My dear student, Sophie, sent me a vey thoughtful and contemplative email after class, a few weeks back. It was in response to a sequence i taught around the theme of ‘Transitioning’, which was born out of my musings about being a process. I asked Soph if she would send it to me as a blog post so i could have a guest blogger. It felt quite fancy having a guest blogger and i’ve been very much looking forward to sharing this with you so do let me introduce my first guest to this site: the deeply intelligent, endlessly entertaining and magical yogini, Sophie Dourambeis (it took me a long time to check that girl into class with all those vowels to remember). Over to you Soph…

Thoughts on Transitions, by Sophie Dourambeis

I love Spring… and Autumn too, Summer and Winter as well but mainly Spring. The transition period from Winter to Summer holds so much promise, so much hope, so much life.

And so, in reflection of the season, our recent yoga practice has centred around transitions. What ‘transitioning’ means and how we can enhance our practice by focusing on the bits in between as well as the ‘end goal’, the final Asana. In one class, Col asked us to embrace the transition, use it, work with it. And there I was thinking, “Isn’t it all transition?”

I wonder if it’s something about the English language that we often focus on where we are going instead of how we are getting there. When we speak we often talk of the destination without recognising the journey it takes to get there. Whether this is a physical place, an achievement, an attainment or something more abstract such as a feeling, a mindset or head space. Perhaps it is a symptom of modern life that we constantly grasp or strive… it keeps our focus in the future rather than here and now.

But is there anything other than journeying?

I often meditate using imagery of water, it’s what comes natural to me. There is this body of water I travel, it flows into that unique part of consciousness where everything is made of love. There are places where the current looks a bit strong, there are places where the ebb and flow is steady and there are moments of calm and apparent stillness where I can pause along the way. But it is never anything other than a pause. The flow must go on.

Us humans are constantly moving and transitioning. Sometimes we are curious explorers; seeking, searching, finding, observing. Sometimes we are striving to fulfil our needs and desires, perceived or otherwise. Sometimes we are lost; ambling contentedly or desperately seeking an escape route.

Our environments are in constant flux. Our ecosystem changes moment by moment; flowers blossom, trees grow, the composition of the earth beneath our feet changes. Urban areas are developed; New houses are built, old buildings are torn down, roads expand. Our physical bodies transition constantly; cells renew at a rate of millions per second and we can’t even measure how many neurons have fired in your brain by the end of this sentence. The universe is expanding at (as close as we can get it) a rate of 68km/s per megaparsec. That means if there was/is (time and space verb tense conundrum) a galaxy 3.3 million light years away it would be speeding away from us at a rate of 68km per second!

We move and change, not only alongside of it, but as part of this magnificent universal soup. We look to expand our minds, find knowledge, learn new skills, improve at something. Yes, we might have goals or points along the way where we check ourselves out and give an internal salute of ‘yeah baby’ but do we ever really get there? Where is there anyway? Is it somewhere that encourages us to find more? Learn more? Discover more? Something new and other or something old and familiar looked at in a different way.

And if we don’t transition, like a body of a water we stagnate and become heavy and grimy, losing our nourishing, life giving qualities. And start to smell. Worse still, if we resist the flow, like a reed, eventually we break and then we get carried along with the flow anyway and have no control over getting caught in the rapids or pushed down into the undercurrent or stuck on the bank… and that doesn’t sound too good either.

You’ll find me back on this body of water, lovingly crafting a raft with life, embracing the flow.

In Greece they say ‘καλό ταξίδι’ (pronounced ‘kallo taxidthi’) it means ‘good journey’. Enjoy the journey, it could be all there is.

Ain’t nowt as queer as folk, as they say up here in t’north. Meaning that there’s nothing more strange than people and I like to think that beneath this hardy no-nonsense wisdom is an intimation that human beings are eternally fascinating creatures. Studying my own inner creature has, I think, led me to appear more and more queer to others, which is funny because the deeper I go the clearer I become. The further down the rabbit hole I travel, the more real I appear to myself. Freer and freer as I strip off my layers, howling and marauding about the place in ecstatic pain and devastating joy, without the assistance of any class-A compounds. Curiouser and curiouser does the world become as my self dissolves and my spirit rises up.

Ok. I said it. I said the S word.

Does anyone else feel weird about the S word? I really don’t feel weird about it but I realize that I’m afraid of being measured by it. And then I realize, who fucking cares anyway? It’s my experience that counts and no one else can have my experience. Just me. Ain’t that something.

Over the last few years, and many hours of yogic practices, study and experimentation it’s become so obvious to me that I have a ‘spirit’. In fact, I find it surprising when people think that it’s weird to have such a view. It’s the fault of the word, of course. Spirit implies spirituality, which quickly tumbles into this whole chain of signification where I somehow end up at the foot of a splintered cross, on a grassy knoll, wearing a habit, chanting and rocking while sweeping the floor for fear of crushing an ant. A heady mix of Judo-Christian-Hindu-Jainism that makes little sense and bears even less resemblance to my experience of ‘spirit’. Apart from the chanting and rocking bit. I love a good chant-rock.

So, let’s, for a moment, pretend the ‘s’ word doesn’t exist and all we have is raw, direct, yet-to-be-articulated experience. Now imagine looking into a baby’s eyes. You know those babies where you look in their eyes and they stare right into your very soul and all you can do is look back at them from the deepest place in your heart. That unspoken exchange of pure being. Of pure consciousness that cuts through all the layers of language and perception to reach inside the very core of you and them. What’s that then? That, right there, is holy communion. Their very essence tapping into your very centre. That, right there, is nothing less than magic. It’s not rational and quantifiable. It’s beauty and love and connection and a recognition that what is inside of you is inside of everyone else.

“Recognising yourself in the other being and the other being in yourself requires an expansion of your perception – a move beyond ‘I am’ and a limited sense of identity. This expansion continues until you experience yourself in all things and all things in yourself. Realising yourself as a pattern of the whole universe, playing its part through you.” (Christopher Wallis, Tantra Illuminated). Woah there Christopher! You’re saying that I am a pattern of the universe?!? Oh yeah. Course I am. I’m made of Universe grade stardust.

Maybe that’s just science to you and science is your spiritual, but what it does for me is bring meaning and presence to the simplest of things. “When you contemplate a pebble, what is really happening is that the universe is contemplating itself. Your illusion is that you are separate from the whole. As you study protons, electrons and neutrons, you are studying yourself – it is the universe contemplating itself. Only when subject and object are collapsed can it reintegrate itself. Consciousness chooses to not stay as homogenous nothingness but as a vast multiplicity of apparently differentiated subjects and objects … a free and joyous act of self-expression done entirely for its own sake”.

[In case you hadn’t noticed, I love Hareesh Wallis. He’s an audacious, scholarly dude who has a way of explaining stuff that makes total sense and completely blows my mind at the same time. You can read more of his words here.]

So if the ‘S’ word freaks you out then don’t use it, but don’t let it get in your way. Don’t let it stop you from trying out yoga and meditation or, if you’re a yoga teacher, don’t let it stop you from speaking from your heart. Don’t let it draw you too far into your speaking, thinking, analytical mind. Drop the language and dive into the experience. As Hareesh says “only experiential proof is valuable in this domain. The experiment is worth conducting.” Hell yeah it is. It’s only through direct experience that any of this has made any sense to me. Sadhana – spiritual practice – helps you bust out of your existing structures so you can see yourself as you really are and access the blissful freedom that is already yours. “A completely autonomous blissful awareness”, right there inside that body of yours, just waiting to be recognized. And experienced.

When I meditate, I allow myself to just be. To rest in my own being, which is the most beautiful place I have ever travelled to. And I can go there whenever I want, which is nothing less than radical. That recognition of my own power, my own magnificence, my own infinite vastness encased in my finite form humbles me with the deepest gratitude for this breath, this life, this body. I don’t believe in God. I struggle with the word divine. But I know that what lies in me, lies in everyone else and all I can do is honour that and continue to remind myself that not everything can be explained. That my experiences are all I have to go on. And that I can find different maps to navigate and articulate what’s happening when my heart blasts open in a backbend or I feel like I’m going to lift off after chanting 108 Om Para Shaktis. I trust what I feel and that’s taken some time – and will be a life’s work – but getting skillful in being sensitive is what it takes to wake up. To my own light, my own dark, my own spirit. And if that’s weird then it’s definitely good-weird and I’ll bow down to that.

“The same awesome powers behind this whole universe are flowing within you and provide the very foundation of your whole experience of reality. Your fear and pettiness drop away as you harmoniously fall into the dance of life energy – realizing that you are the only one who has ever limited your potential. There is nothing to do, nothing to achieve, other than to embrace the divine powers that are expressed through you in an endless flow of moments.”

There’s been a rumour going around since time began that, one day, you are going to get ‘there’. You know, that place. The one where you’ve made it. Where you know yourself as one single, unified, worked out, understood being who has all the stuff you have when you get ‘there’. I don’t know what your stuff looks like, and I don’t know what mine looks like either, but I’m sure we’ll know when we get there. Having said that, I do know that when I get there I can definitely do handstands and I live on a beach with Pete and some feral children. The other stuff is less formed.

As I sat in meditation this morning, I waited. Allowing my mind to romp around in its amusing fashion, before ‘I’ arrived. Consciousness reflecting back at itself, we sighed into blissful luminescence. I rested here for a while and then I dropped the question in, ‘what does transitioning mean to me’? Journeys in cars and planes came into view, the means to various ends. I tried not to let my mind take over the contemplation, and paused. I dropped the question in again and before me arose a procession of selves. Me, in evolution, en masse. Me and myself in patterns and shapes. The patternings of my process, expressed through different versions of becoming. An endless stream of consciousness, manifesting and shifting in response to cause and effect since my form was first conceived.

I’ll always remember a class theme that Bridget taught in the immersion: Trust the Process. It comes back to me all the time and is such a powerful and reassuring lesson to be patient and trust that all will be revealed. That, wherever you are, is where you should be. That we are in a continuous cycle of creation, maintenance, dissolution, concealment and revelation and that ‘it’ too shall pass. But perhaps what Bridget was really telling me was to trust in myself. Because I am the process. I am not an entity. I am a process and I will never get ‘there’ because I’m already here. In the present. And, as any self-respecting sage would affirm, the present is where it’s at.

Quite frankly, it’s a bit bonkers to think that we could ever be just one thing heading to just one place. A single entity who is going to get ‘there’. Where, on earth, is something not compounded, layered, or in flux? Everything is shifting so why would there be this one place we eventually reach and hang out in till we dissolve back into the earth and become part of another process? It’s the same in your asana practice. When you get to Pincha Mayurasana, you never really get ‘there’ because you’re always shifting and adjusting and working in the pose.

When I introduced the idea of transitioning, I described my meditation practice and the moment when ‘I’ arrived. When ‘I’ got present and noticed the patternings of my mind breaking down, from form to formless. When ‘I’ became the seer. “Patterns of consciousness are always known by pure awareness, their ultimate, unchanging witness,” says Patanjali. Our practices support us in our understanding of our patterns, and how we are always a becoming, always a process, always evolving. They give us access to pure awareness, which is always ‘there’ for us. A constant in this ever-changing identity and sense of self.

When our intentions are clear we have a map but where we end up will continue to shift so don’t worry if you never get there. You were never supposed to. Your process is your unfolding and it will take you wherever you need to go. Dark or light, open or closed, forest or field, uphill or down. And everything in-between. When we are transitioning we sometimes forget to breathe. We want to skip past the gritty bits. The not-so-pleasant in-betweens. The cramped-in, pins and needles, numb-bum cabin rides. The can’t quite step your foot between your hands moments. The shudder of your core and the stutter of your will. Breathe into it, move slowly through it, pause, sink in and, in time, it will become. Move inside the in-betweens and trust yourself. You are the process.

Desensitise. Desensitise. Desenstise. Desensitise. Desensitise. Desensitise. Desenstise. Desensitise. Desensitise. Desensitise. Desenstise. Desensitise. Desensitise. Desensitise. Desenstise. Desensitise. Desensitise. Desensitise. Desenstise. Desensitise. Desensitise. Desensitise. Desenstise. Desensitise. Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…

I remember studying structuralist and post-structuralist theory at Uni. I was fascinated by binary opposites and deconstruction and it’s no great surprise that I’m into a non-dual spiritual tradition these days. My dear university buddy and I would laugh for hours as we repeated swearwords over and over in a bid to empty the word of its meaning – a highly intellectual practice, I’m sure you’ll agree.

When you repeat something mindlessly, you get further and further away from what it is, why the hell you do it and why it’s so hard to let go of. It somehow becomes a part of your identity and just one of the things you ‘do’. Like numbing out on Netflix, shopping, chocolate, tequila, fags, drugs, Yorkshire puddings. Pete and I used to have a weekend thing where we’d go crazy on pizza and ‘treats’ so we could bask in the slump of the low-sugar pressure drop. Some of us are big advocates of tightly locked boxes and carefully managed compartments. Or maybe weed is your medicine and you prefer to sidestep into an alternate reality for the evening.

I’ve been a big fan of desensitization, sanitation and survival – because that’s what it is, most of the time. We have to switch off from the tough stuff because we don’t have the tools and resources to tune in. No one ever tells us that the way to work through pain and fear and guilt and shame is to actually feel your way into it. I’m sure some folks do get told this but, for me, it was a revelation that keeps unraveling. And boy, is it hard to do.

First you have to wake up the feeling body. The physical body. The most dense form of ourselves, and start to tune into what is really happening at any given time. I’ve learnt that when I’m in survival mode my quads turn to stone. I am literally in the freeze zone of ‘flight, fright or freeze’, as my sympathetic nervous system fires up. This tends to happen around people I’m afraid of. I notice it when I feel off centre and, for whatever reason, I’m not being myself. My stomach is another big communicator. My digestion completely shuts down in certain situations and even though I think I’m as happy as our good friend Larry, my body, on some level, is not.

In yogic traditions, we can start to decode these physical clues through the idea of saṃskāras. These are deep impressions that are made upon our psyches due to unresolved past experiences of pleasure or pain. To quote Christopher Wallis, “impressions unconsciously shape our preferences and the assumptions we project onto the people and situations we encounter. The stronger the emotional impact of an experience, the deeper the impression that is formed, until we end up with a whole network of impressions that function as a filter to reality. Some of these impressions are ‘toxic’ in the sense that they are so strong that they create exaggerated fear responses when no threat (or only a mild threat) is present, or create attachments to people or things that are not actually very healthy for us.”

So sure, I’d rather not have granite thighs and look like I’m in the third trimester of pregnancy but it’s all good information. There are some experiences that I am yet to digest and, until I am ready to do that, my body will hold on. And that’s ok. At least I’m aware of it. At least I can feel it. With awareness and feeling I can heal and protect myself. I can create boundaries and support systems. I can open up my medicine bag and prescribe the right kind of magic to calm my nervous system, bring me back to my centre, help me soften and call me home to what is really present.

Yoga is the art of resensitising and waking up the parts of yourself that have been asleep for way too long. Studying the structures within the structures, the koshas, the layers upon layers, we work in subtle ways to get intimate with the physical body before working on more and more refined levels of being. To tap into deeper and deeper realities through direct experience that opens up the rabbit hole and leads us closer to the truth of who we really are.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds way more exciting than a 16” cheese feast or a large bottle of booze. It also has the added advantage of allowing me to both remember what’s happened and stay in my centre. And I can attest that being in a room full of yogis who are getting deeply connected is a whole new level of psychedelia. I recently came back from assisting a four-day immersion in London and I was stoned out of my mind without doing a single pose. I was just high on the perfume of everyone else’s subtle bodies intermingling in the cauldron of empowerment. And that, my friends, is what I call a perfectly balanced cocktail.