A piece of a whole

Quarantine day #45. It’s been now 45 days since I taught my last class in a room with students. 45 days going out only for the essentials or for a short walk. 45 days with almost any live social interaction outside my home. 

Without a doubt, this pandemic is bringing changes to a whole generation. This is expressed in the sentence that we have been listening to a lot lately: “these are unprecedented times”. 

They REALLY ARE.

There will probably be no “back to normal” after all this has passed. Or at least not the “normal” as we used to know. A lot will change along the way until we can have a social life again. I’m not saying that we won’t be able to be safe in the same room breathing and practicing our yoga. Or that we won’t be able to hug and kiss and shake hands.

We will do all of it again, of that I don’t have a doubt. But it will definitely be a lot different than before in many ways, especially on HOW IT WILL FEEL.

Every walk on the street, every sunset by the river sitting on the grass, every picnic with friends, every birthday party, every bicycle ride with the kids, every day in the office with colleagues, every (real) live school, yoga, dance, pilates, boxing classes, every weight lifted in the gym, every live concert, theater play, live ballet, every face to face eye contact with our loved ones, every handshake, every hug, every kiss. Every human relation will have a different meaning. Never the saying that you only know the value of something when it’s gone made this much sense.

And from this new significance of life as social beings, I hope we value each other as equals. I hope we look into each other’s eyes and see ourselves. I hope we are more compassionate. I hope we finally understand that we are a small cell in a bigger organism called Earth and that we all work together to make it function well. And that when a part of it doesn’t work as it should, it will, in one way or another, affect us all. And I hope we finally realize that it’s our job, all together, to work in order to heal it.

Old and New

This year, looking for a suitable yoga practice due to an injury, I was introduced by lovely Josie Sykes to Vinyasa Krama. A gentle breath-led practice where you let go of any alignment of modern yoga and follow exclusively you breath, learning how to be strong and receptive at the same time.

This practice helped me so much during this year that, after class this morning, which was my last class with Josie this year, I went to her and thanked her for all her support during the year. After a hug, she thanked me for my help as a Karma Yogi for her classes and also mentioned how important it is to look back into the past year and acknowledge how it was and to be grateful for it.

After wishing her Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, I left the studio thinking of what she said about looking back to the past year and I realised that, at this time of the year, we tend to look forward to the new year, thinking about new beginnings, new projects, new plans and wishes, which is wonderful, but we usually forget about what we went through and accomplished during the year that is ending, we forget to be grateful for it.

Having noticed that, I started thinking about what I was grateful for in 2018. And even though it was a tough year, I realised I was smiling.

I'm grateful for having many amazing people and a lot of love around me, close by or on the other side of the Atlantic - love knows no boundaries, right? Also grateful for this :)

I'm grateful for being able to look around and see beauty in the most trivial daily things, like the colours on the autumn trees, the sunrise or a smile of a child on my way to work.

I'm grateful for the days I was able to practice and for the ones I wasn't and I'm grateful for learning to be ok with it. I'm grateful for learning to take it easier on myself.

I acknowledged that I'm grateful not only for the good things that happened to me, but also for the things that I would categorize as "bad" ones. It's hard to let go of those labels, but if a bad thing taught you something good, labelling it as "bad" no longer makes sense.

So, I'm grateful for the difficulties I faced in 2018. They allowed me to grow as a person and as a teacher. They took me to the Vinyasa Krama practice and my perception of the relationship with myself and the world changed. Those same obstacles allowed me to meet and make friends with wonderful people. They turned me into a stronger, but more patient and resilient person.

I’m grateful for coming across this beautiful piece, which I love reading during my classes and also to myself:

"Remember, Yoga practice is like an obstacle race; many obstructions are purposely put on the way for us to pass through. They are there to make us understand and express our own capacities. We all have that strength, but we don't seem to know it. We seem to need to be challenged and tested in order to understand our own capacities. In fact, that is the natural law. If a river just flows easily, the water in the river does not express its power. But once you put an obstacle to the flow by constructing a dam, then you can see it's strength in the form of tremendous electrical power."

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Translation and commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda

In short, I'm grateful for each day and each obstacle of 2018. It all led me to where and who I am now, strong and receptive to show all my power in 2019.

Om Bhur Bhuvah Swah… say what?

A short story about my experience with chanting mantras

Chanting can be challenging for most of us, unless you’re a singer or used to sing among other people. It can be specially embarrassing if you have no idea of what you’re singing, right?

Probably you already saw yourself on a yoga class, where everyone seems to know what they’re saying while singing mantras in Sanskrit.

Well, I’m here to tell you about my experience with mantras and maybe my story can help you to have a different impression about chanting.

I was first introduced to mantras by my dearest teacher in Brazil, José Luiz (also known as Zé). Actually, he was the guy who brought me to the path of yoga, but this is another story - I love my teachers here in the Netherlands, BUT for sure, I miss Zé!

So, back to mantras. When I first started singing the Gayatri Mantra with Zé, I didn’t know its meaning, but while I was singing it, I experienced an amazing feeling of peace and a joyful vibration on my chest. That’s what mantras were for me by that time, a way to create a certain vibration on my body that would made me feel good.

With time, I found out mantras can be a powerful tool to calm down my mind. And here are the good news: if you’re not interested on weird Sanskrit words and what they mean, you can use them as a tool for concentration and meditation. With the repetition of the mantra, we give our mind something to work on and when our mind has something to concentrate on, it gets calm and settled. This way, we are able to step aside and take some rest from our “monkey mind”.

After a while, I started to search for the meanings of the mantras I learned and a few of them resonated with me, and others not that much. And, if you also get interested in the meanings of mantras, you’ll probably be pleased to know that they are part of a Bhakti practice. Bhakti can be translated as devotion, which means that chanting mantras are also a form of devotion. Many mantras are dedicated to Hindu Gods and Goddesses, like Brahma, Vishnu, Krisna, Shiva, Ganesha, Kali, Saraswati and many others.

Ok, now you’re probably asking me if they are some sort of prayer or what kind of devotion I am talking about. If you are not a religious person, don’t worry, it’s not necessary religion related, unless you want it to be and that’s totally fine!

For me, at first it was kind of difficult to disconnect the mantras from the religious aspect where they come from. But once, one of my teachers told something in class that made clear for me what I was trying to understand for a while: all of the Gods and Goddesses and most of the mantras represent characteristics that are actually intrinsic qualities of all of us. For example, when we chant to Brahma, we chant to what Brahma represents, which is creation. So, chanting a mantra to Brahma would be a devotional moment to the creational potential that exists in each one of us. Chanting a mantra to Ganesh would be an inspiration to our inner strength to overcome difficulties. And the list goes on.

Today, I have mantras as part of my practice and I keep in mind this three aspects of chanting: I enjoy the sounds and vibration it causes in my body, I give my mind something to concentrate on, and lastly, I search inside myself the qualities described by the meanings of the mantra.

I hope you can find your own way to incorporate mantras in your practice and enjoy the chanting experience!

In case you wonder, the first mantra I learned is still my favorite one, here it is in Sanskrit, a simple translation and a beautiful chanting version:

Om Bhur Bhuvah Swah
Tat-savitur Vareñyam
Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi
Dhiyo Yonah Prachodayat

May the divine light of the Supreme Being illuminate our intellect, to lead us along a path of righteousness.

What was good on your day? What did you do good on your day?

While still living in Brazil, working in an advertising agency, I used to take a feel rides a week to work with one of my managers at the time. Today, Dani is a dear friend of mine.

During those rides, often longer than they should be because of São Paulo’s chaotic traffic, there was plenty of time for nice talks.

In one of those days, she picked me up close to my house and a few moments later, there we were, stuck in traffic again… We were talking about something I can’t remember now, but at some point our conversation led her to tell me about the dinner she had the night before.

She was in a restaurant with her boyfriend, and, close to their table, there was a father having dinner with his son. My friend’s table was close enough to theirs so she could clearly hear what they were talking about and it caught her attention.

In a natural conversation, probably because they were used to talk like that daily, the father asked the son “What was good on your day today?”. The son answered he had time to play with his friends after school and he had lots of fun. Then, it was the son’s turn to ask his father about what was good on his day. The father said he had a really productive day at work and he didn’t get too much traffic to get to the restaurant that evening. After that, the father asked his son the question which is the reason I’m telling you this story and it was the reason Dani told me by then. He asked: “What did you DO GOOD today?”

Not surprised with the question, in a spontaneous way, the son told him he was able to help a friend with the assignment during class and he was happy he could help someone that day.

The conversation followed between them also with the son asking his father what he had done good that day and the father telling him about his experiences.

After my friend finished telling me the story, she was thrilled and absolutely touched with this simple yet beautiful dialogue she had witnessed. And so was I. We realized how things would be better around us - and maybe in the world - if more people, including ourselves, asked themselves this same question more often: What did I do good today?

This memory came back to my mind and inspired me to write it down when, during a workshop last year I was presented to this quote:

"The total amount of happiness that exists in the world has come from wanting to make others happy. The total amount of suffering that exists in the world has come from wanting to make yourself happy." (Master Shantideva)

Maybe we should think a bit more often about doing good to others rather than seeking mostly our own happiness.