Adventures in Mysore

The next 'hurdle' I needed to overcome was to get to grips with the ashtanga primary series, and find more ways and places to practice (part of my course work includes submitting a monthly diary of how often I have practiced, where, and what my learnings and reflections are).  Mysore was the elephant in the room - a class format I had never tried, which also relies on you being relatively capable in the asana.

Mysore style is named after the traditional method taught by Sri K Pattabhi Jois in the southern Indian city of Mysore.  It is not the 'led' teaching method I am used to, and relies on one-on-one instruction within a group class setting.  Thus as a student you can practice the sequence at your own pace, and receive individual instruction and adjustments based on your progress.

Getting to Glasgow to embrace this within the setting of Merchant City Yoga was proving challenging from a diary perspective, so I looked closer to home, finding a class in Bridge of Allan at The Wee Yoga room that I could manage to fit into my diary.  

Take a brave pill and email....got booked into 2 Thursday classes a week apart, followed by a 'led' class in between.  First hurdle overcome.

Now to actually show up.

I didn't really know what to expect, so arrived stupidly early, along with my print out of the primary series sequence,  to intercept the teacher (Julie Patterson, who it turns out did her initial training with CYS too) and confess that I may be a complete disaster....  As you can expect, she was lovely, and this news didn't phase her in the slightest!

The other students (4 of them) turned up (one of whom turned out to be my friend Pauline (duuuuh)) and we were ushered into the room (which as the name suggests is small), and I quickly ensured I was right at the back!  After a quick run through of the opening chant we were off...... heart rate hits the roof, panic ensues and I promptly forget how to do a sun salutation!  This was only the start of my challenges, as I don't know all the asanas yet, and the print out doesn't tell you when to do the transitions or vinyasas between them.  So hey, I muddled my way through, with Julie kindly keeping me broadly on track and giving me tips which asanas to skip and how to keep moving through, while the rest of the students flowed through with ease and grace.

At least that's the hardest part out of the way, I've found another place to practice and another way to learn.  I wasn't appalling (or at lest Julie didn't tell me I was), and I've a benchmark now to improve from.  I've written some notes on my print out to help me this week, and have tried some more You Tube videos to work on my sequencing.  

Onwards we move!

And then there was chanting......eeeeek

Yoga for people who don't chant...

Well I blew that in module 1 of my course ha ha - nothing quite like challenging your boundaries in more ways than one, all in the space of 24 hours...and there I was trying to read a phonetic script of Sanskrit doing 'call and respond' in a class full of 25-ish other aspiring yogis.

And do you know...it didn't feel quite as traumatic as expected..  I think, I know, 100% because of the way Judi introduced it.  She's clearly not a big chanting devotee and I think said 'does it when she has to' and was very clear that there was plenty of non-religious interpretation that can be applied to the concept, making it part of how we learn on our course over the next 12 months.  I am very process, fact and control driven...understanding philosophical concepts has always been a stretch for me.  Now however I'm in a space I need to stretch!

This compounded with my lack of experience in Ashtanga (thankfully there is quite a lot of overlap with Bikram), a fierce head cold, and trying to remember the names of everyone (fail), and a night in an AirBnB at 'The Barras', made for an interesting 2 days!

So I've embraced the 'OM', found some shoulder intensity in my down-dog, had some giggles, felt the fear, been astounded by nauli and been excited by the amount I still have to learn over the next 12 months.

Bring it ommmmmmmmm......

Let's Get Physical

Like a lot of people, I got ‘into’ yoga for the physical benefits. As an ultra runner (taking part in run events that are greater than marathon distance and usually 30+ miles, and mostly on trail), my body takes a pounding. I was told about 7 or 8 years ago when trying to recover from a medial ligament tear in my knee that I would never run far again (having previously dabbled in marathon/half marathon/10k events) and having got past that and finding a love for endurance running on the trails, I’ve now reached the point, the age maybe, where I appreciate that my body needs a little more TLC and that to sustain an ‘active’ future for the long term that I can’t just spend all my training time running.

I’d tried yoga ages ago....a class full of middle aged and older women in a school hall standing about not doing very much. I didn’t enjoy it, didn’t see the point, and my mum who was also there kept telling me to ‘be careful’ because I have high blood pressure and I ‘really shouldn’t do anything that involved my head being down...’

The media sporadically attracted my attention with sports magazines and FB pages proposing yoga as a benefit to any good training programme and various celebrities spouting the wonders it had done for their bodies (with, in my head a clear caveat that it came along with some personal chef creating their every meal and enough cash that they could live an ‘easy’ life (and then be airbrushed to ensure perfection!)) ....and then more recently I saw that a pop-up ‘hot’ yoga class was starting in Bridge of Allan.... well, that sounded worth a try...to see what all these celebrities and big city dwellers had easy access to.... and I loved it! The venues were still a little odd, being hired rooms in community centres, with temporary heaters which churned out like a furnace (often tripping the fuses!) but the sweat, effort and engagement was real! And it triggered something in my brain. This really could help my running .... it’s like an ‘enforced’ time to stretch (something we all know is an established training aid and as a sports massage therapist I always tell my clients to do more of) and the strength benefits became clear too - how the heck could I get any better unless I was gaining core, arm, back and leg strength? Getting anywhere close to, or holding any of these 26 postures (often for as little as 10 seconds) was no mean feat!

And so it became a ‘thing’. I tried to go every week. I told my friends, colleagues and clients about it (mostly to confused faces and questions of ‘why?’).

 

Heat Fitness Stirling

Some weeks were good and I felt I was making progress, some felt like I was back to square one. Sometimes there was balance, often not. Sometimes there was flexibility, often not. There was always sweat! Something I was used to with running, and something that made you feel ‘good’ after the 60 minutes of bending, stretching and holding.

The format of the classes was pretty consistent (Jules and Jack teach Fierce Grace or Bikram) and that was a safety, a discipline that could be learnt. Not to enable me to skip ahead or preempt what was next, but a removal of a layer of complexity each week, allowing a few extra seconds to position myself and try to work out what I could do to try to improve.

All the while we were waiting for ‘the hot box’ to be opened. The elusive yoga studio in Springkerse in Stirling. Finally after months of planning challenges and refurbishment it was ready, and Heat Fitness was properly open for business in Early 2017.

Carly Ramsay Yoga

Skipping forward to the present day, and most weeks I get to a couple of classes. Mostly Bikram, but depending on teachers (with many guest teachers and regulars who dip in and out (some of whom, Gaynor and Carly in particular have taught me a lot) and class times (especially now there is only one 0630 class a week), I have dabbled in ‘absolute’, Fierce Grace, power, yang Yin and Yin Nidra variations (more on the latter another day).

My discipline has grown, I’ve gained some ‘confidence’ to practice near the mirrors at the front of the class (enables me to drown out the noise, wobbling and fidgeting of others in class), and I’ve learned to stop wiping at the sweat, to remain still between postures, and over time have got my body into some positions I never thought possible (toe stand (on one side not the other) and reclining hero to name a couple!

Chamonix August 2018

So what of the physical gains??  

While I continue to punish myself on the trails, my body (touch wood) is in decent enough shape.  There is room for improvement, but I've not had a serious niggles for a while.  The 'enforced' stretching is aiding my achy muscles, and ensuring my tendons and ligaments are recovering from the regular pounding.  Areas of concern (my dodgy right knee for example) are holding up well, and when I do practice regularly, my historic whiplash/neck/jaw ache improves.

I've gained strength in my upper body, and remembered why it's better if you have some functioning core muscles!  There is still a lot of work to do here, and in conjunction with some regular gym work I know what to do.....I just need to find the time and dedication!

And it helps me identify areas of tension on a regular basis - to know when to ease off, when to reach further, to 'listen' and learn from myself.  That will lead onto a blog for another day about where else yoga has taken me...

The Eternal Student

I love to learn.  And the discipline of being taught, more than trying to motivate myself to study with no formal deadlines or assessments.

Too often we all hear that we only get one shot at this life, and sometimes you have to go out on a limb where you never in a million years expected yourself to go.

It was the same when i embarked on my massage training - having never massaged anyone (or touched any random strangers that closely) in all my days, I signed up to do a year long (weekend a month) therapeutic massage course, which was the pre-requisite to doing sports massage (another 10 months of weekend a month), which was the ultimate aim.  This was about 10 years ago, and now sports massage forms an ongoing part of my weekly routine.

Fast forward to now, and having 'found' yoga about 2 years ago, I've signed up to do a 12 month (weekend a month) teacher training course with Merchant City Yoga in Glasgow.  With just 2 weeks until the initial training weekend, I am filled with both excitement and trepidation and what lies ahead. 

I keep telling people that 'I may never actually teach'...and right now this is true.  However, what if this turns out to be something I'm actually quite good at, that people would like to practice yoga with me, and it could be something that becomes a bigger part of my future.

If you don't try, you'll never know!

This blog will be part of telling my story as the next year unfolds...tales of 'student' life and where the journey takes me.