Lizzie for Free : a yogi's blog
The Free State of LizArchive for craniosacral therapy
King of Pain
There’s a little black spot on the sun today, it’s the same old thing as yesterday….-the PoliceFor people that live with chronic pain, it can be difficult to keep up one’s energy; day after day feeling unwell, unbalanced, in the body. Whether it’s a niggling, small pain, or a significant pain that is felt through the entire physical system, its no secret that prolonged dis-ease in the body can lead to a unsettled mind.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of living with pain is the lack of control; the sense that nothing can be done to shift the pain. The emotional aspect of this coupled with a lack of sleep and inability to stay present due to the constant peripheral physical pain can lead to apathy, lethargy, and depression.
For many, doing something about their pain means taking a pill. Not only is this a reactive approach that merely masks the pain instead of alleviating it longterm, but the body quickly adjusts to the dosage, becoming less and less potent the more often the medication is ingested. Then there are the side affects and long term damage that pain medication can create in other areas of the body.
An alternative approach to taking pain killers is finding movement based therapies that can help one to better understand the energetics of the pain. Stagnant energy is thought to contribute to disease, so the more energy that moves through the site of the pain, the more freedom, space and mobility becomes available to shift the pain naturally. Emotionally, doing something to help release the pain is a better solution for the mind and body than doing nothing as it empowers one to feel they can take some responsibility for their well-being.
My relationship with pain has changed dramatically over the course of my life, and is something I continue to explore to this day. At three I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis/Crohn’s Disease; by thirty-two I had developed a progressive liver disease as a result of the longterm digestive illness. In the decades between this time among other things I was a marathon runner, a late night disco queen, and amateur daredevil. I had an extremely high threshold for pain that some said bordered on abnormal. The truth was that I had grown up with daily pain and learned to ignore it to the point that I no longer identified it as an unhealthy feeling in my body. It was my yoga practice that led me down the path of becoming more physically and mentally/emotionally aware of the relationship at play between the mind and body. I came to realise that I had spent the majority of my life in such constant abdominal pain that I lost the boundaries of what was tenable and what was debilitating. I didn’t believe living pain free was possible, and swallowed the pain into the rest of the body without having any outlet for it.
By the time I was diagnosed with the liver disease PSC, I had already been practicing yoga for seven years, and was acutely aware by that point of every new sensation in my body. I had an increasing amount of pain in my liver area that seemed to get worse with certain therapies, and better with others. It has been through exploring the space and senses in the body and experimenting with just about every alternative therapy in the book that I have come to understand that more immediate pain doesn’t necessarily mean ‘bad’ and less pain doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good’; sometimes as a result of energy moving through a region that is heavy and blocked pain occurs in the short term, but that can lead to an increase in long term vitality. In these instances, what is required is a shift in perspective. The mind is the ultimate master of the pain threshold. Through my work with craniosacral therapy both on and off the table, I’ve experienced both the buildup of pain in fulcrums in the body, as well as sudden and deep physical and emotional release. Whether mental, physical, or both, pain is a part of being alive, and maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the body is a powerful mechanism to understand and move through pain.
A great Tibetan master says the biggest cause of suffering are hope and fear. Hope sets up expectations for the future based on preferences; how we would like things to be, and sets us up for inevitable disappointment. Fear holds us clinging to the worst case scenario for the future.
The breath, the quintessential life force that enables movement and detoxification, is the grounding force that holds us to the present moment where everything is ok. Even pain is absorbed into the present, if we can just learn to focus on the breath for long enough to move through it.
Bodywork and the mind
I’ve been seeing a wonderful Rolfer named Liesl for quite a while now, and even though I’m a bodywork practitioner myself, it never ceases to amaze me just how much of our past emotional experiences get carried around with us in the fascial tissue and muscle memory of the body.
The body is a storehouse of emotions for everything we’ve ever experienced, but that doesn’t mean that it gets processed in any kind of predictable pattern. Each person holds and lets go of tension in their body differently, and while some things are absorbed and released immediately, other things make an imprint on multiple layers in the body and in various areas, meaning these issues can come up again and again both physically and emotionally. It can be a rather tedious and frustrating process to get to the roots of emotional or physical pain, but as Liesl reminded me last week, just because something doesn’t get completely resolved on the first, second or even on the tenth treatment, the work involved in letting go along the way is all meaningful and relevant.
In craniosacral therapy, the belief is that the body knows what it has to do to heal itself, but it happens only when the body and mind are ready to release the holding pattern. Small shifts and explorations facilitated by the practitioner are what help the larger shift occur. We can think of this shift as a change in mind/body perception, or mind/body attention-where we place our attention on the body. As Sharon Gannon sums up so beautifully, magic is a shift in perception, and in this way, the magic of the mind and body letting go and releasing into softness is a shift in perception, a shift in attention.
The biggest obstacle in resolving past experiences in the body is the mind and the stubbornness of the mind in making that shift in perception and attention; for the mind’s resilience is usually what drives the body into the holding patterns to begin with.
In yoga terminology, there is a sanskrit word ‘klesha’ that means ‘hindrance’ or ‘obstacle’. The obstacles to yoga, or the state of peace and being at ease with oneself in the world, are fivefold: avidya (misknowing/ignorance), asmita (egoism), raga (preferences, attachment to nice things), dvesha (aversions, attachment to repusion), abinivesha (fear of death). In bodywork, we can see these five hindrances as holding patterns in the body. Avidya can be spotted by a total lack of body awareness, along with a genuine sense by the individual that they have no pain or body issues when it is clear they have a multitude of things going on. Egoism and the preferences and aversions we have based on the ego all tend to be connected with the digestive region. These can appear in a negative light as judgement, critical thinking, anger, pride and insecurity, and tend to affect the stomach, liver, gallbladder, small and large intestines, and spleen. Fear of death can be extended to all fear, as all fear is ultimately about the fear of death when you look deeply at its roots. It is held in various regions throughout the body, including the hips, shoulders, throat, jaw and neck.
Shifting the attention from the pain, whether it is looking at the details of painting or remaining present by focusing on the breath, is a wonderful way of shifting one’s perception from being ‘in pain’ to releasing the pain or moving to a more relaxed state of mind and body, softening the holding patterns in the body. And when one has been in chronic pain for an extended period, this is magic.
Bryony Bird Interviews Me!
(Louis playing and baby-talking throughout in background)
BB: What drew you to your first Yoga class?
LR: I was living in Washington DC and was pretty active physically (running marathons and swimming), but also had an active mind. I felt if I didn’t exercise I might blow a fuse, and sought out yoga to help quiet my thoughts. I was also drawn to the principles of yoga having studied eastern religions and philosophy in university.
BB: What kind of style were you introduced to?
LR: There was a yoga shala down the street that was quirky and authentic. At that time I didn’t know enough to ask what style it was – it was slow classical type of yoga with a lot of meditation. The teachers wore orange and led meditations by instructing the students to ‘empty the mind’. The concept of an empty mind was difficult for me to understand at the time, and despite feeling very good after the classes, I didn’t find myself there on a regular basis.
It was perhaps more of an esoteric type of practice than I was ready for at that time. It was four years later that I went to my first Astanga class which I really took to; it appealed to my need for physicality but my self-competitive nature made it difficult to move beyond the asana practice and into the other limbs of the practice. By means of exploration I came to the Iyengar practice and other methods.
BB: What made you move away from Astanga?
LR: It was not thought through- I moved to Amsterdam in 2000 and was practicing Astanga and Iyengar. I had a shoulder and neck injury that came from stress and not practicing some of the postures correctly, and I found myself re-evaluating why I was practicing yoga and what aspects were becoming more important for me. Eventually I was ready for a practice that more overtly threaded the teachings and philosophy together with the asana practice, and discovered Svaha yoga with Patrick and Gos. That became my entry point into the yoga I practice today.
BB: What kind of style do you teach and practice at this moment?
LR: By definition, I teach the Jivamukti method, and my philosophical understanding of yoga and teaching style is strongly influenced by the founders of the method, Sharon Gannon and David Life. Having said that, we are all constantly evolving, and for me as a teacher and practicioner it’s fundamental to continue to practice different methods and to study with different teachers to continue my own evolution.
BB: How important do you think it is to label yoga classes with a name or a method?
LR: I think labels are helpful to the students to know a little bit about what kind of class they are going into. Yoga methods and teachers vary so dramatically that it can be helpful to the student to have a point of reference. In a Jivamukti class, for example, there are certain types of asanas (eg. side bending, twists, backbend) that must be included in the practice, there is a focus of the month that sets a theme for the class. Along with this, music usually plays a role in the class.
BB: Who are your teachers?
LR: My students are my best teachers of the body and of what it means to be human; then there is my son who teaches me everyday about learning to listen – not just with my ears. My yoga teachers are Sharon and David, Thich Nhat Hanh, Richard Agar Ward, and many other great teachers I take classes with around town. My greatest life teacher has been learning to live with impermanence, especially as it relates to the ever-changing state of the body and mind.
BB: How did you get into Thai Massage and Cranio Sacral Therapy?
LR: Ironically I wanted to spend some time with a friend who happened to be doing a thai massage course, so I decided to go along with her despite having never had a thai massage. I really took to it. At the Thai Yoga Massage training one of the teachers was also a Craniosacral Therapist and I had a session with him that was subtle but powerful. He was nurturing, but managed to stir up some old experiences and emotions. After a couple of weeks I returned home and the same area on my body he had been working on experienced a huge opening. I felt spaciousness and freedom in an area of the body I had never even thought much about. I didn’t understand how it worked but it was something I kept coming back to and I realized something much deeper was going on.
BB: How do you learn therapies- theory vs intuition
LR: Everyone is different and learns differently. For me it’s an organic and intuitive visceral exploration. The therapist’s role is to be able to understand the body and its deep connection with the energy, physicality and emotional/ mental disposition of the client, and the experiences that have contributed to their overall state of being.
BB: How has being a Mother influenced your career decisions?
LR: It has clarified how important practicing and teaching is for me. The first time I left the hospital was to give client a massage and it felt fantastic, it was a great reminder that I have capabilities (other than mothering).
It has helped me to balance things and to prioritize. I can’t place my needs first, or even my client’s needs first anymore. In a way this has improved how I treat and value myself, I have to have integrity not just for me, but also for my son. I have it in my personality to be a ‘yes’ person, and at times in my life I have been miserable but have continued without speaking up just for not wanting to rock the boat- to please others. I’m learning now to create boundaries and to be okay with saying no.
BB: You have your own blog- Do you think it is important to engage with modern technologies when you are teaching ancient healing arts?
LR: Not at all. Some of the best teachers I know don’t even have email. I think if it’s an interesting platform for someone to better understand their ideas and it can serve to provoke others to think, then it’s certainly worthwhile. It can help bring people together and stay connected to ideas. If all the teachers of yoga were luddites then the global satsang would lose some of it’s energy as these electronic mediums are the backbone for global events in the evolving art of yoga to stay afloat.
BB: You are now a Yoga Teacher and Therapist in a new studio in Marylebone. Indaba Yoga. Is it important to be regularly in one place rather than moving around?
LR: Its always been my intention not be a stressed out or burnt out yoga teacher and for that I am very much looking forward to teaching regularly in one place. Ultimately it helps students and clients because the more I know their practice, their minds and bodies, the more it becomes a joint healing process that we share.
Lizzie teaches at Indaba Yoga Studio in Marylebone Wednesdays and Fridays at 10am and 4pm, and Sundays at 10am as well as offering Thai Massage and Craniosacral Therapy by appointment.
Goodbye Canalot Studios, Hello Indaba!
Today I moved my belongings out of unit 123b Canalot Studios after a good two years of offering thai yoga massage, craniosacral therapy and private yoga lessons.
While I’ll miss having a private space to operate from, I feel positive about the changes in store. I will be working out of Indaba‘s beautiful and serene skyview studio in Marylebone, as well as focusing more on home visits. In fact, the G-Wiz arrives in less than a week to help me get from point A to point B more easily!
Indaba is due to open any day now, and the mix of yoga, pilates and bodywork is a fabulous combination that is sure to leave any yoga practicioner feeling more balanced, spacious and nurtured.
…And for those too busy to make it to the studio, home visits are individualized to restore the body and mind.
Carpe diem! Do something for yourself to make a positive change.
