This weekend we visited Hannah’s grandparents for a family birthday. We’d opted to sleep over on a sofa bed. We were both slightly nervous about this as the grandad has a penchant for ancient clocks – some of which chime every 15 minutes and strike on the hour. (You’d be amazed by how much you didn’t know about time keeping.) Fortunately the 6 or 7 clocks were easily disabled for the purpose of sleeping.

Now I don’t have much experience of spending time with people in their 80s due to early deaths and a somewhat dysfunctional family background so spending time with Hannah’s gps is still quite a novel experience and I’m enjoying getting to know them.

There is a real sense with them that they are in their last few years and it got me thinking about my own life and how I would prepare for that which we all face (and I’m not referring to taxes here.)

I guess my lack of experience with older people has left me with a sort of naivety that old equals wise… and if you’ve been on the planet a long time you’re likely to know a lot more than someone who’s been around less. After all that’s the message I got from my parents when I was a child. Respect your elders – because they’ve been through more than you have and are therefore wiser.

I can see that this may be useful, even true, when trying to instill a sense of respectful perspective in a child – when nearly everyone is older than them. Obviously with a little of my own learned perspective I know that older definitely does not equal wiser, yet I couldn’t help but pop out the question on our Sunday walk today “What is important in life?”

There were a few answers but the one that caught in my ears was “Show an interest in others, not just yourself.” Naturally the question was returned to me and my reply was “Yoga”. Now one could quite quickly jump to the conclusion that spending 2 hours a day 6 days a week practicing Yoga in varying states of meditative self absorption could be construed as being a rather self centered thing to do.

In a way I think that it is, but I also think it isn’t. Patanjalim’s Yoga sutra states in the second sloka of the first chapter on Samadhi “Yoga chitta vrtti nirodah” – Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind. So physical asana practice is not exercise. Of course I know that it is but at the same time it’s not. It’s like calling a raindrop the ocean – both are water.

Daily practice mirrors our lives – each day we are born at dawn with the rising sun, grow, breathe, struggle, fight, love, fear and surrender again and again. The final surrender is our own death which we ritually repeat with Shavasana the corpse pose. We let go of all the triumphs and tribulations of our practice and are absorbed back into true divine nature.

I believe the other great challenge of Yoga or life is how we live off the mat. These equate to the first 2 limbs of the 8 limbs or Ashtanga of Patanjalim’s Yoga Sutra – yama and niyama. In simple terms we apply the yamas and niyamas to ourselves in our asana practice first. Teaching ourselves with the kind persistent training of our physical body and our thoughts. I’m going to end with these wise words by a great Yogi as you probably get my drift and we all have other things to be getting on with!
“Be the change that you want to see in the world” – Mahatma Gandhi.

As you can tell it’s been a rather thought provoking weekend!

Namaste

G

I returned from Buddhafield festival on Sunday evening and have spent the last couple of days just chilling out and acclimatising to life back in Brighton. It seemed like half of Brighton was at the festival so even though I went on my own I wasn’t alone by any means. In fact Laura and Mark were camped a few tents away from me.

For those who have never been – I can honestly say that I’ve had the time of my life! I’ve directly experienced so much healing, bliss, love and rejuvenation. Each day was an emotional roller coaster full of delights, insights and as many new activities as I wanted.

Some of the highlights for me:

• Contact Improvisation workshop – I attended this on my first full day and it really helped me to get into the flow. It involved safe and intimate contact within a group setting with a bunch of total strangers. There was group pair and group work. Kinda like twister!
• Christopher Titmuss dharma talk – Christopher delivered a really passionate and concise talk exploring the following two part question in small groups: Firstly what do I need to change or let go of so that I may travel more lightly through life? And, what do I need in place to support this change? Christopher encouraged us to name it directly and share within the groups and then we discussed it again in the larger group. It was such a simple but powerful exercise in considering one’s own path and direction in life.
• Reconnecting workshops – A series workshops led by an Engaged Buddhist group (can’t remember which one) This had me sobbing in tears at both sessions that I attended. The idea behind the workshops is to reconnect with the pain we feel particularly around the harm that we are causing the earth and then explore ways in which this pain can be used to instigate positive change.
• Ecstatic dance sessions – with Jewls Wingfield. I’d heard about ecstatic dance before but never experienced it. All I can say is WOW!! I’d forgotten that I love to dance! Jewls was also running Heart Tantra workshops which I checked out too.
• Skillful Flirting workshop – This was great fun and freaked people out quite a bit. The definition of flirting used was this: The beauty and love within me recognises and celebrates your great beauty. The homework was to flirt with 3 people that evening. I won’t tell you how it went ; )

Anyway, the list goes on and on: There was great food every day, fantastic live bands playing every evening, a couple of scorching saunas (that’s right, naked baby!), 35 different yoga classes a day, beautiful Pujas including a Dakini Puja that was more like an ecstatic dance session!

I shot 3 rolls of film so I should have some pics up on Flickr in a couple of days. I also did some practice while I was away but it’s been more of a holiday break so I’m really looking forward to getting back on the mat tomorrow morning.

I’ll definitely be going regularly and next time going to try encourage a bunch of friends and Ashtangis to come along and experience it too.

Namaste, may all beings be free from suffering.

Guy