Jade Lizzie

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Tag: travel

Planning, preparation and borderline panic

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On March 8, 2015

In travel, yoga

SuitcaseReflections on my last week in the UK…

One of the reasons I started yoga was for the feeling of calm it left me with. And since I began practising every day, I have been noticeably more relaxed. Except last week. Last week there were more relaxed chickens in slaughterhouses.

It didn’t help that I left all planning and preparation to the last minute. I had a house to move out of, a car to sell, all my worldy goods to store, vaccinations to arrange, flights to book and that was all before I even thought about packing. I needed to do lists to keep track of my to do lists. Given that I am not the most naturally well-organised person in the world, this sent me slightly mad.

I found myself frantically multitasking, and doing it badly. At any one time I would be emailing a Workaway host, checking travel insurance details, dividing clothes into “take”, “leave” and “maybe” piles, and trying to get a last minute appointment at the travel clinic.  All this really meant is that completing these jobs took ten times longer than it should have.

Unfortunately during this time when I probably needed yoga more than ever, it became just another task to tick off the list. Determined not to let my daily practice slide, I made sure I did it, but in retrospect this may not have been the best decision. I found myself in forward bends, with my mobile between my feet, texting people about selling my car. It wasn’t until I cut my ankle falling out of a headstand because I was trying to grab my sunglasses case from under the table that I knew I’d taken multitasking too far. Quite aside from the mental benefits of being mindful during yoga practice, it turns out it’s downright dangerous not to be…

It was a huge relief to find myself on the plane at last, knowing that although I still wasn’t Montecorto bedroom100% organised, I was on my way anyway. And doing my yoga practice this morning in a beautiful room that looks out over the Andalucian countryside was a very different experience. I even managed to turn my phone off, which I consider real progress!

Yoga Teacher Training in Valencia: The Highlights

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On February 11, 2015

In travel, yoga, Yoga Teacher Training

Why I’d choose Yoga Teacher Training over a holiday any day of the year…

Valencia pool picI spent 10 beautiful days in Valencia in October last year beginning my Yoga Teacher Training with Bahia Yoga. It was amazing. I got a few quizzical looks when I told people I was spending 10 days of my precious annual leave on a course. “But don’t you want a holiday?” was a question I was asked a lot. I did (and still do, to be honest!) but this was better.

Before I start to rave about the weather and the stunning surroundings (which I am going to, you have been warned!), it is worth pointing out that this was a serious study course, not a yoga retreat. Every day I learnt so much physically, academically and emotionally that my brain hurt and my body ached.  Despite the fact I am usually a chronic insomniac, I fell asleep almost instantly each night, which was a good job given that our alarm for morning meditation went off at 5.45am. I enjoyed the whole process though, massive geek that I am. Having spent five years as a teacher, there is something lovely about allowing yourself to be a student again, and completely focusing on learning from others.

Once I’d chosen to train with Bahia Yoga, I had a choice as to whether to study one weekend per month in Nottingham, or to do the course over two 10-day stints in Valencia. Now, I am a big fan of Nottingham – it’s my home city and I think it’s massively underrated, but I have to say, it was a no-brainer for me. The opportunity to study in beautiful Valencia, where we could practise outside, and relax by the pool during study breaks was one I could not turn down. Even the weather was on our side – it was October, but still beautifully warm and sunny.

Being so far away from everything, we were in a secluded little bubble. It was still pitch black when we got up each morning, but this meant I experienced for the first time the magic of practising yoga as the sun came up. Meals were eaten in silence (or at least we tried!) and the daily meditation practice meant I felt more relaxed and at peace than ever before.

That’s not to say that it was a humourless affair. It’s possible I’m slightly biased, but I am of the firm belief that people who do yoga are especially interesting, lovely and funny. And the wonderful people I trained with in Valencia proved my theory. It was like spending 10 days with old friends, except old friends whose stories and jokes you haven’t heard before, so you still have all the enjoyment of getting to know each other.

Admittedly this desire to learn more about each other did lead to some bending of the silence rules. Particularly around bedtimes, mild hysteria tended to kick in, as we dissected the day, whispering while we completed our homework. Decidedly un-yogic mosquito massacres also became part of our shared routine.  My new yoga buddies provided light relief when the physical practice became too intense – my favourite quote of the course came from one fellow trainee (who shall remain nameless!) who gasped after lifting up into Bow Pose. When the teacher asked her what was wrong she announced to the room, “It hurts my fanny!”

The whole experience was brilliant – I returned feeling rested, re-energised and motivated to make the changes in my life that I had been avoiding for a long time. I could not be more pleased that in April I will be returning to Valencia to (hopefully!) complete my Yoga Teacher Training. It turns out there are some things that are even better than holidays.

Yoga and cake with the cool kids in East London

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On February 8, 2015

In yoga

Photo reproduced with kind permission of Mandy at Emm in London

After a stressful week, spending a day in London with a friend yesterday was exactly what I needed. She’s recently moved to Bethnal Green, and we went to a Dynamic Yoga class with Adam at Stretch London on Ada Street, which came highly recommended by another friend. It was brilliant.

Since I started my yoga teacher training, I’m constantly on the lookout for things I can learn from other teachers – it’s one of the reasons I’m so excited about my travel plans for the next six months. As a teacher, and I’m not just talking about yoga here, I think you learn the most from watching other teachers – everyone has their own unique teaching style and that’s great, but I have never seen a single lesson or been to a single class that I couldn’t take something away from. That said, I’ve been focusing recently on my self-practice of yoga, so I was very ready to experience some actual teaching again.

The teacher and class yesterday were so good that had I not been completely zenned out by the end I would have been grabbing my notebook and frantically making notes so I didn’t forget anything. So while it’s still reasonably fresh in my mind, what did I like best?

The creativity and openness of the practice

I’ve been basing my daily practice for the last 12 weeks on the Ashtanga Yoga Primary Series. I’ll  blog about this soon, because I do love it, but because this is so structured and disciplined, it was great to mix it up a bit. I wasn’t sure what to expect from “Dynamic Yoga”, but it was a beautiful flowing class with quite an unexpected sequence of postures. Adam combined longer holds of postures with flowing sequences and vinyasas in an order which kept me on my toes, and yet felt very natural.  He invited his students to make the practice their own – to adapt if postures didn’t feel good.

The adjustments

This openness of approach did not lead to a lapse in focus on form, which can be the danger with very flowing classes. It’s so easy to inadvertently injure yourself by rushing through postures with poor form, but Adam’s instructions and adjustments were precise and clear. Yes, you could adapt the flow to suit your body, but no, you could not lose all sense of form and alignment. I love adjustments, because I find it difficult to sense where exactly my body is in space. I tell myself I’m not clumsy, just proprioceptively-challenged! Unsurprisingly, it turns out my hips in trikonasana and downward facing dog are nowhere near where I thought they were. I got two helpful adjustments during this class, which I thought was good going, considering there were 24 students in the class.

The supportive, yet challenging atmosphere

I’ll admit, I was a little apprehensive that the class would feel a bit cliquey – it’s right next to Shoreditch, so it definitely attracts the cool kids of yoga. But actually, the atmosphere was inviting and supportive. I felt completely welcome as a newbie and outsider, which does not go without saying at all yoga studios in my experience. Although Adam left it to us to determine the level that we pushed ourselves to, there were plenty of opportunities to take more advanced options. It challenged me in a different way to my ashtanga practice (and I can absolutely feel it today in my obliques! Yoga abs here I come…)

As an added bonus, we were able to float out of the yoga class and straight into Broadway Market. I personally recommend the organic carrot cake – it’s the best I’ve ever tasted (and I’ve tried a lot!).  It’s all about balance, right?!

Photograph reproduced with the kind permission of Mandy at Emm in London

How I learnt not to take yoga too seriously

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On February 3, 2015

In travel, yoga

Prayer flags Nepal

In 2007 I volunteered in Nepal with the charity TravelAid. Bhola Yogi, the principal of the children’s home where we worked offered to teach us yoga in return for our volunteering.  He didn’t have to ask twice. There was no way we were going to miss out on the opportunity to tell people we’d been taught yoga at 6am every morning on a rooftop in Nepal, by a man whose actual surname was “Yogi”.

6am yoga classes sound pretty hardcore, and in retelling the stories since, I’ve made them sound that way. But actually  in true Nepali style, Bhola-ji’s approach was laid back.  We would practise one posture, maybe two, and then Bhola would instruct us to, “Take rest.” Every minute of effort was followed by one of rest.  We loved it.  Yoga became an excuse to lie on our mats and gaze up at the sky as the sun rose each morning.

He had a similarly undemanding approach to postures that we found challenging. “If you can’t do the yoga, just think about doing the yoga. Same thing,” he would say with a dismissive wave of his hand. I’ve often wondered since whether this principle applies to other activities. When I can’t get out of bed on a bitterly cold January morning for my 6.45am spinning class, will just thinking about it have the same effect? I really hope so.

Bhola-ji did not shy away from directing us about the more personal details of our yoga practice. “Long toilet before yoga, so the stomach is free.  Short toilet after,” was his euphemistic instruction.  And he practised what he preached.  Many a morning we sat shivering on the rooftop at 6am waiting for Bhola to finish his “long toilet” before he would come to teach us.

Our yoga practices like most aspects of our lives in Nepal were seemed hilarious. Perhaps we were giddy from the shortage of oxygen at altitude, or maybe from the sugar in all the mangoes we were eating, but most postures had us collapsed in fits of giggles. Bhola positively encouraged this – one of his all-time favourite postures was Happy Baby, which he urged us to laugh our way through.  This wasn’t something I found difficult given that I was holding a position that made me feel ready for a gynaecological exam. It wasn’t elegant. When you add to that the fact that Bhola’s favourite instruction was to tell us all to “Relaaaaax,” you have a recipe for hysteria.

He had the last laugh. We’d been diligently practising our sun salutations for 4 weeks when Bhola admitted that the “Lion’s Roar” – an open-mouthed, claw-fisted posture that he’d encourage us to hold then loudly roar to release – was just something he included as a joke when he taught children. He never expected us to fall for it.

Being surrounded by such happy people with such an amazingly positive approach to life taught me not to

Returning to yin: my first yoga love

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On February 1, 2015

In Uncategorized

Yin YangI’m beginning my yoga blogging a little closer to home, with the class that started my yoga obsession. Perhaps surprisingly for someone who enjoys exercising to the point of sweaty, scarlet-faced, endorphin-fuelled exhaustion, my first consistent yoga practice was yin yoga. Shortly after I moved back to Nottingham in 2008, I went along to one of Mike Morris’ yin yoga classes, and from that point onwards I was hooked.  I went every week, and (sometimes!) even remembered to practise in between.

Yin yoga is a slow and mindful practice, where you hold postures for much longer periods of time than in most forms of hatha yoga, typically 3-5 minutes. Rather than muscular effort, you use gravity and your own body weight to go deeper into the postures. This allows access to the fascia and connective tissue, which in the Taoist tradition are thought of as the “yin” tissues of the body.

I loved it. The stillness, the calm, the letting go, and even the discomfort.  Because for all its deceptive gentleness, yin yoga can be really damned uncomfortable.  While you may not be holding the postures through muscular exertion, you still feel it. Trust me on this one. Five minutes of “allowing gravity to do the work” while you lie in sleeping swan with your leg tucked beneath you and your thigh externally rotating from the hip, and you really know about it. Gravity might be doing the work, but it’s certainly not going to take the discomfort for you too.

Yin yoga became my touchstone though.  That class every week was the closest I could get at the time to practising meditation.  I learnt to sit with my body, sit with the postures, sit with the sensations and not fight them. The idea of accepting and even exploring discomfort taught me more than months of therapy could have done.

I’ve since moved to Birmingham, where I haven’t found a yin yoga class yet, so it was with genuine excitement that on a trip back to Nottingham this month I was able to go back to Mike’s class.  Returning to the practice felt like coming home.  The discomfort, which my memory had dulled, was horribly and beautifully intense.  Moving into each posture was fascinating. I felt the difference in my joints that the last three months of daily yoga practice have made – more openness in some places, and new aches, tender points and restrictions elsewhere. It was like checking in with myself again.

If you are interested in learning more about yin yoga, check out the videos here and Mike’s website here. Let me know how you get on!

Around the world in 80 yoga classes

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On January 28, 2015

In life, travel, Uncategorized, yoga

Valencia yogaOr why I’m leaving my perfectly good job to travel around the world doing yoga…

Just over a year ago, I went from teaching English in a secondary school to working as a leadership coach for an education charity. I moved city for the role and effectively started a new life. This was a good move. It gave me the opportunity to work with some incredible, inspiring teachers, and it allowed me time to reflect on what I value.

After moving, a lot of the new people I met would ask me what I did in my free time, which was pretty embarrassing. Having spent the last 5 years teaching, my honest answer was, “Erm… marking?” But gradually I realised that there are a few things I love doing. Yoga, teaching, travelling and writing. And the thing about coaching other people is that it’s hard to avoid turning the questions back on yourself sometimes. I was forced to question why I wasn’t doing more of the things I love. What was stopping me?

Mainly fear.  Fear that if I uprooted the comfortable, happy life I have now then I might not find something as good again. I compared myself to other people my age and worried that I wasn’t “progressing” enough.  Shouldn’t I be climbing the career ladder and earning more money? Shouldn’t I be buying a house and settling down?  My friends are working for promotions, getting mortgages and having babies.  I wouldn’t trust myself with a pet goldfish right now.

And the thing is that’s not what I want at the moment (cute as goldfish are). I’m lucky enough to have the freedom to choose what I want to do right now. So I decided to go for it. I handed in my notice and booked my first flights.

My plan is still very open. I’ll leave my job at the end of February and set off for Spain.  I’ll complete my yoga teacher training in Valencia, then spend the next few months travelling and doing as much yoga as I physically can, writing about my experiences and sharing what I learn.  I’m so far out of my comfort zone it hurts, and so excited that I can hardly sleep.

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