By Scott Johnson

“The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction
the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.”
– Allen Ginsberg

I’ve just talked my eldest son out of his first panic attack.

During those moments, I remember when I held him for the first time as he was born 17 years ago. He had looked at me then with those newborn eyes that cannot grasp what they’re reaching for in this new world.

Back then, there were no identifiable things he recognised. I was an unknowable image. His eyes now, though, choose not to look at me; his internal state not wanting him to be seen.

A panic attack. A first breath. 17 years between. These two things are deeply connected.

He’s on a yoga mat on the floor, where I suggested he lie down for a few moments. He’s finding it hard to breathe as he contemplates his upcoming exams that feel too much to bear. He can’t relax, his legs and fingers restless as he unconsciously deals with the stress that life is holding over him. I suggest to him that he follows his breath. I look at him with such love and pride. I tell him that. “I love you. I’m proud of you.” He disagrees.

I gently guide him to be with the knot in his chest he says is there. To allow it to be there. To feel it. I say that it’s okay to feel this way. It’s a part of life. We talk. He listens and I to him. I watch his body relax and his eyes soften, like he’s just seen me for the first time. We hug closely. We acknowledge the moment we’ve had. Then, with a deeper understanding between us, he gets up. And he begins again…

He begins again.

We both begin again…

A moment of clarity

At near enough the same time that I was helping him, I had been holding a picture of my grandfather (my mum’s father), taken in 1943. I was looking at his face clearly for the first time in my life. I had never met him and sadly neither had my mum. He died at the Normandy landings in the Second World War when she was just a baby. The photo my mum had just sent me was so sharp, as if taken on a smartphone and given a filter. He looked like a beautiful man.

I had never seen him with such clarity before and I felt deeply moved. And then here I was, having a moment of intimacy with one of his great grandchildren and I couldn’t help feeling the great expanse of time. I again felt deeply moved. The ripple of him, in the ripple of us. We are because of him…

A compassionate outlook

I think the 10 year anniversary of SYL has shifted something in me. The turning up again and again to meet people in a deep way has connected me into looking at how we move in the world as a response to contemplative practice over a period of time. I have seen over the years that meeting yourself again and again in a way that captures the spirit of your life is so rich. That’s why I feel the method of embodied yoga practice that I teach, that is deeply personal to the practitioner and their experience, is so effective. And when aligned with a compassionate outlook it forms a highly contemplative approach to changing our lives.

Contemplative practice is a groove that we can weave into the fabric of our worlds. There is no point in our lives where we can’t not learn to be kind, to ourselves or others. We practise yoga and mindfulness so that we can see the habitual turnings of our minds. Through ethical behaviours, such as the yamas and niyamas, we create compassionate grooves that can turn and shape our lives. This helps us to work with the grooves that have always been turning.

How we practise

How we practise affects how we move and every practice can be held with such reverence. Such love. We can create a meeting place for ourselves to drop into that turns us towards ourselves in a deeply held way. We can chant, become still, notice the birds or the gentle soft flow of our breath. If we meet our practice from a place of curiosity, compassion and kindness we can nurture these qualities of attention. These qualities can then become how we move.

The world is changing. With all its vulnerabilities, its tenderness, its violence and its love. It feels so imperfect. Yet we are here and it is all so beautiful and how we meet it is so, so important. How we find ourselves contemplating it. Understanding our place in it. Yoga and mindfulness are about navigating all these intimate relationships we hold in our lives. With ourselves, with others and with the planet. These practices reach through the essence of our lives and can offer deep contemplation on what it means to be alive.

Responding to choices

So, my eldest son is now back upstairs, with his books open and a renewed energy (for the moment) for his studies. He created a new groove to get him moving and now has it in his toolbox for the next time he needs it. How we get up and move is so important. The intricate nature of this flow of life in us can be difficult to navigate. We all make choices. Then we respond to those choices. How we respond to those choices is how we respond to life.

Knowing it’s a process

Interestingly, this is the first time I’ve worked with any of my children on how they’re wrestling with life. It used to be me, wrestling with mine. Sometimes it still is. But the ongoing timeframe of life offers us the opportunity to reflect. To see how we are doing. It always allows for that dance.

When I look at my three sons now I can’t really separate the different aspects of their lives as they have grown. I see them all as a process of life, as an ongoing way of integration into life as it unfolds. I held them just after they were born, I hold them when they need me again. Perhaps they’ll hold me. But what we hold each other with is love. For me, parenthood is the ultimate in being compassionate and the ultimate way to see how I myself have grown.

And when I look at the photo of my grandfather, who I never knew, I again feel the wisps of time playing out. That at some point perhaps I’ll be the image in that photo and someone whom I’ll never know, but am deeply connected to, will have a deep feeling of love that has been carried through the ages.

The post How do you move in life? appeared first on Stillpoint Yoga.

By Scott Johnson

I remember when I was unhappy most of the time. In my late teens and early twenties life felt like a struggle. When I left home at 18 I was suddenly out in the world with nothing to hang on to. I craved reliving my childhood and the security of my formative years in a home with parents. Feeling nurtured. But then I remembered that that environment hadn’t really prepared me for the world I was moving into.

Finding liberation

Those first few years of leaving home were tough. I didn’t really know who I was or what direction I was facing. After going around in circles, of feeling okay then incredibly low, I found a great therapist. Finding solace in being able to share my fears with someone who would just listen attentively and share constructively was, at the time, liberating. She helped me in many ways, but the most memorable piece of advice she gave me was:

Hearing this was a revelation. I had thought I was the only one struggling and that everyone else had life completely sorted. That they all knew exactly what they were doing and where they were going. It helped me to see that all of us have things going on, things hidden from others.

It also made me think about how people saw me. Were they seeing me like that? In the way I thought of them?

When I look back at that young person I was, I wonder what he would have become if he’d had access to everything I know and feel now. Where would I be now…?

The thing is, to become who I am now I had to be that boy. I had to have that sadness. Be that sadness. I had to be that young man struggling to understand so I could begin to see how to understand. That comment from the therapist lit a touch paper…

Discovering ‘sonder’

I recently discovered a new word. It’s called sonder and is defined as:

sonder
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

When I heard the meaning of sonder it woke me up. Language does that to me. The meaning of sonder is what my ‘early twenties self’ subsequently discovered in that therapy room. I hadn’t ever looked at anyone else in this way before. I hadn’t realised it. I was caught up in my own world, thinking it revolved just around me. I had missed that everyone is just like me. Trying to work out this thing called life.

Sonder allows us to look at others and see we are a part of them and they are a part of us. Our every interaction with someone is part of their story and ours of theirs. That just as they are moving though our world, so we are moving through theirs.

I can never know what is going on behind your eyes. I can have a hunch, but I can never know. With this realisation, this can now change who I can be when I’m with you. Can I listen to you in a deeper way? Be more attentive to your epic story because of sonder?

Experiencing the moments

Who knows how life goes. It’s one day, one week, one month, one year, five years, ten years. Life is a challenge!

The real challenge is to remind ourselves that these periods of time are made up of one thing: moments. Each moment makes up time in our life that meets the next one. If we can see that as the evolution of our lives, can we see that for others? By understanding sonder we can begin to see our play in others’ moments. We can begin to see who we can be for others

This is why contemplative practices like yoga and mindfulness are so rich with possibility for experiencing these moments. We take the time to look inwards so we can capture the moments when we look outward.

Most of the people we come in to contact with we will never meet again. Sitting on a train, walking down the street, in the shopping mall. These are all people going about their day, living a life just like us. All are people experiencing moments just like us. The real challenge is can we be compelled to capture these moments again and again, both when we are on our own and when we are with others? Perhaps being kinder, more helpful with these moments. So that we impact others’ moments in a more positive, heartfelt way.

By understanding the meaning of sonder, and seeing that we are all travelling within our own epic story, can we then actually wake up to our own story? Can we change it, move it, shift it, direct it? Can we play it out with as much awareness as possible? Living our lives with agency, intention, open to ourselves and open to others.

Can we have agency in seeing our own epic story and discovering what can be possible with it? Life is there to be felt, to be nurtured, to be discovered. Life moves through us, and we respond.

Choosing a sense of wonder

As our lives shift and move ever onward we can choose to contemplate and train our awareness. We can train our awareness to see ourselves as a process of life. We can train our awareness to discover the beautiful things that are often the simplest. Being reminded of nature, falling into relationships, that letting go begets a sense of wonder. Wonder of the intimacy we have between all of us. Wonder of the intimacy we have with the world. Wonder of the way we can interact again and again with purpose, compassion and resolve for living this life.

The therapist’s words, spoken all those years ago, have become prophetic for me.

I am not the only one feeling like this.

I have acted on those words more than any book I have read. They have propelled me to where I am now. To every now and then, remember that there are moments to notice, to listen to and to ultimately fall into.

And to see that others can feel the same.

The post Will this new word change how you relate to others? appeared first on Stillpoint Yoga.

By Scott Johnson

‘For those who have an intense urge
for Spirit and wisdom,
it sits near them,
waiting.’
1:21, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, interpreted by Mukunda Stiles

2019 heralds the 10th year of Stillpoint Yoga London. For personal reasons this feels quite a big deal. When we started this journey on 9th March 2009, it was just to have a place in the morning for people to come to learn Ashtanga vinyasa yoga in a way that landed safely in their bodies and in their lives. This was as a response to how our own practices had manifested through the dedication and insight of our own teachers. Stillpoint Yoga London was born out of a genuine love for helping people. Ozge and I wanted to just keep turning up to help people…

A quiet space

We also wanted to create a quiet space that was a response to the busy-ness of a city. London. Somewhere people could come to retreat to just for a few moments, at the beginning of their day. There’s something about the early hours. I’ve spoken about this before but it’s worth re-mentioning. In those early hours of a city you can feel the potential. A quietness that at SYL at 06:30 is filled with the sound of breath.

A yoga space/shala is just a room in a building with four walls. A simple space. It’s the intention that’s created within those walls that helps it to become a place for contemplation, of people trusting to be able to find something deeper within themselves. The intention of SYL has always been to help people uncover things in this way. To create the space for that. Importantly, it’s to realise that the space you come to is also just a space you hold in yourself. In time. It’s learning that that space is movable, transient and can be taken anywhere.

Stillpoint as an idea

Stillpoint has always been an idea, a way for me as a teacher to communicate something that may have value to someone I meet. Yes, we teach and practise Ashtanga vinyasa yoga. But it’s more than that. We’re helping people to find what it takes for them to unveil the practice of yoga in their lives. We do that by helping people to find a practice for themselves, so that they’re in control of finding depth to their experience. We’re all trying to make sense of life in our own ways. Importantly, the idea of Stillpoint is not just held in that room in London Bridge. The point of Stillpoint is to move beyond the walls. When I travel to meet and teach different communities around the UK and Europe I teach them about Stillpoint. About what practising there represents. Stillpoint always travels with me. I see that every room can be a Stillpoint.

I see that people can create their own still point within them. Can we find our own still point in the city, whenever we need it? Can we see the world from our very own still point? These are the ideas we have cultivated here. The idea that we nurture and cultivate so that they can become part of us. What are we cultivating our practice for if not to be something we can call on to support us at any time?

Finding love in loss

After Ozge died in 2012 the work I felt we were doing at Stillpoint became even more important. Her death became an incredible leveller and even though Ozge was no longer there, a part of her still existed. Stillpoint has grown since then. Stillpoint became the thing that we lost in Ozge. About love. About connection. About how we can be there for each other. Importantly, how we can look inwardly, individually but still together, to find more that is possible within us. In a room. In a city.

So, the contemplative nature of yoga practice is something that I’ve begun to hold incredibly dear. Be sure of this, in my years of practice and helping others I know we’re cultivating the spiritual nature of ourselves when we’re practising yoga. I now feel anything less than that is greatly missing the point of a yoga practice.

Over the years I’ve changed within these walls. I’ve seen many others change too, as a response to this practice. But as much as I can, I’ve tried to keep the values of SYL the same. It’s evolved for sure, but the importance of keeping the quiet energy held is still there.

Becoming…

There’s a beautiful term in yoga and Buddhism called Bhavana. Bhavan translates as ‘to become’ or ‘to cultivate’. (You may know the Buddhist practice metta-bhavana which means ‘cultivating compassion’.) The practice of yoga, at its heart, allows us to continually wrestle with the way we see ourselves and our viewpoint. The cultivation of yoga has a direction, a movement. That movement is again and again to (re)discover the moment to moment awareness that is the basis of our lives. This is what we are practising for, right? To cultivate. To become. To become the thing we are practising for…

The art of disciplined yet compassionate practice can be lost in the myriad of images, posts and statuses that continually move across our timelines. How can we present an image of compassion as the base of a practice? How can I best visually document finding compassion in the way my hands touch and are received by the floor? How can an image represent the deep love that arises around the 23rd minute of my sitting practice? All I’ve learnt is that it’s mostly about the things that aren’t shared. That perhaps can’t be seen easily. It’s in a gesture, a knowing glance, a soft realising smile. The way we feel as a response to practice is so personal, as no teacher can ever truly know what we are feeling. We (as teachers) can only help light the way with kindness, support and with someone’s best interests at heart.

In my opinion practice is nurturing self love, self compassion. And if not, why not? If your practice doesn’t support a journey towards this then perhaps question your intention. Go deep and find where practice makes you come alive. We’re waking up to the love we can feel for ourselves, so we can then perhaps begin to truly love others in the same way. Can your practice become about self love, about becoming compassion itself?

Smriti

If there’s one word that has defined the last 5 years of my life it is this one. Smriti meaning to remember and Smriti as mindfulness. To remember that we have a practice we are cultivating. To remember that practice and life merge in every moment. To remember to BE compassionate. To be mindful, and to be reminded again and again of all  this. Smriti (mindfulness) is yoga in action. It’s taking the practice off a yoga mat, out of a room and integrating it into the world. Seeing, in every moment, the impact of our actions.

So I feel that with the name Stillpoint we chose well. Stillpoint was the name of the retreat centre in New Zealand that Ozge and I studied at in 2008. I feel I am now trying to return it back to its representation of that space within us that is our spark. The place where we move from and to. The place we can find within us, that has no walls. That’s what yoga is looking to uncover.

Becoming our spark. Becoming who we are. Becoming the love we seek.

The post Becoming the love we seek appeared first on Stillpoint Yoga.

By Scott Johnson

In 2002 I started practising ashtanga yoga. In 2013 I began practising mindfulness. In 2013 my ashtanga yoga practice subtly changed forever…

Cultivating synchronicity

A completely balanced practice of breath/movement synchronicity is what we’re developing as ashtanga yoga practitioners. Returning to the mat is to cultivate and work on that process. Cultivating this synchronicity can be hard, but that’s the point of returning regularly. It is, though, completely possible to keep that focus. Dedicated ashtanga practitioners are in this for the long run so anything that helps to keep us on the path is good, right? Life changes, we adapt. How we adapt is key.

In 2013 I took an 8 week mindfulness and compassion course. It helped me begin to notice deeper parts of myself and my life in a wider context. This wasn’t long after Ozge had passed away and I had taken on the role of running SYL myself. For the first part of the course we were asked to undertake a body scan for six days out of seven. A body scan is a formal practice in which you lie down still for 40 minutes and bring your attention to your whole body. It was interesting. It was boring. I got distracted. I came back. It was interesting again. However, over time it became very effective in its ability to concentrate and direct my attention. To concentrate the attention at a single point in the body, then eventually to widen that attention to the whole body. It was still sometimes boring. But it was mindfulness training, so I was enquiring into the boring. I mean that’s the point.

It did wake me up to the feeling and sensory tone of my body and allowed me to nurture a wider awareness of my body itself. Also, to be able to recognise moment to moment awareness. With this new insight, I decided to bring this body scan practice and lay it on top of my ashtanga yoga practice. I mean it couldn’t hurt, right? It would be an interesting exercise at least. And it would be less boring too.

In fact, it was a revelation…

Moment to moment awareness

My practice moved to a much deeper place. It became a felt experience, meaning when practising I was aware of the whole body in a process rather than a system of separate postures linked together with breaths. The breath was felt, the body was felt. I was only ever focused on that one breath with that one movement, in that one moment. The vinyasa became the moment to moment awareness. I soon realised that mindfulness was actually about the body. A body awareness practice. Being with what arises – and an asana practice is the perfect place to cultivate this. I also noticed the reverse, that the yoga practice helped shape what I thought. So yoga practice became about the mind too. About being mindful.

In Indian tradition the word citta has the same root meaning for heart as well as mind. So we could also translate mindfulness as heartfulness. So we not only learn to sit with whatever comes up for us (getting close to it, learning not to push or pull), but just to be with what arises. And perhaps with heartfulness we can learn to be more open in our acceptance of it too. Seeing if the filter of our emotional awareness can capture sensations. Seeing if we can move beyond language to capture something that we can’t explain, only feel. Cultivating a heart for our practice. A heart for life. Holding our life in open awareness with love, and perhaps loving our own life like we hold and love our closest. Not only can this filter into our practice, this can also filter into our lives. Can we meet our lives not only with a mindful quality but a heartful quality too?

A kinder approach

Importantly, what underlay this experience was the feeling of compassion. That I was practising to really look after myself. To be kinder. Not particularly to get any better (that was a byproduct), not to go in any particular direction, but to use this practice as one that supported me leading a more meaningful life.

I remember now. I began to meet my practice in this way all the time, with a mindful/heartful quality. There was a strong recognition that something was different. It was the same practice that had lasted for 11 years but there was a deepening of my connection to it. I had just changed the way I saw it, felt it and practised it. I think it might come down to when we practise we learn not to hit internal walls too hard. If we have a personal practice, whether in a yoga studio or at home, when we hit walls in our practice we learn to bump off them rather than crash into them. Eventually move through them. Keeping an open and honest approach to how our lives are developing, with the help of a yoga practice, helps us to merge when there are powerful indicators, like mindfulness, that land in us.

Mindfulness captured me in my practice and created a more open attitude. It widened the focus of my practice and helped me to let go of those things in my mind that held me back. It’s not easy – there are constant unconscious reminders and life keeps coming at you – but, for me in practice, it always comes back to the tiny moments.

The tiny moments

The subtle shift of weight across the soles of the feet. The soft feeling of that first bead of sweat dripping from my forehead onto the floor. The delicate sensation of our hands being received as we place them on the ground. Capturing the pauses between breaths. Catching the inner wind of the breath, as if we could feel it gently moving inside us. Moving our imagination toward bandha. The energetic shift. The change in awareness as a particularly challenging posture is met, then held. That moment in shavasana as practice falls away and the gentle sensation of movement turns into stillness. Capturing the moment that post-practice shine falls away and something else emerges. Reality…

As these tiny moments opened up for me in practice I began to notice the tiny moments of life. Those moments that we take for granted, but are always there. These moments, in fact every moment, can become a tiny moment of clarity and awareness. Remembering to notice them is the practice of mindfulness and the practice of yoga.

There are never places that can’t be noticed, looked for or dropped into. Practising yoga with a mindful quality creates a wonderful relationship of delicate movement with unlimited intimate connections to be discovered. This is how the ashtanga yoga practice can be. This is what’s mindfully possible…

The post Combining mindfulness and yoga can change everything appeared first on Stillpoint Yoga.

By Scott Johnson

July 2017 Update: Hey, Scott here. As a response to the tragic passing of Michael Stone on 16th July 2017 I wanted to share a memory of one of the times he spent with us here at SYL. In 2014 I organised a viewing of the documentary Reactor, a film collaboration between Michael and filmmaker Ian Mackenzie, at a local Bermondsey cinema. Michael attended and afterwards talked about the film and held a Q&A regarding the film’s ideas and content. It was a lovely lovely evening. Below is a blog post I wrote about the event.

Michael will be sorely missed here at SYL. His spirit and teaching shone….

On Monday 17th Feb 2014 we hosted the first UK public screening of a short film called Reactor, a documentary made by the Canadian film maker Ian Mackenzie on the aftermath of the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan 2012. We had over 40 people come and join Michael Stone, Louise and myself for the evening. We rented a local independent cinema in Bermondsey called Shortwave so as to make it feel like a real premiere. The venue was lovely and we pretty much filled up all the seats in there.

Why did SYL host the first UK public screening of Reactor?

Stillpoint Yoga London hosted Reactor primarily because it features Michael Stone, a Canadian yoga and buddhist teacher, author and activist, who had come to SYL to run some classes the previous year in 2013. Michael was in the country at the time working and we asked him if he could extend his stay and be a guest at the event. He kindly agreed and it was such a pleasure to have him talk about the film and answer questions afterwards.

In the film, Michael takes a personal pilgrimage to Japan and while there he connects in with the country amid the aftermath of the nuclear meltdown that happened due to the tsunami. He brings his vast experience as a yoga practitioner and meditator to ask questions of how culture can move forward in the face of this manmade catastrophe. To realise that we are hitting critical points on so many levels as a planet and that we need to rediscover the meaning of connection to be able to move forward and live as a wider responsive society.

What is the film about?

The film is really about stories. About how we as a culture have grown to this point where we are living our lives out of consumerism, out of materialism and out of seeing ourselves as individual identities and cultural identities, a kind of ‘us without them’. This film asks us to see how we frame our perspectives, our viewpoints and to take a sideways look at how we have done things in the past and how we are doing things now, to see if there are other ways to evolve. There is an incredible ability and necessity to adapt as a race and the question that tragedies like this ask is: what are the possible alternatives that can be opened up so that we learn from mistakes rather than continue making them?

The nuclear issue is one that began, some would say, in Hiroshima and it’s an interesting part of the film when Michael visits there to learn from the past. What does that tragedy teach us about this one? Why do we continue to make the same mistakes and what can the future hold if we make different decisions?

Michael Stone, as a buddhist practitioner & teacher, has a wonderful way of framing the conversation into a contemplative narrative. As if the ideas and practices of contemplative traditions such as yoga and buddhism can be widened into a cultural ideology and framework of seeing how we relate to the world and how we can grow as a culture. He sees the world as intimacy, as everything being dependant on and part of everything else. This little film really takes the spirit of activism, of the need to be shaken and woken up to what we are doing to ourselves, and opens it up to seeing that maybe what is needed is a cultural connected coming together of humanity to begin to ask bigger questions of how we evolve, including the ecology/environment and not as a separate entity to it.

Reacting to the awakening

The name of the film ‘Reactor’ also has a double meaning. As well as being about the nuclear reactors it also is about ourselves becoming reactors. Reactors to what is going on in our worlds, about becoming awake and reacting to that awakening. It seems that that’s what this world needs more of.

What we were left with was that Michael didn’t have any answers but had a deeper commitment to understanding how practice can wake us up to what is going on and to keep asking the important questions of how we as a culture can change.

Michael gave a talk plus a Q&A at the end of the screening. One of the loveliest insights was that he and Ian had been arguing about how the film would turn out. Michael wanted activism, Ian wanted stories. The stories won, but is there an activist account still to be made? Who knows. Perhaps we should watch this space…

Ian Mackenzie has made a wonderful little film and I urge you to see it. You can watch the film here:

REACTOR (2013) from Ian MacKenzie on Vimeo.

Michael Stone’s work can be found here.

The post You Need To Be A Reactor appeared first on Stillpoint Yoga.