Christina 3

Body Politics

I’ve kept up my yoga on and off over forty years. I was drawn into sessions when a work colleague ran sessions in our lunch hour. I’ve kept it up first in church halls and then at the gym. But only once or twice a week as added to the one and a half hour session was the time it took to get to the gym, change for the class and shower afterwards Oten I could not justify the time for two sessions a week. 

Over the years as age took its toll I felt I was getting worse and worse at the poses. Then in my late fifties, as the result of sadness and turmoil in my life, I gained about three and a half stone and decided I would never be flexible enough to resume yoga again, certainly never see my feet again. So I took refuge in aquarobics where only my head was visible and the water hid all the bumps and bulges.

But one day my cousin, who is a yoga teacher, came to the gym with me. She dismissed my excuses and insisted that yoga was not competitive. I could practice to my own level. So I joined a class with her.  I am eternally grateful to her for restoring my faith in my body to rebuild itself. My weight has adjusted about the right level for my height and build and I’ve mostly stopped obsessing about every lump and bump and wrinkle that offends me. 

Now in my seventies yoga on Zoom has given me a new energy to live the last of my life with as much joy as I can muster. I have been maintaining at least five hours yoga a week. In addition, I have travelled widely for work and leisure throughout my life paying little attention to the features of the place where I live.  In fact, exploring my local area walking has been a joy that Covid has bestowed on me. 

This week I have been finally on a four day yoga retreat that has been postponed for over a year. At last we were permitted to go ahead. All twelve of us had had two jabs and we all took a Covid test at the start so we could mingle freely. I was the oldest which was somewhat intimidating. It was such a joy and we were all thoroughly over excited. Like a bunch of nursery children on the first day back at school.  

I’ve always practised yoga for fitness and flexibility but in this four days learnt so much more about the spiritual side. 

Looking up the philosophy of yoga on Wikipedia provides the basics of the seven chakra system that we were exploring in our yoga sessions over those four days. The more common and most studied chakra system incorporates six major chakras along with a seventh centre generally not regarded as a chakra. These points are arranged vertically along the axial. This system of six chakras plus the sahasrara "center" at the crown first appears in the Kubjikāmata-tantra, an 11th-century Kaula work. Today the chakras are thought to vitalise the physical body and to be associated with interactions of a physical, emotional and mental nature. They are considered loci of life energy or prana which is thought to flow among them along pathways called nadi. The function of the chakras is to spin and draw in this energy to keep the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical health of the body in balance. 

There are plenty of critics who question the very existence of the chakras and as an atheist I’m usually first sceptic in line with a bucket of cold water. But not this time.

The vegan menu cooked by a specialist chef was tasty, colourful and filling. I really did not notice the lack of meat and fish protein. We all enjoyed the food and, apart from the five hours of yoga each day,  we shared walking meditation when we shed our shoes and stepped barefoot through the wild meadows together in silence: then we engaged in ‘laughing meditation’ that left us all breathless with the communication of sheer joy with our yoga friends. We had shared a gong bath each evening in which the vibrations of the instrument reached deep into our souls. The more we shared the more we moved as one as a group. Trust and confidence grew until on the last morning we all stood on our heads, believing someone would catch us if we fell. We ended with a a hugathon. What a joy!

Throughout these sessions we engaged in the chanting of various Indian mantras which we did not understand. This did not matter as the point was the closeness of our companions and the pleasure of sharing our humanity in a common cause that rose to the heavens in volume and depth as our capacity for collaboration improved.

Then in the chanting each day I gradually began to understand the process in was engaging in.  What has been shared since the 11th century is a celebration of our humanity when we work with each other, whatever the project. It is the pleasure of responding in a crowd or an audience in unison both to sadness of a failure and to the elation of a win.

So as the lockdown lifts, you can continue to enjoy the union of minds, bodies and voices through your engagement in choirs, Morris dancing, the theatre, pop concerts or a football match. In my view now, these activities represent a spiritual communion we all need whatever we call the experience. Me? I’m off to an Ashram.