Hump Day Yoga, 2013

From January 2013 I taught a yoga class in Hyde Park on Wednesday evenings.  It was a free class mostly of friends and friends of friends, affectionately named “Hump Day Yoga.”  As of last week however, due to the weather change and the dark that creeps up on us earlier, Hump Day Yoga is no longer is session.

It was bittersweet for me.

Hump Day Yogis and Yoginis

Hump Day Yogis and Yoginis

As a teacher, I get attached to my students, and a part of me wishes they could be with me for as long as I can teach.  I love seeing how they progress from week to week, and the fluidity of how my class plans change as they change.  I love the banter that goes on, and how they have become comfortable enough to bring themselves into child’s pose when they need it.  I love seeing them grow in strength and flexibility and how they brave the dark spaces in meditation.  And I love how this beautiful group of people has made a mid-week yoga session a platform to reconnect, build new connections and to have proper, honest conversations.  For some of them, this was the first step into an unknown world and I thank them for sharing the experience with me.

As a student however, I understand that this journey is a personal one.  You meet teachers that speak to you and you might travel with them for a while.  Then the time comes when you might go your separate ways.  You need the space to explore your practice, perhaps try different styles, and listen to different ways of being told things.

The space on the mat does not exist in a bubble, you come in carrying the weight of your day, your diet, the sleepless nights and injuries on a physical, mental and emotional level. When we get onto the mat, we don’t leave the rest of us behind.  My Hump Day students have become comfortable with that and know that it’s perfectly fine to take breaks, and to have a laugh when they need.

The role of the teacher is but to guide, and offer a safe space for people for self enquiry and self exploration. However, a teacher too brings all that they are into class. When I started teaching, I worried about bringing my personality into class, of being vulnerable and open with my students, but Hump Day Yoga allowed me to learn to relax.

We are all a work in progress, as students, as teachers, as human beings.  In our journey we will meet people who open doors for us to get to the next level of our work and we make the choice to walk through that door or not.  So I thank my Hump Day Yogis for three months of beautiful practice and for both opening the door for me, and stepping into the invitation I sent to you.  You were as much my teachers as you were my students, and may our practices continue to grow so that we can bring more into our future meetings.

Namaste.

Some of the Hump Day Yogis speak about their practice here: 

“Yoga is a great de-stressing activity for me. I am able to clear my mind of all pressures outside of the class and just focus on me, my body and my mind. This mid-week yoga session is exactly what I needed. As I lay on the ground at the end of the class staring at the tree branches and evening sky, nothing else mattered. I was relaxed, at peace and had no worries.”

–          Shady Lim, Marketing Manager , http://www.shadytravels.com/2013/03/how-i-de-stress.html

“Hump Day Yoga (HDY) is why I love my Wednesdays.
Why do I love it so much?
I get to de-stress, BREATH, and challenge myself during this 75 minute session, but it’s also about the people sharing their day, week & their life with you. It helps me achieve a level of physical exercise and a mental fulfilment.”

–          Jenny Schnell, Client Services Manager

“A few month ago, I faced one of the biggest challenges in my life and I needed to find myself again. Thats when a long time lost friend Az invited me to her yoga sessions and it was truly uplifting experience to reconnect with friends that I hadn’t seen in a while and with myself that I had been brutally tough on. Az would always bring stories and wise words for every one to think about and Id come out of the class not only physically balanced but also mentally empowered. Although it was for a short term but I personally really enjoyed the experience and am grateful that I was a part of it.”

–          Nina Jung, Marketing Manager, http://www.junglebananas.com/

‘Azra’s yoga classes are fun! A playful yoga teacher, Az’s deep knowledge of yoga generally and her own practice shine through more and more each week. I am looking forward to being guided by her for years to come. Namaste my friend.’

–          Meriana Baxter, Yoga Teacher

Sequence, Singing Bowl, Speakers and iPod… All you need for a day at the park, really

Everyday Rituals

A couple of weeks ago, I was having breakfast with the lovely Cristina A., and we spoke about rituals, and how important these rituals are in nurturing ourselves.  Cristina is a massage therapist and therefore spends most of the day nurturing other people.  (Side note – if you’re in Sydney, go see her.  The woman is amazing). For her, having a ritual where she spends time nurturing herself is vital so that she can continue giving to other people, so every night she gives herself a massage.

Personally, I too have my own self-nurturing rituals.  In the mornings I treat myself to complete silence while I have my lemon water and boil my chai.  As I slowly sip my chai, I make sure that I am sitting down on the couch with no phone or laptop near me so that I can really savour that bit of my morning. Soon enough, I know my day will be filled with things to do, phone conversations, emails and all my senses will be assaulted in full force.  My rituals don’t stop there.  At night, I often make myself a cup of chamomile tea, light incense, massage myself with lavender oil and spend silent time writing in my journal.  Before the lights go off, I often spend at least an hour without the TV or music on.  In a world where we are over stimulated, this is my way of giving my senses a rest.

 
Last week, I was away at a conference. What this means for me is that I pretty much get up at crazy o’clock and work 12 hour days.   A few years ago, I would have added some alcohol and half a pack of cigarettes to my exhaustion along with the socialising.  This time I could add a bout of food poisoning. The fact that I am living out of a suitcase in a hotel room also means that I don’t have the stuff I need to put me into a lavender infused stupor, and I go to sleep thinking about the conference and wake up to check my email for last minute messages.  My mother goes, “oh how nice, you get to stay in a hotel.”  Sure, hotels are great, and I love being able to go for 6:00am swims in places where it’s warm enough to do so, but my rituals pretty much go out the window.

It was only when I didn’t have these rituals that I realised how much they ground me.  The simple act of feeding the cat, giving her a cuddle and smelling the tea as it boils brings me to the present.  The silence I enjoy in the mornings and evenings just gives me space to just let go and relax.  Watering the plants in the mornings and while they’re in bloom, stopping to smell the jasmine gives me a moment to appreciate things.

We don’t realise this, but we do a lot of shit every day.  Making sure we have the keys, phone, wallet, and yoga/gym/cycling gear packed up as we check the email on the phone and lock up the house to chase the train to get to work on time is a lot of work.  And most of us do it within two hours of getting up.  Our brain processes everything that we see, hear, touch, taste, smell and feel, and in our world where things are going all the time, our brains process a lot.  So for me, taking the time to do these things sometimes allows my brain to slowly warm its engine instead of going from zero to sprint.  Do that to a car every day and see what happens to it.  Allow a car to slowly warm up and see how much longer it takes before wear and tear sets in.

My alarm generally goes off at 5:30, and a lot of people wonder why I wake up so early.  The thing is waking up early gives my senses the time to slowly come alive.  I am not jumping out of bed, into the shower, having breakfast on my feet and rushing to get dressed before running out the door in a frenzy and getting to work 2 minutes late. For me it’s not the length of sleep that matters but the quality of how I fall asleep and how I wake up.  If I wake up rushed, then my whole day will pretty much be screwed, not in any other sense, but just because I wake up right into fight or flight mode. These rituals are what work for me.  They keep me mentally sane and give me the time to keep physically healthy as well.

I used to think that rituals had to be elaborate productions, but they really don’t.  Any act, however small or big that you perform religiously becomes a ritual.  It is the thing that you do every day to keep you grounded and sane, and most of all, it has to be right for you.  I used to say that I didn’t have the time to do things for me as other people needed my attention so much more. I had grown up believing that other people were more fucked up and needed me more than I did.  As it was, the fact that taking care of me made me feel guilty was pretty fucked up in itself.  While others knew that I had their backs when they needed, when push came to shove, they didn’t really have mine.  At one point, the shit hit the fan and I pretty much had a melt down.  Lucky some people actually really do love me so they stuck around, the energy vampires fucked off, and some people still think they have a right to my space, but that’s a different story which we will revisit when I can put it down in a nicer way.

Maybe these rituals already exist but you haven’t been paying attention to them.  This might sound a bit weird, but sometimes taking the time for you is a start in making time.   Just pay attention to yourself and the things you do, because you know what, nobody is worth your own attention more than you are.   As we put prayers in place to celebrate our God, or whatever else we worship, so too should we have these rituals to celebrate ourselves.

So, here are my rituals, what are yours?