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Archive for June, 2012

June Student of the Month

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

Frances Mossman has had notably successful careers in art and design, business, and teaching. Her diversity of experience sits comfortably with the wide scope of her learning and her eclectic tastes. She is a true original. Frances has completed the 200 hr. ISHTA Teacher Training, and is about to graduate from the 300 hr.

How has yoga changed you?

I used to joke, before I discovered yoga, that my body was just there to carry my brain around. Sadly, it was true. I lived completely in my head and was grateful for my strong constitution. In the end though, things started to get imbalanced and illness and injury occurred. It was through yoga that I came to understand the balance between mind and body-the essential relationship between the two-and this completely changed my attitude to my life. I gave up my very stressful corporate job and decided to retire early and focus on doing the things that I love.

How do you hope it will change you in the future?

I hope to just keep practising and to meditate every day. It is hard sometimes to break the habits of a lifetime, but I am making progress, day by day. I am trying to experience balance, that is all.

Has doing yoga given you any important insights about yourself?

Oh, yes. Quite amazing. It has really made me rethink a lot of the goals and expectations that I had based my life around. I have become more introspective but also more content. I take more time with myself and am less judgmental, I hope.

If you had started yoga at seventeen, would it have changed your life?

Oh my goodness!! If only I had. It is truly the only real regret I have in life. I would have been so much more capable of dealing with stress. I think it would have been transformative, and I can hardly bear to think about the difference it would have made to my life. But never say never; it is never too late. I started practicing yoga when I was 57 years old. I prefer to be grateful for having been introduced to yoga now.

If you could be a yoga pose, which one would you be?

Natarjasana. The Dancer.

Why?

It is so elegant and you feel that elegance, that balance, when you are in the pose. It is beautiful to look at, strong, and opens your heart.

What is your favourite thing to do after a satisfying session of yoga?

Walk in the park.

Do you have a favourite yoga quote or saying you would share with us?

With practice, all is coming.

Posted in Questions for a Yogi |

The Yoga Teacher and the Musician

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

I went to hear a lunchtime concert at Wigmore Hall featuring the pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and works by Debussy and Liszt; the selections were exquisitely played, but it was the histrionic thunder of Liszt’s Grosses Konzertsolo that took my breath away. This piece requires enormous technical skill, and Bavouzet gave a performance of controlled mastery, scarcely betraying the intense effort that such music demands from its performer. The composer Franz Liszt is regarded as one of the greatest pianists of all time, but he lived before the advent of recording equipment and we can only know him from contemporary writings. Apparently, when he played before an audience, he delighted in exaggerated gestures and passionate displays. Bavouzet, on the other hand, was content to let the music be the centre of attraction, but his technique seemed all the more impressive for his discretion.

As I watched, I began to think about the similarities between a musician and a yoga teacher. Although I consider teaching yoga an art, it is not “creative” in the sense of making something from nothing, like a painter or writer. A yoga teacher is more like a professional musician or actor: we work in front of an audience; we interpret and perform texts (a musician has a score, an actor a script, a yoga teacher the asana sequences and teachings), and the wilder flights of our id are kept in check by the need to stick to what has been written down before. Nonetheless, there are as many varied interpretations of music, drama, and yoga, as there are professionals who are successful in any one of these fields. The most prominent of today’s yoga teachers all have very different styles of presentation, even though they are teaching, essentially, the same thing. One is very physical, another more cerebral, a third emphasizes the flow, etc. Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the great yogic teachings are open to infinite interpretation because of their depth, universality, and genius.

My own guru and mentor, Yoga Master Alan Finger, has his own inimitable style that combines profound knowledge with decades of experience, and a way of teaching that is both droll and magisterial. Can I claim to have found my own unique style of teaching yet? I’m working on it. With every class I teach, with every training I lead, I feel I am getting closer. The goal is technical mastery welded and wedded to personal interpretation in the service of yoga. That is my creativity and my freedom.

Posted in Inspirations and Musings |

The Open Book: Sukhasana (Cross-Legged Pose)

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

I remember sitting cross-legged when I was a child, playing with my dolls, intently discussing nonsense with them. I remember sitting cross-legged as an adolescent, talking excitedly with my friend about the holidays, the things we planned to do. And later (much later), I remember sitting cross-legged on the grass opposite my lover, our knees touching, the sun shining, holding his hands and talking about our future together. Did it ever come true? That is not so important. But what is–what was and always, I hope, will be–is the sense of anticipation that I associate with sitting cross-legged; sitting like this makes me think that I am about to embark on something new and exciting.

Isn’t it strange that we rarely sit cross-legged once we are adults? Perhaps because it reminds us too much of childhood (which is its attraction for me). One reason I love meditation is that it gives me the opportunity to sit in Sukhasana, cross-legged. Meditation is an activity I approach with the same sense of anticipation that I recall from my younger years. Something is about to happen–something exciting.

When we sit cross-legged, we open ourselves up like the covers of a book, and our spine stands straight like the spine of a book. We open up to meditate and in turn meditation opens us up. We are children again, freed of our adult selves. Once more, we are full of innocent longing for the future, eager for everything new.

As we grow older, anticipation can so easily turn to apathy. Our airiness may become dullness, our eagerness may pale to indifference. The act of sitting cross-legged in meditation prepares me to become myself once more. I become attentive to my future by remembering who I once was, and how meditation can change me (as it has been doing over time) into the person I have always wanted to be.

If you would like to reacquaint yourself with the steps to a perfect Sukhasana, visit

http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/2481

Posted in Poses and Propositions |

The ISHTA lineage

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

There are many systems of yoga and they have many different names, but what is learned today originates from a handful of important teachers who introduced their visions of yoga to the western world in the early to mid-20th Century.

A lineage is important in yoga (which in its earliest forms dates back to ancient India) because it gives credence to a system and credibility to its teachers, and that in turn reassures students that they are receiving an education with pedigree.

ISHTA Yoga was founded in the 1960s by a South African, Mani Finger, who by chance attended a talk that Paramahansa Yogananda (author of the influential book, Autobiography of a Yogi) was giving in Los Angeles; up to that moment, Mani had had no inkling that yoga was his future path. He was greatly excited by what Yogananda had to say and sought an audience with him-which changed his life. The yogi told Mani that both he and his son were destined to devote their lives to yoga.

Mani left his family business and went to India to study with Yogananda’s brother, Bishnu Ghosh, at the Sivananda ashram in Rishikesh. When he returned to South Africa, Mani began to teach his son, Alan, and soon their name had spread and they were welcoming famous yoga teachers from India to their home in Johannesburg. Among these visitors was Swami Venkatesananda, the “jewel student” of the Sivananda ashram, who had been a translator of many important Sanskrit texts; he was a powerful influence on Mani and Alan and was the teacher who initiated Alan into shaktipat and conferred on him the title of Yogiraj. Then came Swami Nisreyasananda, who was from the Rama Krishna lineage and had taught everything from yoga philosophy to mantra; he in turn introduced Mani and Alan to the Tantric Master, Bharati, who taught Tantra as a science that could lead toward liberation on this plane of consciousness. Alan and Mani also studied with B.K.S. Iyengar, from whom ISHTA derives its deep and comprehensive focus on physical alignment.

As soon as I began studying with Alan Finger, I realised that what he taught was worlds apart from what I had previously learned about yoga. I feel honoured to have had, and to continue to have, the opportunity to study with and learn from this great yogi, knowing that he too learned at the feet of other great yogis, and that his knowledge is deep, rich, and inextinguishable. I can never grow tired of learning from him, and I hope that my students will one day feel the same way about me.

I salute my teachers and the teachers who taught them. They are always with me, guiding me towards my higher self.

You can find more about the history of ISHTA at:

http://www.ishtayoga.com/yoga_history

Posted in Yoga: Past, Present, and Future |