Yoga school drop-out (no graduation day for me)

It wasn't the most promising start. "Oh, dear," the landlady of the ashram looked up at me pityfully from the dietary requirements section of my registration form. "Veggan? That is how you say? No milk, no butter, no cream, no cheese, no egg, no honey," she read from my form. "Curd?" she tried, weakly. I shook my head. "Oh dear," she said again.

"I can't be the first," I began, in my defence. "Almost everyone I know who does yoga is vegan and this is an ashram..."  She clasped her hands, shook her head and closed her eyes like I was delivering bad news about a relative. "We will think of something but breakfast real problem," she said solemnly. "Toast! I have my own peanut butter..." I blurted optimistically, as I followed her upstairs to my room.

"Do you use toilet paper?" she asked as I checked out the bathroom. "I'm sorry?" I questioned, sticking my head around the door. "Do you use toilet paper?" she repeated, nodding her head toward the squat toilet. "I'm not sure I understand. Toilet paper as opposed to what?" "Well, if you do, please put it in the bin and not in the toilet," she instructed, matter of factly, ignoring my question. "Do some people not use it?" I asked, genuinely confused. "We don't, we use water," the landlady shrugged. "But then you're all wet, you know, underneath. What do you dry with?" "We have a small cloth in the bathroom..." "I see," I nodded slowly, whilst making a mental note to never, ever use the hand towel in a Nepalese bathroom.

The morning yoga was a little too much pranayama (breathing exercises) for my liking and the evening yoga, although good, was conducted outside in an area surrounded by trees and therefore saw me constantly yanking down my sleeves and trouser legs, hoping to avoid mosquito bites - so I never really relaxed into it.

I just couldn't bring myself to join in with the neti cleansing conducted in the area I mentally referred to as "the snot garden". The less said about that the better. *shudder*

I came into myself for daily chanting, though. I was happy sitting in a circle, eyes closed, chanting musical mantras while some shook tambourines and bells and others banged drums. That was my favourite bit - music makes me feel connected.

The meditation needed mixing up a bit in my opinion. I know it's not meant to be interesting but it was the same technique twice a day which started to become monotonous. A bit of Osho style Bollywood dancing would've pleased me enormously but alas so-hum-ing with prayer beads were as much fun as we were allowed.

As all courses (lasting anything from one day to several weeks) begin on any day you fancy, every meal time consisted of the EXACT same conversation with the day's new faces: Where are you from? Where've you been? Where are you going next? How long are you staying? Have you been trekking/paragliding? After all that there was no time for deeper conversation and by day three I stopped wishing to communicate entirely, was very likely considered rude and moody (for which I actually didn't give a shit) and began resenting the fact that it wasn't a silent retreat. 

It was a complete pain in the arse facing the daily barrage of questions about veganism when it was noticed I wasn't given the milky breakfast products but was instead presented with an apple and a banana and so I found myself either giving short answers like "everything else" when asked what I eat if not meat and dairy or worse still, saying I'm sick of the questions and don't want to talk about it. (It gets you that way when you're forced to talk about it three times a day.) 

But the final straw came on the one day there was toast (halelujah!). Everyone was given cheese toasties and when I asked for plain toast got told there wasn't any bread left. Other than scowling at my apple and banana, I managed to internalise my tantrum, decided I'm not cut out for prison life, grabbed my rucksack and jar of peanut butter and sodded off down to Lakeside to find a drop-in yoga class. And some toast. 

Tea and simplicity

Patient: "Doctor, doctor, every time I drink tea I get a sharp pain in my eye."
Doctor: "Have you tried removing the spoon?"

(It'd be unsurprising to learn that the doctor prescribed painkillers but that's another discussion.)

It can take a different perspective to see that something as obvious as removing the spoon - generally not considered harmful to health! - from our cup of tea can save us unnecessary pain. And it's an alternative to mainstream Western culture that will offer the path to a life of less suffering. 

If you're wondering, "What's missing?" it's doubtful you'll find the answer. Instead, turn the question on its head and ask, "What's surplus?" It's much more likely pondering this question will point you toward the right path.

"If you love someone, set them free. Starting with yourself."
~ Lisa Cherry Beaumont, 2011

Kopan strategies

"Two toilets and one shower for HOW many people?" I enquired, certain I'd misheard. The receptionist monk counted on his fingers again, then looked skyward as he did a quick calculation to be sure he'd got it right. "Twenty," he confirmed, "five rooms of four on your floor." I winced, imagining the endless queue of greasy-haired, cross-legged women outside the communal bathroom at 4:30 every morning. "Is that enough?" I checked. "Never had any complaints," he shrugged neutrally and looked at me patiently for my next question.

With that knowledge, and having heard earlier that the food is "watery porridge, sometimes there's bread, and chips and oily fried vegetables; it's the same every day" I felt my tiara slip past my ears and tighten around my neck and so decided I'd best not ask anything else and just wait and see.

I really needn't have worried about the facilities and the food. After a day or two of settling in I was used to sharing a loo and my showers being a terrifying splash of icy cold water and got myself three of the loveliest roomies I could have hoped for. And the woman who spectacularly misinformed me about the food? Well, I wished her lovingkindness when we passed on the stairs, like a good little Buddhism student. Unfortunately this is where my excellence as a Buddhism student seemed to end.

In spite of warming quickly to the environment, the routine and the people, it was a damn struggle to sit still on the floor of that gompa (meditation hall) and concentrate on nothing more than my breathing for an hour at a time. I could last 20 minutes before changing the position of my legs/cushions/blanket every 5 minutes thereafter, and I was so nosy! I bet his feet are cold with no socks on. I wonder how she did that with her hair. Has anyone got their eyes open? Is the teacher meditating? Her cushion matches her skirt. Are there the same number of coloured blocks in each of the ceiling squares? I'd better count them. Pen lid on, pen lid off, pen lid on, pen lid off... The difficulty of long periods of almost completely unguided meditation was too much for my monkey mind - by session three I'd mentally decorated my houseboat and decided it needs a decent oven and a serving hatch on the side through which I can sell my vegan fayre to canal strollers.

But the meditations improved once were given something to focus on and became a walk through rainbows compared to the teachings. I'll be frank: I found them ambiguous, unfounded, and littered with "scientific" anecdotes that were irrelevant or exaggerated at best; contradictory or wildly inaccurate at worst. And I had to sit, quietly gasping in shock, seething inside, without the opportunity to question or challenge any of it. And that wasn't all that was yanking my chain.

Before each class we'd to recite various mantras (prayers) and half the people (those who come back year after year - to a beginners course? You've got to wonder why) perform a set of prostrations that are like praying and then putting your head on the floor - something to do with letting go of your ego. What I struggled with was, if Buddhism is an atheistic religion, who are they praying to? It was acknowledged that this was confusing many of us but we were quickly "reassured" with, "Shut up and say your prayers". Yes, it was said half in jest but, at the same time, it didn't come with any explanation, which did not sit well with me at all; that's nothing more than dogma! As one student said, "I was brought up a Catholic - this kind of stuff makes me shudder."

Thankfully I wasn't alone in my dissatisfaction. Several people I spoke to were in strong agreement. As one confused student said to me, "Praying to Buddha doesn't make sense." Another decided to stay and follow the meditations only but sit out of the teaching classes. I too considered sticking it out, taking from it what I could and disregarding the bits I didn't agree with but that would have meant disregarding the majority of what was being taught - what would be the point? The food was great but not reason enough to stay a month.

And so after careful consideration I decided that the course was not for me. I kissed goodbye my favourite monastery dog - the one who likes to lean on you, that I nicknamed Cheeky Chops - and, along with several other disillusioned students, I left the monastery to seek a more real and tangible path to genuine, attainable happiness.

World inside my head

As you probably know, I'm fascinated by what makes us happy and so that comes, hand in hand, with an interest in what's preventing us from being happy - kind of stands to reason, really. Therefore, ever since a few friends - some of them relatively sane - have sung the praises of past life regression therapy I've been intrigued to know more and when I heard of a workshop being run locally for a tenner, obviously I was on it like a car bonnet.

And so I rocked up at Brunel Museum in Rotherhithe on a Tuesday night sporting an open mind and leggings (I had a sense some of this would take place on a yoga mat). The evening was led by Doug Buckingham, a therapist whom I've met at various workshops and who looks and behaves, well, normal. He doesn't wear an Afghan coat and sandals, has no visible tattoos and can hold intelligent conversation. Put it this way, if you took him home to meet your mother she'd nod approvingly. (Well, right up until the point you tried to explain what he does.)

Doug explained what past life regression is, the different theories of how it works, how he came to it himself and he told us stories of (anonymous) case studies. We were helped to relax with a short meditation and were encouraged to ask questions. We were then offered the chance to experience a taste of past life regression, and out came the yoga mats and blankets.

Comfortable on the floor, we were led on a hypnotic journey into our subconscious and encouraged to discover one of our positive past life experiences - well, we didn't want to go digging up something negative in a group workshop; can you imagine? And so I stepped out of a large country house into a rose garden, a four year old girl with long curly blonde hair and bare feet, and was sucked into a colourful ball of energy above the fountain. Moments later I emerged as a wrinkly Native American grandmother with great hair and terrible teeth. I was wearing trousers and a waistcoat made from animal hide.

I found myself standing by a huge lake surrounded by tall trees. I felt calm. Beside me was a small fishing boat, and a little boy probably five years old, with big dark eyes and straight black hair - my Grandson! Looking down at my hands I could see small arrowheads and I was threading something onto a fishing wire. When Doug asked us to imagine ourselves demonstrating the skills we had at the time, I was sewing shoes. We were then asked to go to a later happy occasion in the same lifetime and I could see across the lake a large log cabin, where my Grandson was getting married, and I felt contentment.

Shortly after we this, we were brought back to the room, wide awake and refreshed. I was surprised at what my "imagination" had brought forward, considering I know absolutely nothing about Native Americans and am vegan so wouldn't normally think about wearing animal hide and making weapons with which to kill animals. So where did these images come from?

I want to believe in past lives, I really do. To me, there's comfort in the notion that "this isn't all there is" but obviously this workshop isn't solid proof of that. But what it did demonstrate to me is that there are other worlds inside our minds ready to be tapped into. And if an issue is simply too raw to address or difficult to understand in our present reality, stepping into a past life, real or imagined (it doesn't matter) could be the way to do it.

Kiss me, kismet!

A few years ago I was fortunate enough to have suffered from depression. Yes, obviously it didn't feel like that at the time - I was utterly miserable - but I say I was fortunate because, otherwise, I may never had been introduced to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), a psychological approach which taught me that, it's not what goes on in your life that determines your level of happiness, it's how you deal with it. And that's important because, let's face it, crap stuff happens to ALL of us so it's brilliant to learn how to surf the waves without wiping out.

A few months ago, I felt like my landlord had whipped the chair right out from under me; he decided to sell my home. I'd only been there a year and, in spite of my CBT training, I was struggling hard to get my rose-tinted spectacles to stay on my nose. But after the initial shock and a little time spent re-evaluating my lifestyle, it transpired he did me an enormous favour.

See, much as I loved my beautiful home, this re-evaluation forced me to notice just how trapped I was. Underneath, I ached to go off to live a simpler life in order to learn about myself, but I couldn't see this because I was too busy running on my go to work/pay the rent treadmill. And anyway, how could I go swanning off when I had a job and furniture? What a waste of money it would be putting my stuff into storage - oh, boy, I had a lot of stuff for someone living in a studio (seriously, where was it all?!) - and how on Earth would I get all that time off work?

Then a mad but simple idea came to me - quit your job and get rid of your stuff. Seemed like a pretty radical concept for me at the time but, let's be honest, loads of people do it, it's not really that big a deal and so that's exactly what I did. Next month, I fly to Nepal and it feels like the most natural thing in the world. And it has led me to ponder other things that have gone on in my life that seemed awful at the time but were actually a catalyst for positive change.

Sometimes upsetting things happen and we don't take notice of the great things that came out of them. What events have happened in your life that seemed really rubbish at the time but turned out to be the best thing for you?

"Work with your energy,
not against it."

~ Lisa Cherry Beaumont, 2011