Health

Kripalu Yoga Journal – YTT – Now the Inquiry of Yoga; Koshas; Blinfolds: fleshy alive things

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Main Hall, Kripalu

Tues 26 October, YTT

Morning Sadhana, use of 60s music and laughter.

…

Are there other radio stations to tune in to? The strongest signal is not the only one.
Turn up the volume of awareness.
Tune in to others’ energy when assisting and teaching.

…

Koshas – Sheaths or bodies of the organism. A map of our being.

– Annamaya – Body
– Pranamaya – Energy
– Manomaya – Thought, feeling
– Vijnanamaya – Intellect, wisdom
– Anandamaya – Bliss

The mind can think anything. Vijnanamaya Kosha chooses which is given energy

When all are in alignment: Anandamaya Kosha present

Intuition uses all five Koshas

When we die, Annamaya deteriorates and pranamaya shuts down

Sense of I: Manomaya Kosha*

Send each of the Koshas home during savasana

During meditation, Vijnana and Ananda present

…

BRFWA

Breathe
Relax
Feel
Watch
Allow

…

Great day! The nerves of the first evening and yesterday are receding and I’m realising this course can be fun, and profound. The depth of Devarshi’s wisdom and knowledge became clear during his talk about the Koshas. I was reassured he’s not rooted in the ‘easy’ yoga answers of the ‘real’ me, higher self and all the all-too-reassuring stuff. This is about inquiry, questioning, and ultimately, mystery. FANTASTIC! Realised Devarshi is definitely worth listening to.

[I am only using my journal for reference, not the Course Manual which goes into much more detail and is no doubt much more accurate]

*Could it be, therefore, that the exaggerated sense of I, of ego, that seems pervasive throughout our societies and seems to be the cause of many of our problems, is simply an imbalance of these Kosha sheaths?

…

Settling in; sitting easier, heart is less racy, feelings flowing more.

The experiential sessions are great. Blindfolded, following instructions to move about the room, choosing directions to turn, then finding two hands in the dark. Exploring those hands. They felt like a creature in the darkness – fleshy alive things, exploring, touching while someone else explores and touches my fleshy alive things.

My hands are getting stronger, fingers broader.

Shit, only two days in!

Nathan said Megha said: “Just you wait!” This in particular about meditation in motion, which we ‘did’ this evening, eyes closed. The second group joined us. There are 82 people doing the YTT, in two groups. What an incredible centre and course!

Kripalu Yoga Journal – Goals of Teachers, “Self-observation with love”

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Continuation of my journal and memories of the Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training. Monday 26th – first full day.

We start at 0630 with morning yoga. A little more vigorous than the gentle sessions I took before the course started. Lovely stretches, releasing my neck from the travelling, work, NYC. Sunlight pouring through the high windows of the Main Hall.

Goals of Teachers:

– Strengthen, inspire, inform personal practice
– Experience the unlimited power of yoga
– Hold space of sacred sanctuary and safety
– Opening the learning process, inquiry, mystery
– Recognise and understanding Self
– Instil, awaken knowledge of the Kripalu toolbag
– To transmit yoga, including the yamas and niyamas
– To become the best teacher I can be

We wrote down why we were here, and then stuck it up on a wall. It stayed there the whole course (almost!). I wrote:

– Find my voice
– Uncover buried feeling, release, heal
– Open and discover – what?
– Learn to relax more fully
– Learn how to share yoga
– Strengthen constitution – body and all systems
– Balance and grounding
– Enjoy four weeks out of the office!

What is Kripalu Yoga?

– “Self-observation with love” – Mr Kripalu
– A non-dogmatic approach that’s difficult to brand
– The Inquiry of Yoga
– Learning how to learn

…

It’s OK to be nervous, I am supported.
Speak in ‘I’ statements, first person

…

Afternoon:

This is going to be the strangest, newest, exploringest, unusual-situationist month ever. After 24 hours I am just realising what I might have let myself in for. Very good first session with Devarshi this afternoon. Long sequences each side and a very long integrating savasana.

Lots of experimental sessions in small groups and sharing with the mic with the whole group. I haven’t yet, but fully participating in our Full Moon group. Meeting some great people and getting used to the idea of communicating. I feel I need a few words with Devarshi and Mega [the course leaders] to check in with them. This evening… off!

….

I’ve rarely bee so consistently on edge, and never in such unpredictable circumstances. And yet at the same time, in the same day, experiencing deep relaxation. This evening’s session blew me away. Came to after relaxation convinced everyone had left the room. Full on class. Devarshi is a little mischievous.

An assistant teacher said they’d be a time when we each go on the stage and speak. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! For once I can’t control this. I want to face it, even to crumble. If not with this group then with who? And I won’t crumble, or I will. Who knows?

Sat in the sun at breakfast and lunch. By supper, Shaun, Nathan and I were spaced out, wondering what we’d gotten into.

Alarm set for 0545.

Kripalu Yoga Journal – YTT – First Evening

Posted on by Duncan Toms

During the teacher training course last year, we were encouraged to keep a journal during the four week intensive. It’s nearly six months since we started the course and I would like to share some of my entries and memories.

On the first evening we wrote down what yoga meant to us and chose a book title to describe our current position in life, or our life so far. I chose: ‘The Truth Is In There’. In a circle of 50 classmates and teachers, we stood in turn and introduced ourselves and gave the name of our book. My heart was beating like crazy! I remembered very few names that evening. (‘Eagle Steve’ was one I did remember from the start)

We picked cards from a deck. Each card had a yoga pose on it. We then found the three others who had the same card. This was done by striking that pose and looking around for others doing the same thing. That group of four became our study group until after our first practice teach more than a week later. We chose a name: Full Moon. We become close in that original group: Erin, who since has founded Hand To Heart Yoga, Dalia who is now in Puerto Rico, and Ria who I haven’t heard from. The good news for me that evening was we only had to teach three times during the course, to four people only, one of whom would be a yoga teacher.

Good bunch in our dorm – four of us from the course and one guy from a massage course, Brian. I think it was that first night we agreed that there’d be no ‘yoga bullshit’ once back at the dorm. Brian was so chuffed that I worked with K’s ‘Teachings’.

Back to today: Groggy session with morning, but enjoying it somehow. Blissful night. Ecstasy comes in waves and cannot be interfered with or controlled in any way. The more of me, the less of it.

What we call our love is a thing of the mind. Look at yourselves, sirs and ladies, and you will see that what I am saying is obviously true; otherwise, our lives, our marriage, our relationships, would be entirely different, we would have a new society. We bind ourselves to another through contract, which is called love, marriage. Love does not fuse, adjust – it is neither personal nor impersonal, it is a state of being.

Krishnamurti, Book of Life, 14 April

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food – TIME

Posted on by Duncan Toms

It’s not much better, if at all, in the UK, so don’t let the American angle lead to to a false security…

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won’t bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He’s fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he’ll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That’s the state of your bacon — circa 2009.

via Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food – TIME.

THE SHORT, UNNATURAL LIFE OF A BROILER CHICKEN | Chicken Out

Posted on by Duncan Toms

39-day blog from the chicken’s point of view:

THE SHORT, UNNATURAL LIFE OF A BROILER CHICKEN

39 day blog following the life of a factory farmed chicken

ABOUT THE BLOG:

Standard meat chickens, reared in the intensive systems, are grown from newly hatched chick to oven-ready bird in just 39 days. Around 800 million chickens are slaughtered in the UK each year. It is estimated that around 90% of these chickens are reared intensively. These birds are bred to increase weight rapidly and at least 25% of them suffer from lameness and discomfort related to their excessive growth rates. Millions of broiler chickens die from heart failure in these sheds.

via THE SHORT, UNNATURAL LIFE OF A BROILER CHICKEN | Chicken Out.

How the Food Industry Has Made Bacon a WMD

Posted on by Duncan Toms

There is: bacon ice cream; bacon-infused vodka; deep-fried bacon; chocolate-dipped bacon; bacon-wrapped hot dogs filled with cheese (which are fried, then battered and fried again); brioche bread pudding smothered in bacon sauce; hard-boiled eggs coated in mayonnaise encased in bacon — called, appropriately, the “heart attack snack”; bacon salt; bacon doughnuts, cupcakes and cookies; bacon mints; “baconnaise,” which Jon Stewart described as “for people who want to get heart disease but [are] too lazy to actually make bacon”; Wendy’s “Baconnator” — six strips of bacon mounded atop a half-pound cheeseburger — which sold 25 million in its first eight weeks; and the outlandish bacon explosion — a barbecued meat brick composed of 2 pounds of bacon wrapped around 2 pounds of sausage.

via Gonzo Gastronomy: How the Food Industry Has Made Bacon a Weapon of Mass Destruction | | AlterNet.

EA Sports Active; Wise Blood

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Second day using EA Sports Active after work. I’m doing the 30 day challenge, on easy setting. It’s good. Today I was sweating, and yet it doesn’t feel too challenging. I took the rock music out which was annoying me.. Maybe tomorrow I change the woman trainer for the man. This combined with an hour’s yoga in the morning and my body is really appreciating it and energy levels are back up.

So, I’ve been doing some boxing training yesterday and tennis today along with the standard lunges and track training. We hadn’t tied the resistance band on tightly enough and it pinged off during a curl.

K talking about the importance of having time alone, away from the influence of other people. I have always felt this strongly and it motivates many of my choices. Glad to be backed up. So many people following each other we’ve kind of lost our way.

Reading Wise Blood still. Very interesting. Main feeling is the rawness of life in post war era and how little we have travelled, below this sheen of relative wealth and abundance. The story is getting interesting with Haze after the girl and the girl after Haze, and Enoch finding his (probably twisted) purpose.

Discovered today that there’s a Vue cinema in Eastleigh, making it our nearest big screen. But since when did it cost £9 for a ticket?

Homemade wheat free pizza for supper, with Freaks and Geeks on.

Three Days of Dynamic Meditation

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Three days of dynamic meditation, three nights of intense dreams.

First night’s dream, eating whatever I wanted. A big plate of full English in front of me and a strong feeling of ‘do I have to?’ I really didn’t want to eat that meat.

The second night was full of drunken dreams, staggering about, lost and confused, unable to think clearly or act.

The third night, smoking. Dry mouth and smelly. Singe marks on a rug that wasn’t mine and throwing stubs out the window, grubby on the clean driveway.

These are not the usual random dreams; something is changing. It is definitely stirring things up, the breathing, releasing, jumping, being still and then dancing. I look forward to the pureness of it, the direct feeling during that hour after work. The nausea is lessening each day and I’m able to immerse more fully. Less wondering how long left of each section.

New skates! – 4/365

Posted on by Duncan Toms

I bought these Nike Bauer ONE05 in the post-Xmas sales but didn’t get chance to use them until this evening.

This was my third time skating this time round. Before that, not since the early 90s, and before that, as a teenager.

Well, I’m probably as good as I ever was, and the new skates really help. More precision in the ice and a much greater sense of control. The rental skates at Basingstoke ‘Planet Ice’ really are shite.

It took a little getting used to on the sharp blades and hockey style. No notchy bits at the front of the blade to help when standing still. But so fast, smooth, and by the end I was attempting some backwardsness and trying skating forward without moving the skates much, just the hips.

We go every other week, so my progress will be slow. But it’s not about progress for me, more the sheer delight in gliding.

Giving up smoking – 1996

Posted on by Duncan Toms

If there’s beer about, I’ll drink it. I will smoke anything offered to me or that I’ve got, if I’m in a smoking mode. Suddenly tempted to go and buy cigarettes. Shall I? No. No smoking. That rule now sucks. As I write, I think: No it’s all right to have some. Is it? Don’t really know the harm. I believe what they say. But they are so very nice. But I won’t. No!