Most of the yogis I know are authentic rebels. To get to the path of yoga as an Occidental is to purposefully choose the road less travelled. Notwithstanding the current popularity of yoga, I maintain that those who truly follow the yogic path in all its eight-limbed splendour are rebelliously turning their backs on the western void of uncaring and unconnectedness and instead looking toward the inner light in all its glory and generosity.
We love to laugh, me and my yoga teacher, about ourselves as youth. She was a “heavy” – say it with a spanish guttural “H” and you will get the sound. I was a punk. We both walked around scowling and rebelling. We were both, no doubt, unhappy, lonely, and felt ourselves unloved and unfulfilled. That’s a lot of “uns”.
And then came Yoga. And yoga’s magic. Because, little by little, with practice and faith, yoga transforms the practitioner. First we become conscious of the observer and then, slowly, the observer becomes the observed. When this happens, we strip away ego layers, laying bare greed, insecurity, and the incapacity to love genuinely. And, little by little, the yogi becomes freed of her bad habits – most of which involve toxic substances and/or toxic thoughts & emotions. She becomes centred and calm and whole, able to love and be loved without expectation and without neediness. She expands.
For this, I see yoga as rebellion. What used to be alternative – the music, the art, the hair – is now mainstream, Heineken-sponsored, cleansed. When I was young (ahem) we were rebels with a cause, reading Anarchist and Communist literature, standing up for ideals, protesting. My teacher was in Madrid at the end of the Franco era. She tells me about how the Falange fascists used to descend on the University campus and make everyone stand up for Catholicism and country. Whether any of us achieved anything other than a feeling of solidarity with our fellow misfits remains doubtful. But the idealism was there. Now, far be it for me to accuse any young person today of lacking ideals. It’s just that, from my perspective, authentic rebellion has been co-opted. And anyway, it has been proven to be useless. Because transformation has to occur within the soul to make the rebel stand firm and calm in front of the fire. Too many of my friends died or went to jail because of bad choices they made while high. They were getting high to stop the pain. Yoga stops the pain without chemicals. Yoga ends suffering.
What goes as “alternative” in our culture is really just an exercise in slow self-annihilation. The fags, the booze, the drugs are all products of a corrupt industrial society. Amy Winehouse sums up the picture prettily – there’s nothing alternative about her and yet she buys some alternative credentials through tattoos and crack use. Yeah, up with rebellion.
The alternative, people, is yoga. Yoga brings on a state in which the advertisers are seen to be wearing no clothes and the brewers are shown to be serving up sludge. Yoga frees you from your samskaras, the conditionings that you take as the very truth…until a greater Truth is shown to you. Your thoughts, your habits, your desires, your relationships, none escapes the focal gaze of the yogic lens. Be prepared, o yogi, for the transformation. Be prepared to be free. Don’t mistake anything else for freedom. True liberation comes with practice and faith. It must be very sweet - I don’t know. But sometimes, just for a moment, I get a glimpse. And then, my Goddess, I know that everything will be alright and I shall suffer no more.
Yogic texts are quite specific about the life of a human having three distinct phases:
1. Childhood (studying)
2. Householder (working, raising a family)
3. Spiritual quest (renunciation, interiorization)
We are advised to start a family as soon as studies are finished and work secured. We are also advised to begin the deeper quest of Self realisation once children are grown and independent. Of course, this model is flexible: some young people are irresistibly drawn to a monastic life. Some mature people never even set foot on the Yogic path. But, speaking generally, most people will find most happiness if they generally follow this advice.
We in the West increasingly delay childbearing and rearing in favour of longer periods of study or other self-fulfillment like travel or stimulating work. Many people delay starting a family for financial reasons, especially those who can’t afford housing. But, whatever the reason, new parents are getting older and older. I sometimes wonder what it must be like for the child whose parent is grey-haired and glasses-wearing with arthritis already settling into the knees or fingers. In one way, I know. My parents were 39 and 44 when I was born. Some of my most vivid and scary childhood memories are of my father clutching his chest during bouts of angina whilst sitting at the dining room table. Gulp.
I started this because, at nearly 38, I have a dear little 3-year-old daughter. She, like all children, needs lots of exercise, fresh air and movement. Children are pure movement. A child who doesn´t move doesn’t thrive. I, however, am deep in my yoga practice, and have recently been experiencing moments of deep interiorization. They come along somewhat randomly, my eyes just need to shut. How can I reconcile this with childrearing? Well, we find a balance somehow. MY daugher is with me during most of my yoga practices, she comes with me to sungaze and cuddles in my lap while I do pranayama. It’s lovely, but it changes my practice infinitely. The fact is, I can’t really ever turn off because I am always having to keep one ear tuned to her. Multitasking at its best.
I find succour in the pages of Yoga Journal, many of whose articles are written by “yoga teacher and mother…” so and so. Yes, we women mother warrior yoginis are everywhere. Even if we practice “alone”, in our homes, while children hover or sleep, we are a group large in numbers and dedicated in spirit. So, I resolve to let neither my practice nor my parenting suffer. I can reconcile the two. But, it must be said, that I can’t imagine doing it were I a mother of TWO children!
It’s been nearly two months since we returned from India. In this time I have felt the living, warm fire that land lit within my breast slowly weakening. In the West we are materially wealthy but spiritually dead. Europeans are mostly too doubting, or too embarassed to open their hearts and minds to the beauty and grace that surrounds us every moment. Working as I do, in physical contact with people day in and day out, that spiritual poverty per forza rubs off on me. Don’t get me wrong: I love my clients, each and every one of them, and my most sincere wish is for their fulfillment and happiness. But, controlling that energetic drain is hard…a massage therapist can end up being sucked dry. It’s a skill to handle this aspect of my work, and a skill whose failure to acquire probably accounts for the very high attrition rate among trained masseurs.
So, my point is that since coming back to Europe and starting work, I felt my fire, my Agni, sputtering and struggling to burn. Saddened, desperate not to let this happen, I prayed sincerely and humbly, asking to help me keep Agni alive in me.
This morning, I got a call from the post office: a package for you ma’am. I trotted down, as I needed to post some stuff anyway and there waiting for me was my new harmonium!!! The woman who attended to me asked me what it was, and I told her it was an Indian instrument, typically used in vedic chanting. She asked me if I chanted, and I said yes. Well, turns out that she sings in Bulgarian sacred choirs and is a Sun Gazer, full of love and light. She invited me to join her tomorrow morning, before sunrise, on the hill in Albir. With joy, I accepted. Thank you, Universal Spirit.
Of course, it goes without saying that unpacking and trying out the harmonium was cool and fun, but I will need to practice before I really get swinging on the thing.
Late in the afternoon, Luz and I decided to go out to find some trees. We went up to Altea la Vieja and walked a little bit. But it was stony and there were cars, so we turned back. I said “let’s take the other road home” and in about 5 minutes we’d found a children’s playground, newly built, with no passing cars, up in the hills, surrounded by pine trees. Heaven! After mucking around for a while, me playing as much as Luz, some other kids sidled up to us. We started chatting and before you know it, I was giving them an impromptu Yoga lesson! We did butterfly and crow and tree and cosmic dancer, I sang them a few chants, explained about the breathing and it was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!!! I had such a good time. When it came time to leave, we all said goodbye, sweetly and gently. As we pulled out of the parking lot, I blew a kiss to 8-year-old Rafa and he blew me one back. Awwwwwwwww..
And to end the day perfectly, Luz fell asleep without any fuss, leaving me free to eat in peace, surf a little, and tell you all my little tale.
Om shanti brothers and sisters. Om surya namaskar.
The smell of hyacinths always reminds me of my mother. It’s Spring, hyacinths bloom and exude fragrance. Today is Mothering Sunday in the UK – may you pass it in joy.
Reading this article in the Independent about “difficult mothers”, I relive once again my beliefs and memories about my childhood. Raising a child is an awesome task. To do it well is to constantly adapt. Parenting supposes a re-invention of the adult, the loss of friends, the changing of habits, homes and mental patterns. One of my best-loved sayings is that “adults don’t produce children; children produce adults”. Never a truer word been said.
I had a fraught relationship with my mother from the age of about 15 onwards. Divorce, overwork, dearth of help made our family fall apart and for a long time afterwards, I harboured unfounded resentments regarding my mother’s interest and care of me. These negative feelings hovered around me throughout my 20′s, but I couldn’t put a finger on what is was that was bothering me. While pregnant, I read the book “Why Love Matters” and suddenly things slipped into place. My overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness was not the product of my mother not loving me deeply or sincerely enough. It was the product of a broken marriage, paternal absence, lack of money and lack of extended family. My mother loved me, she just didn’t have time for me.
While we waited at home, my mother worked her butt off, studying French at the Alliance Française until earning the highest diploma; becoming a Certified Association Executive, then becoming President of the Canadian Society of Association Executives. She sang alto in her church choir and worked tirelessly to support her parish, championing the social inclusion of minority groups such as gays and immigrants. With her adept fundraising skills and a dedicated group of parishioners, she pounced on the parish, succeeding in building a new Anglican church. It is a shame that her funeral was to be one of the first held at the new building. My mum died of a brain tumour in 2001. She was 68.
With every passing year, I give her more grace. Before, I was an unconscious child, clinging at my mother’s skirts and attributing all my failings to her. With the deep psychological work I am doing through Yoga, I am able to perceive now the Mind, and occasionally untangle one of it’s tricky knots of perception. Every situation can be interpreted a million different ways when two Minds are talking. But when two Hearts are talking, there is no room for mis-interpretation. Love is a physical force that can easily be felt by those who are brave enough to open their Hearts to others and give and receive love themselves. Now that my heart is finally healing, I can recall feeling of the love my mother radiated in my presence. I can feel how much she loved me when I recall images of the past. There is no other love in the world as powerful as a mother’s love. The power and depth of maternal love transforms the woman, pulls her entrails apart and reshapes them. It is a privilege that we women alone own.
So, calling out of all those fantastic mothers out there, all those women brave enough to love tenaciously and consciously, I stand up and salute you. My mother numbered amongst you, Sisters. She was an ambitious, highly intelligent woman raising three children alone and she defied every expectation of her. My mother ROCKED! She taught all three of us determination, courage, tenacity and raw pluck. She taught me to think, to criticise, argue and to accept. She taught me to celebrate the differences between others and myself. She taught me to travel, test new waters, and never back away in fear from new experiences. She taught me to love languages, books and music. But most of all, my mother taught me what love is. Happy Mother’s Day, mum.
Me, aged 1 month.
harmoni
The week before last, I had an amazingly vivid dream: I was standing by a river, in India, with crystalline fast flowing water and green, green grass growing on its banks. There was a waterfall and behind it, a stone grotto. Looking through the little cave, I saw a repetition of the same tranquil, bucolic scene. I suddenly became aware that beneath my sweater, a huge snail was stuck fast to my upper left chest, right over my heart. A sense of revulsion swept over me, expecially when I realised that I had been carrying this beast around with me for AGES. I began to peel its slimy sides off my skin – it came away with a revolting sucking sound. As I pulled it off, I felt the slime on my skin. I gave the snail to my friend Elena, but as I awoke, I could still feel its presence on my skin…
This little gem comes at a time when my poor, downtrodden heart is blooming with a lovingness and openess such as I’ve never experienced before. It is truly a wonderful feeling to feel the heart chakra opening. Lovingkindness, compassion, such bliss. Anyway, that snail feast no more on my poor ol’ heart. My ruby necklace (bought on my last night in Goa) warms and feeds the energy of the heart centre. I am also convinced that the “medicine water” mix we bought back from Kerala holds the energy of the Keralan sun and fills the body with this light at every draught. Total: goodness, joy, lovingkindness, to others and also to mySELF. Om.
A Green Tara mantra:
(The first installment of a bi-weekly green, fair-trade gathering. @Venus Hotel in El Albir, Alfas del Pí, Alicante, Spain. March 14, 2010; 11am-8pm.)
but I LOVE soup! T’night’s brew was garlic/potato and broccoli with black pepper and walnut oil on top. Salad of sprouted mung beans, sea spaghetti and pine nuts with thistle oil and raspberry vinegar dressing. yumMY.
“Practice becomes firmly rooted when cultivated uninterruptedly over a long time with devotion and skill”
“Sa tu dirghakala nairantaryasatkarasevito dridhabhumih”
–
When my body is tired
And my mind craves rest
I give in.
An hour luxuriating
Then beg my spirit to rouse me
Help me rise above this mortal condition!
Breathe.
Aspire once more.
Discipline.