This week Sumit Banerjee taught a few classes at my home studio as part of a teacher training he was winding up in Bali. I did the training to teach his series, a mixture of Bikram and Ashtanga set partly to music, a while ago and now lead maybe one class a week. I still screw up my lefts and rights and twists and planks and reverses.
So of course it was interesting to attend his classes. He played his music LOUD (only for some portions of the class), so loud that it was quite impossible to hear his instructions, but as about 90% of the class knew the series (that is, save for a few stray walk-ins striking gold), a domino effect sort of took place where whoever was near him followed his instruction (which they knew was coming anyway, just not quite when) and then everyone else peering under an armpit or through knees then followed.
I loved the loud music, but I know the series. I’d love to see him teach an 8am Friday class, where eight walk-ins who have never done the series before and one person who sort of knows it is in the class. He may well turn it down a notch, who knows, but it got me thinking about how in a sense it doesn’t matter about the ratio of anatomically correct descriptions, versus energy, versus Instagrammable quotes you bring into the room (and he brought a few of those!).
The important thing is to bring a blend that is authentically you. I probably won’t return to a teacher who is 90% Instagrammable quotes and 10% energy blah blah and who doesn’t know a thing about how to describe doing a camel pose. But I definitely won’t return to someone who isn’t bringing their real selves into the room. There’s a lot of stuff you have to get out of the way before you can do that, I know. I guess that doesn’t stop.
It was interesting too to later hear some regulars complain about having the room so crowded (maybe 28-30 people) because people were knocking water bottles around and flicking sweat and so on. The more the merrier, I reckon. I find it soooo much easier to practise when the room is packed; I find I can just ride that wave of energy with no effort compared to a class with just a few other people (or practising alone, which is damn difficult).
It’s true though that as a student, a great class depends not just on the teacher but also the other students in the room. Everyone brings their own energy; I love practising near some people and I will go out of my way to avoid others. Essentially, the students I love having in close view are those who bring a dedication to their practice with them. They are the students who are calm, don’t necessarily do the postures in any great depth, but rather do them slowly and with great focus and commitment. They are the tortoises, not the hares. They are the ones I try to emulate and I deeply believe their calm is contagious.
They are the same students I love having as a teacher to bolster the rest of the room.
And I know none of this should matter, by the way. I’m working on it!
Reading
Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan. After it being MIA for six months, I finally declared my old Kindle dead and a friend muled up a new one for me from Oz (thanks Geoff!) Diving into old buys: I think I bought this one because I could NOT put down Apple Tree Yard, and the blurb mentions it’s the best of its genre since then. So far, so true. Juicy, delicious. See a review.
The Art of the Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters by Priya Parker. I read an old blog post recently about crappy dinner parties and I’m totally on board with the idea. It was just after reading a bit in this book (see an interview with the author here) about focusing gatherings around a purpose. Let me know if you want to come, and we won’t tidy up.
"Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think” (The Atlantic, July 2019 issue).
Stand-by, big quote:
Many people of achievement suffer as they age, because they lose their abilities, gained over many years of hard work. Is this suffering inescapable, like a cosmic joke on the proud? Or is there a loophole somewhere—a way around the suffering?
Acharya answered elliptically, explaining an ancient Hindu teaching about the stages of life, or ashramas. The first is Brahmacharya, the period of youth and young adulthood dedicated to learning. The second is Grihastha, when a person builds a career, accumulates wealth, and creates a family. In this second stage, the philosophers find one of life’s most common traps: People become attached to earthly rewards—money, power, sex, prestige—and thus try to make this stage last a lifetime.
The antidote to these worldly temptations is Vanaprastha, the third ashrama, whose name comes from two Sanskrit words meaning “retiring” and “into the forest.” This is the stage, usually starting around age 50, in which we purposefully focus less on professional ambition, and become more and more devoted to spirituality, service, and wisdom. This doesn’t mean that you need to stop working when you turn 50—something few people can afford to do—only that your life goals should adjust.
Vanaprastha is a time for study and training for the last stage of life, Sannyasa, which should be totally dedicated to the fruits of enlightenment. In times past, some Hindu men would leave their family in old age, take holy vows, and spend the rest of their life at the feet of masters, praying and studying. Even if sitting in a cave at age 75 isn’t your ambition, the point should still be clear: As we age, we should resist the conventional lures of success in order to focus on more transcendentally important things.
“Where are all the books about menopause?”, The New Yorker, June 17, 2019.
But what if that anger isn’t separable from physiology? What if, as menopausal women discover more forcefully than the rest of us, the duality of body and mind is simply irrelevant?
Watching
Chernobyl. Once I got past all the various accents and the fact they were speaking English, FARK. Haunting.
Fleabag. As one viewer tweeted: We can stop making TV series now. We’ve made the perfect one.
Playing
DuoLingo. Finally paid up. My Indonesian has improved so dramatically I popped my head into my local cafe the other day at 4pm and asked them whether they were already open. Haha. 🤦♀️. But seriously, a great way to learn a language!