“Fear in itself, will reel you in and spit you out, over and over again”

I’m getting some worthwhile music education lately from all the time spent in my car stuck in traffic. This one is Blue October that seems to be gaining frequent airtime lately. Don’t mind the guy that is screaming into the sea. I think he’s just letting go some of his own fear while shooting for this video.

I have been dwelling on the idea of fear since I heard this song. Perpetuated by some conversations that transpired during and after my yoga classes this week. There is a woman that comes in the morning at a small studio in the quiet neighbourhood of Shah Alam. Amongst the many obvious emotions I see surfacing up is fear. And though this is quite common to observe as someone who leads the class, it is also one of the most valuable lessons there is to learn about the human mind and its instinctual abilities to react to the unknown.

Across the spectrum of human emotions, fear is one that I remember growing up with a lot – fear of doing something wrong, fear of not bringing back the good grades, fear of watching the eldest brother ‘pay’ for having the courage to thread around the edges of ‘something wrong’ and a fear, I clearly remembered as a child sitting at the top of a slide, and frozen in place because I was so afraid to slide down.

Lately I have realised, with the recent shoulder discomfort in my Ashtanga practice that fear is like the shadow which exist at the heels of pain. Where there is pain and discomfort, there is a level of fear attached to it. Similarly, beyond the physical pain, where there is emotional suffering, fear would present itself in one form or another. That same question that popped in my head during practice at Dynamics about 2 weeks ago, how far should I go into this posture? How far beyond the pain should I be looking at in order to finish my practice today? and that motherload question of “AM I EVEN MODIFYING THIS CORRECTLY?!” became a daily conversation I have with myself while on the mat since this whole little adventure into discomfort started.

Because everything is an adventure isn’t it? Even the most uncomfortable ones always bring you down a road of discovery; revealing more about the world and its infinite perspectives. Sometimes your role as the observer, the outsider who is not even feeling these range of emotions is enough to teach you a thing or two. I remembered a conversation with I, who had assisted me into a backbend one morning when he said “I could feel your fear coming into that backbend. It was really cool!” I can tell you it was NOT cool to be the one dropping back, never quite sure whether I will break my back on the way down or slam my head on the floor or both, but it made me realised how precious these moments of vulnerability are in forming our understanding of ourselves and those around us.

Usually having been in the same shoes before makes it all that easier to empathise. So each time I see some students hovering their toes on the floor on top of their head, surrounded by hesitation, and that inevitable fear of breaking their neck, I let them explore this dimension while I stand behind them for assurance. And even as this one fear is eventually conquered, there are plenty more that each of us will come across over and over again, whether it be within the series or off the mat. Even as we think we merge as ‘victorious’ having finally crossed over that valley of fear, there must be a constant abiding knowledge that there are many more similar valleys to be crossed. Because as long as there remain possibilities of pain, injury, or emotional suffering, there will always be more of these dimension for us to plunge into with the sole purpose of revealing more of our inner world to ourselves.

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..and this is the wonder that is keeping the stars apart

Time is rather fascinating, from hours, to months and years – one can’t help but wonder what life would be like without any concept of time? Without any regard of time there will be no such thing as New Years no? But the concept of time, amongst its many other function serves as a tool of reflection, consolidation and integration of experiences into something meaningful. Because man is always out to find and attach meaning to everything that happens to them, Viktor E. Frankl certainly got famous from it, and I am not far behind in agreement.

This year has been nothing short of magical. Cliche I know, but it is one word that I can use with all honesty and still feel that it falls short of encapsulating the essence of 2014. Since it is also the end of my twenties, that “defining decade”, it feels really good to be exactly where I am today, to look back on all the big life decisions I have made to bring me here, and to feel a sense of excitement entering into my thirties.

If there was a word I could use to sum up my entire year it would be blessings. I am infinitely blessed and for this I am endlessly grateful to the Universe and the Higher power that governs it. From the opportunities that came in a steady stream and watching Mind Body Breath grow from strength to strength (with the 2 coolest thing to happen to it was the appearance on TV3 Berita Utama and coverage in Her World magazine), the kindness of strangers, the meeting of beautiful souls and mind blowing connections that transcends all my understanding of what it means to really and truly connect with another person, and ultimately the expansion of a group of people I hold close and dear in my heart.

Delivering a report and having a Vietnamese translator by my side (and discovering that having your presentation translated actually gives you plenty of time to calm that public speaking nerves – woohoo!), appearing on their national news, embarking on this teaching thing full time, sharing my written thoughts with others and seeing on it print, sharing what I love and what I know to others and watching them experience similar benefits and positivity, that maiden trip to India, falling in love with Saraswathi and her energy, discovering the value of parampara, falling head over heels with the entire practice and discovering an entirely new world around it, kick starting a business partnership with a person who is so similar to me in values yet so utterly different in certain worldviews and looking forward to the kind of boundless beauty that will result from this communion.

There were a couple of lessons that became really clear to me which affirms some of my understanding of the world or whatever it was that I may have read from before. I understood the concept of making space by first releasing the things that doesn’t serve you anymore. Magic happens in those spaces. They really do 🙂 I understood every quality that which we love, admire, hate or detest in other people are merely the reflection of the exact same qualities within ourselves, shedding an entirely different light and meaning on my understanding of ‘one-ness’ and the self. And I have also come to understand that the Universe awards you with many, many gifts in different forms and that you would only have to be present and aware when it happens to fully appreciate it. Of the biggest lesson in this though, I have learned that sometimes this gifts are not meant to be kept, sometimes to be let go as immediately as they came, sometimes to not be owned but appreciated as they are, and on other times, to be experienced and then to allow distance from it and to admire it from afar. The challenge that remains for me at least is to learn not to grow attached to any of these wonderful gifts.

Equally as the affirmation occurs, so too did the disintegration of certain beliefs that was accompanied with a lot of questions that was really uncomfortable leading to days of unease and sleeps underlined with meaningless nightmares. I am still questioning a lot of things but I have managed to find comfort in this very uncomfortable process, to make peace with certain things that remains unknown and to embrace fully my ability to question the very foundation of my faith and trusting this entire process in and of itself. Certainly these questions arise from within for the mere purpose of drawing one closer to the self.

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

E.E Cummings

Why Do You Feel?

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it. – The Invitation (Oriah)

This morning’s conversation began somewhere around Dandasana. His touch was alternating between firm pressure and cautious sweeping of his fingers on the area that has been responsible for an uprising of many introspection and emotions and a perpetual discomfort when it comes to breathing while lying down.

“Go easy with your practice. I can feel some tiny tears,” to which the hypochondriac in me instantly kicks into overdrive “but practice the way you are doing now. Exactly as you are doing now”, and that little child in me is quickly pacified though what really means are modifications, removing jumpbacks, jumpthroughs and chakrasana, and employing a version of half chaturranga that makes me feel like I have just taken 2 huge steps back in my own practice.

And if that is not sufficient enough for this ego that sits within me, the real sense of dread and fear for the upcoming seated postures, the Marichyasanas variations started as soon as I stepped on my mat and stayed with me all throughout. How does one avoid the inevitable? A clear example of humans being humans and demonstrating their aversion to pain. At home, during a self-practice away from the watchful eye of a teacher, perhaps it is always that much easier to press on for a couple of breath, sigh a little, struggle a little, grunt a bit more and then give in to that feeling of “fuck it, let’s just go to closing from here”, but in a Mysore room and a teacher that seems to hover around when he knows you are struggling the most, giving in to that feeling is akin to exclaiming out loud in a class full of other students that you’ve finally had enough, rolling up your mat and storming out of the room. Never. Going. To. Happen.

At Marichyasana C, I was teetering on the grey but very real line between practicing with awareness and the actual fact that I could really hurt myself. The kind that would usually send many PTs and Osteopaths shaking their heads at your own stupidity. But I caught my fingers and thought that is enough for today, at least in this posture. At Marichyasana D, that was when I felt like I am standing in front of an emotional water-dam that is brimming with tears. Partly not knowing if I should keep moving through the discomfort and complete the pose, partly feeling the full effect of helplessness and struggle, and fully thinking “OK so how FAR should I take this to??” while questioning every angle of this concept of surrender.

The entire time he was hovering close of which I am pretty sure exercising his superpower abilities of listening into every thoughts I had going in my head at that moment. And then he suddenly appeared, sat down, straddled close to assist me and said “Don’t identify with the pain. Just try. Slowly”. And when I caught my fingers he added with a smile “next year, it will be gone”. Next year it seems is less than a week today. I wonder if it will come that soon.

Later at the reception outside, he pointed out those tears weren’t new, that they were ‘old’ and it is just surfacing up to release itself. Now thinking back, few conversations in the last few months seems to make sense. Like that time when S was going on and on about blockages stored in parts of your body, and Akash talking about his Thai massage that made him cry (and in his own words “like a baby”). I have ABSOLUTELY no idea what kind of old injuries I’ve done to myself or unknowingly stored and equally as clueless why it is surfacing up in the form that it is now. Frankly I much prefer if it was just traded into 1 hour’s worth of sadness, so I could cry it out, and get it over and done with. It’s not a matter of patience and waiting to ride this out, but rather the discomfort that is opening up all sorts of introspection that is leaving me quite overwhelmed.

Why do you feel? What is the purpose of all these sensations and feelings? I’m not too sure myself – maybe next year I will find out.