t it? That’s what you call proof positive that the yogini in question is one serious chickie-momma about this yoga stuff.

I don’t think that there’s anything inherently wrong about morning practices. In fact, there’s a lot of benefits to having one. For me, where it’s fallen off the rails, is when I cling to the MORNING part of morning practice. It’s when I start using the hour of practice as a means of separating myself from the common herd, from the “dabblers”. We’re now safely within the realm of ego gratification as opposed to yoga. When the discipline of practice starts bleeding off into a sense of smugness and self-righteousness and superiority, then I know I’m adding things to practice that don’t belong there.

There’s a good reason Yoga counsels us to cultivate both an abiding practice (Abhyasa) along with non-attachment (Vairagya). Practice alone without the conscious cultivation of its companion, non-attachment, is an excellent prescription for allowing ourselves to become insufferable, pompous asses of the first order.

I’m reminded of the more egregious practices of those who are highly and passionately committed to their own particular cause. I personally respect the right of everyone to make their decisions concerning food and how they chose to feed their families. Omnivore, vegan, vegetarian, raw foodist…it doesn’t matter to me. So I find it very discouraging when well-meaning but ultimately disrespectful people feel compelled to berate others about food choices. If diet is just more ammo to prop up the ego by lashing out at other people, I think it’s time to separate the food on the plate from the politics. When I start thinking along the lines of “my dietary group” are more ethical, sensible, responsible, pragmatic, than the “other dietary group”, it’s no longer about feeding my body’s needs. It’s about feeding my ego needs and making the “I”ness a little bigger. In the end, it’s not what we put into our mouths that makes us “unclean”. Too often, it’s the crap that comes of our mouth that’s the true source of our impurity.

For the most part, I plan to keep the morning practice. For a lot of reasons, it works for me. For one, it’s convenient and it works with the rest of my life quite nicely. But I think I’ll work on letting go of the more sanctimonious bits. It’s time to start divesting some of the ego issues from the mat. Vairagya — non-attachment — something that’s worth not holding onto.

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate

Getting down in the neighbourhood…WoYoPracMo

It’s WOYOPracMO… a mouthful of barely pronounceable syllables that indicates someone has called for World Yoga Practice Month. Cleaver idea really, surely developed by someone who figured out one of the most difficult things for yogis to do is establish and keep the daily practice.

It’s an interesting concept – the idea of fostering a daily practice. First of all, why bother? In the parlance of our times, “what’s in it for me?” I’d like to confess to all that I had some great spiritual revelation way back when and committed myself to the daily practice as a means of armouring my spiritual self. Not so fast – the truth is my daily practice came about because I didn’t know better and I’m cheap. As in frugal, parsimonious. Not mean but a wee bit thrifty.

The fact is my first yoga classes weren’t planned (i.e. budgeted) and the tuition took a bit of creative juggling. I can’t remember what it was … some where in the vicinity of $120 for a 10 week course and it was coming out of the familial electric bill. $12 a week was the cost for my classes unless I did it on a daily basis. $12 divided by 7 days works out to about $1.71 a day. In lean budgetary times, I might not be given to a $12 weekly indulgence but when it’s under $2… I can take that out of the weekly coffee budget and still have change. So my daily practice really started out with the intention of getting my money’s worth out of my classes.

There’s still an element of that going on but it’s fading long into the recesses of what else comes from daily practice. In addition to the whole bit of getting my head together, a topic for another day, there was the physical aspect of practice. Everyday, the stack of blocks I was going towards for my forward bends was getting a little bit easier to find. I remember a sense of ah-ha when I was moving in and out of Parsvottanasana, the intense side stretch. My hamstrings had loosened and softened that suddenly that front leg was straight and my weight was on my back foot. In my very goal oriented brain, this was progress.

I’ll tell you for nothing that I’m not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. My body and my brain filed for divorce by the time I was 12. I was the last one chosen for any team in gym. And by the time I was 40, I had developed the slack and idle body that was the envy of no one, most particularly myself. Being able to physically do something .. beautiful beautiful Parsvottanasana, was that moment of revelation where my brain finally forgave my body. Maybe there was hope for a truce between them. A dim flutter of hope for reconciliation and forgiveness peaked up from the wasteland.

In retrospect the other saving grace was that Yoga Culture, if you will was completely foreign territory. Until I’d signed up for classes at LifeSong, I’d never darkened the doors of a yoga studio. I had no idea that studios usually supply mats. I just went out and bought myself one before my first class because I was going to need it. If I was taking swimming, I’d need a swimsuit. If I were playing hockey, I’d need skates. If I’m taking yoga, I need a mat. I got a mat. In retrospect, this conveniently provided one less excuse for not practicing.

Not that I needed it. It honesty hadn’t crossed my mind that one wouldn’t practice this on a daily basis. By way of explanation, my formative adult years were spent in the Army. Of course, you roll out of bed and do your yoga, just like you used to roll out of bed and go to PT, back in the day. Yoga, even when it’s done on the Army time of “Oh Dark and Stupid”, usually doesn’t involve running with ruck-sacks in the pitch dark and rain. I now consider Yoga an eminently civilized way to start one’s day.

Ironically enough, the only time my daily practice went to hell was while doing my teacher’s training. I’m still trying to puzzle that one out. But the last month has been about reclaiming the realm of the personal practice. Just my mat and me.

So there you go, it World Yoga Practice Month…have a WOYOPracMO on me. And for my American friends, Happy Independence Day.

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate