Monday, November 28, 2011

Piano...


When I was learning to play the piano as small child, my piano teacher would ask my mom after each class how I managed to stay in mom’s belly for 9 months.  I was impatient with the notes; hurrying, running over notes that were suppose to be held longer… Most of the time, she would teach me short Mozart pieces which bore me a bit after a while ( no offence, I love Mozart) because they were always similar to one another.  Later on, when I was in high school I started to take classes from another teacher who would teach conservatory students and he gave me lots of exercises to begin with and then there came Bach, and Chopin…. The exercises were good for me but also the complexity of Bach…  made me concentrate wholly…  Afterwards, the first year and a half of college I was at Grinnell, where we could take 30-minute piano classes once a week for a mere hundred bucks during each semester.  Being in Iowa, which could be utterly boring if you weren’t a pot smoker, I began practicing every day for an hour.  There, I really began to play the piano … I was totally absorbed during those one-hour time slots in the piano room.  There were 4 or 5 piano rooms we could sign up for, and two of them had grand Steiner pianos which I loved playing…  The amazing thing was that, with minimum instructions (30 min a week), but with daily practice, I played the piano at my best… and I guess at that point I also learned to be more patient with the notes that were suppose to be held longer…

Now, time to time, I get excited about playing the piano again.  Now I have no piano, but maybe a keyboard, which is similar to a piano, can do the job…  However, I am sure to be very rusty since it has been years…  I have to go to basics to become quick with reading the notes again and then some drills to get quick with my fingers and then start playing some pieces of music…  This is one of my dreams… why?  Because I love music and I know that it is one of the things which makes me totally absorbed.., so very meditative.

Why am I writing all this?  Perhaps there is more than one reason…  One of them is seeing how impatient I can be which reminds me my childhood piano teacher and the book KA where it is written “...that impatience is the only sin” and the other thing is the Mysore room which is when it is full, makes me totally absorbed, total like when I used to play the piano.  I also have a dream that one day things will become more steady in my life… where I will be living in a more natural environment with a beloved, teaching yoga together, and perhaps there will be space for a piano like keyboard in one corner of our home… I hope this is not a mere dream but a possibility… I wish for this with my whole heart.

Monday, November 21, 2011

be light


Finally on a lighter note J I am feeling fine, I am feeling that my hormones are playing pranks on me each month and I began worrying about things without any cause…  And this morning I decided it is enough, I can see this and practice not taking it seriously. I just read this on a wall of a friend “Worrying is like praying for what you don’t want” ha!  Have to remember this! And I have to enjoy being in love; really, otherwise what is the point???

I also realized this morning why it is important to have a teacher and why actually good teacher trainings are kind of necessary to learn how to teach and adjust… I actually learned a valuable lesson this time while I was gone regarding one’s practice versus teaching. These don’t necessarily reflect each other; yes they can but teaching is a whole different skill which we learn by time, hopefully by studying with good teachers, ideally assisting them… 

Well today is a sunny nice day.  I am reading “Krishnamacharya: His life and Teaching” by A.G. Mohan which is an easy and an interesting read and I should finish it soon… ok, there has been few times I complained that he brags maybe too much regarding being close to Krishnamacharya, but I guess I am a bit envies, I mean who would not be proud of this? J I heard about Mohan and his book from a friend who was in Mysore while Mohan was invited to the shala to give a speech this past season… What is interesting in the book is how Krishnamacharya would give different recipes for each student and how he was always keen on accepting only the really interested people as students which I like…




Sunday, November 20, 2011

the mermaid



I am not grounded today…  I feel lots of fear without any reason…  it makes me want to give up everything in life.  I know this sounds so negative but this is how I feel.  I am such an impatient one, I want to see everything laid out in front of me, I want to be sure of what is ahead even though I know this is not possible even when I plan things carefully.  There are always changes, adjustments that come along with time. Before, I did not feel so much fear perhaps because I was the king of my own kingdom…  but now it is different and I am so scared of being hurt that I see that my paranoia can ruin things.  I don’t know how to be serene because all these unconscious old patterns are being awakened and they are bombarding my psyche.  During these times I feel as if nothing is helping me, not the asana, not the meditation, not the therapy, everything out the window and I am on my own with my fears… I suddenly lack trust in myself and in life, that things will be ok, I will be ok no matter what happens.  I forget that painful situations as well as beautiful ones take me wherever I need to be going.  I forget that this need to control things is not helpful but stressful for everyone... this goes on forever… but then I also see that perhaps because of these times, because of this tendency to be so ungrounded that I need such a physically challenging practice which brings me back to my body, back to this earth… 
As I think all these, I keep experimenting.  Just as I think no practice works, I sat on the cushion to see what will happen.…  It brings a bit calmness but that is not for certain each time, next time I might find myself in tears…  But reminding myself, over and over, that we are not separate, we are not all that different from each other and so learning to accept.  As I sat today, the little mermaid story came to my mind…  When I was a kid, each time I was told that story I sobbed; my heart went for the little mermaid… maybe I did associate with her and still does, afraid of becoming a foam in the sea…  So, not to become a foam in the sea, to stay in this body, I have to make sure to wake up for my asana practice tomorrow morning… just like this I have to keep practicing all day long, taming the body, taming the breath, taming the mind, taming the emotions… and then let whatever is suppose to happen, happen…


Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Time



I donnu how it is slipping through my hands…  It makes me wonder where I will end up in no time again…  I am being reminded of my mom’s words to me when I was too depressed last summer, her telling me not to waste my time with being so sad because this precious time we have goes by so fast, that she cannot believe how the time passed so fast that I am in my 30s now…  Well she of course had a point but also it was invaluable for me at that time to go down so low…  It showed me a lot, also made me feel things more deeply, not pleasant feelings but rather disturbing ones which made me face myself more honestly and brought this process of learning to except myself with more openness… It is still an on going process which will take a life time…

I am facing myself in my practice everyday but also now in someone else who is mirroring me in so many ways…  Practicing on the mat has been fine. Things that I work on do not come easily and then still there are things happening slowly slowly… Some days I get frustrated, why so slow progress??? and then I see it is my mind which gets fixated on doing it the wrong way!  Ha! I am so prone to expect the negative, it is also in my practice and then of course that can be the result. This is actually a good lesson because it is in other parts of my life as well.  One part of my life has been high lighted for the past couple of months.  I have been avoiding it so well and now I have to open the doors and windows and let the new air circulate; however, it is not easy.  Many spider webs, holding onto old memories, old feelings, visions…  I shrink and get scared because expect same ways of treatment I had before which has nothing to do with the one in front of me, …  Then I go to other end, I panic and try to hold on really tight so it does not slip away and of course everything gets cramped up when there is no space to breath..  and one more time to the other side of the pendulum, I begin thinking about giving up, “what is the point, it won’t work anyways” syndrome...  so back and forth…  negative to positive, all great to hell run…  Of course my point of reference is not the actuality of now but the past… Events and people from the past and past behaviour patterns of mine which were adopted at the time due to circumstances that have little to do with the present moment, present me or with the person across from me.  Ahh, this is harder then the yoga practice on my mat.  Realizing, and not going on with all this habitual patterns of past but creating a new reality, a new belief system, new point of view, new ways of responding, communicating and a way to see the reality with naked eyes rather than with a vision blurred with the past…  On the other hand, I guess my practice on the mat still can inform this new task I took upon, and create a reference point. One point to start from is to not give up and to take the task everyday in the same way I take upon my daily practice… I owe this to myself not because there has to be something grand at the end of this whole thing, maybe it will fade away, but I think there is a great possibility of learning, and understanding that can come out of it just as there was from the low I have been through last summer.  I don’t want to avoid, run away from it due to my fears.  I have enough confidence to face other parts of life as well… and there is this beautiful being in front of me who is as human as I am and not afraid to show this to me, no pretentiousness, much openness and same as me dealing with fears and reluctances…