Finding Space for Yoga

Finding a space in which to practice yoga at home can be difficult.

Space in which to roll out your mat, space in time when you can practice and space in your life when you can allow yourself to be free of other distractions and the endless list of things you need to do.

We don't just bring expectation of what a 'proper' yoga sequence looks like to our efforts at home practice, we also bring our expectation of what a yoga practice feels like: we hope for a clear and quiet space in which to practice; having granted ourselves the time in our day to practice, we hope that children and partners will leave us alone for the duration; we'd like to light some incense and take some time around our practice. And if we can't get all that together, then the yoga just doesn't happen.

Sometimes I practice in a quiet house, where I have no interruptions, where peace reigns, where I have no deadlines looming and no urgent things to do with my time. The house is warm, the candles lit, the dog snoozes at the end of my mat. Wonderful.

But I have also practised in the living room while the kids sat on the sofa watching tv (it was a cold day and that was the warmest room in the house); I have let my children roll their mats out alongside me and practise with me (these are the chatty, giggly practices); I have practised in tiny hotel rooms and outside on balconies and verandas, in other people's gardens and on the beach. I have practised at festivals while bemused strangers looked on while they cooked their breakfasts on camping stoves. And it was all good. All of it.

In terms of physical space, all you need is the room to roll out your mat and the height to reach up - but you could practice kneeling and seated postures in an even smaller space than this.

In terms of space in time, well I can't put it better than Sue Monk Kidd:

“The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters”

We know it's good for us, we know it helps us live well, but we still find it hard to make the time to actually do it. Don't worry. Make your practice small; make it simple; make it happen in a little way, rather than deferring until a time when you have more time (which might never come).

In terms of space in your life, there are going to be interruptions. We don’t live in ashrams. Two examples of how interruptions manifest:

• The phone beeps/rings as you practice and you stop practising to answer it. As if your caller won't leave you a message; as if you cannot wait for ten minutes to hear that message and call them back. This interruption is within yourself and only you can persuade yourself to wait and finish up your yoga before you take the call.

• Your beloveds come and interrupt you while you practice. Look, it takes a long time for everyone else in your life to understand that you need/love/deserve your quiet time on your mat (how long did it take you to know this?) - it takes almost as long as it will take you to gently insist on having that time for yourself.

You will be as distracted as you allow yourself to be. Why do we find it so hard to prioritise ourselves and to do for ourselves the things that make us better (and nicer to live with, I might add). I don't know, but I do know that I practise around my children and my dog and my life and my friends and my work every day and that nobody has yet died of neglect, thirst or malnutrition as a result.

In the end, after all of your procrastination, you just have to do it. In fact, the only thing that yoga requires of you is that you do it. Move, breathe, be at one with yourself and the world, feel your feet on the ground, spend some time in quiet solitude. Enjoy it. Don't make it into another thing to beat yourself up with or bring high ideals and expectation to it.

It is as uncomplicated as rolling out your mat and placing your feet purposefully on it.
It is as easy as kneeling on your mat and moving mindfully between cat and cow pose.
It is as straightforward as you allow it to be.
Simple is best.

Sarah x

How to Listen to your Soul

Go somewhere you find beautiful: the beach, an art gallery, the woods, your favourite part of your favourite city. It helps to be alone.

Walk and walk and look about you; stand for as long as you want to and stare at whatever catches your attention: a crack in the pavement, an image or piece of art that moves you, the sky, other people. It is important that you do not rush. And nobody should be expecting you. You must not put a deadline on your wanderings, nor should you have someone waiting for you at the other end of your journey - hearing your soul speak takes time and patience, so give yourself just that.

Walk. Sit. Look. Eat. Drink. Write if you want to, but do not read; books are just inanimate versions of other people's voices and you will not hear your own voice if you continually overlay it with other people's words, thoughts and feelings.

Don't actively seek your soul's voice; it cannot be hunted down and found. Your soul's voice emerges when you are doing something else, when you are looking at the sky, or walking across the sand with the wind blowing in your face. Just put yourself in the right place with a certain level of quiet and wait. Make of yourself a blank canvas upon which your soul's voice will draw the colour and image.

If there is fear, let there be fear - you are safe in your favourite place, let it be. There might be joy, or excitement, sadness or pain, just let it be. Your soul's voice cannot be heard above mental struggle, or above your efforts not to feel what you feel. Just walk, stop, look around, absorb what is.

Do it once.
Do it again.
Turn your ear inward as often as you can. Turn every dog walk into an opportunity to listen, every train journey, every delay. Learn how to live alongside your own true voice. It won't ever pretend you are what you are not; it won't ever be unkind to you. Which is not to say that your soul's voice will always be an easy listen - the truth you already know is not always comfortable to hear.

The answers to our own questions are always waiting within and you can trust that quiet voice.

If you stop trampling all over your own soul with your intellect, your struggling, your self-judgment, then you will find it there waiting for you, wondering ‘My dear love, what took you so long?’

Sarah x

Yoga for a Lifetime - Patanjali's Yoga Sutra 3:6

Yogena yogo jnatavyo
Yogo yogat pravartate
Yo prama tastu yogena
Sa yoga ramate ciram

Only through yoga, yoga is known, Only through yoga, yoga progresses, One who is patient with yoga, Bears the fruits for a long time.

I have always loved this chant. It is from Vyasa's fifth century commentary (the first that we know about) on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.

The point of each of Patanjali’s sutras, is that it states a teaching in the most succinct way possible; with the guidance of your teacher, you extrapolate that sutra to uncover its depth of meaning and to apply it to your life-practice. Vyasa was one of those teachers and the above is from his commentary on Yoga Sutra 3:6, which reads:

tasya bhumisu viniyogah
Samyama (complete meditation) must be developed gradually

The essence of this sutra is that patience is required when one practices yoga. Yoga is a practice that benefits from slow and steady progress, commitment and the willingness to wait and see. One of the joys of yoga is how we simply begin where we are, however we find ourselves, and let whatever happens happen.

In fact, the strength of the path of yoga lies in part in its slowness; the lessons that you will learn on your mat are the lessons of a lifetime, not a few months. This is not a quick fix, a cure-all, a handy package that will pick you up, make you strong, calm you down and set you rolling; it is a gradual unfolding of awareness and understanding that will enrich your life and everything you do in your life. This is why yogis need not fear growing older, for there is always something new that will be learnt, a new view, a different way of being that changes, improves, teaches... it never stops; we never get 'there', we only learn how to learn from everything that comes to us in life.

Moreover, it is often the case that we are wrong about what we think we are doing when we start to practise yoga and where we think we are headed with it. I know scientists who have become yoga teachers, accountants who are training to be school-teachers, athletes whose main practice now is meditation and mothers who have become midwives, all of whom express surprise at where they have ended up at the same time as they acknowledge that where they are now is exactly where they feel they are supposed to be. Transformation is mysterious: you just don't know where you are going. Better to put your faith in your practice and let it guide you, rather than push it around, trying to make it look like you think it should.

The only thing that yoga asks of you is that you do it, and this is encapsulated in this sutra and in Vyasa's beautiful explanation of it. You can't read about it in a book; you can't have someone tell you about it; you can't dip in and out of it; if you want to be a yoga student and to discover all its riches, then you have to turn up, you have to do it (and remember that leaping about on a yoga mat was never the apogee of yoga practice that some yoga studios and students would have us believe - asana is the means, not the goal).

Yoga requires patience and teaches patience, it's wealth lies in the way its lessons open to us gradually, giving us time to acknowledge, understand and assimilate the things that we are learning, seeing and encompassing in our lives as we continue with our practice. You start where you are every single time you practice, with a beginner's mind and a humble heart and these techniques, handed down, refined and shared over generations, help you towards a healthier, more whole, more established and simple way of being.

Your practice is like the ripening of fruit over a summer, which happens quite naturally and in its own time. You are simply ripening over a lifetime.