Day By Day

Janu Sirsana -- yAy -- with adjustment by Zoe

I spent the weekend at an Ashtanga workshop with one of the most fabulous teachers I know, Zoe Mai. It was a pretty wonderful weekend. Most of my workshop weekends are filled with big releases that come in the form of tears and are often accompanied by difficult feelings. This one didn't have as much of the latter, maybe because of all the releases that have come before, or my relationship with Zoe, I don't really know. But it was a relief.

We did, however, find ourselves talking at meals about how deeply I feel things and my predilection to tears. I assured them that being an empath was something I carry with me everywhere I go -- I don't just feel things deeply in the studio. They laughed when I told them the story of my real tears during CPR training last week when I had to ask a pretend mother if her pretend baby needed help after falling into a pretend pool. And it is funny, in a way -- it can also be a little awkward socially to be so prone to tears.

The weekend's emphasis was on the subtle body and making adjustments from that place and space rather than from the gross. It was about seeing students whole being rather than just the shape their body has taken. It's a cool concept and one I intend to work with as a teacher.

As I was listening to her lecture, this song from my childhood came back to me:

Day by day, oh, dear Lord, three things I pray
To see thee more clearly
Love thee more dearly
Follow thee more nearly, day by day

Day by day, day by day
Oh, dear Lord, three things I pray
To see thee more clearly
Love thee more dearly
Follow thee more nearly, day by day

I remembered how the sound of this song used to fill my childhood home, and I would wonder what it meant. I'm getting it now -- not necessarily in a prayer to the Lord, but in a the Universe is bigger than we are and there are powers we may not fully understand but can still harness and use for good kind of way...

We also talked a bunch over the weekend about how ultimately incompatible the study and practice of Ashtanga yoga is with another highly revered form: Iyengar. My own training was with someone highly influenced by Iyengar, but I have found myself straying from that school in both my teaching and my practice. Still, I like this quote that someone posted on FB:

"For them freedom is misunderstood. They think freedom is license to act as they like. Whereas freedom comes after discipline, it is the end of discipline, which later urges one to action from the inner voice. Freedom comes when the disciplined action is converted with rigorous discipline into a natural action." B.K.S. Iyengar

As a person who has been driven by a desire for freedom much of my life, I have found discipline much harder to come by. But through my Ashtanga yoga practice, and specifically after studying with Zoe for the first time last May, I have finally found discipline. And I've realized what Iyengar is saying -- that discipline makes freedom possible in a way that is sweeter than anything untethered could ever be...