Winter and stillness

I have started writing for the health and spirituality site Conscious 2. You can read my first piece below. It is about what happened when the river froze over.

Winter and stillness

My favorite of the ancient yoga sutras is this one: Atha yoga nusasanam. You can translate it from the Sanskrit as, “Now, yoga happens”. It’s among the opening verses in Master Patanjali’s collected insights on yoga, and you could take it to mean, “Okay, sit down, we’re going to talk about yoga now.” And you could hear it on a deeper level, too. Yoga means union, and it’s used to describe the state in which we realise life’s deepest truth: that we are all connected, and everything is divine. And where does this truth reside? In the now, in the miracle of this present moment. When we practice asana, the physical aspect of yoga, or meditation, we are practicing bringing our minds back to the breath, back to movement, back to one single point – again and again, and with kindness.

But what if you'd rather do anything than be present? Than accept reality? This is something I've been working with for the past month or so. A very beloved friend of mine died suddenly, and around the same time a cherished relationship came apart. The present has felt incredibly painful at times, and the very idea of accepting reality can be frightening.

I went to stay with a friend who runs a beautiful retreat center in the countryside at the weekend, to try to find some peace. I have been visiting this same place for some years now, and have seen it in every season, just as it has seen me in all my heart seasons. But I had never before seen the river frozen. Utterly still, and glistening in the sunlight. I couldn’t quite believe it. Every time I’d see the river out of the corner of my eye, its stillness made it seem like the world had been paused. And there was a strange relief in that.

Usually, it’s when the river flows that I feel a relaxing – via the knowledge that all things are constantly moving and changing and nature is carrying things along just as it needs to. But this time, the river just said, “Stop. Be still. There is nothing you can do. Nothing to be done. How about breathing into the pause? How about relaxing and not trying to figure anything out, or solve anything, or be somewhere else? How about now? What does now really feel like?”

I recently came across a beautiful piece of writing by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, on stillness. He wrote,

“If it were possible for us to see further than our knowledge extends and out a little over the outworks of our surmising, perhaps we should then bear our sorrows with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new, something unknown, has entered into us; our feelings grow dumb with shy confusion, everything in us retires, a stillness supervenes, and the new thing that no-one knows stands silent there in the middle.”

This strikes me as an expansive and generous way of looking at uncertainty; of bearing the experience of not knowing and feeling like nothing makes sense. It reads as a reminder that you don’t have to try to pick apart the source of your sorrow, or push to make sense of it to the point of exhaustion and despair. I don't think you can neaten up the uncertain and the unknowable, and tie a bow around it all.

From a holistic point of view, winter can be supportive to this state of not knowing, whether you’re grieving or in a happy place, or somewhere in-between. We all begin the year not knowing, just as we begin every day not knowing. Winter shows us how to be still, with its frozen rivers and sleeping creatures and hidden seeds, dreaming germination in the dark.

We know, in winter, that movement will happen in due course, that the river will flow again, sap will rise and green shoots will appear; the seasons are the most beautiful, poetic and sure reminder of life’s capacity for rebirth, to those of us feeling desperate, lonely and bereft.

This is a quiet time, a space to let feelings move as they may, and listen. I cannot recommend highly enough that you support yourself as lovingly as possible while you do this. Yoga is a listening system, as is its sister science, Ayurveda. To practice either in a way that is nourishing and effective, you need to listen to your body, heart and mind: Which bones are creaking? Which muscles are sighing “Yes”? What does this food say when it meets my belly?

Restorative yoga will help you attune to the season’s innate encouragements to find some gentle time. Taking suptabadakonasana (reclined bound angle pose) will relax your body in a profound way. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, winter is associated with the kidneys, which are in turn associated with fear and anxiety when there’s an imbalance in the body. This pose opens up the kidney meridians, which run along the inner legline to get chi (energy) flowing smoothly. Support yourself using a bolster and blocks, lay a blanket over the hips and stay reclined for 10-20 minutes. If you have a piece of rose quartz, so much the better – place it over your heart for soft healing and regeneration.

Warm, wet foods will soothe anxiety and stoke your agni, your inner digestive fire, and abhyanga, the practice of massaging yourself with oil, will boost circulation and bring you back to the body if the head is running around in circles. Sesame oil mixed with brahmi oil is especially effective and warming in the winter.

In my experience, letting others look after you, and accepting that love quietly is a profound practice and a meditation in and of itself.

Wherever you are at in your life at this still and poignant time, I wish you warmth, patience and peace.

Resting and growing

Winter—quiet, slow, long-night winter—is a season of stillness. If you go for a walk in nature at this time of year, things are so quieted down you may find your ears leaning in to readjust. But the sounds are still there, all the same. I went walking in the English countryside this week, and felt that there was something so special about being able to hear the small sounds; a little rustling, wings flapping, the gurgle of a stream whirling around stones.

Peace

The word santosha in Sanskrit can be translated as contentment; I have enough. I have enough friends, food, clothing, or what have you. I am enough.

It is one of the niyamas, or ways of living, as described by Master Patanjali in the ancient Yoga sutras. In my understanding, there is a sense of fullness to santosha—a knowing that we are full and clean and knowing, like a moon at night. Purna, wholeness.

It can be difficult to tune in with feelings of enough-ness and fullness in the holidays—specifically at a time when there's a tendency to compare our experience with everyone and anyone else's.

I found a doodle

...that I made at the summer solstice. You can hear the birds singing. It made me feel nice.

Winter and grace

I went to see my teacher, Mātā Amṛtānandamayī Devī in Detroit over Thanksgiving. It was a most illuminating trip in so many ways; I felt that through its challenges, as well as its many sweetnesses, light was shed in some dark and wintery spaces for me. The journey to Michigan was tough; like many other folks on Wednesday, I experienced all manner of shenanigans just getting on the plane. We boarded, our wings were de-iced (with green slime!), we waited, we "de-planed". We re-boarded. We were de-iced again. We waited. We de-planed again. There were frantic negotiations with airline folks at the airport, rescheduled flights, wonky routes—I'm sure you know how this goes. I eventually got to Detroit around midnight. Amma was still giving darshan (her blessing as a hug), and I found my way to her arms around 1.30am. I had to take my glasses off (I usually wear contacts but had been flying), and there was something really profound for me about receiving her embrace in such a blurry, vulnerable way—looking up afterwards to see her smiling at me as if I was a little baby: Look at you! You made it! Well done!

It was an intense trip for many reasons. Seeing my teacher is always a big experience for me. And there were aspects of the retreat that I hadn't really thought through beforehand. When I've seen Amma in New York, I am with my very favorite people, my whole yoga community is there and it feels like a shared experience. At the retreat, I didn't know anyone. I had thought that I could give or take Thanksgiving, being as it's not a festival I grew up with in England—but realized that since I've been in the States, I've always celebrated it with loved ones, and it felt strange to be away from that. And I signed up for a two-day meditation course that required a lot of time and I ended up feeling anxious and exhausted by it, surely not the intended result!

At the point where I realized I hadn't left the huge hotel and seen daylight for 24 hours since my arrival and was feeling very overwhelmed, I decided I needed to take a break and take a breath. Like a GPS: Recalibrating...

International Day of Non-Violence

Hello everyone! Today is International Day of Non-Violence in honor of Mahatma Gandhi, who was born on October 2nd 1869. Ahimsa—non-violence—is such a key part of any yoga practice, and it encompasses non-violence on all levels, from the base to the subtle. Perhaps today would be a good day to be super-kind to yourself? Or just notice your mind when it goes into judging mode, particularly of the self (as mine often does). I'd like to share an excerpt here from a talk my teacher Amma gave 12 years ago, when she was presented the Gandhi-King Award for Nonviolence at the United Nations in Geneva by Dr. Jane Goodall and the late UN Human Rights Commissioner Sergio Vieira de Mello. Amma said: "It is easy to awaken someone who is asleep. You just shake the person once or twice. But you can shake a person who is pretending to be asleep a hundred times and it won’t have any effect." I think today is a good day to be awake and be kind! Love to all.

"Mahatma Gandhi didn’t just preach. He put his words into action. He dedicated his whole life to peace and non-violence. Even though he could have become the prime minister or president of India, Gandhi declined because he had no desire whatsoever for fame or power. In fact, at the stroke of midnight, when India was declared independent, Gandhi was found consoling the victims of a riot-affected area. Likewise, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was courageous like a lion, yet in his heart he was as soft as a flower. He risked his life for the sake of love, equality, and the other noble ideals he upheld. He had to struggle with great perseverance against the people of his own country.

"It is easy to awaken someone who is asleep. You just shake the person once or twice. But you can shake a person who is pretending to be asleep a hundred times and it won’t have any effect. The majority of people belong to the latter category. It is high time that we all truly wake up. Unless the baser animal tendencies in people are subdued, our vision for the future of humanity will not come true, and peace will remain only a distant dream. Let us have the courage and perseverance, born out of spiritual practice, to realize this dream. For this to happen, each one of us needs to discover and bring to light our innate qualities of faith, love, patience, and self-sacrifice for the good of all."

—Amma, on the occasion of being presented the 2002 Gandhi-King Award for Nonviolence at the United Nations in Geneva by UN Messenger of Peace Dr. Jane Goodall and the late UN Human Rights Commissioner Sergio Vieira de Mello

Thank you, B.K.S. Iyengar

December 14th 1918–August 20 2014

Mr. Iyengar died last week, aged 95. Can you imagine being born in 1918? And continuing to live zestily, generously, big-heartedly into a whole new century? He published his book, Light on Life, some ten years ago. I think of it as a manual for humans wishing to live well, and Mr. Iyengar closes the book stating, "I pray that my ending can be your beginning." What a thing to say, and with such lightness.

Much has been written about Mr Iyengar's life, and rightly so—this man was, and is, a true pioneer. He brought yoga to the west, literally, when he first visited London as a steely-eyed young man in the 1940s. His seriousness was part of his determination to be taken seriously, for yoga to be taken seriously—at a time when he was forbidden from showing his face in the dining room of the posh hotel he was staying in, on account of his being Indian. Half a century later, you can look at the photos of Guruji, laughing away; in a fine Radio 4 documentary recorded around his 80th birthday, he says, "I feel that my method of yoga can never die and that is why I am happy." He recognized his essential part in bringing yoga to the world and it delighted him. Of course, his levity and joy bubbled forth as a result of his ability, founded on tenacity, to live in freedom.

One of the things I've loved most about Mr. Iyengar's teachings, over the years, is his emphasis on living yogically as a "householder". In other words, not a practitioner who secludes themselves in the woods or a cave or a monastery to pursue yoga. Rather, someone living what we'd consider a more regular life; working a job, raising a family, these things. He treats this way of living—the way he lived, in fact—with utmost respect. He offers teachings on how to live in this world with devotion. It moves me that he did this; that he strove to help people in this way. It rings through in this teaching from Light on Life:

“As animals, we walk the earth. As bearers of divine essence, we are among the stars. As human beings, we are caught in the middle, seeking to reconcile the paradox of how to make our way upon earth while striving for something more permanent and more profound.”

Every inch of his teachings—physical and metaphysical—explores and seeks to clarify this wonderful, impossible, perfect situation. He helps us navigate, directs us in the dance that takes place as we negotiate these two seeming poles, as we move towards yoga, union.

He's there grounding down our back foot in Parsvokonasana as our top arm reaches up to the sky. His meticulous instructions directing us on how best to open the chest, waist, side-body to make space in the pose. He's there, encouraging us on how to bring our finest awareness to our asana practice, asking that we watch our discomfort in poses in our journey towards sthira, sukha—strength and sweetness. Or at least, I feel this to be so.

I was considering our human situation—our hooves on the ground, our consciousness ascending to the stars—with regard to longing. That particular heart-song that our condition seems to inspire. My friend suggested that this longing is also what helps us grow; it keeps us reaching, exploring and learning. Good to have a teacher there with you.

There is so much gold in Light on Life. Another friend of mine has read the book many times, underlining sections in a different color on each reading; the pages are almost entirely underlined now. When I heard the news of Mr. Iyengar leaving his body after this great gift of a life, I thought immediately of one particular part of the book, which you can read in the photograph below.

Here's to courage; to commitment, clarity and compassion.