which comes first...the class or the chaos?
remembering the purpose of the practice
You’ll notice a lot of what I write, think and teach circles around being a parent to a small boy. I’m aware this runs the risk of me becoming one of those twatty sounding mums who harps on about nothing but motherhood, but it can’t be helped - he pretty heavily influences all the parts of my life he technically doesn’t even have anything to do with.
Yoga included.
This week he served me up another one of those life lessons/think pieces when, first thing on Monday morning, he absolutely fucking lost it about going into nursery. I’m not talking rage - I’m talking whole body, nervous-system-says-no, heartbreaking devastation.
It didn’t take many breathy sobs of ‘I…want…to….go…home…’ before I realised there’s no way I was going home and working that day.
For context….he bloody loves nursery. He’s got the cutest little mates, they run around outside most of the day and he usually goes in happy as Larry. So I figured something else was going on under the surface (that he probably didn’t even know) and there was no way I was pushing on and overriding that kind of reaction.
So we headed home, threw some Tumble Leaf on for a while and had long old cuddle, went for a walk, did some drawing and generally tried to decompress. That mostly went well until I found out a pigeon had made its way into the studio and got stuck in there, shitting all over the shop. But that’s a whole different set of drama we don’t need to get into here.
I was teaching that night (sans pigeon) and as ever, like to teach off the back of whatever my practice looks like off my mat, and in my life.
That day’s chaos had served me up plenty of teaching fodder…
I could have talked about how life is never linear and some days we have to just roll with it…
Or I could have gone down the route of holding space…not fixing, distracting or steam-rolling a nervous system that’s clearly saying no (how often do we do the equivalent ourselves, ignoring our inner child fucking screaming that something is wrong, only to plough on regardless?).
Then there was the option of getting into that idea of sitting in tension…the push pull moment of ‘shit, what do I do?’ - holding steady in a moment where there’s no clear cut answer in discomfort.
But I went for option D (mentally banking the rest for another day).
The idea that standing at a nursery door with a sobbing toddler who is usually absolutely dandy is exactly the sort of thing yoga is made for - not the other way around.
When we’ve had days that have challenged us, tested us and turned us upside down it’s easy to escape to our mats as a place of solace. Isn’t ‘relaxation’ one of the key reasons so many of our students seek us out in the first place?
Yoga becomes a response to the chaos of our lives. A balm to our nervous system that helps us go on to face another day.
And yes, the right practice absolutely is nourishing and nurturing and all of those delicious, feel good adjectives. But yoga is more than just the thing that comes after….the best practices are the ones that help prevent that chaos feeling quite so…chaotic.
It’s what gives us the tools to sit in those moments with the ability to stay present and calm(ish), keep perspective, offer grace, or at least pull ourselves more quickly out of the spiral when it catches hold.
It stitches itself into the fabric of our being so deeply that when the shit inevitably hits the fan, we’re primed. We have this whole arsenal of yoga shaped weapons to draw on…
We’ve practiced holding space for ourselves in moments of extreme discomfort, so we’re more able to hold others in those moments too.
We’ve experienced what it feels like to push through, pull back or hold steady on our mat, so it’s easier to know which is needed in our lives.
We’ve learned to keep breathing through the most challenging moments on our mat, so when we do get overwhelmed, that feels more like second nature.
We've practiced noticing our thoughts so often without being swept away by them, that we're less likely to let our minds spiral when a shitty headspace tries to take hold.
We’ve come face to face with our impatience. Our resistance. Our insecurities. Our boredom. Our frustrations and our own worst inner-critic.
We’ve seen the best and worst of ourselves.
We’ve been humbled. We’ve been challenged. We’ve been cracked wide open and we’ve been gently rebuilt in a new form.
And still, we’ve stayed.
Those tools don’t give us all the answers we need to make the chaos go away completely, but with enough pre-emptive practice, they can be a bloody good help.
In reality, it’s the perfect chicken and egg scenario and we probably need both - the practice that prepares us and the practice that picks us and dusts us off afterwards.
So make sure you’re teaching and practicing both. Holding space for the after that helps patch your students up when they’ve been through the ringer, but arm them (and yourselves) with the tools to survive the during too.
PS. In other news, I sent an email out yesterday to my main mailing list about our long weekend teacher gathering in Somerset on September 11th. It’s low-key, low-cost ‘family holiday’ vibes in a beautiful farmhouse. 3 nights of sharing practices, chats, snacks and time together from £425. Shoot me a reply if you didn’t get the email and want to hear more.
If anything I’ve written has ever made you think twice, chuckle, question everything you know or feel a little less shitty about things, consider coming on as a paid subscriber to show your support for what I do and keep this ship afloat 💛