12/11/2011

"That which angers you, controls you."
-doc rivers

Beginners Mind

Hello friends. This is the first official entry in High Stakes Headstands, my personal Yoga blog. A brief message on the origin of my blogs title: after a particularly challenging day centered around inversions and arm balances, i had a dream about the imaginary game of High Stakes Headstands, where someone would be performing a headstand in a room, surrounded by expensive vases, each having been bet upon as to which would be smashed first. It basically boiled down to my mind showing me a silly take on my fear of destroying things in my room when falling out of a headstand.

Well, I am dave. Instead of starting here with a static introduction, I want to dive right into the 7 hours i spent with Philip Urso today.

First and foremost, I was lucky enough to make it to the class and to meet Philip. I have taken all 50 of the classes he has posted on his iTunes store podcast, but until today I had never met him; his podcast is a wonderful resource for not only the practiced Yogi, but also the beginner (as I was when I started his classes) who is still figuring out exactly how to fit yoga into their lifestyle. Sometimes classes at your studio don't exactly line up with your life, but Philips podcasts are a wealth of training by a very present teacher available to you at any hour.

I know that sounds like an advertisement (which it is), but I learned something today from being with him in person: as he said in our bootcamp, the most appreciated and progressive kind of teacher is the one who does not follow a script. The teacher surveys every aspect of a yoga class and changes the focus of progress to meet the needs of their students. Teachers like Philip can utilize the weaknesses in a newer Yogi and use that instructional path to not only give better awareness to the less experienced, but also challenge a practiced Yogi with the disciplines of simplicity. As it turned out, I was in a class consisting of 80% yoga teachers and other well practiced students, so Philip accommodated to our needs and we got ourselves a proper ass-whooping (in the very best sense).
___________________________________________________

Moving on: After I returned home from my yoga marathon with Mr. Urso, I was thinking about how a fellow boot-campee mentioned that she was most present when in the company of her dogs; with her dogs as the focal point of a situation, she felt she was the most in tune with nature and with her Beginners Mind. Stepping into my home, I dropped my bags and was immediately greeted by an Old English Bulldog named Bella (pictured above) who was very happy to see me. I noticed her breathing almost instantly: for whatever reason, the shins of my pants were especially fragrant, and Bella was sniffing away at them. Soon she settled down, and I sat with her and pet her for a while. Her breathing then completely changed; she had relaxed, had gotten over the initial curiosity her mind had given her in the foreign smells on my pant legs, and was now breathing quite deeply. She was enjoying being petted, and her mind was completely invested in the relaxing sensations of a nice backrub.

While giving her this backrub, I realized I had come into harmony with Bellas mind-state, and compared her state of total presence to the way I personally invest myself in the many different situations I face in my day to day life: A human can have a cat on their lap, petting her with one hand while being completely absorbed in the text messages on their iPhone at the exact same time. I did this myself later in the evening, with a cat in my own lap while I uploaded some pictures to my computer. My cat was totally present in how I interacted with her; I was multitasking, going through the petting motions with her as my mind was focused on completely different things.

This came to me as a metaphor for how you treat the many challenging poses you are given in a yoga class, as well as how you treat the different interactions that happen to you in your life: if you give your all to a situation (ie: a cat in your lap; a particularly long hold in Crescent Lunge), you will benefit so much more from your interactions with it. All the sudden, your "cat" wants you to rub underneath its chin, or it'll roll on its belly and let you know "you sure haven't scratched this spot in a while". In Beginners Mind, in the animal mind, you first search out relaxation, comfort and stability, but then find your way to progress, to scratching those itches that have been out of reach until now.

Right now.

-namaste