Saturday 26 July 2014

One Song Yoga; Wahe Guru

So I did it, I qualified, yeah! Wow what a whirlwind month it has been but what an amazing one at that, I still feel slightly in shock that I did it and finally committed to it but also feel overwhelmed how quickly it went and without any hiccups, it was a blissful, inspiring and mind opening month and I am so thankful to Denise and Bex for the experience I had, I wanted to commit myself to writing a full post in relation to my training experience as feel it’s so important to spread the message of the importance of yoga, without it being a stereotypical hipster thing to do, I remember I told one friend I was thinking of training whilst travelling and his reply was ‘you and every other fucker’ ouch!  I could totally see his point though and even more so when away, the ongoing conversations had through India of people studying here and there, the schedules sounded hardcore though and not the yoga I wanted to be able to share with others, I couldn’t find the right training I wanted to commit a month too, nothing inspired me and I kind of decided that maybe it just wasn’t the right time to train, which was fine, I kind of stopped looking by the end of India, I chose to enjoy my yoga practice for what it was and the right course would come up one day.
We when we arrived in Ubud we chose to stay a week and relax, I had read about the Yogabarn when researching yoga studios before coming away, so decided to go and attend a few classes there. I signed up for a few amazing workshops, and saw a Yin Yoga class that I fancied, I have only done one Yin class on my 30th birthday last year, I remember the teacher in Vietnam gave me the choice for the class that morning and I chose a Yin practice, it stayed with me as it was so relaxing and really made me feel a therapeutic sense of ease that was just truly beautiful, however when returning to the London I hadn’t found any classes nearby so therefore had just enjoyed that one experience, how lucky I thought trying it again in Ubud.
I can literally say going to Denise’s class changed my life, I can’t fully explain how or why, maybe it was the tennis balls (I will get to that), the information shared on the practice we were doing, the way she taught or the Yin practice whatever element it was I left that class so moved and energized for change that I knew I had to train with her and share the knowledge she had with others, luckily for me she was running a course two weeks later, after a discussion with Sam,  I was signed up to her course by the next day and ready to start training on the 18th June.
Denise’s training, One Song Yoga, is put forward as not your average training course, stepping beyond the physical and commercialization of the spiritual and offering the key to transformation of your own mind and body, it covers 4 different styles of yoga Power, Vinyasa, Hatha and Yin. When reading the leaflet and talking with Denise I just felt this course differed from any other I have read about or heard about and I felt it really sat with my principles of yoga practice in current society and would marry well with my previous counselling training.
My reasons for wanting to train in yoga is to bring this into my counseling/therapy work as I feel it can be a real benefit to clients I work with, I also feel Yin Yoga holds such important principles in allowing people to relax in their yoga practice and encourages people to take time out to actually slow down and be with themselves for 90mins, it works with the connective tissue and moves stuck energy that for some people can be causing such trauma in their lives, for me to bring this into therapy work will make great changes for the client, allowing them to start to understand their body more on both a physical and emotional level. 
Denise first class I took worked with both Myo Fascial and Yin, the Myo Fascial Release  is a soft tissue therapy for the treatment of the skeletal muscle. The Yin Yoga being more a therapeutic meditative style of yoga that works with the connective tissues, the poses used in Yin Yoga work by moving energy through the body to improve organ health and emotional well being, with both of these practices combined together in one class you can maybe see why I had a life changing moment in Denise’s class.

The training started on June 18th and I was delighted to find it was a small class of only 10 people, we talked about what we wanted from the course and a small bit about ourselves, it was so interesting hearing peoples reasons for doing the course and although some were to be able to teach a lot were about their own yoga journey and practice. It was explained to us how the course would run and how we were able to choose which classes we wanted to par take in, both our teachers teach at the Yogabarn therefore we had a number of different classes in power yoga, vinyasa yoga, yin yoga, acro yoga and restorative yoga, I was so pleased to hear the diverse range we could chose to work with and although I planned to try all I knew my preferred choice would be the more yin, restorative, therapeutic style classes, however I did par take in a few vinyasa classes as this was the style I practiced at home.

That morning we took our first two classes of power and yin and after 3hrs of yoga I was so excited to be lucky enough to do this for the next 28 days.

The course definitely opened another range of emotions I had carefully tucked away, it was challenging in ways that is hard to understand unless you’re in that physical and emotional journey of yoga, I remember one vinyasa class with Bex, I went into Hanumasana and just broke down crying, I really understood the term ‘crying your way through hip openers’. When learning about this reaction and why this happens I started to understand our chakras more and how hip openers open our second chakra, Svadhisthana who’s identity is emotion and can develop between 6 months and 2 years, wow, my mind blew learning this and related so much to my own life changes around that age.  From working with Erickson’s stages of developmental I was now working with a whole new psychology system which related to our bodies and yoga, I was drawn to learn more and was recommended a book called eastern body, western mind which has now become my travel companion for learning more about this sacred chakra system (Denise informed me to wait till the course has finished before delving into this book as it will be a life informing read).
We carried out a whole day related to the chakras, no one knew how the day would go but we were told to wear bright colours and bring a friend/partner/husband. How the day worked was we went through different yoga asanas and set activities to open up each chakra and allow the energy to move through (obviously if energy is stuck they won’t necessarily just move, it’s can take time) but this was a way of looking at certain asanas and things we can do to start that process and engage in what it is like. We worked from our 1st chakra to our 7th chakra and went through a whole range of emotions dancing and grounding ourselves, flowing through sun salutations, playing on slack lines and silks, backbends, placing our hands on others hearts, sharing innermost secrets to mantras and chanting, the energy felt in the room was beautiful and it was a day I will never forget, it was a day that made me understand more about each chakra and its importance but also a day at where I looked into myself and saw were my energy could be stuck and the benefits of using chakras as a tool in looking at how people are impacted, but also using yoga as a tool for moving through this, the two marry together in such a complete way and I can’t wait to take this new information home and use it in my therapeutic work.
The course covered so many different areas of yoga practice that every day I was yearning for more, Bex took us through the history of yoga and took us back before Pantanjali and his Raja Yoga about 5000 years ago, we talked about what Yoga was and how mantra is the oldest form of yoga practice, Bex talked of the practices of the shamanistic and their out of body experiences, the ascetics who went out into nature and on their own having no attachments to basic living and the vedics who believed in fire rituals, mantras, dharmas and breath work. We moved through the years of pre classical yoga and how the Bhagavad Gita become such an important text, this then led us to the knowing of Pantanjali and the yoga most of us now know and love. This was all such information for me and my mind was so eager to take it all in, from this we started to move towards our yoga philosophy and Pantanjalis 8 limbs of yoga Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi, for me seeing asana and pranayama as 3 and 4 was mind boggling as although I knew it, in our current world of yoga, we jump straight to the asanas before anything else and don’t even know about the other areas of yoga, this information and new knowledge just stood strong in my belief how yoga is more than just moving our bodies in certain ways and yoga can be found in many forms not just the poses.

From one amazing thought blowing information gaining subject to another we moved into yoga therapy and talked of the types of yoga that can be used as a therapeutic tool but also the benefits of yoga to an individual and ourselves, the list we came up with was endless and secured my knowledge again of why I was here learning this worthy and precious skill. We learnt about thai massage (and its origins) and the art of touch and Bex explained how we can bring this into our yoga sessions and the benefit this can have to students by having a ‘safe touch’ experience. The yoga therapy session resonated so much with me and I was already starting to know the type of yoga teacher I hope to be.

We were taught human anatomy by a leading French Ostepath, my mind was opened again to the biology of the body and the way we work, taking me back to school but with a deeper insight into the importance of learning and wanting to know the information to be able to put into practice when working with human bodies. I loved the way Francoise taught us, teaching us how Ostepaths look at the whole body, not just isolated areas, sharing her wealth of knowledge and experience allowed us to understand certain elements of the body in relation to yoga practice and how we can help others who may attend classes with aliments but also avoid aliments and understand them in our own practice. We discussed the importance of fascia again and how it’s a subject rarely covered but is as important as muscles, Francoise sharing how Myo Fascial release work being so important to the human body.

We took work home and learnt then presented information about different Hindu deityies like Saraswati, Ganesh, Shiva, Vishnu, Rama, Kali, Brahma, Sita and Hanuman and how they came to be the gods and goddess worshipped by many.  We took time to look at certain deities in relation to yoga and how certain asanas found their names in relation to the deity’s tales. It made me want to head back to India and make more of an understanding about the gods and goddesses worshipped there.

Our work led us to our yoga for the hands, mudras, linking these again to our chakras and how certain mudras can help release certain energies. We learnt the sacred chant of the Gayatri Mantra, one of the most oldest and powerful of Sanskrit mantras, the power of Om, the resonant sound of the universe.

We covered the different types of yoga in our modern day world and looked at the history of Yin yoga and due to it being new to the yoga world, only being founded by Paul Grilley in the 1990’s.

As the weeks passed by our teaching started to focus more on us as teachers and we learnt adjustments in certain asanas, attended real classes our teachers were teaching to assist and then started putting our adjustment practice into reality when adjusting people in classes giving them a deeper experience of the asana. We started to learn our own ways of sequencing and put these into practice by demonstrating in class with the eventual move to teaching in real class ourselves.

I was so scared to teach a real class and was so pleased I could teach a yin class as this being the area I wanted to teach back in the UK. I had put together a 30minute sequence for the class ending with shavasana, Denise took the start of the class and I took over with 30mins left, I counted 46 people in the studio and we were in the main studio upstairs, the whole experience was incredible, I was moved by the experience shared and by the energy felt in the room, it gave me the strength and sense of real security about how passionate I was about yin yoga. I looked over to my teacher, her smile overwhelmed me and gave the courage to carry on and even bring students out of shavasana, ending the class with a collected om.
My feedback was great, and I felt a great achievement that all my learning was going in and I was able to teach a class of 46 people and teach it well enough to be given praise.

We had a number of sessions in our learning group where we did 20min sequences and 1hr sequences and were given feedback in the form of Haiku’s (Japanese form of giving feedback). We looked at how we work with students in our classes and talked of double loop learning, using strengths to encourage our students and not put them off, it was all becoming so real and soon I was going to be leaving this training qualified to empower and share this art form with others.

With the course coming to an end and our learning shared with others both in a public and class forum I was feeling more confident with what I would be taking away and more confident in sharing the practice with others without feeling I have to be able to carry out every yoga asana to be a ‘good teacher’. My focus was now about what I could share and not what I can do, as Denise shared in one of her thoughts for the day ‘we can’t give away what we don’t have’, my confidence in my own ability was strengthening and my sense of self identity as a yogi was holding true to my own beliefs and values, my own niyamas.

The course came to an end with the beauty of a butterfly mandala, made out of an array of vibrant and stunning flowers and we discussed our writing assignments as a collected group, we shared our highs and lows and self discipline to carry on but overall our bond as a group and our collected sense of sharing as teachers.

I couldn’t have asked for a better training experience, I feel equipped to teach, I feel ready to learn more, as like life, yoga is a forever learning experience.

The vast knowledge of two empowering teachers has allowed me to develop and grow into the yoga teacher I have always dreamed of becoming and I am forever thankful for that experience, my time in Ubud will never be forgotten and I will ensure my practice gained will be shared worldwide.

Wahe Guru

(A few favourite snaps)







Friday 4 July 2014

Indonesia

So I normally leave my blog posting until after I have left the country I am blogging about, however with leaving Indonesia straight after my yoga course finishes, and deciding I would write a separate blog for my teacher training I decided it would be nice to get a few things down of our visits so far into the depths of Indonesia. 

Our Indonesian part of the trip didn’t go as planned, which I guess is part of the beauty of travelling in terms of route change, everything happens for a reason and I totally believe this with our next few weeks we had planned. When we left Derawan (Indonesian Borneo) we had planned to dive into the thick of Indonesia, exploring the rainforest of Kalimantan and driving hours overland to glimpse that unknown village and beautiful primate, what we hadn’t realised was the lack of transport due to bad roads and therefore the distance overland journeys would take. We sat down and realistically looked at how much time we wanted to spend in this part of Indonesia, realizing we only had a week planned for this part of the journey we realistically didn’t believe we had the time and didn’t think it would be worthwhile stressing ourselves with the journeys for a few days here and there, for me that wouldn’t be an experience and would just be a headache, so with that in mind we headed to the nearest airport and jumped on a plane to Java and prepared ourselves for a journey to Bromo Volcano. 

We flew into Surabaya and chose to stay there for one evening, arriving at night left us slightly disorientated but I felt a real city feeling when driving through the bright lights and fast pace of the hustle and bustle. We only had one night planned so after a long days travel from Derawan we settled for a sound sleep, excited to be heading to Bromo earlier than planned.  We woke early the next morning and knew it would take around a day to get across to East Java where Bromo is situated, we had done quite a lot of research around Bromo as wanted to climb without a guide, the internet is amazing for its wealth of personal information and we found one women’s blog which was just an incredible guide for the climb. After a few buses from Surabaya we arrived at Problingo and shared a taxi with another English couple and Swiss couple, the journey was a short one too Cemoro Lawang, which is the small village next to Bromo, where you stay before the climb. 
It was early evening so we decided to climb to the crater rim, it was such an incredible sight, I was really taken aback, this being my first experience of being so close to a volcano, the vast beauty and landscape surrounding were just dazzling to the eye and the dusk time walk just felt the perfect way to head to Mt Bromo. We took the path down the hill from Cemoro Lawang, missing out walking through the main Bromo office, we started our walk across the volcanic sands, it was incredible in the middle of the sands was the most beautiful Hindu Temple, sat lonesome but with such stature and magnificence, it was a treat to witness but also wonder who visited as it felt far from any main town or village. After about an hrs walk we arrived at the steps to make our ascent up to the crater rim and with determination, I managed to make it to the top, huffing and puffing. It was amazing up there, with the smoke billowing out and the sun setting, it felt a really beautiful time to see the crater and experience this natural wonder, we took some time out up the top and watched the sun come down over the sands and turn the sky beautiful colours of orange.  As night started to approach we realised we had a long walk back and only a small torch, we managed to get about half way across the sands before it turned pitch black, with a little bit of confusion we managed to join the back of some other trekkers and followed their lead back to Cemoro Lawang. After eating another plate of Mie Goreng we took to our beds, ready to wake at 2am to climb to the viewing point to watch sunrise over Bromo. 

We woke without problem and started the climb in the dark, we had mapped out our route and grouped with the others staying in our home stay, we decided to take the climb at our pace due to my knee, this worked fine for the first bit and after about an hour and a bit of walking we arrived at the first viewing point. We could see the option of higher viewing points but sadly the path had become over run and wasn’t as clear as we hoped, after about 30mins of rustling around and taking a number of dead ends we managed to find the trail again and we then really started to climb, as you can imagine at 4am this wasn’t the easiest thing and with a number of trips, skips and a huge face plant I finally broke, the tears came and my knee felt like it was about to explode. At this point I will admit I did feel like giving up and telling Sam to go on, but after 5mins of sorting my thinking out and believing in myself I managed to hobble on, making it to the viewing point just as sun was rising. When we arrived here I suddenly realised why I had needed to carry on, the view was astounding and like something I have never seen before, it really was truly beautiful and Mt Bromo just looked spectacular, the dreamy mist that surrounded the volcano, the smoke circling out, the clouds in front of us, it was a dream like scene and I felt proud of my own ability but it felt magical to be sharing it with such a wonderful group of people. We sat snuggled, eating our morning treats and silenced ourselves at the views spanning out in front of us. After sun rose we took the time to wander around, drink some coffee with some locals and then attempt the descent back down, amazed at how we had just climbed it in the dark. 

We snoozed the rest of the morning away then the 6 of us took the taxi back down to Probilingo, going our separate ways, not without some great hugs, facebook befriending and well wishes for the end of our travels. We decided to make the long journey across to Bali, we were going to head to Ijen but with my knee in a bad way we decided to take on the trek on the way back (however this has now changed again and Sam will be doing this whilst I am training). Without going into it we had a bit of a nightmare journey, Indonesia seems to be good for this and had to stay in a random hotel in a random town for the night, starting again the next morning and marvelously making it to Bali and our very nice accommodation in Ubud. 

We had decided to take some time out in Ubud and stay for 5/7 days to really recuperate and get back to us after all the disjointed travel, unwanted stress and smelly hotel rooms. I had always wanted to visit Ubud as heard a lot of good things about it, Sam wasn’t too fussed but decided it would be nice to just relax for a bit instead of being on the move. Ubud really did live up to its vision I had, although touristy it has such a beautiful feeling about it and with Bali meaning offering you could feel the sense of community in the air. Our accommodation was back from the main street which was amazing for us as gave us the feeling of not being in the main tourist hub and also allowed us to feel it was okay just to do nothing for a few days. Before coming to Ubud I had looked into the Yogabarn which is highly recommended for its variations of classes it holds, I picked out  YIN Yoga class and took to the 1.5hr session ready and willing for some rejuvenation, the class was incredible and really got me going, the teaching was so great and I just knew at that moment I had to engage in this further, after speaking with the class teacher, Denise she informed me she was running a teacher training course on the 18th June, at that instant I knew I had to book a place on the course and before I knew it I was signed up to start the month long training, with this decided Sam and I chose to head to an Island off Bali for a week before the course started.
(I am going to blog about my course when finished so will leave the details above at that).

We headed off to Nusa Lembongan and it really felt a holiday from a holiday, ridiculous right, we took a small bag, leaving our main ones at our accommodation in Ubud and took the boat across to Nusa. Nusa is a small island off the Southeast coast of Bali and is a really popular surfing and diving spot, it has different parts to the island for different activities but is really beautiful place to just relax. We managed to find a beautiful quiet nook of one the beaches away from the surfing zone, we spent most days enjoying our time reading and swimming, and just getting back into our bodies preparing me for the hard work ahead over the next month. 

We also took one day out to snorkel, but as we called it extreme snorkeling as the sea was so choppy and at points I couldn’t even enter the water as the current was so strong, I did however enjoy a few moments and dared the water at times. Sam had a great day however and really got in there, enjoying all five different spots we snorkeled at. 

With our week coming to an end we spent our last night with new friends celebrating their engagement and enjoying the sounds of the open mic night. We fell asleep that night ready to head back to Ubud in the morning fully satisfied with our week away on Nusa Island.

My course started that week and I was a bag of nerves and excitement at the prospect of committing myself to a month’s training, I went and purchased myself a notebook and prepared myself like the first day of school, knowing we would be in Ubud 1 month we did some shopping and fell into Ubud life pretty quickly, Sam finding his local haunt to watch the world cup and me working out the best shortcut to get to class each day. I have blogged separately about my training so won’t start writing a full blog here but will include my time in Ubud as we joined in a number of things outside of the course and both become firm friends with two heartwarming Canadians, Ash and Mike, eating many a weekly meal with them and enjoying their company greatly. 

Ubud is an interesting place, I througherly enjoyed every minute there and miss it so much, it has definitely been a highlight of my trip and maybe that’s because we become nested there it felt like home from home (with a lot more sun). There is talk of an ‘Ubud community’ and being at the yoga barn you totally see and feel this as you become part of the everyday rituals and routines for some. There is a lot of expacts living in Bali and even attending a few nights about love and togetherness you could feel people had found something important to them and a sense of belonging in a spiritual community. For me I could go with this, I could understand it and sit back and enjoy watching it, for Sam at times I think he found it a bit much, obviously being Sam and unspiritual as they come, however what was beautiful to see was even Sam letting go, sharing things he would never share at chakra day and even letting go of a lantern with a meaningful message on instead of asking for Fulham to win the league (or something football related). 


I have went through my thoughts on the yogabarn constantly, how it is a ‘yoga business’ how it doesn’t bring in the type of communities I wish to work with now qualified, how it is a money making enterprise but something draws me back to the love of it and how it is a community, when writing an email to a friend the other day I explained it as a community of yoga, it’s a place where there are so many different types of people attending but one thing is that there all there for yoga and isn’t that in itself just beautiful? 


Ubud has so many great eateries, cafes, and local restaurants, organic supermarkets and everything you could need for being based there for a month, we ate the most sumptuous food every night and even relaxed in some nights, using the kitchen at our guesthouse and catching up on some tv series or other. We also spent our 2nd year anniversary in Ubud and went to an amazing resturant called Kebun, it was recommended by my yoga teacher and we ate like royalty, with the gift from our families we had a nice amount of money to spend and ordered the most delicious lamb shanks (for Sam) and salmon for me, a carafe of the most tasty red wine turned up (a present from my yoga teacher, amazing right?) and we even had millie feuille
slices, it was such a nice evening and even though the rain poured we couldnt have been anywhere more special at that time. Sam even bought me some flowers, now that's saying something!

Sam took a couple of days away with Mike, (my friend Ashley’s husband) and they went and climbed Kawah Ijen, on his return he stated it was one of the best experiences he has had travelling as talking with the sulpher miners and being in a working volcano was just a mind blowing experience. 


For both of us though one of our main highlights was spending 1hr 30mins sweating and dancing at ecstatic dance, there’s one rule, no talking just dancing, it’s a place to totally let yourself go and do what your body tells you, the upstairs room at the yogabarn is full to the brim of smiling sweaty humans just having the most beautiful uplifting time, we both agreed we have never felt so free and so at one just letting ourselves and our bodies just go where the music wanted, we dance so much at festivals, gigs and clubs but in this space at Sunday at 11am there really was no one else watching allowing our souls to be in the time and space and be whoever we wanted to be. 


We left Ubud with our hearts contented, Ubud and Ijen will forever be special to us both, were so thankful of our time there  and we both had the most wonderful life changing experiences there, I have never felt so lucky to be having this experience and opportunity to travel as we are, blessed.