PRACTICES FOR STRANGE AND DIFFICULT TIMES
I don’t remember the date exactly but it began one weekend in March, 12 years ago.
I had been living in Barcelona for just over a year, my first big design job, and through friends I had come in contact with this strange new group of people.
They were a tight knit bunch, bonded somehow, alternative - definitely not your average 9-5ers - tattooed in a time before tattooing was so normal, fit, athletic, and, what most drew me, they had this glow about them. This inner confidence and light. Nothing seemed to faze them.
I was fascinated, and I wanted some of whatever it was they were having.
The ‘what’ turned out to be astanga yoga. It’s a very dynamic, athletic form of yoga: physically and mentally demanding - and beautiful to watch. One of the group, a senior teacher, offered me a place on his workshop that March, and that was it, I was hooked. Up until that point I’d been doing a lot of running, cycling, swimming, going to the gym.. but nothing came close to this. It was like the best night of dancing I had ever had - without the drugs or the hangover.
I learned to make beautiful shapes with my body, to twist and bend and sweat - boy did we sweat - and to come out glowing, vibrantly alive, literally cleansed from within.
It was transformative and I loved it with a passion that was pretty much an addiction - only I felt amazing, not ashamed.
We practiced 6 days a week before the rest of the world had even started to wake up, and we carried this golden secret in our hearts each day. The world was brighter for it, more beautiful and way, way more exciting.
Astanga became the backbone of my life for the next 5 years, day in, day out. I practiced wherever life took me: in India, Singapore, Hong Kong, and I became fitter than I had ever been, and strong like never before.
But it was taking its toll too.
I was getting up at 5am to practice for two hours before doing a full day of work. In my job there’s barely time to think, let alone eat lunch, and I was wearing myself thin.
When a bereavement hit me out of nowhere, everything shut down overnight. The astanga party was over.
And in my grief, I came to meditation.
People talk a lot about meditation now. Apps like Headspace have made it possible to meditate anytime, anywhere, but even just a few years ago that wasn’t the case.
It’s not something you just sit down and know how to do, by the way (if you’re feeling bad for having tried it and come up with nothing). It’s a skill you can learn and practice, and very simply put, it’s about lengthening the time between thoughts.
Our brains are designed to think. At a primeval level, they were built to keep us safe. Now that we’re running from predators less often, the fight/flight response tends to keep us in jobs we don’t like, with people we don’t love - because it feels safer than taking a leap into the unknown. Which might be true on one level, but boy can it get depressing.
So meditation can help you get some distance from your thoughts and some perspective on your emotions. Very slowly and gently, you will learn when to take a breath and let it go, and when to take some considered action. It gives you the ability to respond rather than react, and to make that response from a place of authentic truth, not from some confused place of ‘I should/ ought to/ everyone else is doing it so it must be right...’
Since taking that first workshop back in 2008, my yoga journey has progressed and developed through various forms of yoga and a yoga teacher training. I have studied meditation, mindfulness and now have a twice daily Vedic meditation practice that feels a little like astanga for my brain. All stages of this learning have helped me to get where I am today, and to ride the waves of life with a little more detachment and clarity.
Below I’ve made a very short list of links, if you’re interested to explore any of the practices I’ve mentioned today. It’s in no way definitive or prescriptive - please explore for yourselves and find what works for you. But if you’d like to ask any questions please just drop me an email.
I share them in the hope that, in such strange and frightening times, these practices will help you as much as they have helped me.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashtanga_vinyasa_yoga
https://themindfulnesssummit.com/sessions/9-powerful-meditation-tips-jon-kabat-zinn/
https://chrisgermer.com/meditations/
https://self-compassion.org
https://www.londonmeditationcentre.com