Tantra, mantra, fortune tellings and unfortunate tailings … what a week the penultimate week has been!

The second to last week of treatment has been one of the strangest, toughest, most exhausting and, perhaps, most exhilarating, yet, and it has almost nothing to do with Ringo and Miranda. They are great as always, if rather busy. No, the emotional rollercoaster of the week is due to other forces taking over – both for good and ill.

First of all, late on Saturday night as I am walking home from a much-needed dinner at Laguna Vista  – Guruji having given us a surprise (and surprisingly long) Satsang, no doubt in the interests of recruiting more people for the workshop due to start the next day – I am attacked by a Great Dane of a dog standing in the road. Not barking or jumping up as most of the dogs here do but minding its own business, I do the same. But whether it’s the lingering smell of the garlic naan and vegetable saag I just demolished or the sight of my (less than juicy) ass wiggling by, it wanders past behind me and decides to take a bite, savagely sinking its teeth in without any warning and walking away just as nonchalantly afterwards.

Needless to say I am shocked and scream out some obscenity, grab my left buttock in pain and check to see the damage. Two or three red and bleeding puncture marks. I’m limping, I’m annoyed, I’m concerned. What if I have rabies? “I’ve just been bitten by a crazy dog,” I tell the Indian ladies I run into moments later. Okay, not crazy in the foaming at the mouth sense, sure, but crazy in the one-moment-its-quiet-the-next-it-has-my-bum-in-its-mouth way. “Why you walk alone?” they ask. Like the dogs here, women always go in packs, especially at night. It’s only crazies who got it alone. But I am alone, tired and have no wish to go to the hospital tonight, so I find what I can amongst Gosh’s ointments to dap it with – some alcohol and some left over spray can of iodine – and try to go to bed. I have to be up early for the start of Tantra Mantra Yanta, that is, if I can walk in the morning and am not rabid and/or delirious with infection by then.

The next morning, however, I am none the worse for wear and get to the Space early. But, telling Yolanda my story, she is wide-eyed in horror: “you have 24 hours to get a vaccine,” she tells me. “If you have rabies, there is no cure.” Great! I’ll go at lunchtime, I say, and off we go to start the workshop – a few hours of chanting, a break for breakfast, make a yantra, more time to sit and drink chai (or, in my case, get a double shot of rabies vaccination; because prevention is the only way to avoid death by rabies) more time to sit and chant, then the piece de la resistance, covering ourselves in brown paste and sitting around – yup, you’ve guessed it – chanting. Manta mantra manta….Ommm

This last for several days. By Wednesday, however, Gurji’s Tantra Mantra Yanta is over and if I have one more person asking me how it was I think I will scream.

For you see, my first response as we settled in on Sunday early morning was ‘interesting’ and at first it is. I like chanting the easy simple mantras “Om” and the seed syllables for the chakras as a group, tuning into the vibrations created in your throat, body and in the room at large, losing your own in the communal voice. I like making the yantra and am grateful to finally learn what a yantra is – a kind of mandala made of coloured rice; beautiful, representing the symbol of the chakra we were working with: in this case, Muladara. I like rubbing myself all over with a brown paste of Ayurvedic herbs; and I love the fire ceremonies we do on the final days. I’ve always enjoyed a good bonfire and these are amazing. And I do feel moved by the offerings we make. But the long afternoon of chanting an interminably long mantras, whose meaning no one explains – 45 minutes altogether, 45 mins in our mouths silently and thank god we were let off another 45 minutes in our heads – when I was getting faint with hunger and feeling like I was about to pass out, not so much. Nor the incredibly uncomfortable bloating in my stomach that follows, leading me to seek out Ringo early the next morning.

Apparently though, I am not the only one who struggled with the long hours of sitting, the inconsistent eating schedule and the pain of sitting sukasana (easy cross legged – easy?! my aching knees!!!). Whether it made that individual as angry, frustrated and as close to tears as me, is uncertain. But when we finally finished at about 4:45pm, I am just overcome with hunger – no longer hungry, struggling not to cry and just wanting to be left alone. Perhaps this is a natural, to-be-expected reaction to all the energy work that was supposed to be happening. But who’s to say? I feel unsupported in the experience, rightly or wrongly, and am doubting very strongly the efficacy of the whole process.

This is not helped, I’m sure, by the results of the body scan Guruji performed on us the first morning when we hugged him. My chakras, he says, are totally out of balance. The End. I kind of knew this already, but what I am supposed to do to correct the imbalance I am still none the wiser about, and my question to him about my stomach problems is also unanswered. But perhaps I am foolish to think that my physical problems can be healed through energy work. There are plenty of people here willing to tell me that my trouble eating are to do with blockages in my lower chakras, that they can heal these with crystals or mantras, etc. But as yet… Ringo’s pink digestive tonic seems to help best, if anything, and I am very glad to get back to the clinic on Wednesday…except for all the excited, eager, greatly anticipated question how was Guruji?!?

Like me, whether consciously or not, almost everyone has high expectations, and I for one neither wish to disappoint or be disappointed. So I modestly reply that I am refraining from judgement, but how can one refrain from judgement when even that is taken a judgement? “How do you mean?” they ask. And of course, what I mean is that I am trying not to be negative and closed off to the potential powers of a kundalini master, but for me the whole experience was such a rollercoaster of ups and downs, and at times just seemed so unproductive or unsupportive of what I am trying to do here – so much in conflict with the treatment I am getting at the clinic – that I can only feel a bit cheated!

I am trying not to feel any of these negative emotions, as I understand how much resistance the mind puts up and that just as the lucky are those who believe they are lucky so (the theory goes) these critical voices may just my ego resisting the powers of good that are trying to unblock my chakras and lead me to enlightenment; and that a real guru is someone who works so subtly that he could well walk past you in the street and you would never know, but that his energies will be working on you anyway.

In other words, not all that glitters is gold and I should not be looking for fireworks and lightning-strike miracles, but being open to the fact that this ordinary man, a father to a baby boy who is making his first crawling movements as we sit around meditating, is completely competent and conscious of what he is doing, and that it is all for my best, even though (my Ego raises its head to say) he hardly seems to be doing anything or to be here much at all and we are given long breaks of inertia between long sessions of chanting without much explanation of the rituals, meanings or process. I am trying not to be cynical because I understand that this is a deeply sceptical/epistemological problem that we have here: problem that is, about how we can truly know anything, but especially that which is beyond ordinary human comprehension – and that I am a novice in all things tantra, and that I seem to be the only one who is doubtful, and who wants to be that? The only one not vibrating and pulsating with amazing rising energy just because I am too stuck in my Western mentality of “seeing is believing”?

But whether it is Shakti (a powerful energy located in Muladara chakra, at the base of the spine) stirring or just my own conflict at taking time out of my Body and Bone schedule to sit around chanting a lot of long, difficult mantras I do not understand, I am left feeling angry, annoyed and irritated by the experience, both at the time and money invested and by the lack of guidance on where to go or what to do next. ‘ Hence, whenever someone asks me how it was I want to avoid answering, because this is not the response I want to have, nor does it necessarily reflect the reality of the situation. Just because I am doubting the efficiacy of the process is not to say that it is not working. On the contrary, it might be proof that it is. Yolanda, who I respect very much and who has a lot of experience as well as professional interest in tantra gurus, is also refraining from judgement. The test, she says, will be time and I am happy to go along with this too.

So, straight from Guruji to Psychic Sue: Tuesday was a day of prophecies and predictions, some more predictable than others. For while Guruji’s advice was typically Indian, that I should get a family because I will need to be taken care of in my old age – a person from my own community he was specific enough to add; the Intuit’s was of quite another sort. I will not reveal all this English mystic had to say, but it did quite take my breath away and leave me wondering is that really what the future holds? Then, great! Bring it on.

Thanks to the rabies boosters I pop into the hospital for, at least I can rest assured it is not that!

The best news, however – and most pertinent here – was that the worst of my health worries is behind me. (And my chakras are not irrevocably blocked!) Picking up on the history of eating disorder, she said that I have the situation more or less under control, explaining that the planet I am from in my past life had a scarcity of food and, being still connected with that, I am likely to always prefer to eat little and often; that intuitively I know what is good for me and it is only the mind that has been bombarded with conflicting messages. “If you can choose when to eat and listen to your system,” she said, “it works very well. You naturally choose very nutrious foods, and…” she says eagerly, “I like your cooking! Do you cook?” All in all, she says, its an issue that is bring resolved, and throughout the rest of the week this is the message that comes to me from various other sources too – from Gosh in the kitchen early morning, from the Irish Chinese acupuncturist who puts me under a state of near labotoby solmnolence and calm, and from Ringo at the clinic this morning – Friday – when he checks my stomach. It is okay, he pronounces, and for this day, don’t I know it!

Last night, Louise cooked for us. I was hungry and ate with gratitude the lovely food she had lovingly prepared with good prana and spices from the Spice Farm. This morning, I woke up hungry, went to the toilet, left the clinic before stretching class to go home and eat the most peaceful, quiet, blissful breakfast, and then, a second one an hour later, my stomach responding very naturally both times. Then I go to see the acupuncturist, David, and feel the Chi flowing as he puts the needles in. I swim in the sea with energy, drink ginger and cardamom tea and feel amazing. I feel myself, my body, my life, all mine, back to me again. Me, and not me, but part of a universal consciousness that ebbs and flows but that right now is flowing in sync, a part of nature and not separate or antagonistic to it.

Treatment is almost over, just a few days left next week, and I am looking forward to doing yoga again once I get to Rishikesh where I will meet up with Louise for a chai (and beyond), seeing my family and friends back in England in March and …whatever else the future holds. Who knows? I may have had some clues and insights this week, but I also know that “we still have judgement here…” And on this bank and shoal of India, I’d quite like to dive straight in and swim with all my life and light.

Where there’s true will there’s a way

As any regular reader to this blog will know, I began January 2014 in something of a state of depression. Life, it seemed, was just not shaping up the way I’d intended. (I would say “hoped” but I am far too much of a control freak for that.)

Having left Hong Kong in September to come home and start a PhD, by January I’d truly woken up to the misery-inducing realization that I was living the life of a single student in a single study-bedroom eating single meals for less than one, and not even with the highly-strung yet adorable cat I’d spent a small fortune relocating home with me to cheer things up. I knew that wherever she was (in my mother’s quaint old country cottage as it happened, lucky thing!) was my home.

I tried telling myself that this was inevitable winter blues but that I was on the right track, pursuing a course of study I not only loved but had spent months – years! – planning for, looking forward to, working and saving hard for, and now here I was! I was even learning Latin on the side for free! What more could I ask for?

But, sans-money, sans-boyfriend, sans-cat/home and even, ironically, sans-family (so near and yet still so far!), I was perhaps most importantly sans-health, physical or mental.

Something had to change. My New Year’s Resolution therefore was this: not to end the year the way it had begun. And so, in very Bridget Jones fashion, I began a new diary to get – quite literally, write – my way out of those dark depths and back into the current of life again.

By March I’d finished that 200-odd page notebook and made several more resolutions. First, to take a break from study; second, to go to India and regain my health, my spirit, my balance; and then, finally, I would go to Hong Kong and reclaim my relationship. I was sure that after this I would be able to return to university and finish what I came to do – be of some use to myself and my family.

But if I’d planned my trip to HK for the purpose of reaffirming my ties with my boyfriend, the reality was that I was coming to explain and confirm my reasons for breaking up with him. So, while the time in India was everything physically, spiritually, emotionally, creatively, socially, gastronomically, organically – in short, therapeutically – I had hoped (yes, this time, hoped) for, Hong Kong has been less so.

India allowed me to slow down and focus on a few small things at a time: my breath, the sunshine on my skin, the taste of fresh coconut milk; Hong Kong brought everything rushing back in, flooding my senses, overloading my brain and overwhelming my emotional centre.

Break-ups are never easy, and this one has been no exception. Yet the one thing I hold on to amid all the typical feelings of pathos and grief (all those ‘what was’ and ‘what might have beens’) is my conviction – so strong and intuitive three months ago that it gave no space for doubt and little pain – that it is the right decision, it is for the best in the end.

So, coming back here (for possibly the third and final time in my life, or possibly not) and truly feeling, ‘seeing’, knowing it for sure has been worth all the inevitable attendant heartache and tears. I know I can go forward now not only into the second half of the year but the next phase of my life with a clean slate, a tabla rasa.

While I do not have any plans beyond the next two months, while I do not know the answer to the question of what will happen next, I do have a strong sense of resolution – a strong will. True Will. I know what I want and what I don’t want, even if I am – finally! – leaving the hows and wherefores up to Tomorrow to answer.

Not beginning June as I did January, I am hopeful and rather curious about what the next six months will bring. Whatever it is, I am ready for it. I surrender.

All by my self (-practice)

Life after a yoga teacher training course: that mixture of relief and fear as the gruelling early morning schedule is abandoned and the work of maintaining it one’s self begins.

Of course, this is not the first time I have experienced this feeling of aloneness – singleness and independence. Only a month ago I was in precisely the same position: four weeks of 5:30am wake up calls over, with the intention of rising every day at 6/6:30 to meditate and practice asana by myself very much in mind. In mind, that is, and body until I arrived in Hong Kong, jet lagged and exhausted and thankful for every bit of sleep I could get. And then? Well, then the next course started and I went back to the alarm clock, grateful for every day in seven when I did not have to set it.

As I have mentioned previously, however, there is a big difference between waking up in India at 5:30 and strolling five minutes down a quiet dusty street to the shala with only the occasional cow hanging out, munching leftover watermelon rind, and waking up at 5:30 in Hong Kong to walk 30 minutes through dirty, litter and vomit strewn streets, the taxis already circling like sharks and the buses picking up the first bleary-eyed children to take to school. There is quite a difference between happily dreaming your way into meditation, still warm from your bed, and having to down coffee just to wake-up enough to make it in one piece (i.e. without tripping all the way down the escalators!) to meditation.

But, now? No more. Not for five long weeks. And whatever (lazy?) part of me was looking forward to this, is now suddenly scared into staying firmly hidden under the covers, ignoring the 7 o’clock alarm, the 7:10 snooze and finally awaking, slightly annoyed at oneself at 7:50am.  But while this is an accurate reflection of what happened this morning – DAY TWO – the feelings are not. I was not scared but tired, and not annoyed but grateful. I needed sleep – present tense: need!!

Yesterday – DAY THE FIRST – I woke briefly at 7am, went to the bathroom and prayed that when I got back in bed I would be able to go back to sleep, and thankfully I did, until just before my alarm at 8:30am, and boy did I feel better for those 10 hours of sleep. A quick shower and a dreamy breakfast before going upstairs to teach the little twin three-year-old boys, I really wished for more time: more time to dream, more time to eat. But c’est la vie. I am living here rent free, the least I can do is go and spend an hour helping the boys with their English!

Yet the moment I sat down with the boys, Tat – the fractionally older and smarter (and hence generally ‘naughtier’) one – started pointing to the veins standing out on my too-skinny arms, saying “ugly, ugly, ugly.” I looked down to see what he was looking at and could feel myself flushing with embarrassment, but I didn’t tell him off or even tell him to stop. After all, is it his fault? He’s only a child. Clearly no one’s told him that Victoria Beckham skin-and-bones is beautiful, that you will only be successful and admired if you weigh less than the sticks of celery you live off, if you never even look at a bread roll for fear of the guilt that will ensue. But he’s only young, he’ll learn. And growing up with their mother, who already worries that the youngest daughter will grow up to be as “fat” as the eldest, while the middle daughter (competitive as ever she was when I used to teach them four or five years ago in Shanghai) consciously exercises and calorie counts more than I ever have (or any 13 year old, to my mind, ever should!), he’ll learn that lesson quite quickly and come to have much more respect for his ugly duckling/beautiful swan of a teacher.

I jest, of course. Part of me is very grateful to the child for his honesty, sad though it made me, and hence why I did not tell him off but instead redirected his attention to the work of the day. Because children are like that: they say it as they see it. Sometimes, yes, they know – as Tat did – that it is cruel and hurtful; they are purposefully winding you up, exercising their power over you, and then…? I would say it is the adult’s role to step in and socialise them, not let them get away with teasing and hurting other people. But as teachers it is also important to stand apart and not allow them to hurt you – perhaps not allow anyone, young or old, to hurt you with words. As our yoga and mindfulness teacher has been telling us, they are just concepts and one person’s concept can be very different from your own, but it does not make it either right or wrong. Tat is simply telling it how he sees it. You might say his concept are limited – he does not understand why I look like this – but essentially, I would agree with him: it is “ugly”, but more than that – for me, it is sad, a sign that I am overworked and underfed, still under-loving myself. But I will not let his comments or anyone else’s hurt me and bring me down. I will only allow his words to inspire me towards better health, not drag me down into a circle of self-criticism and self-hatred. For I know only too well where that will keep me: in unhappiness, in “ugliness.”

You might say, however, that this is easier said than done, and I would agree. I know only too well what it is to have negative personal comments and looks directed your way each and every day. When I returned from India last year, a shadow of my former self, I had to put up with people every day saying something about my weight, even one bizarre time congratulating me on my diet and wanting to know how I did it!? “Are you crazy?!” I wanted to scream. “Do you think I want to be like this? Do you think it’s fun to be collapsing in the middle of the night with diarrhea? To be stuck in the middle of nowhere in a monsoon that is killing hundreds of people and infecting our drinking water? To be cut off from all contact with friends and family? To be so weak with hunger you fear you are going to die?” Well, I didn’t say this either. I just shrugged, smiled and walked away, keeping my tears, my sadness for myself to learn from, to deal with. That time I knew better; I knew it was not my fault. But with anorexia it is harder, and it is lonelier, partly because you feel it is your fault, that you have no one else but yourself to blame. All by yourself, with yourself, killing yourself each and every day. But I don’t want to think like this. I know I have to rise above playing the victim and rise above playing the bully or judge. The first rule of being alone, all by myself – in one’s yoga practice as in life – is about cultivating compassion. It’s about love.

And this is what transpired yesterday. For after teaching the boys and leaving the Peak, I went to Central, tired though I was, for a gentle hour of yoga. Sometimes, for me, it is as much about taking yourself to a clean, neutral space and being around familiar and un-familiar people. But as it was, the bus was running late and by the time I arrived the only person in the changing room was Carol. Carol, aiya! How can I describe Carol? She’s the Cruella Devil, Devil Wears Prada, Know It All of Hong Kong high society who happens to patronise the same gym and yoga classes as I and who, over the years, has taken great delight in prying into my affairs – health, wealth, relationships, career, soul – causing possibly more hurt than any three-year-old could and yet with a sort of blindness and insensitivity that suggests she does not intend it and would be mortified if she knew she’d offended you, as I one time had to suggest to her that she had. So it was only Carol, finishing up and getting ready for her usual Sunday brunch at the yacht club with her mother, asking me – as I hurried in and hurriedly undressed – how I was and where I was living, and basically (so it felt) trying get a few more scraps of information to add to her file on me. But bleary-headed and late as I was I answered everything wrong – not at all to her satisfaction – and before I knew it I was stressed, trying to explain how the estate I lived on (next door to hers as it happens) was “far away” when she affirmed it was not. Aiya!

So, by the time I arrived in Arno’s class of only three other people I was grateful for the silence and simplicity of yoga: a few gentle sun salutations, a couple of standing poses, a headstand or three, and some floor stretches… I wanted to cry. Sometimes the sadness and emotion that’s been raising up in us through the weeks – sparked by little or big things – comes out in a deep seated forward bend, hip opener or groin stretch. (Or, at least in my experience. For others, I appreciate, it could just be more physical pain that is being felt.) A number of things, not least my run in with Carol and Tat that morning, was coming out: the dream I had had the previous night involving my ex, the exercises we had done on the yoga course the couple of days before…

The exercise on Friday had been to look deeply into the eyes of the person opposite you for two whole minutes, just observing their features, your thoughts, their breath and whatever else came up. The partner I had was someone I had spoken to a few times, someone shy on the outside but as I knew quite sociable and friendly, warm and caring on the inside; someone, perhaps, seeking greater confidence, greater love, greater acceptance from the world. But, as I looked into her eyes and saw all this – the sadness, the plea “Don’t judge me” – I suddenly wondered how much of what I was seeing was a reflection of myself. Was she looking so sad and earnest because she was seeing the same things in me? Was I only reading in her expression my own feelings of low self-worth, fear of judgement, desire for love, friendship and acceptance? It was powerful stuff, and the next exercise was no less so.

This time we had to sit in groups of four or five, looking at one group at a time as they went to stand at the front of the class. Again, we did this in complete silence, observing the people standing up, observing our thoughts, feelings, breathing. And as the second group stood up to take their turn, I caught myself thinking “Oh yes, I like all these people,” as if I hadn’t liked everyone in the previous group, had been able to find some fault with each of them, but luckily this group would be spared that. “How awful!” the next thought came. “You are judging everyone, trying to find something to say or think about each one – this one’s pretty, that one’s good at yoga, I like her clothes, I don’t know her so much, she’s shortest in the group, etc etc etc. How exhausting! Can’t you just stop thinking for a bit? Can’t you just stop judging?” And that’s when I started to cry, when I realised how much time I spent, how much of my life was being wasted, judging – not really others, but myself.

Then there was the dream: I was back with my boyfriend, though I am not sure I wanted to be or that we were properly together, not like before. (Dreams are annoying like that: kind of vague – but then, some relationships are like that too.) And I remember I wanted to catch a train; I was going to see Alan, the yoga guy in India. But we were sitting in the waiting room and just kept missing the train, or the bus, or anything that came by, and finally I was getting so frustrated that I just went out of the waiting room into the snowy street platform and hailed a passing taxi. There were already quite a few people in it, so my ex and I had to squeeze in, when I suddenly realised that it was going in completely the wrong direction and I just wanted to get out. We paid our share of the fare and as I got out of the car I turned to my ex and said something to the effect that I didn’t want to be with him anymore, that I wasn’t going anywhere the whole time I was with him, that it felt as if he didn’t really want to be going anywhere and was cursing – jinxing – every plan for foreign travel I made, every plan for us, our future. It would be better, I said, to go on alone, by myself. I’d get there quicker, I said, without him. And I think we left each other, or at least, the dream ended there, the scene – the relationship – dissolved. But as with all those heavy, involved dreams, it had lingered – through my shower, through breakfast and into teaching the twins, finally to come out in all its sadness during that yoga class, so that by the time I left the gym to meet my friends, I really did not feel good company at all, just sad and introspective. I just felt I wanted and would be better off being alone.

Added to this, the weather that we’d been counting on to stay dry for our walk up to the Peak to take photos had failed us, starting to rain (again) just at the crucial moment. IFC mall and all its coffee shops were crowded and when I met them I could tell we were all a bit fed up. Talk of the weather – English and Hong Kong – was dragging us down, barely disguising our ennui and disappointment: what were we going to do with ourselves now that all our best laid, most looked forward to plans had failed?

Yet, arriving at Agnes B – pregnant friend, Jacky, was starving – we were lucky to take the last vacant table and were able to hover in front of the menu board for a good ten minutes trying to decide between designer cafe lattes, before finally enjoying a rambling, lighthearted and reviving conversation about photography-art-literature-film-children-writing-etc-etc-etc. Within minutes of sitting still, slurping some warm gingery soya coffee, and relaxing while Lloyd took the pressure of “how does your new camera work” off me and went to work finding out himself, I felt better. All that melancholy, bluesy stuff of wanting to be alone was behind me. I realised I was alone. Of course I was. I was meeting up with my married, happily expectant friends for “coffee” (Jacky is off caffeine and Lloyd seemed to be keeping her company with an iced tea and a shared panini) alone, by myself, no boyfriend in tow. But that was how I wanted it, that was my choice. Because in terms of A relationship, it was not going to make me happy – not right now. The dream was all too symbolic of how I felt, of my conceptions about the relationship – whether he would agree or not, whether objectively valid or not, it was how I felt, how I saw it, and I wanted more than anything to be free, to come and go, to be myself, to choose my own role rather than feel it was dictated by someone else, their needs, their expectations. So I was alone, but for now not sad, not lonely. I had myself and I had these, my friends and their best intentions to help me while I was here – not only take photos without the lens cap still on, my finger over the lens etc etc – but to get better, to help myself get better.

And so I did leave them to have cake, but with the intention of going home, making a vegetable green curry, chatting to my mum on Skype and catching up with some reading. The sun now annoying shining and the weather was perfect for a walk, so I stopped on my way through the park to take some terrible photos of the carp in the lake, thinking of my friends and grateful to them for their company that had lifted me out of my blues and brought me back to the present moment.

 

 

 

For I have had too much of apple-picking (aka “please no more, yoga!”)

Apple-picking?!

Let me explain – okay, admit: I really didn’t want to get up this morning. Like really. 

We’re into week three of the yoga course now, which is about 74 hours done and another 126 to go. And just so you know, it’s pretty much not stopped raining since we started.

Not that it’s outdoor yoga. This is Hong Kong after all. No open-sided shalas here, just your regular, bog-standard Hong Kong studio: tiny, arms almost reaching the ceiling and certainly touching my neighbours, heavily air-conditioned… So what am I complaining about? Oh I don’t know, only that to get to this wonderfully serene yoga sanctuary in the heart of Sheung Wan, opposite the towering Cooked Food Market, I have to abseil down from the Peak, navigating white-water torrents of gushing rain water, dodging umbrellas and slip sliding my way through the-morning-after-the-night-before Soho streets (eugh!) to finally arrive, ass-wet through, at morning meditation on my poor water-logged travel yoga mat. Sigh.

No wonder I didn’t want to get up this morning and that, even having gotten up at 5:38am and had a quick shower and sat slumped over a sad and sorry cup of chicory coffee, I still didn’t want to go but very nearly climbed straight back in bed (but woefully didn’t). And no wonder that, hiking the 2.7 kilometers back up the hill in the still-pouring rain, I was wishing that I had.

But it’s not just the rain. The rain I think I could live with. It’s worse than that: it’s the yoga.

“But I thought you loved yoga,” I hear you cry.

Yes, I do. I did. I thought I did. I think – no, I know – I still do. But everything has it’s limit and I think I am finally reaching mine with yoga. Not only am I practising the physical asanas for anything from 90 minutes to three, three and a half hours a day – which, to be honest, sometimes, when I have been really bored and had nothing else to do, have been known to relish – but I am now dreaming about it at night.

Again, to be honest, I have dreamt about yoga before too, but not like this, not sequencing, sequencing, sequencing, and not every single night!

You might think I am working too hard – an accusation I am used to accepting and often level against myself – and it is true we do have a 90-odd minute (depending how quick or slow you are, how many postures you leave out or how many vinyasas you throw in) routine to learn, a sequence devised by our teacher which we have to learn off my heart and be able to teach to the rest of the class at a moment’s notice. So you might think I am spending every waking moment memorising the warm-up, sun salutations, standing series, core section, balances, backbends, hip openers and closing segments. But I am not. Really. I have enough confidence (yes, both arrogance and faith) to know that the sequence will come naturally, with time; that I know most of it already from having gone through it the past two weeks and that, anyway, if you forget a bit or miss something out it doesn’t matter too much. So, no. For a change I am not being a complete control freak or grade-A geek and swotting up on my sequence night and day, but whether I like it or not it is working its way around me – body and mind – and I am practising it even in my sleep. Aiya.

What do they say about ‘no rest for the wicked’?!

So, I am seriously having to consider taking some time out from yoga – even from the yoga course itself. Maybe I should have stayed in bed this morning, shouldn’t have bothered spending an hour and a half hiking through the rain to get to and back from meditation and asana class. Maybe there is more to life than yoga. Maybe there is more to yoga than asana! Because while the arm balancing was fun (side crow into koundinyasana), hiking all the way back up here, with groceries (because even when there is not a single free taxi to be found a girl still needs her grapefruit and pineapple), was exhausting. Truly. And suddenly throwing ourselves around into strange half-upside positions, spending so much energy trying to get our legs a few inches off the floor, our asses higher than our heads etc etc, seems… Well, stupid. A big expense of spirit. A waste. A shame. (As Shakespeare might say.)

Okay, maybe that is taking it a bit far. I don’t really believe all this. It is merely an indication of how I am feeling about my energy – high, low, insufficient, surplus (I wish!)… And where I am coming to in terms of what I want to give that energy to. As I was saying to some good old friends over dumpling lunch yesterday, I am eating more now (as compared with five months ago), I am able to be less restrictive and I am careful to eat a fuller, more varied diet, but I am – thanks to the amount of exercise I am doing – still only the same weight I was five (and even nine – after a week’s enforced starvation in India!) months ago: drastically underweight for my height; and my periods are still only on prescription, courtesy of the contraceptive pill. I may be getting better in some ways, but I know it will still take time and self-care before I able to reach my ideal, healthy weight and be happy with and in myself, not suffering energy lows or blood sugar spikes; not having to worry, for example, about eating too much white rice or too many fried dumplings, cream cakes etc as even the nicest meal or most well-intentioned treat from a friend sends my system into freak out for several hours. And it’s hard making people believe that you’re avoiding cakes not because your crazy scared they’ll make you fat but because they actually make you crazy scary ill!

So I am having to make a decision: to continue pushing myself through the physical yoga training or not, to continue my aspirations to be a yoga teacher or not. Or perhaps I do not have to decide anything. Perhaps I let my body speak for itself, my heart, my soul.

Because I made a commitment – and it was the memory of this that got me walking through the rain to class this morning (I look up and through the window outside to see that, yup, it’s still raining) – I made a commitment to the course, to myself, to yoga… But yoga, what does that really mean?

I have had many conversations with many people over the past few weeks since arriving in Hong Kong, and even in the months in England prior to leaving for Goa, with people – dear friends and family members – who claim simply, or rather apologetically or nervously or defiantly, not to be able to do yoga.

“I’m like Iron Lady,” one friend said to me, “I don’t bend.”

Another: “I don’t believe in any form of exercise that has a name. Gardening, cooking, walking the dog…that is my idea of exercise,” she explained.

As I listened to my friends I did not think how wrong they were or to try to explain to them the importance of stretching their muscles or toning their body, or learning how to deepen their breath to Darth Veda levels so the people across the street can hear. I thought instead how perhaps for them they do not need to go to class to learn how to bend backwards or twist themselves into weird shapes to get at the deepest, most inaccessible layers of fascia known to man. Perhaps these people – the wonderful friends and family around me – are already bending over backwards in their daily lives, helping other people, helping themselves, walking their dogs, cooking for their friends, going shopping for baby clothes with their expectant wives, picking up the pieces whenever a colleague lets them down, being there to listen to the woes of others and only talking about their own with a smile that says “I’m coping.” Perhaps these people already live their days so mindfully, counting each breath, each moment and not wasting a single second, so that for them a yoga class would be “an expense of spirit in a waste of shame.” Perhaps for them the joy of handstand does not come after weeks and months clinging to and then trying to un-cling from a wall in a studio, but from the spontaneity of finding yourself alone on the beach at sunset with the energy and heart to leap up on to your hands and feel the grains of sand beneath you. Perhaps there are such people who are yogis already, without having matching pants and vest from Lulelemon. And perhaps I would like to be such a yogi, giving my time and energy to helping and healing others first, or even to helping and healing myself, rather than to getting up into an arm balance or headstand before breakfast. Perhaps…perhaps…perhaps….

But for now, I can’t give up. I did make a commitment and that includes to all the other people on the course, the people who do want to learn to be a teacher and do have the physical, mental and emotional energy to endure. Whatever feelings I am experiencing now, whatever thoughts or realisations I am coming to, can wait. To quit or back out would be selfish and would, I know, later be felt as a missed opportunity to learn about something  more than just asana. So for now my yoga is to keep going, even when part of me – for good and less good reasons – would like to give in, sleep in and dream about something else. I know I have other dreams, and if one of these dreams is to be a yoga therapist, then good: keep at the yoga! But if there are other dreams yet undiscovered or unfulfilled then let’s give more of our waking energy to them and save perfecting koundyasana for another day, another week, another lifetime. There will always be another of those, but there is only one of this.

Talking about a yogalution

Going the distance

So I arrive back in Hong Kong, as I’ve done so many times, to dismaying damp and drizzle. My friend Kate sympathises: “I’m sorry you have to come back to this,” she What’s Apps to say. I am already, within half a day, signed up at the gym and back on a Hong Kong number, pepped up on coffee my suddenly 11 year old student has made me. “Suddenly”, because the last time I looked she was 6 years old and adorable, not she isn’t still adorable but, like her then 11 year old sister, is now a trouble-maker, rummaging in the fridge for fish eggs to try and tempt me with (I’m strict vegetarian and having non of it) and getting me all caffeinated when I’d rather be sound asleep.

“It’s okay,” I tell my friend. “You don’t have to apologise for the HK weather.” But she does and we both…

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Talking about a yogalution

So I arrive back in Hong Kong, as I’ve done so many times, to dismaying damp and drizzle. My friend Kate sympathises: “I’m sorry you have to come back to this,” she What’s Apps to say. I am already, within half a day, signed up at the gym and back on a Hong Kong number, pepped up on coffee my suddenly 11 year old student has made me. “Suddenly”, because the last time I looked she was 6 years old and adorable, not she isn’t still adorable but, like her then 11 year old sister, is now a trouble-maker, rummaging in the fridge for fish eggs to try and tempt me with (I’m strict vegetarian and having non of it) and getting me all caffeinated when I’d rather be sound asleep.

“It’s okay,” I tell my friend. “You don’t have to apologise for the HK weather.” But she does and we both know it.

We are sitting in the back of Le Petite Cafe on the second wet grey morning since my arrival. I’ve got my much-needed cappuccino while she is trumping me in the ethical, clean living stakes with her peppermint tea. It is good to see Kate. She is about the only person I can tell all this hippy stuff too without fear of being disowned, unfriended, betrayed.

“It’s just so inhumane,” I complain, “so isolating. In India I never felt lonely; you’d go into a cafe or bar and the guy would ask how you are, if you’ve had a nice morning; they know that you’ve been doing yoga or that your friend’s been by looking for you to go swimming. You ask them how they are and they actually look at you and smile as they reply. I mean, can you imagine having a conversation with the person serving you? There was this guy that had a shop where I’d buy some nice dresses and things, and he told me all about where he was from and what it was like. You’d love it, he said; they all said that, that you have to go visit their home because it’s the most beautiful place in India…with this look in their eyes, kind of faraway and dreamy that made you believe it. CAn you imagine doing that here? Going into Zara… Hallo,” I sing in my best Chinglish accent, “welcome to Zara, how are you, nice day. Where you from? I am from most beautiful place in China you must come and visit sometime.”

My friend laughs. I gesture around at the long queue for coffee, the bustling cafe full of smart suited types. “No one talks to anyone, and yet everyone expects and demands so much. We are just rude to each other. Treating people like commodities.”

I knew this would happen. I’d warned myself on the walk down here not to do it. What was the use of railing against it? I knew when I was back in India that it was going to be a shock. That day that we’d sat in philosophy talking about the importance of feeding the mind with purities – not only clean foods, but gentle sounds, pleasant smells, harmonious colours and images… I knew that Hong Kong was going to feel like an assault on the soul like never before. The pollution, the concrete, the noise, the crowds… Where even was the sky above my head, the earth beneath my feet? Where was the nearest fruit stall selling fresh bananas, mangos, coconuts? Waiting to cross the street I had seen a stall selling flowers – such things do at least still exist – but it was not until, finally 2 minutes later, I walked right past could I smell the intense fragrance of two dozen orchids, and then, just as quickly, it was gone. The intensity of colour and smell replaced by the grey of the pavements, buildings, smog and drizzle.

What was the point of complaining though? This was life. This was reality. This was Mrs Dalloway in the 21st Century – what a lark, what a plunge! what bullish*t. But where was the use in complaining? What could you expect – the erase it all? To turn back the clock, unpave all the roads, dig up the sidewalks and go back to bare feet shuffling along sandy paths, pulling rickshaws uphill, carrying sacks of rice on your head? People wanted taxis and roads, tramways and escalators. They wanted skyscrapers and high-rise; they wanted shopping malls and coffee shops and constant wifi. Even in India they want all this and you want them to be able to have it too – your Indian friends who slave away in front of pathetic fans, longing for air-conditioning and refrigeration. To be able to sleep comfortably at night and wake in the morning to an ice cold juice and a hot shower.

I had considered the problem deeply: if yoga heightened your sensitivity to your environment, made you hyper-aware of sounds, smells, tastes… gave caffeine and alcohol, tobacco and McDonalds an intolerable toxicity… then surely the yogi could not survive in the city? But then, on the other hand, if modern city living was so stressful that it drove people to seek the calming, mind-altering effects of yoga, wasn’t it inevitable that at some point – sooner or later – a revolution had to occur? Wouldn’t the city be forced to change in order to accommodate humanity again, in order to be humane again?

In my mind green spaces would spring up everywhere: people growing vegetables on their rooftops, letting the grass grow in the cracks between the pavements, flowers, shrubs and trees out of window boxes and guttering… Instead of red taxis lining the street, children would be running hand in hand to school, picnicking on the sidewalks; businessmen walking to work barefoot, not texting on their iPhones but talking to their neighbours on the earth. The sky would be blue and the air good to breath, scented with flowers and carrying, not the noise of the traffic, but the sound of birdsong.

Yes, it was a crazy dream, but that is what – for a moment – I imagined when I thought of Hong Kong. But then, as my friend Alan reminded me, most people do not do yoga for that reason. They do it because they want to look good, because it is fashionable, because they have bought all the Lululemon gear and look damn good wearing it over post-pilates coffee with their friends. Oh Alan, I wish your cynicism was not quite so justified, but I fear it is.

Still, if Kate is anything to go by, I have reason to believe yet. Kate started yoga with me back in… June, July (?) last year. Hers was the familiar story of being unsatisfied with her body and wanting to join a gym to do something about it. So I did what any evangelical yogi does and signed her up at my gym, selfishly pleased I would get to spend more time with her and eager to share the life-enhancing benefits of yoga. To begin with, I’ve got to admit, I was a little dismayed to find her bringing her iPhone along; I understand she has to work, but this was hardly going to help her to zone out and chill out. Still, she’s my friend so I said nothing, until now. (Sorry Kate).

But, patronising as this is going to sound, I am thrilled to report that Kate is still doing yoga – has been doing yoga the whole time I’ve been away and now has a regular, heartfelt practice. Heck, she’s even doing wheel pose on the top of freakin’ mountains! (Yes, a photo worthy of Facebooking, I quite agree!)

Talking to her about “Everything I Learnt in India” I have to acknowledge that she is already there – spiritually, ethically, intelligently trying to live the life of a yogi and without having to spend a couple of thousand dollars and several weeks on a teacher training course. Kate’s a natural born yogi. My big sister stand in for the past four or five years, she has always have been my go-to guru of choice in this crazy old town. My first gratitude and biggest pleasure, and I will certainly be taking a leaf out of her book and opting for the peppermint tea in future.

So Kate, I break my vow of silence for you, in honour of you. Yes, I have lots to lament about returning to HK, but you are not one of them, and in terms of starting a yoga revolution? If it has only two members (and perhaps we recruit your brother as a third?), nameste. “I bow to you.”

Going, going, Goaed

So, I’m just about packed and ready to go, relieved that my suitcase isn’t quite as bursting at the seams as I feared what with all the new dresses and Ali-baba-style yoga pants I’ve acquired since I came here. But, lightweight and effortless, they appear not to be weighing me down, which is a blessing, because if I came to India with a stock of emotional baggage, I am glad at least to be leaving feeling lighter brighter and breezier, certainly with a nice sun tan and even, possibly with a little bit more flesh on my bones – or at least the inner strength, energy and vitality to allow that to happen in due course.

But of course, I cannot claim to be a whole new or entirely different person. I know I have not exactly been reborn or remade afresh after just five weeks in India, this morning being a prime example of how easily we can be… discombobulated – to use a word my sister was once all too fond of.

For, awaking at 6:30 from dreams heavy with lovers past and imaginary, I rolled out of bed to walk down the road for my last asana practice in the shala just as I’d intended, but not unfortunately with the same anticipated joy and optimism. What had seemed such a nice idea last night suddenly, as I left my flip flops in the usual place and walked barefoot along the dusty corridor and up the stairs as I had done so many times before weary and hungry, didn’t seem so exciting. Weary and hungry indeed.

Perhaps my mind was too caught up in dreaming, perhaps I was too preoccupied with thoughts of leaving, of packing, of pedicures, taxis, flight times… I cannot blame my tamasic mood on last night’s chocolate and beer binge because I gave in to neither temptation but went to bed with some wholesome literature and fell sound asleep before 10:30pm. Perhaps then my lack-lustre mood was just an indication that, no matter how hard I try I am simply not a nice person in the morning – that a cup of hot tea (at least) is required before I can or should attempt any conversation with myself or God, or any physical exertion, be it going to work or going to my yoga mat. Well, c’est la vie!

I stayed for the short duration of half an hour, long enough to discover but not resolve a stiffness in my upper back and decide that today was not a day to push myself, but to go straight to Fatima’s Corner for iced tea and fruit salad, to meditate on the infinite goodness of lemon and mint, banana and papaya, and to reflect that I am more than ready to move on to Hong Kong, to studios and apartments with air-conditioning that will allow me to sleep in past sunrise and practise yoga before sunset; how good it will be to be back in Marvin, Charlotte and Sky’s classes, to – just occasionally – give over my will to that of a teacher, to once again have my practice dictated and determined by them rather than my own free choice and discretion. For while I agree with Iyengar that to do self-practice is empowering for allowing you to follow your own will rather than that of a teacher, sometimes – especially when you have awoken to your worst, most grumbling inner child – it is good to surrender yourself to someone else’s instruction, to tell yourself you’re here for the hour, like it or not, and find at the end of an hour that you like it very much and off you go. Thank you!

Iced tea over, the thought of packing returns to plague me, as does my commitment to be at Govini’s beauty parlour at 9:30am for a pedicure – to finally get the sand out of my toenails after four weeks and to replace the chipped and faded green nail polish with something more sophisticated and demur for Hong Kong. How easily we are stressed by time commitments: too many things to do, too many things on our minds, to go here and do this and that by a certain time. So I take off, only to find her just arriving herself – ten minutes late – I find myself feeling a little annoyed, at her and myself. Even after 5 weeks, I am still forgetting this is India and there is no need to hurry. I could have stayed and finished my drink!

But it turns out that we are both hot, perspiring and a little stressed this morning. Having struggled to get a ride and been saved by her friend just in the nick of time, her concern not to be late makes me feel guilty. I am glad I was not too late for her, but wish I’d given her the benefit of the doubt. Of course she would not choose to be late; even if this is India and there is no hurry, she is conscientious about her work. It is her yoga.

Switching on the fan, she waves me into a chair in front of it and gets busy with the water, towels and implements she needs and within minutes has my feet soaking in a steaming bowl of hot water – “hot, but relaxing, right?” she smiles up at me, encouragingly. I do not argue, but let it work as an auto-suggestion. Yes, hot but relaxing. Relax, relax, relax…

I open my book. Gideon too is coming to the end of his journey: another pilgrimage on foot, but this time around the 80-odd temples of Shikiko, one of the four main islands of Japan. And as I read, with Govini scrubbing satisfyingly at my feet, massaging cream and getting to work on trimming my cuticles, I start to melt away. No pressure, no worries, nothing to do but sit here and feel myself softening, the nerves and excitement – because as Govini looks up and asks me, it is exciting, to be moving on, going ‘home’, seeing old friends and embarking on another yoga course in a matter of days… But it can all fade away for now. I am still here, now. I settle in and feel myself becoming peaceful.

Gideon is contemplating doing it all again – his o-henro-san thingamee – but I am not tempted to do the month over again. As I felt this morning walking barefoot up to the empty shala, it is enough. The days and weeks of dragging myself, tired and hungry and hot, up there are over, done and finished, and me with it. My break from reality has run its course and I am ready to start getting on with the busy-ness of life again, start thinking more seriously of the future – of university or work, money, family, etc. It’s been necessary to take time out, but all things come to an end, and perhaps that is why I am finding it hard to relax this morning. Much as I try, and I do, and succeed for a short time, I am ready to be on the move, anxious to get going. I have things to do, people to see, decisions to make. And it’s bloody hot here, too hot to do a damn thing but shower and sit in the breeze drinking iced teas, and I have not reached that level of samadhi just yet. I cannot rest on my laurels completely, not just yet.

As I stand up to choose a new nail colour, I realise that it is simply being with Govini that I find so soothing and relaxing. She is the same age as me, but already married with a baby, she has been something of a mother to me, calling me “dear”, waxing my delicate bits and telling me how beautiful I am and how much more beautiful I would be if I had some more fat on me. She laughs as she tells me how she is always eating, making a little miming eating gesture with her mouth like a rabbit. She is soft and feminine, but by no means big – I guess a UK size 12 – but she would like be bigger. “Even my husband, he is telling me,” she says. In India to be big is beautiful; it is to be happy and healthy. Richly alive.

With her mild manners and gentle, characteristically Indian wobble of the head, she has become something a comforting presence – a friend – in my life here. Yesterday, after painting a new henna tattoo on the palm of my left hand, she gave me a gift of some silver bracelets, which I wear proudly. I have never really worn a lot of jewellry or taken much care over my appearance, but yesterday as I showered, dressed and put on my bracelets to go out for dinner, I felt pretty for the first time in a long while and was conscious of the looks of the men as I passed. Indian men are always looking, so perhaps this was nothing new; but I felt pretty, confident and strong inside and this was new. Even going off for dinner alone felt more of a treat because I’d made an effort: I was on a hot date, with myself.

This is thanks largely to Govini who, on the first visit I made, told me I was a beautiful person – inside and out – but that I needed to look after the outside more. I had a good heart, she said, but in this world that is not enough; people need to see your beauty on the outside too. “You do it for yourself but also to show everyone else you’re beautiful,” she said.

This was an interesting idea to me, as I’d always believed that true beauty shone from the inside out. I am still of this belief, but also appreciate that, like today, when I give Govini her gift (my Accessorize bag that she’d so much praised when I first entered her salon four weeks ago) and she grabbed me back, stopped me from leaving, hugged me twice and sat me back down in the chair so she could thread (that is, wax) my eyebrows, inner beauty deserves its outer compliment, and no one wants hairy eyebrows – not even my taxi driver who, he tells me, plucks his himself and is often complimented by the ladies. (Though I think this information was offered in an attempt to curry favour with his “beautiful” passenger.)

Oh, Govini! What have you done? Poor Mr Happy, who I’d been starting to think was not as happy as his name suggested, is, I now realise, love-sick. He is having to say goodbye to the woman who walked into his life for the first time only a week ago, had one brief ride on the back of his scooter, rejected his offer of a beer-and-beach date, and is now employing his services merely to fly out of his life again, with little or no guarantee of ever returning.

He plays romantic pop songs to her in the car, but she is distant and quiet, hardly talking, certainly not chatting away as has been her wont with most of the locals she meets. She watches the scenery out the window, takes the occasional sip of water and is reticent about accepting his proffered bananas. But, arriving at the airport, she gives him a sweaty hug, an extra 100 rupees for his trouble and leaves an apple on the passenger seat for him. Perhaps it’s a sign that she’ll come back after all, and marry him and live happily ever after: him feeding her bananas, getting her nicely fat around the edges and she fresh from the salon cooking him dinner every evening in the beautiful dresses he buys for her.

Or perhaps he underestimates her, takes her polite, friendly but quiet demeanour for willing subservience. She did not seem to like it when he asked her where she was going that time, seemed quite annoyed by his questions, his intrusions. He does not realise that all the men – the taxi and tuktuk drivers on the street – bombard her day and night with questions of ‘where you going? want taxi?’  preferring to dictate to her than let her decide where and when she’d like to go. He does not realise her independent streak, her hostility to those who try to tell her what to do, who suggest they know better, or how far she might run in order to escape such control. This is, after all, the first time she’s ever even taken a domestic flight – Goa to Mumbai, Mumbai to Delhi… It’s always been all international with her, and as she said about her Hong Kong boyfriend and he agreed, distance is hard.

So he walks away with a grin and a smile, the hope that maybe he’ll see her next year, for now happy in the knowledge that he lives in one of the most beautiful places on earth and that that by itself must be enough enticement. After all, who wouldn’t want to settle down  to domestic bliss in a tropical paradise? You’d have to be crazy, right?

 

Grounding down and growing on up

I woke up this morning in something of a funk, the impression of last night’s Skype conversation with my mum still churning around inside my head.

It had been quite unintentional, quite unthinking that I’d mentioned that perhaps I’d get work and stick around in HK for the summer – more like wishful financial thinking than anything else.

“Err, hang on a minute,” my mother had replied, “can I just stop you there…” before going on to remind me that, not only had I left England at a time when she needed our practical and emotional support, but that I’d left my adorable but rather highly-strung, OCD cat with her, and my 1001 book collection which, even in my absence has been growing thanks to wifi on the beach and Amazon’s universal shipping service. Poor Mum!

“No, of course!” I reassured her, instantly filled with guilt and remorse, “of course I’m coming back and picking up Audrey, of course I’ll help you sell the house, and I’ll learn to drive and…”

And the conversation we had only the other day, and the conversations we’ve been having over the past few months came flooding back – conversations in which rather than planning a life of international jet-set travel, no worries, no responsibilities, no cares, I’ve actually been yearning for, fantasizing about and starting to logistically plan having a home, a space where I can take care of Audrey, myself and my mum if she needs it, where I can teach yoga, hold art and dance classes, a place with enough room for a garden to grow vegetables and a kitchen to cook them in. This has been the dream, growing slowly from a tiny wishful seed into a ‘why the blooming hell can’t I not?!’ flower, but a dream that, in my insecurity – my need for money in the bank, the illusion of deep, fixed, sustaining roots – I turned my back on, reverting to the old-habit-dies-hard of “Hong Kong is the answer, go where the money is.”

However, I know that is merely the ego talking and, after upsetting my mum last night – giving her the impression that I was thinking of abandoning her and my pussy cat, going abroad indefinitely once again – and thereby upsetting myself, I gave a good talking to.

Like most crazy people, I can often be found talking to myself, or rather writing to myself. She’s quite sensible is that other self, most rational, very reassuring and rather sweet and loving. So by the time we went to sleep, singing bowl reverberating on my abdomen in an attempt to open up my manipura and heart chakras, we’d made peace with ourselves, quietened our insecurities and reawakened our faith in my best, most earnest dreams for myself, Audrey and my mother.

Yet still I awoke this morning, around 6:30am as usual, with the stink of last night hanging over me, berating myself for being irresponsible, flightly, immature, selfish…. Wow, how unkind we can be to ourselves and no wonder that with such a rude awakening – no “good morning beautiful!” for me – I was tempted to roll straight back over and go to sleep! But I didn’t. Or okay, I think sleep claimed me for 10 minutes, then I was back awake and mindful of my intention to walk down the beach to the shala and get in some self-practice before breakfast. Because it has been many days since I’ve seriously given myself to meditation or yoga, and yesterday I found myself feeling most ungracious and increasingly hostile towards the half a dozen flies that kept landing on my breakfast; but I was sure that an hour and a half of Mysore-style practice would see me right, put me back in touch with the Oneness of the universe. And I was right.

Even by the time I reached the shala I was in a better mood. The mornings here are cool and walking down the beach, so quiet now that the season is at an end, just the cows having their early morning dip with the crows, and a few well-seasoned expats taking their final strolls along the shore before they head elsewhere. Walking down the beach is a meditation in itself, a recognition of the power and peace of the ocean, its essential unchanging emptinessness. It has nowhere to go, nothing to do but enact its ceaseless assault upon the shifting shore. “Everything could have been anything else and would still have had the same meaning,” as Tennessee Williams said.

The Sampoorna Yoga shala above Fatima’s guest house is quiet now, the guest house itself shut up, all the doors to the once-occupied rooms boarded and padlocked; only in the  centre of the courtyard are piled the heaps of blankets, tables, chairs and discarded apparel as evidence of a once bustling hostelry. It is like this all over Agonda. One by one the restaurants, guest houses and shops have been closing, the shopkeepers desperately trying to sell off the last of their goods before they head for the cool hills of home, the love and longing in their eyes as they speak of the beauty of Nepal, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. Almost everyone here hails from somewhere else, and given the distances and hours travelled in India, I am almost more of a local than they are, it being a mere 9 hours for me to get back home… Or 7 to my adoptive home of Hong Kong.

(Eating peanut butter and banana on toast – it is breakfast time now as I write – is very satisfying, especially after waking so early and fitting in over 90 minutes of relaxing, invigorating, restorative, calming yoga practice; and it puts me in mind of my father, the reason I am a life-long vegetarian but who himself, after dabbling with both yoga and vegetarianism in the mid-80s has undergone many chameleonesque transformations and has been heard to say that vegetarianism is quite unhealthy and, no, he has no idea what is fuelling my brain – a comment which led me, during my Finals, to consume PB and banana on toast as a daily necessity.)

The asana worked its magic, as ever. Starting with some gentle Sivananda-style sun salutations I worked my poor aching hips open (all that walking up and down and up and down the beach?) before coming up into some Primary Series sun salutation Bs, through the standing poses (good old favourites especially: utthita trikonsana and parivrtta trikonasanas), incorporating some spontaneous heart-opening and back bends, and down to seated forward folds and the finishing sequence.

By the time I was done I didn’t want to leave, but stayed for a few more deep backbends (bow and locust), understanding now in this heat how it is the Indian yogis can contort themselves into all kinds of impossible positions, the heat and humidity literally melting you like plasticine, softening away all tension and stiffness so that, even if unlike me you were schooled pre-Thatcher and had all the benefits of free milk, your hardened bones are no obstacle to even the most esoteric of poses. 

As I came down to rest in pidgeon and baddha konasana, resting my third eye on the ground, gratitude was flooding my body, heart and mind. I could forgive myself for my momentary flightly selfishness, come back to the greater point and purpose of my sojourn here in the lovely Agonda – a world away from the tensions and responsibilities of life in England – and for my continued exile while I go to Hong Kong next week for three months. I could feel myself wishing to make the most of this gift of time to heal and reconnect with myself in the knowledge that this will help me heal and reconnect with others. For as Swami Rama writes: “non-attachment properly understood means love… When yogis speak of non-attachment they are not teaching indifference, but are teaching how to genuinely and selflessly love others.” 

We often take non-attachment to mean to objects, material possessions; but for the yogi, this includes people. Surely there can be no harder practice than non-attachment to those we love? How can we care when we so easily take ourselves away, half way around the world when they need us most? It is still something I am trying to reconcile myself to – possibly a deep hurt I have inflicted and continue to inflict on myself and others. But sometimes one knows – one feels – the weakness, the futility of holding on, and the greater strength of letting go, if only for a short time in order that you both may have the room, the air and light to grow.

Before our teacher and monk Kasheva left last week for the hills of Dharmasala, he performed reiki on me. It was an incredible experience in which many things came up – the floods in Uttarkashi last summer among them.; many tears followed and the message “LET GO” reverberated clearly: Let go of pain, let go of possessions, let go of attachments, let go of old habits, let go of fear. Accept life and death. Choose vitality, choose creativity, choose transformation, and attain transcendence. These were the words that came to me – promises of what I could achieve if I could just practice letting go, if I changed my old thought and emotional patterns, my samskaras, and started living in the now, for today, for bliss. 

Why would we choose anything else? Why would we choose to live in unhappiness? Many would argue that we do not choose to, but that pain and suffering comes to find us. But who has not encountered troubles – a car crash, a divorce, bankruptcy, a tsunami, flood or famine? Who has not had a parent, sibling or child die, or if not yet, then will do – must do – one day?

There is a story of a woman who, grieving for the death of her child, went to Buddha entreating him to tell her why she should suffer in this way. He told her to take a bowl, fill it with rice, bring it back and he would tell her the answer; but, he said, she could not beg rice from any house that had been touched by grief. A week later the woman came back empty-handed. “I understand now,” she said. For every house had been touched with grief. The question then should not be ‘why do I suffer?’ but ‘why is there suffering?’ And if suffering is universal why can I not still be happy in spite of it? Or if happy is too trite a word, why can I not be accepting, peaceful, content?

Cultivating this state of santosha (contentment) is not easy. Like me with the flies at breakfast yesterday morning, we are all too easily irritated, too easily distracted, too easily angered. But yoga and meditation do help – for me, at least. They work to erase the ego, erase the sense of difference that separates me from the flies, from the restaurant owner, from the tuk tuk driver who is always trying to get an extra 50 rupees for his fare, and reveals to me the underlying sameness of ourselves, our existence. My true self is as kind of myself as it is to the tuk tuk driver, giving him the extra money he so desperately needs in this quiet end of the season and myself the extra slice of peanut butter and banana on toast my mind and body craves after a wonderful, energetic, life-enhancing asana practice.

I can’t claim – or even hope – to have reached Samadhi, but as I gaze at the henna tattoo making its way from the middle of my forearm to the tip of my middle finger, I am reminded of how far I have come and of where I hope to go. There may be many twists and turns, detours and diversions along the way, but these are all a part and parcel of the infinitely charming, mysteriously beautiful overall design – sometimes baffling, sometimes labyrinthine – but always always delightful. Forever a part of you.

A yoga mala prayer

And just like that, it’s all over – 200 hours of yoga teacher training completed and we can all breathe a sigh of relief. It is over and we, who came together from all over the world – Australia, Canada, Hungry, Spain, Finland, UK… – will go our separate ways again, some travelling together, new friendships having been formed and to remain for a lifetime, others to return to their normal lives, touched by but not attached to those they met. For me it is like this. We came together as separate beings united by a single purpose – so many beads on a chain – and as that chain dissolves once more, returning to formlessness as yoga teaches us all things must, I make a prayer. A prayer of thanks to each and every bead in that chain. Some may have stood out for me more than others, but all were important – all unique – and I am grateful to each and every one.

*

At 5:30am yesterday morning, I got up and walked down the beach to the shala for the last time. The sun was rising behind the palm trees as I arrived at the shala for the practicum and fire ceremony, found as usual only one person other there. For some reason she has always been one of the first to arrive. I have often wondered why and have, over the weeks, been drawn to her, sensing her openness to the fearful process of stripping away that asana and meditation works and witnessing her appreciation, her transformation as she truly allowed herself to surrender – more perhaps than most – and as a result getting all the most out of the experience.

It is funny, but somehow, despite all the sun and tanning, her complexion has grown more transparent over the weeks – paler in a way, but not a bad way. Slightly vulnerable perhaps, but in a new-born baby way. Fresh, revitalised, renewed. The light when it shines shines bright, right from and through her. It is as if her outer-most layer has been erased away and there is only the prettiest, most delicate film of ‘self’ left. I feel honoured to have been a witness to this. Truly humble and in love – with the power of yoga, with the strength of this woman’s spirit, her honesty. She has truly been an outstanding jewel in the chain.

But perhaps what I see in this one person is true of us all when you look closely. I think we all feel it, even if it is not visible to others on the outside. Yoga has polished and refined us. Asana has stripped and sweated away toxins, baggage and left only what is most pure behind. Meditation too, chanting and pranayama has taken us closer to our true selves: our quietest breath and most sonorous inner voices, the loving OM that emanates from the heart, not the chitter chatter that waylays and distracts us, sending us sometimes to near panicked distraction. Yoga has touched us all, and I have been touched by all.

From Laura, I have seen how wonderful it would be to be a mum and share your life with a natural born yogi, a carefree and inhibited being who has brought more joy and insight to me than most of the very wonderful, experienced and adept teachers on our course. From Claire, to how to be direct and assertive with a big smile, a lot of grace, good humour and generosity towards others; to look outside of yourself and give support and constructive criticism to others, using the benefit of your intelligence to value and recognise the gifts of others.

From so many of the beautiful women – too many to mention by name – I have observed what it is to be graceful, feminine, soft and strong all at the same time. To be calm and quiet in spirit and still have endless joy and energy for life. To have a zest, a passion that is unsuppressible, insurpassible, boundless. To make friends with everyone you meet – man, elephant and child – and yet remain centred and true. Truly your own. How too to have hidden talents, hidden depths, and yet let them come to the surface and shine – to sing!

To burst free with laughter, yet speak slowly softly with forethought and intelligence. To measure each word and let nothing of violence be heard, though anger, frustration and pain may linger beneath the surface – a battle with yourself that you will not pass on to others. To have a compassion and care for those around you that is not self-interested, that has no thought of reward for the ego.

To be humble; to know and accept and walk with grace within the limitations and narrow constraints of one’s own body. To have humour, warmth and self-possession, even while you let the tears freely fall, the emotion freely pour out. Not to be a harsh critic of yourself or others, but to give everything a try and revel in your own success and others. “Wonderful!”

To smile quietly and patiently, giving to and caring for others; being tolerant with your own body and sensitive to the weaknesses of others. To truly listen, not to judge first and to keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, because at the end of the day “it’s only yoga.”

To use just enough effort and force to stand up, and sit down again. To work slowly at balance – on the mat and in life – allowing yourself the freedom to take a step back so that you may take that step up. And so much more. From learning a love of Savasana to a goddess-like serenity with which to sail through the heat and hassle of the toughest of days, I thank each and every one.

And I could be here all day and still not do justice to all the people who have shared their time and energy, their joy and pain. They each have their own story to tell, and it is not for me to share. I can only tell mine, but I am infinitely grateful to each and every one of them for embarking on this journey and staying the course; for being there from sun up to sun down, from alignment and anatomy through meditation and mysore to yoga nidra and yoga acrobatics. I’m not sure we quite reached Samadhi (there is only so much you can do in 200 hours after all), but we got pretty close. It was certainly joyful and blissful in equal measure. Thank you one and all.

Nameste

How we are hungry

We are all thirsting, hankering, yearning for and craving one thing or another, whether it is time off from work and a holiday in the sun, or a new car to replace the one that keeps breaking down on us, that fabulous pair of shoes you saw in the shop window, or a lover to share our bed, breakfast and idle chatter with. We are all hungering for something. Me? I realise I am hungry simply for food.

This has been the persistent theme of morning meditation and yoga practise. Waking at 5:45 and under instructions not to eat or drink (too much) until breakfast time at 10am, my mind is already by 6:30am trying to figure out what to eat. Whether my tummy is ready for nourishment or not, my mind is moving in those old familiar circles, conjuring up enticing images of banana porridge drizzled with honey, omelettes with raita and roti, toast spread thick with homemade peanut butter and stacks of pancakes running with maple syrup, a pot of steaming hot coffee standing by. But I am meditating, I tell myself, and bring my myself back to the beam of clear white light emanating from the point between my eyebrows, my third eye or ‘ajna’ chakra. Sure enough, within minutes we are back there and with greater interest and attention: should I have the banana soya shake or the mango smoothie? The homemade muesli with nuts and coconut or the fruit salad and yogurt? If I had the muesli with curd then would I still want the shake? And so it goes on until I catch myself and bring my attention back, again and again and again to my third eye, a point of emptiness and peace, momentarily, from these cycles of samskara, the old familiar thought patterns that have become so enmeshed, so entrenched that I cannot distinguish them from myself – so loud and persistent are they that they seem to be all there is, all myself.

But I know this is not true. I am learning (relearning really) slowly that I can turn these thoughts off and when I do….? That is the scary thing, and my mind will try to frighten me that without these same old thoughts I will be lost, I will have nothing, life will be even worse. But, as I say, I know this is not true. I remind myself that without these thoughts I still have my breath, so I tune into this. Ah, that’s nice, a nice soothing sound, a peaceful wordless rhythm. Or is it? No, not much. It is short, choppy. It starts and ends in my chest, around my heart. The months and years of restricted eating and low-weight have put a strain on my internal organs, shrinking them, making them work harder – making my heart beat faster – to stay alive. I focus all my attention, engaging my well-trained stomach muscles and literally forcing the breath to move down deeper into my abdomen, then up into my chest and back down, rolling in and out in a wave-like motion to the sound of the waves on the beach just a hundred metres away. Imagining it massaging me, filling me, expanding me from the inside out, and focus here, inhaling and exhaling until the voices intrude and I am carried away again, bring myself back and start all over.

In the twenty minutes of meditation practise we do (after pranayama) I must gain only about five minutes of respite, of peace and ease. Tranquility. But what is better than that – at least for now – is that I am learning about myself, starting to feel and sense myself, my needs, listen to them, really wake up them in a way I have never had to do before, or at least, not for a long time – possibly the three years since I last dedicated a couple of weeks to just yoga and meditation. And what I am realising is how hungry I am and how long I have been hungry. How long I have been denying myself, ignoring these signals from my body and overriding them with the noisy chatter, the absolute controlling nonsense of my mind.

It came to a head two mornings ago when, after waking up moderately hungry, I finished meditation already totally ready for breakfast. Quick cup of tea? A banana? I don’t really like to eat or drink right before asana; even a cup of masala chai can leave me feeling sickly as we start to inhale rise up, exhale fold forward, jump back, through, up-dog, down-dog for half a dozen rounds of sun salutation. But, trying to be wise, I took the tea and watched hungrily as my friend tucked into her fruit, feeling the the pain and suffering of hunger growing as we began our class and with it the desire to leave.

But it was Joanna’s class, a modified Ashtanga – the idea being to go gentle and easy on yourself, so I made a deal with myself: I’d stay, take it easy and move through the first  half, just give my body a warming up, then I’d leave and do myself the greater kindness of having breakfast. And this is what I did, moving mindfully, feeling my body, feeling my energy low but pacing myself and actually managing to stay until the end, even through the Savasana (ironically, Corpse’s Pose – just about how I felt!) that I thought would be just torture to lie through, the ache of emptiness in the pit of my stomach, the desire for food clawing at my throat. I stayed. Albeit in tears as I realised that the suffering, the hunger I was feeling so acutely that morning, was a hunger I’ve been ignoring for a dozen years; the pain that I was suffering, a pain I’ve been inflicting on myself since I was 17.

As I say, we are all hungry for something. I was, then, at that age, hungry for life, for its opportunities; ambitious for knowledge, for credit, achievement, recognition. But in seeking to gain the world, I paid dearly – with my health, my heart, my soul. I put myself through slow starvation, an act I repeatedly keep coming back to – an old habit, a samskara so powerful and so hard to break.

But I am breaking it. I am literally breaking – breaking my heart, breaking down in meditation and asana, breaking the need to push, push, push myself… And so I am glad I stayed to the end of the practice, the hardest practice (ironically, given how slow and gentle it was) that I, perhaps, have ever done. Because with it this realisation came and promise, once again, never to put myself through such torture, but to start feeding myself body, mind and soul, working on building up the strength of my heart that I may live for and love myself – as well as all those around me. Because, as in meditation this morning when we were asked to look forward, backwards and sideways at all the people in our lives (past present and future), I know there are many people around me that I would wish to share my life with, give my time to and even be a mother to, but until I can sit and breathe easy for myself, I cannot hope to spare a breath – be it a kind word, a smile or a kiss – for all these others. So I am working on my heart, drawing life to it that it may shed life and light back out into the world. And if you wish to help me, join me, I ask you simply to repeat these words:

Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu

May all the beings in the world be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and freedom for all.

Namaste