In this month's newsletter, Liz shared a taste of her recent experiences at a teacher training at It's Yoga in Puerto Rico. Here's the full piece for your delight! Plus she's offering some of what she learned in a donation class series this month. Classes are Saturdays at 11:45am, and donations benefit the Beverly J. Martin Middle School Garden Project. Next one is 3/17! For more info on the classes, visit here.
Opening to the Challenge, by Liz Falk
As a yogi, you’ve probably had that “aha” moment in a class when a pose you have done dozens of times all of a sudden clicks and melts over the entire body and mind (and even soul). You’ve experienced “yoga brain” – that lightheaded, tired, yet energized feeling after a wonderful yoga class that concluded with a more wonderful Savasana. And most likely you’ve been in a yoga class when the teacher says something like “and now wrap your leg over your shoulder, hook your foot and lift your hips” (Astavakrasana/8-Angle Pose) and you thought, “She said what? Nobody can do that. I can’t do that.” And maybe one or two people around you actually do it, while others laugh as they try.
To me, this is yoga. It’s a synergy between awareness, finding deep relaxation and challenging oneself mentally and physically. It offers endless opportunity for growth no matter what level yogi we are. The real question is, are we truly open to exploring?
I’ve been practicing yoga for 10 years and teaching Vinyasa Flow yoga for eight. My relationship with yoga has ebbed and flowed. There were months at a time I didn’t take a class and other months I went once or twice a day. And then recently I reacquainted myself with my personal home practice. I started teaching myself new poses I always thought I could never do, and I began yearning to learn more. I wanted to challenge myself as a practitioner and grow as a teacher. So I decided to take an Ashtanga Yoga Teacher Training with David Kyle at It’s Yoga in Puerto Rico.
Yes, of course Puerto Rico in February sounds nice (and the studio was only a block from the beach!), but the draw to this specific training was David and Ashtanga yoga. I had taken a workshop with David in 2009 that dramatically strengthened my practice. And I wanted to learn Ashtanga because of its regimen (e.g. doing the same sequence of poses every practice), challenging nature and focus on hands-on adjustments. Though It’s Yoga bends the rules a bit, traditionally, Ashtanga is very different than Vinyasa Flow yoga. This is what I wanted.
The day I got to PR, I dropped my bags and raced over to a Rocket II class, an adaptation to classic Ashtanga, with David. I had never taken such a challenging class in my life; Pincha Mayurasana (forearm stand) or Adho Mukha Vrksasana (handstand) seemed like every 5 poses, and in between those were intense binds and twists, repeated jump-throughs, and arm balances. I kept up the best I could but certainly was not able to do much of it, especially at that pace! One ‘exhale’ and people were bound in a position I thought I could never get my body getting into (and many I still cannot). It was awesome. The coolest thing about it, every student was trying something! Maybe only half of the students were getting into full poses, but every single one was trying, maintaining their Ujjayi while they tried, and settling deeply into their pose.
The next 2 weeks went on something like this day after day. We started at 7am with a MySore practice (self-guided Primary Series practice with teacher adjustments and guidance), followed by lecture-like sessions and practicing in one or two more teacher-led classes (Ashtanga or Rocket), ending our day about 8:30pm. I would bike the 2 miles home, make a quick meal, study a little, go to sleep and repeat. I dreamt about yoga poses, oftentimes waking up and writing down several questions before going back to sleep.
On day four, after already taking six primary series Ashtanga classes, I was sitting on my mat waiting for the morning Primary Series class to start and thinking “I hate this practice, I want to flow! I want to do down dog split, and flip dog… OMG flip dog would feel so good. I don’t want to do this practice again.” Exactly what I had gone to Puerto Rico for was what I was finding the hardest thing to handle – discipline and repetition of the sequence of poses. It felt like monotony, like a chore. I struggled through half of the practice. And then I let go. I started paying attention to only my breath and how I was moving my body in sync with it. I stopped thinking about it and rather gave it just feeling the repetition. Then I was given an adjustment that made my entire self wake-up. By the finishing postures I felt calm, focused and rejuvenated. I was falling in love with Ashtanga yoga.
The magical thing about repeating the same postures in the same order day after day is that it takes little thought. The body and mind know what is coming next and the focus and attention to breath becomes easier. The monotony is exactly what makes the practice so powerful. As one settles into coming to the mat everyday to do the same sequence, you develop a baseline and then start to notice how your practice grows, how much deeper each pose feels from day to day, how much closer to that bind or that balance you are getting, and perhaps most importantly, you also learn to recognize days where you need to ease up in a pose and accept these as wholly as you do days where you step-it-up. To me, it feels like a moving meditation, where I am learning to trust myself to let go of my ego and instead, to listen to my breath and body.
So while my first and true yoga love is Vinyasa Flow, Ashtanga yoga is now my control practice, it’s my teacher. Since getting home from PR I have tried to maintain a morning self-guided Ashtanga practice while then taking Vinyasa classes a few days a week. Getting up early in the AM is hard, but the ritual is slowly becoming second nature.
“Your joy is your sorry unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter arises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain”--The Prophet
