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January 30, 2008
Dead
I think I killed it. I was at it most of the evening, fixing things right and proper. I even uttered the words
"Once I get these downloads installed I'll show you how to do a full backup of your system"
I should've seen the warning in that sentence right there. Do the backup FIRST.
Err no.
When the laptop rebooted and started to reinstall the operating system I knew something was seriously out of whack. At least I could prove that the files were still on the hard disk, I just couldn't get to them. I should've stayed well clear when early on in the afternoon a process that's worked seamlessly for over 8 years suddenly started to complain and failed to start. Talking about being in the present moment.
Hindsight's 20/20 I know, but what you're left looking at sometimes sure ain't pretty.
Posted by graeme at 4:42 PM | Comments (1)
January 27, 2008
Back to the auld toon!
Seems like the universe has decided I need to recoup back in Scotland. I'll be back up there for a few days next week on business, trying to put the last touches to the project at work I've been working on. It'll be nice to be back there, even nicer as someone else is picking up the tab, though I'm going to miss the morning practices here for sure. It'll be a nice opportunity to go back to my teachers classes up there as well and for sure to catch up with my friends there too.
I went walkabouts yesterday, over to the Natural History museum for a wander around as it's the one museum I missed when I was here back in April.
From there I walked back through the park then to this place for my booked 'flight'. Felt like I was a tourist again!
Posted by graeme at 4:46 PM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2008
New toy
The last couple of days I've been playing with my new 'toy'. On ebay I found a good bargain for an iPod Touch and I've been engrossed with it since it turned up here a few days ago. Following Apple's Macbook Air launch, which is kinda outta my price range, I opted for something a bit cheaper, even saved myself 70 pounds by going through ebay. Following the upgrade of some of the software from Cupertino I've had a great time rumaging through all the applications. I even found out that there was a problem with the website I support when an email dropped into the inbox about it. Handy little thing.
The video playback's superb as well. I managed to load Ashtanga NY and watched most of it at lunchtime yesterday. It's great being able to SKPJ and get some inspiration, a real pick me up anytime I need too. Then there's the link to the uTube videos you can download and watch too. Worth the purchase price just to see Tim Miller in his hey-day.
Posted by graeme at 9:25 PM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2008
Swimming
I was in meetings all day yesterday at the J.O.B. It got to the stage where at one point I found myself saying...
"What you're asking me to do is tell you how much water I think it's going to take to fill a cup when you can't tell me anything about that cup, except it's not a cup, it's a swimming pool".
Though it seems the "swimming pool's" about to be split into a baby pool and a big pool, which is far more to everyones liking.
Ah the joy of analogy. I must've been subconsciously thinking about John Scott's analogy between the sea and the waves. Funny how some things stick.
Posted by graeme at 9:41 AM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2008
Good things
when I'm absentmindedly surfing the internet and discover that one of my favourite yoga teachers is coming here to run a workshop. Yippeeeeeee! That's one advantage about moving here is that a lot of international teachers stop over here on the way from America into Europe (or vice-versa). The list of must-go-see teachers is getting smaller and smaller, which I think is a good thing, because when that list's empty I might actually get round to doing some creative yoga thinking of my own. (Eaak).
Another good thing. I really missed not practicing this morning. I normally really look forward to the extra long lie and being able to take a break from watching what I eat for a day but this time around it was like "awwwwwwwwh". Mind you, it was weird getting to walk to and from work when it's light.
And number three good thing to happen today... I finally got my finger out and got round to starting to look for somewhere new to stay, though in many ways that's going to bring it's own 'horrors'. Seeing how small places are to rent around here, especially with the extortionate prices they're asking, but hey, that's the big city for you. Today I had a look at a place which had a beautiful, gorgeous view of the brick wall of the house in front of it. No wonder the estate agents don't mind showing you around in the evening when it's dark. "Wooden flooring through out" - that'll be the two planks then; the modern fitted kitchen - that's the new kettle from the 'everything for a fiver' shop; pied-a-terre living, yeah, you're lucky if there's enough room to put one foot down let alone two. Ah well, the search continues.....
Posted by graeme at 8:37 PM | Comments (0)
January 21, 2008
John Scott - Day 3
Day 3
Facing east, travelling to the east - you’re looking for something
‘Men often stumble across the truth, pick themselves up and run off in a hurry as if nothing happened’ - Winston Churchill
“Honour all things as sacred - Foremost is life”
None of this is permanent
“If you put someone on a pedestal, where did that pedestal come from? The hole you are standing in”
Faith - in the method
Faith - in your teacher (as they’ve been through all of this). Know the difference between challenging your teacher (your agenda, your ego) and questioning your teacher
Faith - in yourself. Doors: Compassion, hero, aware, not ready yet - be discerning. You will make mistakes but what was it that tripped you up? Need to be aware that you made a mistake!
Copy - find the right people to copy. Don’t think you’re not ready. You’ve always been ready, you just don’t realise it yet
“The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s fear”
It’s not about the shape of the triangle but the gates that it opens (in you)
99% practice, but the 1% theory is HUGE. Need to pay 100% attention when you are looking at the theory. 100% theory is MASSIVE!
If you’re stuck in the form, you’re looking for the best triangle, you’re following/copying the wrong agenda => this will be what chokes you.
Posted by graeme at 8:26 PM | Comments (0)
Growing
Be not afraid of growing slowly.
Be afraid of standing still.
- Chinese proverb.
Posted by graeme at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)
January 20, 2008
John Scott, Jan 08
I'll try and summarize what John's been talking about the last 2 days.
Day 1+2
John talked a lot about the Heart Sutra his analogy being that of the wave identifying with itself (fear of birth and death coming) as opposed to identifying with the water and stillness from which it comes from and will ultimately return to. The wave is pure potential, empty of form.
Heart Sutra: Form is Emptiness, emptiness is form (coming in and out of form)
A lot of us do not have awareness
"Grasping". We like to have and collect objects, polish them, keep them, cherish. This includes our asana practice.
Energy can't be created or destroyed so it's all about "transformation"
If our prana energy is down, we are hardly breathing, the food we ingest is poor quality, kundalini sleeping THEN we are barely living. No wonder life is such a rough ride!
Within each of us is a garden which we need to tend for the flowers (lotus) to grow
John expanded on the Tibetan Heart yoga that he'd started with when I was with him down in Prussia Cove. There's 5 different levels (from the outside - in):
- the body machine
- fuel layer
- pranic layer
- thought layer
- the seeds (of your garden)
and the idea that movement between layers effects us at the body layer (bad seeds coming to the surface) and emotionally (events at the body layer planting seeds further down). The question is how each layer moves the one above/below.
Imagine: Disturbed thoughts leads to disturbed mind leads to disturbed (shaking) body.
Addiction: Every action self feeds back in. John's analogy here was shouting at his family, instigated by himself by saying to them all the time "I'll be there in a minute". Easiest way to get a child to want to get attention.
3 Parts to the spine : head, heart, pelvis. Get each into alignment with east/west banks so we're not spilling our 'vital fluids'. Seek equilibrium
According to vedas, samadhi is only 30 minutes away. After 2.4 minutes of practice we should be in a moving meditation (he gave a mathematical explanation for this). If you're not then ask yourself why? It only takes 6 seconds before the mind will wander
"Your God can't eat your lunch for you"
Break addictive patterns by "exhale 1, inhale 1, exhale 2, inhale 2... "
John went over the practice or "homework postures" that he came up from watching his kids grow, his dog sit outside the practice room, and many years of observing Guruji and being inquisitive to ask why he was doing certain things
"Just because you are moving doesn't mean you're not in stillness"
Ashtanga's very much about adjusting but there is an intelligence to it. John talked a lot about the benefit of the count in a led class.
We all make the choice to behave this way or that, what is good, what is bad, where the mind goes [the energy] follows.
Ujjayi - victorious breath, but victorious over what????
Pain is change, depending on how quickly you are changing will determine how much pain you get. Stick with the program and let it run again, again, again.
Ground through your hands.
The practice sessions were short, quick, and very structured, though he did give everyone a long meditation after the morning practice where he went over mostly the things he'd talked about the evening before. He split the room into 2 with one group observing the 'sea and wave tips' of the other group as they practiced sun salutes - John invited us to count along with him if we knew the count. He also led us through part of the practice in the afternoon where we had our eyes closed as we practiced. He also said that it's often those that are newest to the practice that are closest to its essence.
I am paraphrasing a lot of this (I took a dozen pages of notes) so all the mistakes in the above are mine.
Posted by graeme at 10:21 AM | Comments (3)
January 17, 2008
Forward and back
One of the things I've come to appreciate of this practice of late is how the system works both ways. I got the idea of how the early asanas open you up for what follows, that seemed pretty common sense, but over the last year I've really been paying lots of attention to how little bits of each asana crop up in other places. Hips obviously run amok through most of the asanas so the stuff I'm dealing with now is concentrated in kurmasana but pretty much everything up to there is helping them out. And in reverse, the edge in the postures at the end of my practice are feeding back into the earlier postures, and, especially as it gets into the latter part of each week, how i feel noticeable more pain free away from the practice too. That is when I'm not sitting on the floor for 2-3 hours in the evening mucking about with my legs.
Then there's tomorrow. Ah, yup. Another visit to the teaching clinic and the wonder that is John Scott. Yipppeeeeee!!
Posted by graeme at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2008
Perfect
well almost.
On the way in to class this morning I was thinking what would make the perfect day. That gorgeous polish girl I see every morning standing on the platform at 5.25am. She could come across and say "Hey, I see you every morning, wanna go for a drink sometime?" Yeah, hmnnn, errrr, sure. That'd do for a start. Usual sort of ego-founded shallow male fantasy.
Then during class, I'd have a pretty good Marichyasana D, a sound bhujapidasana, then the teacher would go something like ''blah blah blah kurmasana blah blah blah". I'd say something naff like "Yeah, I'm just redoing my exit from bhujapidasana" and that would be that.
Hold on a second. That DID actually happen this morning. The blah blah bit took place but I was convinced teacher was talking to the student next to me so didn't pay it much notice until she came back to the top of my mat looked at me and said "Kurmasana?" y'know with that lift in the end of the word that means "you gonna do this or what?"
Errr, for sure.
So 13 months after getting started on Mari D, and 5 months after being given bhujapidasana, here I was, day 1 on kurmasana. Oh, then while you're at it might as well give supta kurmasana a go too. Yipppeeee!
Oh bugger me, my back didn't have ache after that, though I was pleasantly surprised how far into it I managed to get.
Perfect well, almost. The girl's still in the fantasy league. Anyone know the Polish for "Hello?"
Posted by graeme at 8:21 PM | Comments (0)
January 15, 2008
Sloppy
I was reviewing some old workshop notes last night so this morning was in the mood for doing what I'd written down during one workshop in Miami as a "sloppy" practice. The idea being just to go with the flow and forgo all those little idiosyncrasies and adjustments in and between each posture. You know the ones, the mat adjustments, the brow wipes, the toilet run, the multiple pre-posture adjustment, watching the adjuster do their thing on the student next to me, you get the drift. It certainly cut plenty of time out of my practice, especially as I didn't do any of the prep postures (pigeon and the like) that I throw in mid practice in a vain effort to try and open me up a little. In fact, I didn't realise how much these little adjustments were helping until I got to Mari-C and couldn't hold a bind. To top it all off in Mari-D the teacher commented over my shoulder to the other adjuster "I'm sweating more than he is!" And coming out of practice my knees ached considerably more than they normally do. Back to a nice slow practice tomorrow I think!
Posted by graeme at 5:46 PM | Comments (0)
January 14, 2008
Drifting
For the last couple of days I've had this feeling of drifting along, both in my practice and away from the mat after class. It's not that I'm not being mindful, it's just a feeling of not being totally present. Well, there's a contradiction if ever I've written one. I guess the best way to explain it is to liken the feeling to that 'calm before the storm' kinda thing that goes on. You know there's something about to come around the bend and it's coming straight for you.
Of lately I've been really quite restless. Sleeping's been a bit topsy turvy when I ping from one restless night to a deep sleep/hard-to-get my-ass-out-of-bed-in-the-morning kinda affair.
I think it's all coming from the supposed change in my attitude. I've been telling myself I was going to get more realistic, to stop kidding myself about things, for years now, and it finally got to me just before Xmas with a real "right, that's enough of that" feeling kicking in. I guess I was just a bit fed up of the lack of good progress but at the root of all of that I kinda realised it was all my own doing, or all my own non-doing more to the point. It's the simple truth to say that there's no point in expecting to make progress if I'm self sabotaging myself within the same breath.
What's the point in getting up early every morning to then wash it all down the river with masses of alcohol? Or food for that matter. That bind in Marichyasana D will never happen if I keep putting crap into my body.
As the teacher said once, "You put crap in, you'll get crap out."
So it's the realisation that if I'm going to change, then the change has to come from me and it has to be done with some sort of conviction, well, certainly more than what I've been giving recently. But again, that's just the way it seems, so perhaps at the end of that day it's just my ego getting at me for being stuck where I am.
And the thing to do when I feel like drifting. Yup, sit their and watch it go by.
Posted by graeme at 5:55 PM | Comments (0)
January 10, 2008
Be soft in your practice...
"Be soft in your practice.
Think of the method as a fine silvery stream,
not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream, have
faith in its course. It will go its own way,
meandering here, trickling there. It will find the
grooves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it.
Never let it out of your sight. It will take you."
- Sheng Yen
Posted by graeme at 8:11 PM | Comments (0)
January 9, 2008
Hmmnnn, very nice
to be back into the shala, lots of good heat, great energy, the odd wee smiley face here and there, a good squish here and there from the adjusters, a nice even practice with no real drama. Life can't get better than this.
Oh, yeah. Teacher's away. Missed that.
Posted by graeme at 7:58 PM | Comments (0)
January 8, 2008
Guilty
Today I received a letter in the post from my nephews thanking me for the Nintendo Wii that I got them for Xmas. Only problem is I didn't buy it for them, my parents did. They got asked by my brother to get it for his kids as a present but found it really hard, like everyone else, to find one in any of the shops. Even down here the shops had not stock though they were taking names for when they became available. I thought, 'that's not going to happen' so I looked them up on eBay. Guessing that the prices would be going up I persuade my parents to back a bid to buy one online, which thankfully after 3 attempts I managed to get one. I kinda thought the kids would realise the gift came from their grand parents not me. My mum had said to be me before I left to come back here that she thought they'd picked up that I'd managed to source one for them. Eaak!! Seems like it's true, so I'm feeling a tad shit about that. Still, I guess the main thing is atleast the kids got what they wanted for Xmas.
Posted by graeme at 9:33 PM | Comments (0)
January 7, 2008
Self practice, over and done
This evening marked the last of the home self practices. Thanks to Derek Ireland's counting in his led class audio things have been pretty good the last couple of days, mostly down to the fact that he counts 8 sun salute As and atleast 6 or more sun salute Bs. It's really given me a decent dose of respect for the benefits of the salutations.
Needless to say practice was really good tonight. My hamstrings were really open and it was good to be able to forget about them for a while and listen in to Derek's instructions. Lots of 'going forward' when coming down in the sun salutes was really getting me over my toes with loads of room to get my head further down my legs. Must be one of the few times my chins been further down than me knee caps.
Cant wait really for the shala to reopen, looking forward to getting back in to class and the routine of it all, and hopefully a bit more stability.
Posted by graeme at 8:55 PM | Comments (0)
January 5, 2008
Free Weekend
This is the first free weekend I seem to have had since before Thanksgiving and I'm glad to be able to sleep in late, practice, have a leisurely breakfast, clean up, take a walk in the afternoon and finally settle down to do a bit of house keeping on the mac. I even got round to cleaning up my rubbish in the bathroom, stuff that seems to have been accumulating there over the past couple of months. A good day for just mucking in and getting all those little jobs that's been on the back burner for so long.
Practice this morning was good, moreover to do with the fact that when I started my hamstrings were quite stiff but by the time I'd finished they had completely eased off. It was also very nice to finish practice with the sun streaming through the bedroom window.
Posted by graeme at 4:38 PM | Comments (0)
January 2, 2008
Always thought Derek Ireland would have the X Factor
As part of my Xmas I bought the Derek Ireland Primary Series CD and have been running with it as the shala's closed until the middle of next week.
There's a couple of differences between a led practice then and what we have in the practice today, most of which I knew about - the extra posture after trikonasana b (link the arms together underneath your bent leg), and the side and box splits after the Prassarrita Padottanasana (forgive the spelling).
There's copious amounts of instruction, lots of reference to 'even effort' when within a posture, free breathing and, more interestingly, extra breaths mid posture. Sun salute B, for example, has a 'set' (inhale) then exhale take right (or left) leg forward, then inhale arms up above head. Nice for beginners. There's also a full breath cycle in downdog during vinyasas.
All the way through practice (I only went up to bhujapidasana) I kept thinking there was something awfully familiar about all of this but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Then it dawned on me in savasana as I listened to Derek continue with the remaining postures, it's what he sounds like, or rather who he sounds like.
I've seen plenty of pictures of Derek but it never dawned on me what he might actually sound like, right up to the point where I handed over my card to pay for the CD. I would never have guessed he sounded like this guy.
Posted by graeme at 6:33 PM | Comments (0)
January 1, 2008
New Years Day Parade
Some quick pics of the parade in town today. Other than that, a great day to just laze about at home....
Oh, and Point Break was good, wasn't it!
:<
Posted by graeme at 9:25 PM | Comments (0)