Yoga for potters

This is a post related to all professions where we sit for a long time. Long time means for an hour at a stretch. Specifically for potters , since i happen to be one. In my decade of practising this craft I have faced quite a few challenges. Also potter friends have physical problems surfacing. Hence this post. However, you can use these techniques anyways just to be balanced and healthy.

Sitting on the wheel we are contracting our hip muscles, the psoas and the illiacus muscles. These are one of the strongest muscles in our body. If these muscles are contracted alot they tend to not strech or release fully when we stand up. This limited release can show up as pain in lower back, hip, groin and even in our neck. It also intereferes with taking full breaths. So all these make us tense and tight affecting how we feel overall, not just physically.

Basic practises.

1. Shavasana.
Focus is on relaxing, releasing every part of the body, systematically allowing all parts to drop towards the floor. Breathing is slow and deep without effort. Just observe the breathe and let it go the way it wants to. gradually it opens and slows down. Keep 5 minutes minimum for this to happen.

2. Pawan mukta asana.
Holding one knee to chest at a time , releasing gently.
then practising with both knees . Breathing gently.

3. Setu bandha or bridge pose.
Lying on back bend knees with feet a few inches from buttocks, on floor.
Gently lift the hip up, pressing the feet into floor. transfer the weight into thighs and then to the feet.
use a bolster to keep hip up for some time. Feel the stretch from inside the hip to front of legs.
keep breathing gently.
while lowering imagine the spine to land one vertebra at a time on the floor. slowly when the sacrum is to land pull the belly button in so it curls inwards. This lenghtens the spine and stretches it out.
Try a few times.
Relax in shavasana noticing any changes like relaxation in lower back, release in sides of waist.

4. Trikonasana or side bends.
keep the feet apart 3 feet. Right foot inward slightly, left foot fully flexed to left. swing hips slightly to right, bend to left, right arm up to sky and left arm on left leg or if you can reach to wards the left foot. Make sure that the breathe is smooth and not constrained. Ease up a bit to allow this.
Practise on other side.

5. Ardha chandrasana
in this pose keep focus on both the feet.  Do a lunge and push the hip down towards the ground.

Right foot onground, left knee on ground. Arms up joint .

Bottom on the floor

Yoga is about where we find ourself. Its about this moment. Being aware of the bottom touching the floor, the feet on the floor. It is the sensations, perceptions, thoughts, feelings, emotions, ideas, visuals all that we are aware of right now. How can we then limit the understanding of yoga as a posture, a movement , a value , an attitude?? Is it not all of our life? The totality of what is going on, what we are present to, right now?

in own practise and life, I have come to question everything. I have reached a place where labeling things is just not interesting anymore. It seems futile and quite meaningless. Everything is such a constant state of change, of flux that pinning things down is pointless.

When I have so much beauty around me, how come I overlook it? Beauty in so many expressions of life. This doesnt mean that there is absence of unpleasantness or pain. It means that there is the pain and also here is something beautiful. Here is joy and something else which could be repulsive or worth rejecting. Something that can overtake the senses and engage the mind fully so as to ignore other present aspects of reality.


The challenge is how to remain grounded in reality. All of it, even if at times we narrow our focus. Zooming in and zooming out! This image I found on the net, nails it

Wiiling to receive

We have to relax, we have to relax in our bodies to receive all the help around us. -
Reginald Ray

It all is going on in our bodies...  we have to quieten down enough, make room for what has been hidden to come up. And all this is in in the body. We normally understand meditation as a way to quieten our mind. But what after that?
The letting go of our ideas, conceptes, expectations allows us to relax. AND this happens in the body not just our minds. We have to bring in our body as a whole into this meditation practise only then can we really relate to who we are.

Intelligence in every cell

Recently at a family constellation workshop, the facilitator was explaining the psycho somatic understanding of our selves. A participant was complaining of body aches and headaches, to which he expressed that these can happen due to processing from deep work worked on the previous day. At that moment it struck me that most of us see pain and aches as something to correct  and change, something we do not like and to get rid off.

This way of looking at pains and aches just add another layer to what is going on. This is resistance to the current moment expressions of our self. There is this intelligence in every cell, in every part of our being that is completely true. It is the best of us expressing itself. In body pains we find a communication, a message for our understanding. Here is some part of us telling us , showing us something which needs to be acknowledged and known by another part of our own self. This very ache is part of our process of being aware of our larger self.  The ache is something coming up just now for us to pay attention to it and listen to the message. At times, we can get assistance from therapies like massage and treatments. This may help us to quieten down, open our perceptions to see what is going on within.

Yoga is about being in a steady way - quietly aware of what is going on at any moment and being able to attend to what is needed - in every moment. Listening to the flow of our own life , to do what is needed. The listening is as much needed as is the doing. Some call it the "being" -  the presence to all of our life. This attitude can give us a new respect for all the calls we receive from our bodies, to listen and respond in an appropriate way.

Asanas help to be inward, open and in a listening and very much being with the body aches. Relaxation poses like shavasana or legs up resting on a wall will calm down the nervous system. Allow the breath to slow down and widen. Listening to the ache, you might feel an invitation to move in a certain posture or asana. A simpler , slower version is much helpful. Always listening and moving only to what comes up from that particular ache. Wait and patiently respond.

Again, like the the facilitator said - pulling the golden thread from behind. Following and going to new information that shows up. Its really a very humbling and grounding experience to see the message, the intelligence that our body shows through the aches and pains. Enjoy this too!

in- Habit the body

What is spirituality?? All of our parts, some visible, some invisible but sensed? what about those parts we recognise in nature, in others??

I find that in the depth and spaciousness in the body this question dissolves. No answer is needed as the question doesn't exist anymore. The minds function is to look at everything- explore. This exploration takes us to what we sense. In the body it returns to dissolution. Absorbed by the peace that is the body.

The point that remains is the body is a true refuge to our wandering mind, our sense of being lost finds home in the body. Of course, in the superficial way the body appears dense and static. On being in the body we find sensation and impulses of movement, agitation, pulsing. Still being here - very patiently if we stay here with these sensations , it becomes clear that all this is superficial. The real body- what is underneath is this steadiness, this flow. And this is peaceful no matter what we notice is happening in the surface. Like underwater it is dense, moving and peaceful. This is the spaciousness which is the mind- as thoughts, feeling in my own body. And my mind rests here.  In the deep, moving, silent, space .

The part of our mind we call the body

beginning with “the part of our minds we call the body,” we find easier access to stabilizing our awareness. As Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche points out, if we work with the body, we can avoid forcing the mind to be quiet. The mind will quiet naturally, because body and mind profoundly affect one another. Focused on the body, our mind is less likely to wander off into our own story lines.

The mind can rest in the body

Our entire being is one and yet we seem to be have often a friction within ourself between our thoughts and the way we feel within the body. I am in the  midst of a seemingly major upheaval , lots of confusion , grief, feeling sorry for myself, anger at myself...  the full works of misery.
However, as days go by this is turning out to be an opportunity to really be within myself, close to me. I see that in this very challenging situation, my mind is doing its job of trying to figure out the best ways to keep me safe. All energies are looking for solutions.
 And it's very very frustrating,  tiring. However, in the body there continues to be a certain rhythm,  a flow of okay ness.  Things upset yet things go on. I find that there is tremendous sadness , i cry for no apparent reason , yet I laugh, I can see beauty around me. I can also sense others suffering and empathy flows. My current despair makes me very vulnerable and also open, softening of ego.
Its easier to be myself.

When I notice all this , the mind rests jn the body. It seems to me that that's what the mind needs most-a place to rest. And it happens in the body. I am not meditating or doing asanas but in the true sense yoga-the union of my entire being- is happening. Life caring for itself through the body and as seen, sensed in the body. Its the untrue thought that I am alone, that all is lost,  these thoughts are creating misery. But the true emotions and feelings in the body always have an okay ness to them. Even sadness is rich and very comforting when sensed in the body.

I can trust the body to take care of my mind, so I listen to all my senses and let things pass through me as they are.