Gone bush...searching for patience

Tomorrow is the last day that I am teaching 'Circus Week' here in Swifts Creek, rural Victoria. So rural the town has a hall, an IGA, a pub, a school and no almond milk for miles. 

They have put us up in a lovely little miners' cottage, and I have been waking before the sun comes up whilst everything is quiet to practice yoga as the birds wake up and the light starts to dissolve over the hills into the sky. After school, been processing the day with long bush walks featuring parakeet, bellbird, gallah, kookaburra and roo sightings, and the evening cooling the hills before an early night.

Bushwalk view. My friend said I look surprised in this pic but really I'm just waiting for selfie timer.

These parts of my day have been my refuge as the teaching itself has bought it's challenges. The 11 year 8 students here come from rural families in all flavours and varieties. The country culture makes the accents thick, desire to be seen failing or looking stupid in front of your mates low (most 13 year olds aren't keen on that) need to be the centre of attention and amount of eye rolls per minute by some classmembers high. 

I was hired by a wonderful soul to team up with her to create a show in a week for these kids, she has come to this school twice before. We have been working with them all day everyday, teaching them poi, staff, hoops, choreography, acrobalance, tumbling and tramp to make into a 20 minute. Learning such skills requires a lot of patience, a lot of time spent not getting it right, getting back up and doing it again. 
For some members of the class, if they didn't get the staff straight away, or had to stand and listen to how to do it, they would immediately give up. They trash talk their mates, hit them with the staff, lie on the floor in the middle of the class, ruining it for the rest of the group who were working hard, picking the staves up if they dropped em and giving it another crack. 

As a dance and acrobatics teacher; I used to be really mean. I used to death stare 10 year olds, point at someone then point to the door, signalling for them to get out without explaining why. I would shake my head disappointedly and yell and scream till my voice was horse. Not every class I taught, but some. 
Cue 5 years of life experience- a lot of inward reflection, a serious meeting with a parent who didn't hold back, forgiving myself, and yoga teacher training, and I have softened a lot.
And by jingo has it made it a way more enjoyable experience.
Still; this week has made me want to go back to some of those old ways. 
Of using fear as a tool rather than being an inspiration. 
Shaming them into doing it right probably like whoever they have at home is doing, calling people weak, pussies, girls, sooks, and all that that I hear them call each other.

These bush walks have given me time to reset each day, fill up the patience tank so that I only shove them into their spots twice a day rather than shove them off that big hill I sat on for the picture.

"Patience is not simply the ability to wait- it's how we behave whilst we are waiting."

Patience doesn't come easy. It requires effort, so that things can be easier later. Kind of like making your lunch the night before requires effort but makes the morning easier. Or how calling your friend to tell them you can't come to their party on Saturday takes effort but it is easier than having your friend be upset at you and maybe not want to invite you next time....(oooohhhh I have a post about that here)

How perky is your patience muscle? If a youtube video takes too long to load, do you just sit and look out the window, or open 20 other tabs/apps, which also take time to open......
Does waiting for a toddler to tie their shoes make you want to cut your toes off?
Is waiting for your toast in the toaster make you want to go to hell and back just because you know hell is hot and at least that must mean your toast will be made faster?

I still don't know if they are going to come to school tomorrow for the performance. 
I don't know if they are going to remember the bits that they are in and aren't in, or if I tell them they are standing in the wrong spot they will roll their eyes and walk offstage. 
I know that if they do pull through, they will feel an awesome sense of achievement with their mates clapping for them and see that hard work pays off. 

Cheesy I know, but there's no almond milk here.

Jj 

I am a machine, not an ornament

This has been my mantra over the past while.
I have tried to hold fast to this since my time in Adelaide, which was very enjoyable due to all the pub meals and little exercise I was doing, but weeks after has left me feeling a little doughy around the middle.

The world we live in teaches us that trim and toned is better - for me, as a yoga teacher and performer, I worry that my credibility might sag if my bum does too.

Some of us have these strange yardsticks that we stick to; indicators that we are in shape or not. Be it the way your jeans feel, the amount of nights in a row drinking beer, or sweaty workouts in a week. Whilst the ones I listed aren't THAT far fetched; if you have more than one yard stick that isn't quite measuring the way it should be then you have a huge game of pickup sticks when you get back to reality. 
Or do you even need to?

This is something I have been telling myself. This change- adding a little bit of festive padding to my body hasn't made any different to my ability to do my work, write this post, see my friends, speak to my family and do handstands, boxing and ride my bike everywhere. 
It hasn't changed my health (though that Dr I went to ages ago and calculated my BMI and as it was on the cusp of the top end of the higher range asked me if I was conscious of this and I politely told her to back off might argue.)

I am a machine, not an ornament.

A machine needs fuel, it needs maintenance sometimes, but can still run for ages even if it is a bit old or makes a creek.
An ornament needs dusting. An ornament's pure function is for looking at, and my function is to give big hugs, do the macarena and make sure my plants don't die.

I could go waaaayyyyy more into this. 
But, this way of thinking ("I'm not .......enough") Is a LIFE THIEF
It robs us of our brain space, our happiness, our confidence and our money and time.

So I shall not spend another tooting second taking about THAT.

Let's talk about what's next- Teaching kids in the bush, Confest, Dance and Family adventures in NZ and finding a new job when I get back to Melb.

Hire me! I am a machine! (not an ornament) That loves cake! (and cardio)

You can have both.

Jj

Yuggen - not a brand of Nordic Yoghurt

Thanks to everyone who read last week's post. Here is something completely different- zooming out on life for a moment.

“To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill. To wander on in a huge forest without thought of return. To stand upon the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands. To contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds…” ~Zeami Motokiyo

Yuggen is “An awareness of the universe that triggers such an emotional response that it is too deep for words.

This is a concept that was presented to me in my daily calm (from Calm meditation app- it’s awesome.)

We don’t have a word for it in English; that feeling you get when you look at a vast starry night and suddenly realise how incredible that we are on this Earth that spins at 1000 miles per hour and is that is orbiting around the sun at about 30km per second, and doesn’t even mess up our hair.* And how massive this Earth is but compared to the Universe it’s a tiny speck. You feel such a sense of wonder you can’t describe it so you feel Yuggen.

Domou Arigato Mr Robato, and the rest of Japan for it’s awesome words and concepts.

I felt Yuggen several times in Adelaide. Nights spent in the Ute in rural S.A blanketed by the stars, and waking to see a huge swarm of ants working together to move a crumb to their hole. We went snorkeling around the reef at Point Noarlunga, and got to explore all the little nooks and crannies and fish of different varieties in their schools hanging about. A week on, it feels somewhat distant.

I guess this concept fits into the category of “things I remind myself of when things get overwhelming.” Our minds love being distracted, and have been for a very long time. Socrates was around when the greek alphabet was being developed. He was sure that now people were writing things down it would diminish the mind, distracted us with an excess of information, weaken the memory and recall as necessitated by the oral tradition, and over-simplified the complexity, flow, and development of ideas that happens in dialogue, his preferred form of communication. I wonder how he would react to know that our attention span was 12 seconds in 2000 before smart phones then reduced to 8 seconds in 2016.

What does that have to do with Yuggen? Well, I am going to try and divert my 8 second attention span to the bigger picture where possible. To look up or out at a view and think “How great thou art.”

8 seconds of one’s day to do that is still something, and in the words of Flight of the Conchords- “Two seconds in heaven are better than one second in heaven.”

Jj

*That line is kind of taken from Tim Minchin’s song “Not Perfect.” You can watch him sing it here.