Tag Archive for: Axis

Sweet Silence: Committing to the process

Keeping with the idea that change is inherently good, I made the choice to be silent for four hours every day. Due to life conflicts like my job at Starbucks where I have to talk, I chose not to be silent all day– my Starbucks regulars wouldn’t like that very much, not to mention my boss! I chose the four hours solely around my work schedule. If I had plans during the four hours, I had plans. I was still committed to keeping silent. I wouldn’t check my phone, email, facebook, twitter, blog readers’ comments… anything of the sort until my four hours were up.

The first few days were torture. I’ll be honest, I fantasized about just giving up and knowing I was defeated by this idea of silence. I was worried I would lose friends, money, influence or even credibility. I kept on with my goal, however, and found the effects to be immeasurable.

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Sweet Silence: Seeing results

First came comments from friends, family and my blog supporters, asking where I was or questioning if I was okay. It took everything in me to not write back until time was up. I even had classmates emailing me, to which I had to wait to respond.  Fighting with my internal dialogue, I waited… and waited… and waited longer. The first few four hour sessions seemed like days.

I found that after a few days, my silence got easier. It was less hectic, less rushed and more incredible than before. I grew happier, using my silence as a solace where I could acknowledge feelings and not have to explain them to anyone.

During the second week of my experiment, I was faced with hardships at work as well as in my family. Through choosing silence, I was able to listen to concerns, to feelings shared with  me. I was able to listen to everyone around me with a clarity I hadn’t before. They shared things that were new and raw. I was able to listen and focus, not just hear or acknowledge

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Sweet Silence: Conclusion

Of all of the emotions and changes that silence brought me, the one most pressed upon me is the feeling of thankfulness. I feel as though I was able to gain insight in to myself, into those around me and also the people I come in contact with everyday. I worked to listen. To understand the things that weren’t said. To give the people I was in contact with my full, undivided attention. It was pretty incredible feeling. They noticed, too. I was more present, alert and in tune with them.

Using the idea of silence will continue to be influential in my journey towards helping others through yoga. Being present in the moment and hearing where my students are coming from will help me to tailor their experiences in my classes or in private instruction. I’m incredibly excited to see the lasting effects of this experiment throughout the journey I’ve started. It will benefit me as well as my students, fellow classmates in training and my family.

It seems to me from talking with classmates, that this experiment impresses upon us a feeling of renewal. There’s something magical about bettering yourself. It seems like a common thread between all of the experiments, no matter the group, that they’re life changing and they turn out differently (and better) than we’d originally planned or thought. It’s truly been a life changing two-and-a-half weeks. I know I’ll continually reflect on this time as one where I gained insight into myself and those around me.

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Blessings in Disguise

Axis Yoga Teacher Training students’ series of experiments culminates with a “personal” experiment. Taking into account all they have learned, students examine any piece of the yogic puzzle on a personal level. This student came full circle as she realized that what she had been aiming for in the beginning of her experiment came around to surprise her in the end. And it was an enriching journey along the way.

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Blessings in Disguise: Looking for Shiva

When I began this personal experiment I was certain that I wanted to do a project revolved around meditation and/or spirituality. Lately, I have been very drawn to Bhakti yoga, and for some reason the name and entity of Shiva has been popping up into my life. It’s been happening so often that I can’t ignore it or dismiss it as coincidence. I felt like I was being told to meditate and pray to Shiva for my personal experiment. It seemed perfect! It made total sense! Everything was fitting into place so nicely…until I couldn’t find a book to go along with my plan.

Try as I might, I could not find a book on the mythological legends of or guided meditations on Shiva. Besides being surprised, I felt almost hurt that I couldn’t find the type of book I wanted. Everything seemed so neat and tidy so why was this part of the plan not working out? Discouraged I went to yet another library to search for my ideal book, which I didn’t find. Instead I found The Inner Life of Asanas by Swami Lalitananda. I decided that if my personal experiment was ever going to get done that I would need to scrap my initial proposal, and so I picked The Inner Life of Asanas to base my personal experiment off of.

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Blessings in Disguise: A New Direction

The Inner Life of Asanas is comprised of different yoga poses described by a personal story of the author (or mythological tale she’s heard regarding the pose), physical ways to practice the pose, and reflections on the pose. I found the little stories fun and sometimes beautiful. The physical how-tos on how to practice the asanas were nice but nothing new since I have spent so much time in the teacher training learning how to do asana. What I ended up enjoying about the book were the reflection sections on each pose. It’s there that I realized what my personal experiment really was.

After practicing the pose I would write down my answers to the reflection questions. An example of such a question about bakasana (crane pose) was, “ Visualize a crane and try to embody its qualities. Ask: What are you afraid of? When you work with Crane pose, can you peer beneath the surface to see the root of the fear?” The book describes bakasana as, “the yoga of falling on your face” which I thought was fitting since I can barely do bakasana before I panic at the thought of crashing head first into the floor. When I did the reflection writing I was sort of surprised that I wrote, “I’m afraid of failing.” I wrote failing, not falling. Freudian slip initiated by a yoga pose. It’s true though; I’m terrified of failing in my life.

What my personal experiment became was, as the book suggests, was finding the inner life of asanas. Even though I knew that asanas were more than just physical poses, the book helped me to really see the spiritual and psychological core behind the actions. It also helped me to become sensitive to emotional and spiritual reactions I had to each asana and how my feelings manifested themselves in my body. After a lot of meditating on why I was afraid of failing, and accepting that I if I fell over in crane pose then I fell over, I was able to do a very beautiful and sustained crane pose.

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Blessings in Disguise: Finding Shiva (and more)

When I was thinking about writing this essay I had planned to write and say that my personal experiment was only discovering how asanas can be a direct spiritual practice for me, but something occurred to me. By not being able to find the book I wanted (and so not have the experience I was sure I was going to have) I feel like Shiva stepped into the mix and destroyed my preconditioned sense of ego.  Inadvertently I had a Shiva experience without meaning to.

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Crossing the Midline

Before graduating, Axis Yoga Teacher Training students submit a paper describing the experience of completing a personal experiment. In this experiment students have an opportunity to put any of the yogic principles they have been studying to the test. This student found a big lesson by making a small change.

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Crossing the Midline: The Experiment

My personal experiment consisted of exercises and explorations crossing the midline. There is a balancing pose in asana practice from the table position that extends the opposing arm and leg outward then draws the extended elbow and knee together under the chest. It sounds very simple at face value, but upon attempted practice I found it very difficult from a coordination standpoint. I was told years ago that it was because I was crossing the midline and engaging the non-dominant side of my body and brain that caused the difficulty. So the experiment was to do other actions with the non-dominant side (left hand) and see how that affected my practice, both in asana and in other experiences like, playing guitar where use of both hands are required and typing as well.

I began to do things in my daily routine left-handed. I reprogrammed my computer mouse to the left hand. I ate meals using the left hand. I washed and shaved using the left hand. And during asana practice where it called for interlacing the fingers or sitting cross-legged I did the action in the non-dominant orientation first.

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Crossing the Midline: Observations

Eating left handed is something I’ve tried before just for fun and if you have not done this yourself, the first thing I recommend is to wear a bib or something you are not worried about spilling on. Oatmeal is a good breakfast meal to do this with because it is less likely to cause a mess than cereal with milk or eggs for example. There is also the risk of sticking a fork in your lip accidentally when trying this. There has been no blood drawn in this exercise, but one thing I did notice is that it made me much more mindful during the meal. There is always a tendency to mindlessly inhale your food as fast as you can, while the television or computer is on. Well you just cannot do that when you are activating the non-dominant hand. You have to concentrate on getting that utensil to your mouth as the muscles are moving and the neurons are firing in a different way in your brain.

The computer mouse was another interesting experience. As I started this, there was the feeling of being the Tin Man from Wizard Of Oz just because my brain, so it seemed, could not tell my left hand where to go on the mouse pad. My left elbow started to flair out in some weird contorted way and I almost had to reach my right hand over to guide it. There was some pressure too because I didn’t want to accidentally click on some spam advertisement for home mortgage refinancing while my brain was trying to figure out how to get my left hand to do what it was asking. After a couple of days, something kicked in and I’ve been able to function pretty well on the computer mouse. Regarding my typing ability, I have not seen any tangible difference in my typing speed and/or accuracy.

Washing has not been eventful because I’ve always been pretty ambidextrous in that department. Shaving was another matter. As opposed to eating with the left hand, I’ve never tried shaving with the left hand. At first I was having a similar experience as I had with the computer mouse, where the arm did not quite comprehend what I was telling it to do. It took some effort and creative visualization to actually bring the razor to my cheek. Eventually I was able to train my left hand to get going and was able to shave without missing spots. As with eating it was not something that I could do while my mind wandered somewhere else, I had to focus on the task at hand and it made me more mindful of how the blade felt on my skin, the thickness of the shaving gel on my face and what parts of my skin were sensitive and irritated from the strokes of the razor. Then I had a little mishap under my nose. I had been shaving left handed for a week without incident. I have chronic dry skin and the occasional scratches here and there are common when I shave. But this one was a doosy because I totally misinterpreted the pressure and angle I was putting on the handle and the blade dug into the skin. It took 20 minutes to stop the bleeding and now I have two lines of scratches in exact proportions to the two blades of the razor as a temporary reminder to pay attention and be in the moment.

I have made significant improvement in asana practice both in poses that require interlacing my fingers and in the alternating arm and leg extension exercises that require the coordination to bring the opposing elbow to the knee. I had noticed a significant difference in my grip and flexibility previously on the non-dominant grip and now the grips are basically the same. On the extension exercises, both my coordination and my overall balance have improved dramatically.

The last major facet of the experiment was playing the guitar. I consider myself a very amateur strummer. A few years ago I bought a “Teach Yourself Guitar” book and companion CD Rom and proceeded to learn some basic chords. I found various web sites where I could get the chords for favorite songs. It was much more motivating to me to do that than to work on songs like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” from the book. However, the emphasis on the left hand to play chords was mentally exhausting. I also have had issues with transitioning from one chord to the next. With a lot of practice, I could play well enough to be endearing to my wife if I learned a new song for her birthday or our anniversary. My play would certainly not be good enough to play for anyone else. So I was very interested in what affect if any the crossing the midline exercise would have. I am happy to say that I have noticed an improvement in transitions from chord to chord, the ability to learn new chord combinations, and also to experiment with alternates that sound better than the ones listed. I noticed this affect trying new music with many chords I had never attempted to play before plus revisiting old songs that I had not looked at for a long time.

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