Praxis
The podcast where practice makes purpose…
Praxis
The Practice of…Yoga (with Sam)
Ashtanga yoga practitioner and teacher Sam shares his decade-long journey through yoga and how this rigorous daily practice has shaped his sense of purpose and identity. He explores the tension between tradition and adaptation, personal growth through injury, and the importance of community in spiritual practice. In this episode we discuss:
• His two-hour daily practice at 6am involving memorised asana sequences developed over ten years
• Practice deepening from purely physical to include spiritual and philosophical dimensions
• Academic study of yoga's history providing critical perspective on cultural appropriation and commercialisation
• All practices existing within webs of human and non-human connections, challenging individualistic approaches
…plus much more!
Welcome to Praxis, the podcast where practice makes purpose. I'm Mikey and I'll be interviewing people about the practices that reveal and create purpose in their lives. Welcome to episode one of Praxis, the podcast where practice makes purpose. I am really, really excited that I have my first interviewee After a bonus episode last week. I actually am sitting down with somebody to talk about their practice, which is what this podcast is all about. I'm going to introduce you to my friend, sam. He is a Ashtanga Yoga practitioner and teacher. So welcome, sam. I'm so, so happy for you to be here.
Speaker 2:I'm so happy to be here. I'm delighted to be guest number one.
Speaker 1:This is brilliant. I'm so excited. So we're going to start off First of all. Can you speak about what your practice is currently like? What does that look like on a daily, weekly, monthly sort of basis?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's a slightly complicated picture. Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga is a tradition of yoga. That picture, ashtanga vinyasa yoga, is a a tradition of yoga that um encourages discipline and um quite aesthetic kind of practice. I practice for about two hours every day.
Speaker 2:I go to the shala, to the yoga studio, every morning, 6 am, um I practice a series of memorized asana, which um, I've I've, you know, developed over 10 years, that you build up, you know, pose by pose. Your teacher sort of bestows them upon you when you're ready, um, and I work my way through them every single morning. If I'm ready for the next one, I might be taught the next one, um, I might need to work on a particular aspect of a particular pose as the practice develops. Um, but it's something that's built up over the over many, many years in communication with your teacher. If your teacher is a good one, it's a really community focused practice because everybody's there practicing together, independently, on their own stage and their own journeys.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I won't go full out with two hours of practice on a particular morning. I might emphasize the sort of more meditative or sort of pranayama aspects of the practice. I do a lot of chanting as well, um, a little bit more. Uh, woo, woo. Aspects of the practice there maybe, um, but I love the chanting I, I I'm memorizing a text, uh, the thousand names of the goddess lalita, at the moment with another ashtanga practitioner working on that together, and sometimes maybe I'll chant that other morning instead of doing my full, full-blown loads and loads of asana.
Speaker 1:I mean, that is quite dedicated practice. Two hours a day is is quite a lot. Um, there is one day off a week. We do get that okay. So, yeah, you have a rest day. I think that's important. Um, so I am really interested in the idea of the hero's journey. So what I'm going to do is kind of take you back to the beginning of your practice. What was your call to adventure? What sparked your interest or passion in yoga?
Speaker 2:That's a really good question. I mean, I started practicing yoga when I was 16. Um, this was just from like YouTube videos and I found a. I found an old camping mat in my parents' attic, um, and I did sun salutations on it in the in the living room when I was like stressed about a levels or whatever. Um, but that was just based on youtube. But then when I went to university, I started going to this lead ashtanga class.
Speaker 2:So ashtanga is usually practiced what's called mysore style, where you practice individually and you've memorized the practice. But occasionally you might go to a lead class, um, where it's where you're sort of walked through it like a more sort of mainstream yoga class. And I went to this yoga class, this ashtanga class, that was taught by this uh, terrifying ballerina, ex-ballerina um, and she made the poses look so beautiful and graceful and strong and I thought, oh, I want to, that's how I want to practice. I don't want to just be sort of flopping around on my camping mat, uh, in the living room. I want to, I want to practice like that. I want to make it look that purposeful and that um, deliberate and graceful Um, so I guess sort of being taught by her was a sort of call to adventure in the sort of, in the sense that I was able to see what the practice could be like. I love that idea of sorry.
Speaker 1:I love that idea of being inspired by someone who's already an expert or some sort of mentor, which is a classic part of the hero's journey. And so what was your initial perception of yoga? In terms of a physical practice, or was it more spiritual? Um, what drew you to it? Was it about being able to practice in this graceful sort of way, or was there something else about that teacher, the former ballerina, that inspired you?
Speaker 2:that's a good question. I think that, um, nowadays my yoga practice is I would say it's spiritual. I'd even go as far as to say it's religious. It's certainly philosophical and disciplined in that sense.
Speaker 2:I think when I first started practicing it was as a physical practice. I'd been a gymnast as a kid and I wanted a form of exercise that kind of played to my strengths, I guess. I was flexible and I had calisthenic strength and I stopped doing gymnastics. I didn't want to lose those skills and yoga kind of filled that gap, if you will. I mean, looking back, I don't think there's anything wrong with being attracted to yoga asana as a physical exercise, because it is also a physical exercise, it works on your body. But I'm really glad that I've sort of deepened into the broader aspects as my practice has developed.
Speaker 2:Um, I think that it would be less rich, uh, certainly now, if I hadn't had my mind sort of expanded to include those, uh, more spiritual, philosophical, whatever you want to call them aspects. I'm not sure if it was that original um ex-ballerina teacher who sort of inspired me on that front, I think. Actually, I read a bunch of things, including, like, the yoga sutras of pathanjali, which you know historically don't have very much to do with ashtanga vinyasa but have kind of been sort of co-opted into it. Um and uh, I think reading that kind of thing sort of, as I say, expanded my, my sort of awareness of what could be involved in the practice. I have a really great teacher here um in Edinburgh, and she's very much aware and actively practicing the broader aspects and so, um, having her as my teacher has sort of really encouraged me to sort of explore those aspects so kind of on.
Speaker 1:Let's stick with the theme of the teacher. Um, you know, in the hero's journey, the hero has a, a mentor, an older, wiser, more experienced person who leads them through their trials and tribulation, or what have you? Obviously you've had teachers in the past and you have teachers presently. You are a teacher yourself. How important is it to have an in the flesh teacher as opposed to I'm talking specifically about yoga as opposed to, you know, sticking on a dvd or youtube video? Um, you know, you have yoga influencers on instagram. You have, um, people who have youtube channels with millions of followers. Is there a point where that is not useful anymore and you have to go into lead practice, or is it enough for me to stick on a YouTube video 20 minutes a day? What is your opinion on that?
Speaker 2:I'd say I have sort of multiple opinions. I think that there is nothing wrong with practicing along with a youtube video.
Speaker 1:You know, 20 years ago, maybe a dvd, um show my age so, as a little aside, I remember finding, um, a vhs of it was so 80s uh. One of my mum's vhs is a video of a yoga uh and I was, I remember, doing sun salutations when I was about 10, at like six in the morning, so obviously I was drawn to that sort of stuff as well. Sorry, you continue.
Speaker 2:No, that's right, I think you know there are. There are some great teachers putting stuff out there online, and there's nothing wrong with with with that being the way that you, you learn and practice, and it makes it a whole much more accessible. Because you know, the yoga industry is this, you know, booming thing, where lots of things cost a lot of money, and so having these things accessible online is actually a really good thing, I think. But when it comes to something like Ashtanga Vinyasa, which can be quite a dangerous practice if it's not done carefully, you really need a teacher in person. For that.
Speaker 2:You won't make anywhere near the kind of progress that you can make with an in-person teacher. Progress is perhaps the wrong word. You won't deepen your practice in the same way. Um, it's not about progression. It's not about getting a new arsenal, like I could look at a video of kina mcgregor she's a famous ashtanga practitioner practicing the fourth series and just copy her. Like I could do that. But I don't want to do that.
Speaker 2:That's not what the practice is about. It's about a relationship with yourself and with your teacher and with your community, and for that to be established you need a teacher in person. At the same time. If I did follow Keenan McGregor doing the fourth series on a video, I might hurt myself, and having the teacher there to say, actually you're not ready for this is a really helpful thing. It's not necessarily about what they can tell you to do. It's about them telling you what you can't do, and that's that's really helpful as well. They're there to say no as well as to sort of say yes and you can't. You can't get that sort of limiting factor if you're just sort of bumbling along by yourself. That's not to say that there aren't some great things out there online, because of course there are um, but with this practice specifically, you need a person in person.
Speaker 1:Teacher and I suppose probably the vast majority of people, uh, globally, or maybe not globally, maybe uh in the west, are doing, you know youtube, yoga practices a couple times a week or something like that, or going to, um, I suppose, maybe less spiritually oriented classes in the gym or something like that. Um, you mentioned the, the p word of progress, um, so obviously the, the tagline of my podcast, where practice, practice makes purpose, um is kind of a riff on practice making perfect or progress. How do you judge making some sort of progress in in yoga? You say that your practice has deepened, but what's that look like? You know, I associate expert yoginis or yoga practitioners has been able to do all these kind of pretzel-y sort of poses. But what is the goal of, or is there a goal of, yoga? How do you measure yourself now as opposed to maybe five years ago? What is the difference there?
Speaker 2:that's a really tricky question and I have about 100 answers to it.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry I think that you know there is. There are so many different ways to conceptualize the goal of yoga. If you want to take a sort of classical, historical philosophical perspective, you look at a text like the yoga sutra. You know that the goal of yoga is yoga. Yoga stills the movements of the mind. It's. The goal of yoga is the achievement of the state of absorption called samadhi.
Speaker 2:I don't think that I will ever achieve that, certainly not practicing asana. You know that you have to do like years and years and years of meditation on a cushion to get that level. I don't suppose I will. But I guess progress could be measured by movement towards that kind of state. I mean much more prosaically, you could measure progress in inverted commas by saying well, how many poses can you do? I, particularly with something like Ashtanga Vinyasa, where it's sort of sequential. You learn poses and memorize them, pose by pose. You build up through the series primary, intermediate, third, fourth, etc. Like when I, when I first started practicing with my current teacher, I had all of primary in my practice and the early poses of intermediate Learning with this teacher. Over the last few years I have built up and I do the whole of intermediate now and I've got the first few of third.
Speaker 2:As I say, on a prosaic level, you can see progress by just adding postures, but at the same time it's a sort of ebb and flow, isn't it?
Speaker 2:There have been a number of times in the last few years where I've had quite serious injuries, not necessarily because of yoga, like you know, bad shoulder tore my hamstring and the practice has to then take a step back and actually I think during those times when I wasn't doing my full series of asana, I actually made more progress in the sense that I got to know myself more and I knew how to move my body in ways that didn't cause it pain and I learned how to work around those injuries and I learned how the different parts of my fascia and my joints and muscles all worked with each other. And sure, I wasn't doing the same, anywhere near the same level of intense physical practice as I was when I wasn't injured, but I definitely made more progress, I think, during that time, even though I wasn't injured, but I definitely made more progress, I think during that time, even though I wasn't putting my legs behind my head or pressing up to a handstand like I might usually, um, I mean, I mean.
Speaker 1:I like the idea of having practices that have kind of infinite levels of depth. You know you can always go a layer deeper. Um, in my own meditation practice, very similar to yoga, I don't think I will ever achieve so-called enlightenment. It might happen, who knows, but I don't think I will ever get there. However, what I can do is aim to go just a little bit deeper each time, or to quieten my mind just a little bit more, to sink into the practice, day after day, week after week, year after year, and I kind of like the idea of having it's almost like a goalless goal.
Speaker 1:There's no end point to yoga or meditation, even in something, as you know quote unquote non-spiritual as running. You know, I can train for a marathon and I'll complete a marathon, but it doesn't mean I've completed running. I can train for a marathon and I'll complete a marathon, but does it mean I've completed running? I can always go a little bit further or a little bit quicker. I can always change my posture, I can always change my gait. You know, there's always something to learn. You mentioned in your kind of pre-interview questionnaire that you had a three-year break from daily practice. Yes, how did that affect your attitude towards your yoga practice and how did you return to a more embedded daily practice?
Speaker 2:I think returning to a more consistent daily practice has felt like coming up for air, I think is the best way I can describe it. I feel like I've come back to normal. It's not that I've taken something on in addition to what I would otherwise normally be doing. It's that I have recovered a sense of how I'm supposed to be living. The reason that I had that break from practice was because of the job that I was doing and the stress that it was causing and the business that was bringing to my life, and I just felt like I didn't have time for it and I let it completely go and that, quite quite frankly, severely damaged my mental health over time, like not just because I wasn't in the practice but the job as well.
Speaker 2:But I think coming back to the practice has, as I say, felt like I've returned to myself. In a way that practice has helped me recover my sense of who I want to be and how I want to live my life, and it feels like I'm being much more deliberate and, um, mindful and purposeful with regards to how I'm living my life in a way that I wasn't before, and there was a whole bunch of things that affected that. It wasn't just that I wasn't practicing regularly, but that was definitely part of it, and they were all symptomatic of the same sort of tangled knot of problems, and I'm very, very glad that I've come back to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah it sounds like you're saying that you have a sense of coming back to your.
Speaker 1:I know it's a very cliched polyamericanism phrase, but your kind of authentic self or coming back home, that sense of returning to practice, um, I find it interesting when you know there's been times when I've gone through periods of less than optimum mental health and my daily spiritual practice has suffered because of that.
Speaker 1:And it's kind of ironic that those are the times that I probably should be practicing more and it's kind of ironic that those are the times that I probably should be practicing more because it will help kind of lift me out of that thunk, as it were. But I totally get that. I think it's a very, very common thing when you're injured physically, mentally, that your practices that usually ground you, stabilize, you, anchor you do take a hit when they're the tools that probably could help you get out of that. I found that very, very interesting. You also say that there's some things you know in the way you live your life now. There are certain things that you don't do and there's certain things that you have added into your life because they affect your practice. Could you maybe give some examples of that or speak more on that?
Speaker 2:absolutely. I think that. So the practice that I do overflows the time that you give. It isn't just the two hours 6 am to 8 am every morning minus saturday.
Speaker 2:It overflows that because you know, it with a practice that's so physically demanding. You can't. You can't just go about the rest of your life and expect to be able to turn up at the mat at 6 am and be fine to be able to do it like I have. You know, I have to get up at 5 am in order to go there. I have to go to bed at a certain time. I can't go out and have have a late dinner with friends. I can't go out and have a late dinner with friends. I can't go out and drink in the evening. I can't. I have to be in bed by 8.30, 9 in order to be sort of functioning. At 5 am I have to make sure that what I've eaten in the evening doesn for for the day ahead. I'm taking into account this, this thing, this huge chunk of time in the morning that's going to be just just gone.
Speaker 2:Um, at the moment, you know, my work is very flexible and I can sort of make my own hours.
Speaker 2:But uh, in the future, if I have a job that I'm never going to have, a job that requires me to be at work at hopefully that requires me to work at 8 am, because I won't be able to be there because I'll be at practice and that's more important to me I'm going to have to find a job that will allow me to do that.
Speaker 2:So it will completely shape the way that I live my life going forwards, which I guess some people would see as a restriction, and in many ways it is a restriction, but it's a restriction I'm sort of joyfully taking onto myself because, like you know, you were talking before about you know what's what's the goal, and the practice itself is the goal in a way. Um, that's what I want to do. I think I remember at one point saying that you're deciding that I all I wanted from life was, you know, convert a van, get a dog and do yoga, and that's all I needed. As long as I could do that, particularly that last thing, as long as I could do yoga, I would be fine.
Speaker 1:I mean that sounds like a wonderful life. I mean I suppose that is not to delve too much into this for this interview, necessarily, but that's also quite a privileged position to be in, to have your life kind of revolving around your daily practice. But then I suppose you make space for what you make space for. You know, I do have a job where I'm in work at 8 am so in order for me to meditate and then go to the gym, which is part of my what I call it you know it's habit stacking, I don't call it that, that's a known phrase. Your practice Part of my habits phrase, but part of my habits. Or meditation, part of my practice, meditation and going to the gym.
Speaker 1:I get up at 4.30, which means that I go to. I know it's gross, isn't it? I've always been a morning person, so I'm pretty lucky, but then I do go to bed at nine o'clock, so I do get my seven and a half hours, whatever, um, but then you know there's certain things that I don't do now because it impacts my practice. So you know, I I gave up drinking about 14 months ago maybe, um, partially because it was impacting me being able to get up in the morning my mental health. You know how can I authentically meditate in the morning when I've got a raging hangover? You know, um, how has an academic grounding in yoga changed how you engage with it, or changed your view of your practice?
Speaker 2:hugely. I think. I mean, um, my PhD is, uh, the PhD I'm studying for at the moment is on yoga and yoga as taught in the UK and its relationships to Indian history and Indian politics, and a whole host of other sort of things are drawn in. I won't go into it in depth here. Read the thesis when it comes out, nice plug. It's hugely changed my practice.
Speaker 2:I relate to the practice in an entirely different way. I have a much, much more grounded understanding of what it is, I think, and what it is aiming to do. I think when I first started practicing, I had the sort of stereotypical understanding of yoga as some sort of ancient, uh, ancient indian practice that is mystical and, um, it's quite an orientalist perspective, I think. Um, and yes, there are traditions of yoga that are very, very ancient indeed, but ashtanga vinyasa is not it's, you know, max 100 years old, if that. Um, and I think that that's sort of given me an understanding, given me an appreciation for what, for what the practice actually is. It helps me keep it in perspective. I mean, I know I've just gone on talking about how my life is all revolved around it and and all that, but that's a choice that I'm making. I'm not putting that on the practice and saying, oh, there's this ancient tradition that I'm committing myself to.
Speaker 2:It's like no, but you have to do it exactly I've decided that I'm going to commit myself to this practice and I and I know what I'm committing myself to it. So I'm making that, very making that decision, in full knowledge of what what this practice is, um, and I'm particularly knowing what I do about the tradition. You know, ashtanga Vinyasa has problems with regards to exploitative teachers and teachers causing injuries to students and sexual abuse by gurus and things like that, and that is all very much involved in the history of the tradition. And I'm glad to know that because I'm making the commitment, knowing all these things about the practice and about the history of it. And if I'd made this commitment not knowing those things and then later found them out, I that would, I think, be very damaging to my, the fact that I had committed myself to it and my sort of self-understanding, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, I mean in a related sort of way. How do you deal with the cultural context of practicing yoga outside of its original culture? Obviously it's been imported um, some might say by force, by, by whatever means from india and practicing it in the west. What is the tension there between, you know, cultural appropriation or people setting themselves up as a guru, or you know, even using the word like yogini on instagram, you know all those kind of those memes and things is there, is there a tension there or not?
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100% is a tension, and it's a tension that I, as a white practitioner, 100% need to grapple with and all white practitioners should.
Speaker 2:I think that it's sort of incumbent upon us to educate ourselves about the history of the practice, and too often the education of oneself becomes just a sort of blanket oh, this is an Indian practice, oh, this is an ancient Indian practice which is, in fact, just as problematic as kind of appropriating it, because that is doesn't reflect the richness and diversity of the, of the many, many different traditions of of yoga that have been called yoga across the, the huge span of time that this word has been used to describe spiritual or philosophical meditational practices.
Speaker 2:Um, the, the practice I would, I would I like to put like this that the practice of yoga by non-indian person isn't inherently appropriative, but it can be practiced appropriately, it can be taught appropriately. I don't call myself a yogi for that reason. Um, I call myself a yoga practitioner or, even better, a practitioner of yoga, asana, because that is very specific. I'm practicing asana, I'm practicing yoga postures. Um, the term yoga being so broad, um and applied to so many different kinds of traditions, I don't want to imply that I'm sort of encompassing all of those which would be impossible. Um, and I think that you know, as a teacher of yoga, I try to be very, very deliberate with regards to the words that I use when I'm teaching.
Speaker 2:You know, you hear about, um, yoga teachers who you know, use sanskrit names for themselves, which is deeply inappropriate on so many levels um, you know, I remember reading a yeah, quite, I remember reading an article by an indian american practitioner of yoga who said something like are you going to use that Sanskrit name on your job application? Obviously not. So like, I mean, there's obvious things to avoid like that. And then there's more subtle things as well, you know, with regards to the ways that you are interacting with knowledge, interacting with with knowledge, like, are you, uh, like, equally drawing from, like, indian practitioners and non-indian practitioners, and how do you relate to those different kinds of knowledge? And it's a, it's a, it's part of the practice of yoga. I think it's about being mindful, it's about being deliberate and it's about being so.
Speaker 1:It's about cultivating a particular kind of yeah, and I mean, there are lots of different traditions where, when you are initiating such a tradition, like Zen Buddhism for example, you are given a Japanese name that is supposed to incorporate your goals for the path, perhaps. And yet I suppose some teachers, some white practitioners, might use that when there's cultural cachet attached to it, when they're trying to flog their course on social media, but then when there's a negative attachment to a foreign sounding name, they won't use it, of course. Um, what do you think, aside from being mindful of cultural aspects of yoga, what makes a great yoga teacher? You know, you've obviously gone through the process of being a student, and I suppose you will always be a student, but you've obviously gone through the process of being a student, and I suppose you will always be a student, but you've gone through teacher training. You are a yoga teacher. What makes a great teacher?
Speaker 2:uh well, I certainly wouldn't call myself a great yoga teacher and I certainly wouldn't say that yoga teacher training makes you a great yoga teacher. Um, I certainly wouldn't say so. It makes you a good one. Um, but that's by the, by repathesis, um, anyway, I think that a great yoga teacher is, is is made by, I mean, just to use a buddhist idiom. For a second, wisdom and compassion, I think, are probably the two things that make a yoga teacher great. And and I use that, I guess you know those are two very nebulous terms, so I'll sort of clarify a little bit.
Speaker 2:But I think that you can see this quite well in different kinds of ashtanga teachers.
Speaker 2:You get some ashtanga vinyasa teachers who prioritize tradition and orthodoxy above all things.
Speaker 2:And you know, regardless of the the shape of the student that's standing in front of them, regardless of the body that they've got, regardless of the injuries they've had or the problems they're presenting with or whatever not problems, but you know, opportunities, perhaps that they're presenting with, that teacher will say, no, this is how we must do it, this is how the tradition says we do it, let's go. And that is unwise. You know that's not going to lead to positive benefits to anyone in this situation but a teacher who sort of looks at the student in front of them and dialogues with the student in front of them, um, and adapts for them. You know how it sort of navigates this tension between orthodox tradition and the student and their own body that's standing in front of them and can navigate that, that tension appropriately so a bad teacher ironically has a lack of flexibility as a as a yoga teacher, so that was an awful pun, I'm really really sorry but I had to had to get that in there oh no.
Speaker 2:Yoga academics do the same thing all the time. Loads of yoga articles are like stretching yoga. They've all got stretching in the title. I'm guilty of myself. I wrote. I wrote a paper called stretching the gods. You know, oh god oh, awful, awful, um.
Speaker 1:Just a couple of things to to kind of wrap up with. You mentioned the importance of community. What is your current yoga community? Is it based around your phd or is it broader than that?
Speaker 2:it's, it's broader than that. I mean, I guess I've been drawing on the community for my phd because it's all based on sort of ethnographic work, um, with yoga communities and I've, you know, I started with my own um for that. But the primary community that I'm talking about, that I'm that is really important to me is is the, is the shala community. So shala is a word that um. It essentially means studio, it means it means school or sort of place of learning, um, and in ashtanga vinyasa we generally refer to our studios as shalas to indicate that it's not just like a business. It might well be a business as well, but it isn't just primarily like a sort of public facing organization that's there to sell classes. It's also a place where people go to practice and that's what's most important about it.
Speaker 2:Um the same. I see the same faces every single day when I go to practice. You know it's not always exactly the same, but you know I I've known these people for years now and we will get. We'll chat before and after practice, we'll talk about our practice and we'll go for coffee together afterwards and you steadily build up this community of people who are all interested in the same thing and support each other through the sort of highs and lows and sympathize when your shoulder injury means that you can't do your proper downward facing dog or whatever it might be. And because it's such an esoteric and non-mainstream kind of yoga, it's really nice having people who understand what you mean when you say that. You know I managed to do Ekapada Raja Kaputasana, like most people aren't going to get what you mean when you say that?
Speaker 1:Not a clue. I mean, part of the hero's journey is having allies and having friends. You know, the hero's never alone, uh, in the hero's journey, and I think having that community around you to support you and even to challenge you you know people who might call you out on a certain aspect of your practice or ask you questions that you hadn't really considered before is part of growing yourself as a student of of yoga, of your practice. Um, what's it like living with a partner who doesn't practice?
Speaker 2:I have to say. I mean, obviously I am very, very, very happy to be living with my partner and I'm blessed that he moved up to edinburgh to live with me, but I think that it certainly was easier to get up at 5am and go to practice when I wasn't delivering with my partner, um it adds another layer of tension is the wrong word but another layer of navigation.
Speaker 2:It's another way for me to demonstrate my commitment to the practice, that I can find ways to fit it into our life together. And it isn't just about me doing my practice, that's what's really important to me. It's also about how can we build our life, our life together, in a way that is great for both of us and satisfies satisfies both of our needs and wants, um, but also doesn't compromise on the things that are important to both of us. Um, so, uh, it might mean that I go a little bit later to practice so that I don't wake him up at 5 am every single day. Or maybe I practice at home a few days a week rather than going into the shower. So, so, again, I'm not having to get up as early. Um, I think that's flexibility, I guess yeah, no, I think that's really fair.
Speaker 1:I think you know things. I think your practice should enhance your life. It shouldn't provide unnecessary complications where there doesn't have to be, and having that element of flexibility is really important. When the hero has been on their journey and completed all the trials, the last part is the return home, hopefully with a different world view, a different outlook on life. How has your world view changed or been challenged or altered, whatever you want to call it, as a yoga practitioner?
Speaker 2:I guess an easy answer to that which unfortunately I can't say I agree with an easy answer to that would be maybe that I've, you know, absorbed the worldview as presented in the Yoga Sutras or some other text. I haven't. I don't necessarily agree with the philosophy as presented in those texts. A more nuanced and and more more accurate answer might be that I've probably become more questioning of um, the importance of holding a worldview at all. You know, I think I've become less grasping onto particular um ideas as like totems or whatever, in the sense that the practice is so.
Speaker 2:You know, you come in every day and you, you do your asana and you don't necessarily make anything new today as you did, just as comparison in comparison to yesterday. It's gently tripping away very, very slowly. You can't expect to achieve results straight away. And in the same way, I think that it's encouraged me to think of life like that, if that makes sense. It's not that I have to have all the answers right now. I'm much more comfortable with being in the dark, because my practice is also kind of in the dark a lot of the time. There's no sort of light at the end of the tunnel, necessarily, um, and it helps me live life in that way as well. I don't have to know what the world is going to be like or what the world should be like.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, just leaning into that kind of uncertainty. Yeah, costas, yeah, yeah, I think. Yeah, leaning into that uncertainty and not having all the answers but just doing the practice anyway, regardless of you know that security of knowledge. Yeah, um, just before we finish up, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you would like to talk about, or any final thoughts that have been ruminating that you want to want to put out there?
Speaker 2:I think that, just how I think, just to emphasize just how important it is to to do this kind of practice in community that, yes, there are practices that essentially you do them on your own, and this kind of practice, yes, you're doing it on your own, yes, you've got a teacher, but you are on your own, but at the same time, you can't exist in isolation.
Speaker 2:Um, and no matter how much the, the sort of ideal meditator or yogi or whatever is like in a cave on a mountain, no, even that yogi in a cave on the mountain is reliant on the air that they're breathing and the water that they are consuming and the animals or plants that have died to provide them with food or whatever it might be they are still embedded in this web of connections. Um, and the emphasis on this kind of, in this kind of practice, is often on the individual and the progress of the individual and the practice of the individual, and not necessarily enough on all those webs of human and non-human connections that are sustaining them. Um, and I think that I really want to sort of emphasize that in my teaching and in my practice, how much I and others are embedded in those sort of webs and connections um, which is, I think, under emphasized in this kind of discussions often well, I think that is a wonderful place to finish, so, honestly, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:That has been a wonderful interview. I've enjoyed every second of it. Uh, thank you for being my first guest. Me, too, it was wonderful. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you. My sincerest thanks to sam for agreeing to be interviewed for this very first full episode of praxis. I hope to see you next time. You can always get in touch with me at Praxis underscore podcast on Instagram, and I will see you next time.