Letter to my third chakra

Dear Manipura,
I am talking to you, yes, so stop pretending you're busy doing something else please. Listen to me.
Leave on the side your digestive concerns for a while.
Try to stop worrying about everything and stop and listen.
Just listen.

You are my sun, you know you are.
Solar plexus you are, there in the middle of my body, where everything meets and everything spreads out.

RAMRAMRAMRAMRAMRAMRAMRAMRAMRAMRAMRAMRAMRAMRAMRAMRAM


I have been treating you badly, I know.
I am conscious of the mistakes I have done.
I have not trusted my gut.
I have acted against my will.
I have been following the wrong idea of me, the idea that others instilled in my mind.


I am now ready to make peace, to make love with you.
I am looking inside me, and I see who I am, I see what I want, I see YOU!


Give me the power to digest the world I live in.
Give me the strength to see my desire and follow them.





But hey! Don't get too hot. Don't burn too wild.
Calm down.
You are important, but not the only one.



I love you, my Ego, but not too much.

My Vipassana Experience

I went on 10 days silent meditation retreat few days ago.
The technique that was taught there is called Vipassana and it is related to the teachings of Siddhattha Gotama, also known as Buddha, the Enlightened.

Vipassana literally means "seeing through", "insight into the true reality of life".
It is basically a meditation technique like many others, but it is explained by the leader teacher/guru S.N. Goenka as the most effective technique because it works in a scientific way, as a rational investigation of the mind-matter phenomenon.


The explanation he gives is synthesised as such:
due to the continuous modification of the matter, the atoms, the whole substance our body and mind are made of, through Vipassana we are able to feel and understand things as they really are.
Observing from within our sensations from the top of the head to the tip of the toes and back up, we manage to grasp they continuous flow of things.
Sensations are always changing. We might sometimes feel a pleasant sensation throughout the arms, like a kind of electric shock, but few minutes later we might arrive to a painful feeling in our legs that have been immobile for forty minutes already.
Our mind's task is to welcome and detach from such feeling of pain and pleasure, cause they are all ephemeral (ANICCA).
I think this is really a good exercise for the mind because it trains it to be equanimous towards all the various CHITTA VRITTI (from Patanjali's Sutras, means: "the modifications of the mind").
Nevertheless, I reckon that Hatha Yoga helps in reaching the same goal, Samadhi, Enlightenment, Liberation, yet through other forms of mind (and body!) exercise.

During my 10 days of retreat, we were asked not to communicate to anybody (not even the red gorgeous cat that was hanging around sometimes), no eye contact, no reading nor listening to music.


The daily schedule was very strict and tough: 4am wake up (still dark), 4,30am start meditating in the Hall, 6,30am breakfast (amazing selection of food), 8am back to meditate for one hour of sitting still, without moving unless really necessary(not so hard for me though), then again meditation till 11,30, lunch till 1pm (wholesome vegetarian food), at 2,30 again sitting still for one hour (this time harder cause of my slow digestion), at 5pm tea break (and some fruit), at 6pm back to the Hall sitting for one hour without moving, then at 7pm screening the video of Goenka teaching the technique (which is basically the only moment of a sort of 'leisure activity' of the day). Back to meditate till 9pm. At 9,30 the day is over, bed-time.



The hardest thing of the whole experience was for me the amount of hours sitting.
I am a IBS sufferer, therefore I was always fighting with my mind to turn it away from the movements and the struggles of my bowels. Additionally, since you cannot express your feelings to anyone (apart from the managers, which are very professional and cold) you basically end upgoing deeper and deeper into your fears and paranoias.

Goenka's words: "Practising Vipassana is like making a surgical operation to your own consciousness. When you cut open the wound, the pus is bound to come out. It is a good sign that the pus comes out. It comes out to go away."

I managed to stay till the end. That was, I think, the biggest challenge I have ever accomplished in my life. It was hard, painful. I cried a couple of times, feeling miserable as Goenka always repeats in his discourses "we are all miserable. Vipassana helps us coming out from our misery." I had my moments of bliss and total harmony with the universe I have to say. It has been heaven and hell at the same time.

In the two following days, I felt weird: weak, emotional, fragile, like the wound was still wide open.
I went to see an Exhibition of Outsider Japanese Art at Wellcome Collection (I recommend everyone to go, really interesting!) and I felt like crying in front of many of the artworks. No comments.

Now I am definitely feeling better. I am discovering how much this experience has added to my practise. Concepts as equanimity, awareness, compassion, impermanence, detachment, love... are precious concept and in the ten days I really got to understand them on a deep level.

No, I did not continue to practise Vipassana after the retreat. One should meditate one hour in the morning and one in the evening.
I'd rather do Yoga, and Yoga-related forms of meditations.
My body needs to move, and this makes my mind quieter and clearer.

But yes, I suggest you to go once in your lifetime. It is a very worth experience to know yourself and your limits.

Thanks for reading this ;)



Please comment anything you feel relevant! Critiques are more than welcome.

Will Yoga change your life?

Yoga can change one’s life: it is true.
There are many examples of this phenomenon out there.

The fact is that Yoga is such a powerful, strong and wide system that includes both knowledge and practice that it is absolutely understandable why so many people found their answers in it.

It did change my life, too.
Not like a miracle, though.

It has changed slowly and the process is still on…I doubt it will ever end.


Yoga, with its centuries-old tradition,
with its literary masterpieces,
with the religions linked to it
and with the series of public figures that brought it to the West,
it constitutes a strong and solid apparatus
that sometimes scares people that want clear, simple and straight-forward solutions.

Yoga is good for anybody that doesn’t think that the path for happiness is like a stroll in the park in springtime...

Yoga is dedication, commitment, unquenchable quest, patience, and perseverance.
Yoga is a tool, very powerful indeed, but it doesn’t work if you don’t know how to use it.


So yes, I would say:
Yoga helps people change their life,
but only if the change comes from within.


To change yourself through Yoga is the best present you can ever choose for your Atman.

Be your own guru.

Having started my Yogic path not long time ago (I have been practising seriously just for a year and I started teaching in May 2013) I feel I am still at the very beginning in the process of embodying the ideal qualities of a Yogi, which are well explained in Patanjali Yoga Sutras, called the Eight Limbs of Yoga.


Still a lot to work on my Yamas (the ethical standards) and still I haven't connected enough to meditation pure and simple.

Sometimes this fact makes me feel weak, insecure...
Sometimes it even blocks me so much that I start feeling hypocrite, fake.

But then some other times I find myself listening to my own voice saying things like:


"We are used to think that we are born with a natural capacity to be aware of our bodies but this is not true.
We have to train ourself to listen to the body.
We have to cultivate the habit to stop and listen.
This is why Yoga is so great: you don't finish with Yoga in the moment you're walking out of the class. You bring Yoga with you on your desk, on the bus, in the moment before falling asleep. Because Yoga is a technique for being more present, more aware."

I listen to my own voice saying this to the only person that appeared to my 8am class this morning (bless her, what a wonderful soul!) and I think: wow!


Sometimes we underestimate ourselves. We think we are not good enough because our actions are still full of mistakes, bad habits, weaknesses.


But deep inside we all are enlightened, free of bonds, full of knowledge and truth.


This is the meaning of the sentence "be your own Guru".



Namaste :)

How to become a GOOD yoga instructor.

After two years after the end of my first, glorious, life-changing teacher training with YogaLondon, here I am, writing down the steps that in my opinion will have to walk on if you are choosing to become one of us, one of us.

Before starting with my 5 yama of the Good-Yoga-Teacher path, let me clarify one thing.

Many people can do teacher trainings and become yoga instructor.
Oh yeah. You just need the ka-ching and free time...things we all have, right? ;)

Anyway, there are many out there, I meet them regularly, even in fancy yoga studios such as Triyoga. They are people that love yoga and think that is enough to make them good teachers.
I say: NO.

You can be an average teacher, you can also be a pretty BAD teacher if you don't work on yourself enough to get out the qualities that a seriously GOOD YOGA TEACHER has to have.

Sorry peeps, it's not an easy peasy job. It is not enough to be steady in Vrschikasana (yes, the damn Scorpion pose). It is not even enough to meditate every day, do the neti pot in the morning and reading the Bhagavad Gita before going to bed.

There are more subtle qualities that require to be there. And for some people it's easy (the natural inclination thingy) for some it's hard.
And, sorry, but for some others, it's impossible. I really wish these people some clarity of mind to recognise one day that maybe, perhaps, they choose the wrong career.

Point one: love yourself.

We hear this a lot in classes. Self-compassion, kindness towards ourselves. So easy to say, so hard to put it in practise. 

Everyone has different ways to show love. For some people self-love is staying in bed till late, for some other is waking up with the sunrise. Having or not having that piece of cake? Shaving my legs or leaving them free to be the legs I was born with?

It is finally just the difficult practise of LISTENING. Shut up and listen to yourself. And with yourself I mean that Atman, that deeper self, not the constructed Ego full of fears.
Ok, I know, this is a practise that take a lifetime to be mastered. But a GOOD yoga teacher has started cultivating it. And this is why he/she glows in the room. This is why when he/she teaches, the words that come out from his/her mouth go directly to our soul:
because he/she SPEAKS THE TRUTH. 

Point two: learn to love people.

Yes, it might sound weird, but you do have to love people, not only yoga, to become a good yoga teacher.

To love people means practise compassion. Means accepting differences. Means being an empathetic person. Means being able to listen, to support, to be there for someone. Anyone. Even people we don't really like so much.

In yogi words, it means to recognise that in everyone there is a sparkle of divine.

It means also: not being disgusted by other people's different body qualities or details. A rush on the arm, some feet in serious need of some care, a hairy and sweaty back.

None of these feelings will help you to become a good yoga instructor. If you are not able to open your eyes while you are teaching and walk out of your comfort zone (your mat) to the end of the class where that weird guy hides himself and performs the poses in wrong and unsafe ways, there is something you need to work on. 

Point three: do a teacher training. A good one. 

Ta-daan: we finally arrive to the point. It is important to choose a teacher training that teaches you the values of yoga. In depth. With clarity. 

I was lucky I choose well, out of intuition: YogaLondon. 

Wonderful teachers, covering very well the wide aspect of what Yoga means (philosophy, lifestyle, anatomy, teaching methods, ethos).

Point four: start teaching. And do it more. And more.

You will never become a teacher if you don't start teaching. I know it sounds silly, but so many qualified teachers are feeling so scared to take the step because they feel they are not enough/they are shy/they don't have enough time.
And even if you are teaching, then take further steps: teach workshops, organise your own retreat, do another trainings, keep on studying.

Point five: return to point one.

We are never arrived, always learning.

So, do another teacher training. 

Know yourself deeply.

Love people more.

and...

Enjoy the journey!!!