Lockdown Yoga Life

Who has two thumbs and a bunch of randomly collected together cushions and bits of neglected real yoga stuff?

Staged. They don’t usually hang out like this, as if in a family photograph.

I do.

Pictured L to R, ignoring the jelly mould collection, we have; a couple of cork bricks which I’m not using much but which are there if I want them, the grey things are blocks that are a dense foam, then at the back we have a proper yoga bolster lying on top of a bolster shaped cushion cover from Ikea filled with a single duvet. Perched on top of that is a meditation cushion called a zafu At the front two slim cushions from my sofa which have become essential kit, and inside the glasses case is an eye pillow. I’m enjoying the sunshine on my shut eyes, so not using that much now. Lent my yoga belt to someone a while ago and have always hated using one and now I know how to do stuff without it so I doubt I’ll bother re-buying that.

I’m on week – I don’t even know… ten? Is it ten weeks since I used a bus, sat in a room with people, didn’t know what Zoom was, didn’t care if I caught ‘a flu’, ate something in a cafe or went in a shop for no reason?

Whatever it is, it’s that. How have I passed my days? Well, as a chronic painiac very much the same as usual except in the way that I’ve segued from a couple of yoga classes a week to an hour of yin every day. For anyone who knows what it is like to actually have a daily practice of any kind – WOOO HOOO!!!! GET ME!

Anyway, so how did I do it? ekah where I usually go for classes shut down as suddenly as everything else did in the UK, and it took them a while to go online, but meanwhile De Nieuwe Yogaschool where I went while I was in Amsterdam had already moved online and was offering yin classes every single day except one when there was a restorative class, all of which offers what my brain and body needs.

Yin is a practice which gets to the parts other exercises and other yogas may never reach. You aren’t using your muscles much, so you’re not going to get ‘yoga body’ or ‘workout body’ from this practice. What you’re doing is getting into poses which you support with your props and then you stay in them for several minutes. The idea is that your body relaxes while also being appropriately uncomfortable. This may be an idea that is familiar to meditators as well as to other yoga practitioners and anyone who does a physical exercise that involves a level of endurance. That’s where the similarity doesn’t completely end but needs another bit of Venn diagram all to itself. As you let the props hold you you’re opening up the tissues that keeps the muscles contained and connects them to the skeleton and whatever other viscera they encounter. This is why you’re not engaging your muscles during the poses. The myofascia in the target area gets a chance to release because you’re ‘resting’ and telling your body it is safe to let go. This is obviously awesome for my fibromyalgia, it also helps with any tension that talks to my migraines, and, for bonus points, doing the practice every day I’m shedding any build up of stress and moving out of fight flight and freeze and into rest and digest.

DNYS’s offerings have mainly been at times when I’m happy to tune in but sometimes I’ve caught up with an older one, and while I have missed a handful of days I’ve also sometimes done two classes in a row. The other day there wasn’t a new class available and I didn’t feel like re-doing one of the available recorded ones so I practiced without. I know. Big leap. For me, there are a few things about doing a live class. In a studio you have complete accountability. It’s like going swimming, you’re in the pool, you can’t ‘just’ look at your phone or get a snack or feel the pull of tasks. At home those things are there but a live online class is a better approximation than you’d think. Sometimes if I’m listening to a live class I wander off and put my tea on in the middle, or answer the door, or feed the dog, but things get even more lax when it’s a recorded session. I’m more likely to think ‘I’m not doing that’ or not sustain a pose for as long even if during a live class my camera was off. Anyway, the day before yesterday I switched things right up. I didn’t go completely rogue. I’m not ready for silence, I like the encouragement. But what I did was play a Yoga Nidra I’m familiar with and use the pacing of that to change poses.

Thanks, yes I am a genius.

You can get a whole bunch of Yoga Nidras free here and you can get live lessons from the teacher I learned Yoga Nidra from, Helen Moss, here but  I went with  Tanis Fishman who I’ve been listening to at night for years  on YouTube.

During lockdown I’ve been weirdly well. Not catching the virus obviously helped, but so did not having to perform ‘being a person’, not having to travel, not having to socialise. A lot of neurodiverse people are pretty good with extended alone time, but of course I’m not completely alone, I’ve got the dog. That’s enough for me for the most part. I’ve had a few glancing conversations in the street, I’ve used Zoom and FaceTime but the structure I’ve created between dog walk and yoga and doing normal self management like food and so on in a spacious way has been good for me.

The UK has the highest death rate per capita in the world. I’m lucky as hell this is sustainable for me.