I'm back! Here's what I took from my first Yoga class...

Hi, everyone!

I hope you all had a really good December and that Christmas and New Year's day was a lot of fun, because now we are smack into 2019 and it is time to get to work! :)

Remember when I said that I was going to try out a Yoga class during the holidays?

Well- let's scroll past Dhalsim here...

(He happens to be the one connection that most of us make between Yoga and martial arts- if you know Street Fighter...)




Let's stop here...





How awesome is she? Meet Casey Chiang! At work I have first met her as an advocate/ barrister and have found that she has quite a sharp mind and a lot of readily accessible knowledge that comes in handy in many cases.

It was only very recently- towards the end of last year- that someone pointed out that my favourite counsel was also a Yoga teacher.

The surprise does not stop there, though.

Over here in South Africa- in the province of Gauteng- she is THE Yoga teacher and owner of the Zen Hot Yoga studio in Bryanston Johannesburg. A couple of instructors have been taught BY HER!

And SHE, believe it or not, invited me to attend one class.

Now that was one highlight of my December holidays...

(Another highlight involved a Chinese masseuse in Cyrildene who actually lives in Cape Town and another is the purchase of that handsome devil below that spent most of the ride home on my car's dashboard, but let's not digress now, shall we?)

 


So- to tell you how the class went I have to confess-

My years of martial arts training was of no help at all.

And THAT's where the awakening lies. Sure- we train a lot. We punch, we kick, we grapple, we lift weights and we stretch and do push-ups, but in the end- what did we actually do?



 

Don't get me wrong- I know that all that training has its place, but when I realised how un-flexible I was and that I was unable to balance myself on my hands in Crow Position- and let me rather not relive my attempt at doing a head stand... There was this much older looking lady in class that actually nailed that pose while I ended up nailing myself... :D

... digressing again... Let's get back on track...

What I realised was- You may think fighting is a challenge. You may think that the Qigong student who only does these insane looking exercises (see the lady in pink above? Sure- she does not look tough, but give that pose a try!) will not be any good in a fight, and maybe you are right. But then again- these people have mastered themselves. Your comfort zone may be the cage, but that does not necessarily mean that you have mastered anything... You may just be good at fighting...

Jesse Enkamp's brother Oliver said in an interview last year that his Ikigai -or raison d'etre if we want to get fancy- is to be the best version of himself.

In my case- I got reminded about all those unpleasant aspects of my training that lay there gathering dust and I just realised what the result was of neglecting them. 







So- I have decided to take some of those Yoga Asana's back with me and to start working on my flexibility, balance, upperbody strength and posture.

And yep- we have a lot of work ahead.









But then again- Kung Fu is work...

I saw a posture like this at Yoga class!

 

While Yoga itself my not feature much in martial arts training nowadays Chinese and Indian martial arts (especially Shaolin's Kung Fu) has always had these very hard, damn near impossible, contortion and stretching exercises. Some students of Qigong may recognise them in their own systems.

Last year I have explained how Hinduism, and later on Buddhism, sought spiritual perfection through ignoring the senses and pushing the body beyond its comfort zone. Stretching exercises and contortionist poses played a huge part in this process as this was one way to get one used to pain.

Other ways of course involved walking on hot coals, sitting or lying on a bed of spikes and getting hit.

The thing is, we as fighters want to be able to take on the world. The limitations to doing so lie more in our minds than in our bodies. You may know that. What Yoga teaches us is that through mastery of the body the mind can actually be freed in order for us to accomplish what we have not done before.


That's it from me! :)

Hope we all have an awesome 2019!