Vairagya, Not Viagra!
/Dear Yogis
I spent the bank holiday weekend, all of it, in workshops with Kino MacGregor. There are many famous teachers with finely honed teaching skills but my heart opens wide as the world to Kino’s teaching and humour and cartoon-like noises and the easy, smiley way her philosophy tumbles out. By the end of the weekend I was so full of big loving feelings that I promised I would go and study with her in Miami! (Help!)
On the first day she talked about the Sanskrit word Vairagya. (I know! It sounds a bit like Viagra!) It means desire; powerful, raging desire. In yoga practice, the biggest thing that gets in the way of us experiencing the spiritual practice of yoga is desire; we want more difficult postures, deeper backbends, more flexible hips, longer hamstrings. But this is like obsessing with the finger that is pointing to the moon instead of looking at the glory of the moon. Kino says; ‘All the poses and the body itself is the finger pointing to the moon of the deep spiritual realisation that yoga practice promises.’
If you get lost in the Instagram hype of worshiping the body and physical accomplishments then you will always feel ‘less than’. This is something that every yogi has to contend with. Desire left unchecked leads to accumulation of things, not only amassing poses but pursuing the perfect job, perfect relationship, perfect poses, perfect house…When we have all the things we desire, will it be enough? The basis of all desire is the feeling of not being good enough; the feeling of ‘if only I had that, I’d be better’.
Yoga practice encourages you to relocate your sense of self-worth in the eternal and beautiful spark of your spirit (which in Sanskrit is called Purusha) that lives in all of us. OK. How do we do that? Vairagya is the active practice of letting go of the results of our actions. In class, the paradigm shift is when you replace desire with listening and try to experience the pose to see what happens rather than projecting what you want to happen. As soon as you hear the voice in your head saying that it wants the posture to be deeper, the hips to be more open, the hamstrings to be more flexible, THAT is your yoga, THAT is where you begin to practice. The paradigm shifts to listening and mindfulness. Listening implies that we are open to change by what we hear and what we experience. Listening allows you to be vulnerable to yourself and to be compassionate to vulnerability in others. We have a responsibility to listen and to respond and to change.
That’s a lot to take in, eh!
Kapsali Yoga Retreat.
The first retreat arrives with the new moon, the Harvest Moon, on September 9th. The second retreat leaves just before its fullest glory on September 24th. I have never seen such a huge and shiny moon but that’s probably because of the setting, over Kapsali bay in a wondrous galaxy of stars. It adds to the enchanting spirit of Kapsali, the reason I am drawn there and the magic of teaching yoga there. Please come!
Home Studio
It’s always fulfilling to teach people who are new to yoga. It’s just lovely to introduce people to Ashtanga and see the spark light up in them. Thank you for making the studio such a blessed space. If you haven’t come already, come and have a go! See what’s available here. (I update this before posting this email.) You can book here.
Training
To regroup after the weekend you really can’t do better that Yin Yoga with Ruth Voon at Triyoga Ealing. It’s at 6.15 on a Sunday evening and is just the stretch you need to round off your Sunday to dive into Monday.
Yoga in the news
BBC News tells Asks: Can prison yoga help tackle reoffending? The first prisoner says that yoga makes her feel free, gives her hope and takes away her stress! Just like civvy street, then!
The Business Insider tells us that: Doctors are warning people not to wear Lululemon-like clothing during MRIs. This is worth knowing! Athletic clothing manufacturers weave small threads of silver into their clothing to prevent smells from sweat during exercise. Metal heats up in MRI machines and people have experienced low to moderate burning. (Check out silver nanoparticles.)
The Evening standard tells us: This is the difference between Bikram, Vinyasa, Rocket, and Power yoga — and how to know which one is right for you. (That’s helpful – especially since I saw a class called ‘Space and Flow’ and had to ask my teacher what it meant). The evening standard helpfully covers the established types.
