Finding your own way to wellbeing

Welcome to What My Body Wants – or in this case, what your body wants.  Here you’ll find inspiration and practical help to make little changes in the way you look after your body, your mind and your life.  Little changes lead to big differences in the way you look, feel and connect with the world.

Consider this official permission to give yourself the attention, love and space that you want and (like totally) deserve.

Understanding the subtle beauty of your body and your mind gives you a deeper connection with life and sparkle in your step. From the lunchtime walk that gets you through your work day to a yoga practice that lets you connect with your spiritual self, giving your mind and body a bit of extra attention helps you be clearer about what you want, more motivated and more connected in your relationships.

Lessons from the Yoga Mat #2: On effortlessness

There is a yogic concept which has transformed the way I move and even the way I work.  The term is effortlessness.

In effortless, I am able to use just the right amount of energy to move.  In effortlessness I am grounded in my body, my breath comes easily, and I use my body in a way that is best for me, right then.

Many people say, “I’m not flexible enough for yoga”.  They say they aren’t very good at yoga because they can’t touch their toes or reach their feet behind their head.

I happen to be rather flexible.  Not as flexible as the contortionists at the circus, but I can touch my toes, do splits and even bend over backwards until my head touches my toes.

But this does not make me good at yoga.  In fact, at times, I have even found it to be a hindrance.

When I started out in yoga I did many of the more advanced postures easily.  Easily in the sense that I made the shape look like the same bendy shape the teacher was doing.

But there is a difference between doing something easily, and doing it effortlessly.  There is a difference between making the shape and doing yoga.

In a yoga asana we are mindful.  We are aware of our body.  We are present with our breathing.  We are acting with intention.

Take a couple of breaths now and notice how it feels to breathe.  Observe how your chest moves, your stomach, your back and your sides.  Notice the speed of your breath.

And now notice how easily you breathe.  Is it comfortable to breathe?

What would it mean to breathe effortlessly?

You can try a similar thing with your arm.  Raise your arm above your head and then place it in your lap again.  Repeat the movement a few times, experimenting with the feeling of being really aware of your arm – and what it might mean to move your arm effortlessly.

People suffering from illnesses like Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome often find themselves worn out after the smallest amount of activity.  The same thing can happen when we are under stress, or even in a new situation like a change of job or a new city: we seem to be tired more easily than normal, more out of sorts.

And then there are those times when I can do so much for so long and be really very well indeed.

So what is the difference?

The difference is in the way I manage my energy.  How much energy I use to move my body through the day, the amount of energy I use to think, and the amount of energy I give to others and receive in return.

My physical practice happens to be yoga.  Yours may be Tai Chi, relaxation or a mindful walk through the park.  Whatever your practice of choice, if that practice allows you to connect with your body then you will notice that with time you are better able to know what your body is capable of.  When you are present in your body, you know when it needs to rest. When you are connected with your body you give it permission to do what it asks of you.  When you are aware of your body, you are more easily able to move effortlessly.

Treat your body and yourself to some moments of pause today.  Perhaps a few breaths before you go to sleep. In those moments of stillness, listen to what your body is asking of you.  Give yourself permission to nurture yourself.

Whatever your health situation right now, in this moment, your body is a precious thing and it deserves care.  Practice moving in effortlessness each day and notice how moving, however small that movement may be, becomes a joy.

Lessons from a yoga mat #1 What does Samadhi mean to a girl in Perth on a yoga mat in her lounge room

The second book of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, one of the foundation texts of yoga, tells us what we have to do to move towards the ultimate objective of yoga.

“Do I know what the objective of yoga is?” you might be wondering.  “I’m just there for the relaxation and the stretching.  I’m not really into the whole spiritual thing.  I didn’t think there was a goal.”

People take up yoga for many reasons: injury, exercise, stress, to balance out other more intense activities.  Very often the reason we continue yoga is not the same reason we started with, and sometimes that reason is hard to define.  We just know we aren’t the same without it.  Our muscles are tighter, our brains race and things seem a bit more frantic.

I’m easily fooled into thinking that tight muscles, racing brain and franticness are the only way.  I’ll talk myself out of a Yoga practice by finding other more important things to do, like cleaning the bathroom, checking Facebook or having a coffee.  ”I’m too busy,” I pronounce confidently, tinged with guilt at being a bad example of a yoga teacher but rather missing the point of what it’s all about.

And then, after some days or hours of avoidance, I come back to my mat.   After just a few moments of an opening posture, my breathing slows, I am more present and it is as if everything that was a worry two minutes prior is put into perspective.   I think, “This is why I do this.” I am once again aware of my own objective for yoga, albeit in a slightly abstract way.

The Yoga Sutras, depending on the precise translation, describe the ultimate objective of yoga as the control of fluctuations of the mind,  as achieving Samadhi,  as being conscious of being conscious without thinking,  as liberation from mental constraints, as seeing things as they truly are.  You might hear it said as true union, or connection with the divine.(1)

Now, after an hour on the mat I will often feel really, really good but it would feel somewhat brazen to suggest it was anything that would take me close to true union or connection with the divine.  I’d like to think it’s the case but sometimes I’m not sure.  I’m just an Australian girl in her lounge room on a yoga mat and my Catholic upbringing says things like that don’t happen to people like me.

And so I find myself torn between believing my practice has a spiritual benefit and not feeling I have a right to describe it as such in the language I see in the texts, or even in other people’s blogs.

During my studies in Yogic Education at Université de Lille II, we explored a new place for yoga in the west.  We studied and researched the role of a yogic education in a context of western health – which included finding an appropriate language.

The reality is that your belief systems will affect how you make sense of a yoga class.   Your culture will have an impact on the way you articulate your experience in that class.  And your life experience will determine how you actually carry out your yoga practice.

So it makes sense that how you express Samadhi or divine union is heavily dependent on where and how you live.   Controlling the fluctuations of the mind may manifest for you as handling work stress differently; liberation from mental constraints could shine through when you realise your partner just might be right after all; and perhaps, for now, true union is sitting on the beach, content and knowing that work and life will be and are OK.

However you experience your intention for yoga, notice it.  Be present to how you change physically and mentally, and let that growth extend beyond the yoga mat.   Connect with your own experience of a yogic education in the world in which you live – and from there develop your own awareness of just why you practice.

NB Many of the texts I use are French translations so you may see me use some different spellings for certain Sanskrit words.

References and inspiration:
Chandrika Gibson is a naturopath and yoga therapist and writes regularly about the integration of yoga in every day life in Nova Magazine. Dr Deb Zucker of Vital Medicine, inspired me in a lecture with the idea of nourishing as a means of enabling future health.  Yoga for Dummies was also sitting on my housemate’s bookshelf and it does come in handy for quick references.  (Some stuff does require a double check, though.)  (1) -

Our own, very personal definition of health

Yesterday I spoke at Perth’s ME and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Society’s Support Group, housed at The Niche by The Centre for Neurological Support.  Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia are such unique diagnoses: it’s not just that we don’t really know why someone suffers from these illnesses, we can’t even narrow it down to one bacteria, one virus or any one cause.

In terms of our healing, the journey each of us takes between what science tells us is well and what it means to us personally to be in good health is like treading a slackrope hung between two palm trees we can’t remember planting.

In my own personal case the causes and the symptoms of my fatigue and pain were so intertwined that even if we had identified one main trigger (say, low iron) and treated it (which we did, by iron infusion) there were a whole heap of downstream effects that needed caring for too, even simply the stress that results from being unwell for so long.

I do advocate finding a doctor who understands you and will work with you to find out what is wrong.  And yet there is only so far I find I can go with my doctor.  If my doctor considers the absence of a clear problem as his definition of “OK”, then he will pronounce me just fine.  Or say he doesn’t know.  He has done his professional duty – he can see nothing that western medicine knows of that will kill me and that is as much as he can do.

But I know my body and I know when it isn’t quite right.  Alternative therapists or a GP with a slightly different angle on health will give me more useful pointers to make me feel more well, rather than just treating what is wrong.

And yet even then there is only so far we can go together.

My perception of being well and “over” chronic fatigue may be different from yours.  As I spoke about yesterday, and as I have shared with other support groups, I consider myself completely recovered – and yet my life is completely different to what it was five years ago.  Were I to go back to working six days a week on a construction site maybe I wouldn’t be so well.

Why not?  Well, the stresses on my body would be different: my sleep patterns would change, I would have to focus on particular tasks at particular time, my holiday times would be different.  And so too the people I spend most of my day with would change completely.  The overall intention for my life would not be what it is right now.

So perhaps it is not that I am recovered, but I am through it.

Yesterday we opened the discussion by identifying our question for Chronic Fatigue.  They included: What is physiologically wrong with me?  Why am I like this?  What is the cause?  What can I learn from this?

Mine was: How can I enable people suffering to give themselves permission to get the care they need and find new possibilities for feeling well, wherever they are at?

While there are many common aspects to health, the internal, subjective experience for each of is, as Deb Zucker of Vital Medicine highlights in the work I have been lucky enough to see her do on integral medicine, different.

Even when we all identify with the same illness by name, what is going on for us is different.  That experience also changes with time.   When I was very ill, in the beginning I wanted to know what was wrong with me; I wanted to know “Why?”

As acceptance arrived, the question became “What needs to change?” and then to “And what do I need now?”

Once I gave myself permission to give my body and myself what it needed, I was able to ask “What opportunities are there for me right now?”  and then something more like “What do I choose right now?”

If we know the question we have for our health we can find a physician who can help us answer that question.  We can recognise when we pass into a new phase of understanding of our health, either by realizing we have answered the question or by finding that the question is Mu - no longer relevant in the way we are asking it.

Stay abreast of medical knowledge.  Know where you can get help when you need it.  And in the meantime, enable your own progress by asking questions of yourself, taking time out to give yourself permission to get the care you need.  And ultimately, continually explore the possibilities for what wellbeing means to you, right now.

Rachael’s work: Yoga, awareness and a new experience (excerpts from a University Diploma of Yogic Education)

I introduced you briefly to the University Diploma of Yogic Education I studied recently in northern France in this blog post.  I promised to share with you the work I did as part of that study on changing perceptions of workplace stress.

The whole thesis is about 60 pages, accompanied by another 43 or so pages of (assessable) reflective notes, so I will spare you and share just a series of excerpts.

The piece I offer today is the prefix to my Carnet de Bord, summing up my personal experience of the course and framing the subsequent reams of reflective analysis.  It concludes with my intention for my work: as often happens when we take time out for study or new projects later in life,  this course gave me much clarity around my direction.

And as often happens when we find our way we very quickly lose it again.  As such, to remind you and to remind me:

Diplome Universitaire d’Education Yoguique: an introduction to yoga and the way it changes how you experience your world

On having a car

I’m back on trains, buses and my vintage green bicycle after two weeks’ access to car.  I haven’t owned a car in nearly five years and my fortnight with one, thanks to a friend who went on holidays, tested my relationship with motor vehicles: how I use them, how I feel when I drive, and whether actually having a car alters my perspective of how much I need one.

Perth isn’t the most public transport-friendly city but when I returned six months ago, inspired by living in places like the bicycle utopia that is The Netherlands, I wanted to give life sans voiture a chance.   Initially I managed quite well, by living close to train stations and finding a bike I loved, as well as accepting lifts for journeys to harder-to-reach places (which admittedly in Perth is about two thirds of suburbia).

Enter stage left access to a four-wheel motorised machine that let me attend Christmas parties in suburbs where the buses stop at 7pm.    I dropped two friends at the airport and carried 12 cans of cat food home in ONE TRIP! I even dashed off to use the library’s internet and air-conditioning without having to consider a packed lunch and water bag or lather up in suncream.  While this spontaneity came to bite me soon after when said hatchback became locked in the library compound overnight and I had to take a train home anyway, for the most part, time and temperature were never enough to prevent me from doing STUFF.

On the other hand, I found that without the hassle of time and temperature to keep me from doing stuff, I was less likely to say no to doing stuff.  The discerning that would normally inform my schedule wasn’t necessary: I could separate back-to-back appointments by ten minutes, go back for something I’d left behind and easily squeeze in a couple more errands.  I didn’t have to choose what was really important.

I found, surprisingly, that I missed the empty ten minutes granted by being ready too early for my train (or by missing a train – I am writing this post as two nice public transport attendants wait for the imminent train to pass so as to pick my hat off the rail tracks where it blew onto a second ago).  I even realised that I missed the forced stillness when I jump on the train in a flurried frenzy; it’s not often we have the chance just to sit.

The third lesson for me was watching how driving disconnects me from my surrounds.  I get to my destination faster and I can belt out Gotye’s greatest hits at the top of my lungs as if the drivers’ in the 4WD next to me at the red light can’t see my diva moves through the glass, but I miss all the stuff between my house and the shops that is outside my little air-conditioned bubble.

It was this combination of less discerning, less space and less seeing that reminded me that life with a car can be very, very different to life without one.  Duh, you will say, but I’ll bet you forget it, at least every now and again.  (Can you imagine life without a mobile phone?  Or life without email on your iPhone?!)

And if you could remember that your life is different with a car, what might it mean for the way you create your life?

When I cycle to teach yoga, I am awake when I arrive at my class.  My lungs are open, my legs and stomach have worked, and I already feel I have achieved something.  I have smelt the sea air and noticed the direction of the wind (always against!).

When I travel by bike I also know if my suburb has been designed for pedestrians or cars.  A fifteen minute cycle will show me clearly just what people in my city think of bikes.   I am acutely aware of the distances between train stations and shops and I see the impact that an asphalt parking lot has for the facade, and therefore viability, of an urban café.

When I travel by bike I arrive at my destination a different person than if I drove.   Not better or worse, just different.

My two week transport test tube experience reminded me that from a car we see our city completely differently.

If we have cars because we need them – because what we do is too far in location or too close in time – we are quite likely to create a life and even a city that is that.  We don’t need our favourite café or pub to be local and so there is no impetus to create a hub in our own neighbourhood.

So while cars change how each of us lives our life, they also change how we create our life around us.  We are a different person, seeing our life and our world from a different vantage point.  Something to be aware of when it comes to deciding whether to walk or drive to the shops.  And something to be aware of when we consider how to create more dynamic cities, from the position of having a car.

Wishing you radiance in festivity

Thank you to everyone who has supported our projects over the last year, whether you attended Yoga en Francais, gave feedback on the books, or simply offered hugs when they were needed.

What My Body Wants has been some years in the making, if not nearly two decades when I first taught creative visualisation to my highschool English class. The projects since then have been motivated by my own journey through chronic fatigue, change of career and adjustment to new countries and new places. They have also been informed and inspired by incredible people I have watched transform their own life and help others to do the same.

Back in my hometown of Perth now, I see a city and a state that has profited from financial prosperity unlike much of the rest of the world. In the midst of that, emerging pockets are asking how we best invest that wealth: for ourselves, for our city, for the world.

Whether 2011 has brought you insight into the way you care for  yourself, the way you are with others, or the contribution your work

makes for the world, I hope that 2012 brings you many opportunities for creating and experiencing joy, connection and possibility.

Wishing you a radiant festive season,

Rachael

Give Yoga for Christmas

If your loved ones are the kind of folk who have everything they want or are all about experience, here are some suggestions to help them see in the new year with peace and possibility…at special festive prices for orders before December 21.

Private yoga class: $55
(valued at $90)

Group yoga class: $15
(valued at $18)

Private yoga class…en Francais: $65 (valued at $110)

Group yoga class…en Francais: $15
(valued at $25)

Set of four Yoga en Francais classes: $55
(valued at $100)

Body awareness and possibility: tailored private and group sessions for managing stress, illnesses such as Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia, or simply a busy, busy life.  A variety of options available from $20 – $150.

Wishing you a rejuvenating, life-giving holiday.

Rachael