Mana Wahine: He Raina Momo Nui

Women with the hearts of lion.

How to even begin to describe the totally contrasting experience I am having going from the painfully uncomfortable yoga retreat to being embraced whole-heartedly by the Maori of the Rotarua region.

This is why I came to NZ. I arrived exhausted from my time at Still Point, and was picked up by the lovely green-eyed Rachel, the daughter of woman who started the Credit Union that I am here to write a story about.

 I haven’t paid for a single meal, or been left wondering where I am, and felt completely cared for in every way since I arrived last week.

 Now I had been warned by many people that I might spend several days on a Marae (a meeting house very much like the long houses of our first Nations). That I might undergo intense scrutiny, and be forced to spend many days in solemn ritual before I was able to ask any questions. I was told that the Maori were a proud and private people, and to mind my P’s and Q’s, and be careful what I asked and what I said, and that I better have a few songs  to sing ( waiata) at the ceremony or I was in for it.

 So it was with some trepidation that I followed Rachel to her family’s village ( the village with the longest name in the world, most of them can’t pronounce it themselves, suffice to say that the short name is a mouthful that begins with a swear word in English, like many of their words: whakawearaweara ( all Wh is pronounced F) –which kind of makes it hard to be an English prig here anyway- not that ive ever suffered from prudishness…

  The village is itself is astounding. This fana (family) and their hapu ( more extended family) have been living on top of constantly exploding and shifting geothermal gases and activity for at least a hundred years. There are gaping holes in the ground everywhere belching out huge clouds of pungent smelling sulphur gasses and minerals. Each boiling hot water hole has a name, and they are referred to in the first person. The largest “pond” is the cooking pond in the centre of the village, which has brilliant turquoise water that is 500 degrees at the top, and 900 further down (no scientist has ever made it to the bottom, the family members tell me with pride). This is where the villagers come to cook food in muslin baskets, and get hot water for washing. The houses are all built around seeping cracks of heat which keep them warm in the winter ( and relatively unbearable in the summer). There are communal baths for bathing which until the day that I arrived had been where the whole village stripped down to bath together at the end of the day, a practice that still carries on to this day (although Logan – a maori arttist, and sky diver- tells me that even he thinks its strange that he feels perfectly comfortable stripping down in his village for a bath, but would never dream of taking off his clothes in front of his village in any other circumstance). The village is so strongly sulphuric, that by the end of my stay there, I was almost hung over.

 Although it was hard to tell since I was indeed totally hung over after I was invited to the village barbecue within my first five minutes of meeting the family.

Rachel had taken me to the village during its tourist hours to take photos. The whole village is involved in what can only be described as the world’s only reality theatre show. They are open to the public from 9-5 seven days per week, and perform all their daily duties behind fences in their homes and lawns. All day long, tourists ( and yes, lots of aisan tourists) wander around on the other side of those fences watching them! This is how the village sustains itself, and no one I spoke to found it strange in any way. As I was standing behind the fences, trying to get the a picture of the tourists taking pictures of us, I felt at first like I was an animal at the zoo, and then I got the distinct impression that it was actually those on the outside who were the animals.

 It has utterly changed my impression of zoos

 So within my first five minutes, I was invited back to the village barbeque, which Rachel wasn’t up to, so she LEFT ME THERE.

 So here I was, having been primed basically to be prepared to be eaten by the Maori, being introduced to every Aunt and Cousin, and nannie in the village as the Canadian Cousin (which they all laughed uproariously at while taking me in big bear hugs and kissing my cheeks). And then they proceeded to get me drunk, which entailed literally being told to hurry up and finish my drink so they could introduce me to something they wanted to drink instead…many times over.

 Highlights of the evening that I can remember are:

 I did indeed finally sing a song –the Canadian Lullaby- into a broom with a package of cigarettes on the top that we were all pretending was a microphone while everyone went in a circle to give a little speech ( I’m totally introducing this to my own family –without the cigs). Including the three year old.

 Realizing that I had been duped and that only the person before me had sung a song, everyone else had refused.

 Having the surly 13 year old grunt, “ that was good” with admiration after I had finished my song.

 Eating pigs feet: including those little toe thingys, while everyone secretly watched in admiration and I just pretended it was bacon.

 The best food I had eaten in a month ( yum! Seafood, and delicious veggies, and salad, and lot and lots of meat that wasn’t in the shape of a foot)( the foot-food was yummy too, when you closed your eyes)

 Having people randomly yell out “ Canada” like a mini war-cry as we all got completely knakered. ( Me after only 3 drinks as -remember- I just spent a month on a yoga farm)

 Having the nannie try and set me up with the hot older unmarried man, who wasn’t even at the party…by which time I knew two things: we were all family, and if I didn’t leave they would be rolling me down the hill into a car, or I would be passing out on carpet to wake up with a brand new Maori tattoo on my behind.

 Hooray for enlightenment!

 

Brilliant Enlightenment Hell

I have been trying to come up with some words to describe my overall experience at Still Point.

 It was with an immense sense of relief that I left Nelson on the last day, two days before the course ended. I made some beautiful friends there…in fact, the other students were really one of the high points of my stay, and I am so grateful for their support and patience with me as I struggled on a daily basis to hang on to my dignity.

 As I was leaving in the morning the lovely Bella ( a fantastic human and yoga teacher from the Philippines who is teaching in China) said, “ It wont be the same without you my dear. The other day Evelyn came into the shared living area and said, ‘where is everyone’ and I said ‘everyone’s here, its just Amanda who is in here room’. So you see, you take the place of everyone.”

 I couldn’t help feeling the whole time like I was the square peg, and that while I love yoga with all my heart, I don’t even aspire anymore to be one of those peaceful, calm, quiet yogis who leave neither shadow or smell behind them. It is just not my path.

 When I left India I was so sad to leave, I never felt judged or wrong while I was studying at the Shala in Mysore, and yet it could be that it was just my time to continue my yoga studies while dealing with the biblical amount of SHIT that I was dredging up and wading through.

 I learned an enormous amount while at Still Point: about yoga, about teaching, about myself, but I would not call it fun or enjoyable in anyway. And I am not filled with warm bubbly feelings of gratitude. More like begrudging-gratitude. Like finding a way to thank someone for teaching you a really bloody unpleasant and awful lesson that was so bad and thorough that you are pretty sure you will never ever have to learn it again. Or at least that is what you will tell God every moment of every day after, while making deals with her/him/it on your immortal soul in exchange for never having to go through an experience like that again.

 It was at the same time, one of the most brilliant yoga experiences I have ever had, and one of the most awful.

 Shiva, in all her most destructive and wonderful glory.

 And so with begrudging gratitude, I have to thank John and Lucy, and all the other students at Still Point for the poignant lessons and irrevocable personal change.

 And thank God, that now I get to move on from it all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Udhianna Bandha and the root of love and hate.

I am filled with hate.

 Up until two years ago this was the state in which I lived. Incensed, Enraged, Filled with hate. It was the underlying theme in all my actions, and the engine that drove my life.

 In India, I woke up one morning and all the hate was gone. It wasn’t a gradual change, or something I was working towards, or aspiring to or was even really aware of.

 Until it was gone. Then I was suddenly so aware of it in it’s absence it was like waking up with no core. Like taking the lava out of the earth. Sure it was peaceful not to have a spouting volcano coming out of my insides, but I actually had no idea what I was going to do without it.

 My first thought was, would I die without this burning engine of hate to fuel my actions? Can I be bothered to do anything at all? Am I still a writer or an artist without this burning passion? For the next few months, all my moments were of curiosity…who am I and what propels me without hate.

 Over the next two years, I peacefully floated without hate. And then in September I began working at a job with a woman who could effectively push aside all my calm and get straight to the volcanic matter on the inside…but it was short lived and exhausting, and I tended to try to let it blow through as much as possible.

 And then I came to study yoga at Still Point, and had Lucy point out to me that I “didn’t like to be inside my centre.” She spent an entire class pushing in my belly and saying “engage your udianna bandha, Amanda”. Now it must be said, that one of the reasons why I came to study with John is because he is the first person I have ever heard really give Udianna bandha ( pulling in from your belly button) as much importance as Mulha Bandha ( pulling up from your anus), and I already had a pretty strong feeling that it was indeed something I was missing.

 And Lo, but wasn’t there just a whole place inside my body that I was Indeed cut off from, and wasn’t that place just absolutely filled with hate. The rage started slowly but began to build on a daily basis. I am not even sure I noticed it until the morning I woke up, looked around my room, thought about having to go into the shala, and silently acknowledged that the idea filled me with hate.

 Horrified, I tried to empty the words from my mind, “ I am NOT filled with hate.” I tried to connect to my breath, “ I have already moved beyond the place where I am filled with hate. Yoga has cured me of my filled with hate-ness.”  I spent the next week silently seething about everything. I hated the classes, and hated being surrounded by people, and hated that I had made an agreement about my food needs that had been miscommunicated so that I was ill, and hated that my body was falling apart.

 And then, on top of the root of hate that was burning in my stomach. RIGHT ON TOP of my belly button, seemingly coming straight out of my udianna bandha, like a sign of my failure to engage, I popped a hernia.

 So here I was, one week from completing my Teacher Training for Level one. Humilliation hemorrhoids only just barely at bay and making me imminently aware of my imbalance in the Mulah Bandha, guts popping out of my Udi Bandha, hating my practice, hating the Shala….filled with hate.

 I am failing at yoga, I thought. I didn’t even know that you could fail at yoga, but I felt deeply that if you could, I was.

 On my last day of practice, I was putting in a huge effort to try and rise above all the hate, and find my joy in yoga, and failing. And then I gave up. I felt my heart fall, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by exhaustion, and I just stopped trying entirely. And as I stopped trying, I took a deep breath inwards, and felt my body connect all the dots, mullah to Udhi, to heart and out my breath, and I began to cry. With every breath I took, I felt my body connect into this incredible core of strength inside my body, and I cried harder. I realized that underneath all that rage, was an incredibly deep layer of grief. I went through the layers, crying about everything that had ever happened to me, every bump and bruise…and break…I cried from Uktasana through handstand, an hour of crying, and felt my practice get lighter and lighter with every pose as I let go of all my grief. And then I left class and cried for the rest of the day. Long wrenching waves of tears, and then moments of intense quiet. A storm of tears.

 I cried about my daughter, and all the children that I haven’t had, and all my fears around not being able to support myself, and all the years spent alone, and all the mistakes I have made, and all the times I have been misunderstood, and all the times I have misunderstood, and all the ways I struggle to communicate with my family, and all the ways I try and try and fail and try again…

 B came in to snuggle me at one point, and then Sarah brought food, but mostly I was left in peace.

 And then when I fell asleep. And when I woke in the morning, I knew there would be more tears, but that I was strong enough to let them go, and that underneath all that anger, and all that grief, there is in fact love. And that if I stop myself from feeling hate, then I am also stopping myself from really grieving, and really being able to feel love. All these emotions are what it means to be human. To have them, and to let them go. Just like the sky is always blue above the clouds, underneath it all, at the centre, there is a quiet huge strong love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am "exploring" my hips, and eight other words that yogis use to express agony

While most people in the world like to express their pain openly -thereby perhaps eliciting some sympathy or maybe even a back-rub, these are the phrases that yogis use to express the "excruciating -oh my god i wanna die or throw up- agony", we often feel during a "deep" (meaning deeply painful) practice.

I am really "feeling it" in my hips (meaning feeling the agony)

I am really "working into" the stiffness in my hips ( working into the posture for more agony)

There is " a lot of opening" in my hips ( moving past initial agony to reach deeper levels of agony)

From the teacher's point of view, this translates into instructions like:

Just breathe into your hips ( breath into the agony)

Try and relax into the posture (relax into the agony)

Practice and all is coming ( keep practicing and eventually you will achieve all the agony)

Samadi ( finally moving past the agony into a state of peace)

Is it denial or positive thinking? You decide.

Vayu (vie-you) finding spirit through logic

A moment must be taken to talk about Vayu, an absolute gem of a human being, and the only man in this party of hormonal yogi women. 

Vayu is a tall slender Korean guy. He is supposedly forty-something, but with his delicate gentle open nature, and his youthful curiosity I genuinely thought he was in his late twenties when I first met him. Vayu is like a giant grasshopper with glasses -if grasshoppers could be handsome, and is so aptly named (his name means air -vata) he practically floats through the world, his giant mind always turning gently in the wind.

Vayu is a pharmacist in Korea, and teaches Ashtanga there. He is also  a life-long student of tai-chi, and practices both here. His goal- he says- is to marry both Eastern and Western philosophies...were East is Asian, and West is India. He carries enormous books of knowledge in his head, and in the middle of all this girly feeling emotive intuitive blah blah, Vayu will put all experiences into his bank of knowledge and come out with something akin to a highly intuitive heart-felt process. All done with pure intellect and logic.

I have never seen logic perform at such a level, and could not have believed that it could be as magical and "true" as intuition. I have seen Vayu process the emotional woes of a long-time married woman, and through the power of his logic, the 64 elements (asian thought) and the indian equivalent( some very complex system that is designed around....gack... numbers) he comes out with absolutely brilliant, helpful, heart-felt advice that hits it's target every time.

He was explaining to us the 64 element system one morning. How all the symbols come from just the first two, yin and yang; all of the other 64 symbols are made up of various combinations of just these two. I love that earth is three yin, and sky is three yang. Water is one yang inside two yin, and fire is the yin inside the yang. the differences between water and lake (water is moveable, transformable; lake holds the water in it's shape) and earth and mountain. I was having a hard time understanding earth and mountain and Vi-u said:

" The best way to explain is to use the symbol for a humble man. The symbol for a humble man is mountain under earth. That is because a humble man is one who can go under the earth, even though he is a mountain."

Another day, we were talking about how I am fire, and he is air: I am intuition and he is logic. And Vayu said,

"It is like aristotle and Plato. But you know Amanda, I used to be like you -like aristotle, but then i was so angry. I was in fact the leader of a student revolution, and was hunted by police for two years, and finally thrown in jail. It was then that I realized that I needed to find some plato" So Vayu started his quest towards pure logic in order to balance out his emotional, heart-based fire.

What is interesting is that it is  transcendental logic. I would never have believed that  pure logic and rational thought can transcend its limitations as completely as pure heart and intuition. It is the kind of magic we imagine out of great men, the minds of great men, but rarely see.

And he makes a mean miso soup too.

Spirituality my asana

Ok. By this time I was hoping to be able to speak with you about my great spiritual and physical progression through Asana.

I have to say that there is a bit of a disaster happening with my Assana here in New Zealand, that has halted my ability to think any thoughts deeper than my butt.

To be honest, so far my entire trip feels like it has been about my bum; I don't think it has ever been under this much scrutiny and pain in my life before. In fact most of my life has been spent trying NOT to think very much about my bum. Perhaps this is -in fact- some kind of deep inner bum karma that I am now working out. 

Before I left Canada, I wrote a very clear letter to Still Point Yoga, explaining that I am an epileptic, and am on a very strict diet for that. I said that it was essential for me to be able to eat meat, or I wouldn't be able to come, and I hoped that was all right. I got a reply saying that it was normally a veggie kitchen, but they would make an exception for me.

The day I arrived, I was told -without explanation- that it was in fact going to be a vegetarian kitchen. Now, it is important to explain that I have not eaten a whole apple or orange, or any other piece of fruit in it's entirety for OVER A YEAR. I have not eaten rice, or bread, or lentils, or beans, or really anything else that vegetarians live on. Needless to say, my digestion packed it in, and my bowls slowed to an LA traffic jam crawl within the first week. 

That coupled with LITERALLY HOURS spent thinking about my mulah bandha ( the bum-bandha in laymans terms), hours sitting on the floor, trying to squeeze and lift my anus, caused the kind of hemorrhoidal descent the likes of which I have not experienced since giving birth. And yes, i have spent many hours trying to view this whole experience as a kind of birth-giving to myself, but I have to tell you, after a week of a humiliating kind of agony, that it is literally impossible to have god-like thoughts when you feel like a pretty boy after his first week in jail.

Now, I really never thought that in my lifetime I would post a blog about my hemorrhoids, except that after a week of basically seeing every pharmacist in the Nelson NZ area, I feel I can no longer really be embarassed (ha) by anything.

You see, first of all they don't have anything that I recognize to treat this affliction in NZ. In Canada, I could just slip silently into any London drugs, grab a tube of Preparation H, hide it under a magazine, and slip out. Here, there are (of course) a bunch of brands i have never heard of, so after I had gone completely pink just trying to ask a saleswoman where " that kind" of medication was kept, I grabbed the first box i could find, and tried to slip off to the sales counter with a magazine. The woman rang in the magazine, I had my bag open and ready to snatch the offending medication to be hidden in the darkest part of my purse, when a small ALARM went off at the till. 

AN ALARM.

There was already a small line of people behind me, and the cashier said," oh, just a second I have to go and ask the pharmacist about this." waving it around like it was a small flag. 

"What?" I hissed, "why? I mean, it was over the counter?" The alarm was still sounding audibly in the background.

"Well, we are not allowed to sell this to you without talking to the pharmacist"

All the people in the line were now looking at me, and looking at my "SHE HAS HEMORRHOIDS" medication that the cashier was still holding up, as if I didn't know

 what it was.

By now, bright red, i head to the back counter, which also has a line of people, where the pharmacist comes out to ask me, in a loud voice like she is talking to someone semi retarded (the poor Canadian girl with hemorrhoids) if i was having trouble and straining, and what were the consistency of my bowel movements. Where they the inside or outside kind, and what did they feel like?

Apparently in New Zealand, hemorrhoids are a going concern. Pharmacists here seem to love to ask you questions all about your bowels, loudly, and especially if there are cute men nearby. I can now say unequivocally that most of NZ's hemorrhoid ointments don't work, and stay far far away from any natural products which just seems to make them bigger.

I have now spent the equivalent of one week's car-rental  on medication to put inside my bumb, which feels a little like it has a small pharmacy stuck in it backwards, to no avail. Today, I marched without shame into the nearest pharmacy, approached the young handsome pharmacist at the counter and said,

"Hi. I have really bloody awful hemorrhoids. My bowels haven't been moving well for the past week because of a diet change, but I think that if I up my greens, and water that I pretty much have that sorted. I need the strongest suppositories that you have to go with my lubricating cream, because they are mostly inside ones. I have two more weeks to go on this intense yoga retreat, and I swear I am going to go ballistic if I have to do one more down-dog with my ass feeling like this.What do have?"

At which the pharmacist went bright red, and took me straight to what I can only describe as relief in the form of a small zeplin-shaped suppository.

Hallelujah and Praise God.

Bhandas and Cleansing

How can a person sleep this much? I keep waiting for a night when I don't need nine hours sleep. In my head I keep saying, "Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day...maybe next week." 

Practice has become amazing. I am sweating so much that yesterday when I bent forward into paschimotanasana it felt like someone was pouring water over my head. Even my ankles were sweating. After watching the other people in the class not even break a drop, I asked John WHY I was pouring water, he said that it was good and that I was 1)concentrating hard 2) opening up 3) cleansing 4) pita (fire person...duh) 5) getting close to my period. Yup these are the things that we talk about with John. He asked us all last week when we were going to bleed so that he could have an idea of where we were in our cycles.

Now that's the kind of yoga guru I like. The ones that are aware of my bloody cycle! Lol.

I have been working hard on my udhyana and mula bandha while sitting. Sitting is excruciating. It is harder than my practice in the same way that breastfeeding was initially harder than birth. They both make you want to die, but the second one just seems to be pain that goes on endlessly, just when you thought the worst was over.

Yesterday John talked alot about diet, and YAY he is not a vegetarian. Nor does he promote vegetarianism.

I haven't gotten around to talking about the incredible experience that I had with the 108 sun salutations. Last Sunday John said he had a surprise for us, a special treat. I was of course hoping desperately for sugar-free chocolate, but no, it was going to be more yoga.

108 sun salutation A's with no extended breath in downward dog. Just a continuous cycle up and down...for an hour. He had 27 stones and was going to move them around in some way that I can't remember so that we could know which sun salutation we were on, and the reason that I can't remember is that I was just trying desperately not to think about doing all those sun salutions on the sixth day of excruciating hard practice for the week. 

I made an agreement with myself that I was absolutely NOT going to look at those stones during the practice, because I knew that it would crawl by if I had to count all those A's. 

The first ten minutes were mostly a mind game of trying not to see how many we had done. But suddenly the seriousness of the room hit me. Here were all these people very seriously trying to connect to god/themselves through this insane form of movement, and I got the giggles. After the giggles, I just relaxed into the movement, and it became quite comfortable.

Ekam inhale hands up look up

dve exhale hands to the floor look down

Trini inhale look up

Chatvari exhale jump back

Pancha inhale upward dog

Sat exhale downward dog

Sapta inhale jump hands to feet look up

Ashtau exhale head down

nava inhale hands up look up

Samastitihi

Part way through I bonded with counting the entire thing to ten in english. To the tune of a very slow sesame street. Then I thought about how maybe the guys that wrote sesame street had been indoctrinating and entire generation with counting to ten....maybe they were ashtangis. That gave me the giggles again.

Then I had a very very deep memory of "bumping my head". It was something that I did as a child to put myself to sleep (and also in cars) FOR HOURS.

Now it must be said that in recent years I have often wondered if maybe I was/am autistic, and that it just went unnoticed in my family...because I would hit my head against my bed for hours at night, first one side, and then the other. Counting out the sides so that they were equal.

One two three four five switch sides one two three four five...etc Occasionally I would just go straight on for to switch it up a bit. Same kind of counting, until I would reach this place of....hmmm...well exhaustion for sure, but also clarity and peace. 

I realized that the 108 sun salutations were doing the same thing. My body was quite comfortable in the slightly painful repetitive pattern, and I was counting. At that point I had an experience that can only be described as totally blissful. I realised that not only is it true that the more we give into gravity the easier it is to find lightness physically, but the same is true on a spirit level.

 The more I gave into gravity physically, the lighter my spirit felt.

the first time I looked at the stones, we only had three left, and I had been sun saluting in pure bliss.

In Shavasana that thought went even further, as I realized that the greatest way to give into gravity is through death, and that is when your spirit finally gets to it's lightest place.

108 Sun salutations to Enlightenment

Well the first week at Still Point was...um...ok, it was excruciating.

I got here late on Monday morning after 30 hours of travel. I had been told via email that someone would be there to pick me up, but my flight was almost an hour late getting into sunny Nelson, and there was no one there when I landed.

Standing outside in the hot New Zealand sun I had a few thoughts: 

one: it was hot. after an interminable winter on the West Coast of Canada, I was feeling the delightful sensation of short sleeves and wind on my arms.

Two: even if I could rent a car, what was the likelihood that I could -in my sleep deprived state- figure out how to get to this remote yoga retreat, AND drive successfully on the "wrong" side of the road.

Three: would anyone care if I just napped on the sidewalk while I mulled over "one" and "two". As I was thinking these things, the sign of the man I was staring at (without actually seeing him) finally came into view, and seemed to actually have my name on it. At the same moment, I realized he was actually speaking to me and the sound coming out of his mouth was -indeed- my name.

I have had this sensation a few times in New Zealand, especially when I am tired. It is very Finding Nemo: It's like they are talking to me, I just know it. If only I knew what they were saying.

I launched into the first day, kind of see-through from exhaustion, and then made my way painfully through the next week. By day two I had already had a wobbly, all wet and teary during a painful hip adjustment.

By thursday i was quitting ashtanga forever at least once during every posture -ALL the way through my hour and a half practice. At one point as I was waiting to for john and lucy to put me into supta kormasana (bending forward with your feet behind your head, and your hands linked across your back), I actually started banging my head against the floor at the seeming futility of it all.

The result of which was that I had an epic piece of purple fluff stuck to my face for the rest of my practice. 

Friday morning was my early morning practice day with B and John Scott. Once a week we get up at 5am to practice with John and then watch the class. I had been so bloody miserable for the whole week, that my only intention during the practice was to enjoy myself. Which I did. Immensely. 

B had a big wobbly, which made me feel better, cause she is a bit of a warrior-queen, so I figured if she could have a wobbly then it was probably ok that I had been a bit of a mess for the week. 

It is worth mentioning B's wobbly. I was busy desperately trying to keep count of my breaths, and heard John Say, "B, what position is that then?" and I heard," well, actually in having a bit of a ball." which I took to mean that she was just taking a moment to curl up in a ball. And John said, " Ahh, the bit of a bawl position." 

And then I realized that having a bit of a bawl is sometimes an important asana.

Thanks B.