How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Yesterday I was a Japanese ham sandwich. I was also Artemis pulling her standing bow, a stretching Cobra, and a fire-flower petal blooming.

Before most days I light my fire early in the morning – with hot yoga. It’s here in the hot room, I try to forge a new body, a new person, under the pressure of heat.

When I’m disciplined enough to 'early to bed and early to rise', I step into the inferno every daybreak. But first, coffee. I blink into life in the dark, stumbling not to wake husband and child in the wee witchin’ hours.

I took up yoga in Singapore years back and have flirted on and off with different styles. It’s a long-term relationship. But I always come back to the Beginnings class, to Bikram, to Hot. Call it 26, 26+2, Original Beginners whatever. Separating the archetypal dark Magician (Bikram) from his spellbook, the teachings that remain are gifts from God. Initiates must surrender to the 90-minute (60 minute on a work weekday) pummelling to observe the alchemical effect. Pure transformation. Metamorphosis. Hot yoga for me is grounded in science and the intangible. From the void of ‘no-thing’ comes something. My mess becomes miracle. I love yoga’s ancient tradition, but the wizard isn’t the teacher. It’s you and me. We become our own alchemists. In standing-head-to-knee-pose utter defiance of our perception of reality, of our previous understanding of our own self-imposed limits.

Fire: photo by Cullan Smith via Unsplash

We lick the flames and smoulder on our wet towels. We try to burn our pasts to cinders. Like beautiful phoenixes rising from our own ashes, we are reborn daily with mat and mirror. By manipulating natural forces (working with the body, with gravity but with no other props) we can create magic on a mat. By applying the same dogged process, waxing on and waxing off, success comes crawling along with its accumulator effect like compound interest for the body. Immersed in a primordial soup, transmuting into something ‘other’. And all this before 9AM!

The fire is within us in our temple to British bulldog spirit and Bengal tiger strength. We try to look good naked and defy-age by breathing fire. Healthy, happy and hot we beginners walk through the flames, we sizzle, we purify.

Half-moon goddesses who garudasana-twist into divine eagles and growl like a tigress, we aim to be the best version of ourselves. Sometimes I ignite ideas, work-out anger or the blues, rev up the grey matter, tourniquet the blood, blow up the lungs or try to just back-bend it out.

Sitting in South East Asia, near a real Ring of Fire, the metaphor comes alive as the heat and humidity blast like a sweaty furnace. At this altar we attempt to yoke the infinite, control our chaos-monkey minds and most importantly try not to lose our grip in this mad world.

Black swan-navigators embracing antifragile convexity, we camel backbend-out of life rather than fawn in. Days spent in front of screens and digital surfaces, here is an hour and a half respite away from attention deficit inducing notification pings in an all too easily distracted world. This hot habit of mine not only supports my analogue wellbeing but my digital health too, at the coalface. As I continue the daily oiling of my joints, tendons, muscles and mind, I know hot (Bikram) yoga works.

Instead of reptilian reaction, the hot yoga makes me more reflective and response-FULL in my interaction with (real) LIFE. Prometheus stole fire from the Gods for a good reason, it feels great. Time well-spent offline in this way unlocks the humanity in us, the pure potentiality. It is my active meditation, perfect for a restless mind.

Hot Yoga is my detox where I unplug, ready to be slayed. I’m cut down daily by the furnace. I fall to my knees. I get clarity. I am slowed down and emptied, ready to be filled anew. I get stronger but it takes sweat, strain, determination, tears and guts to glory. Discipline, grit, toughness, sacrifice and countless other Fourth Turning attributes are called forth to fight. These mix with focus, honesty and (sometimes) pain to turn the 40-something junk body into Wonder Woman under my yoga pants.

I have more balance, confidence, relax easier, feel more toned, have lost inches, tightened loose head screws, lubricated stiff problem areas, cope better, Mother better, wife-well, am a better daughter, am (I hope) a more responsible employer at home and better employee and manager at work, feel younger, stress less, let go more, sleep well, believe in myself more, access states of peace and calm easily, eat less rubbish, booze less and think better.

Ha-tha and its hot incarnation is dialectical – a fusion of opposites. Hot is not an easy path. Opening hips in heat at 7AM can feel as Herculean a feat as moving the rock of Gibraltar, but once you conquer, you can bask in the glory that (truly) a rabbit & camel a day keeps the doctor away. The self-discipline is relentless. Like a hard taskmaster cracking the self-flagellation whip at sunrise. But rise sisters rise. Pay the piper his dues and clean the pipes.

Rose on Fire: photo by Zach Vessels va Unsplash

The endurance, the stamina, the freakin’ faith extracted is a cost rewarded in results and the healthy knees needed to carry it through. The silence, the awful rawness of the brutal self-reflection (try gazing at your sweating beetroot red face just inches away in the mirror), the concentration required – these are all simple sufferings we offer up willingly. Alms also include patience, bootstrapping, self-reliance, tenacity and will power. Prayers dedicated, the oven stokes up like a loving but devouring great Kali consuming her offspring. Children of Fire are then forged in a weird Westworld hot fantasy of lycra, sweat and re-programming. It’s also (for me an Aquarian) very Saturn.

Hot yoga is my catalyst for change. It’s no parlour trick. I’m no conjure woman. Hot Yoga heals, it connects me with something cosmic and starry. The harnessing, the yoking, helps me draw down my own power, joy and light.

The control harnessed radiates everywhere out in my life. I hum. I’m happy. The operating system reboots, upgrades. I sculpt VERY SLOWLY. I un-junk myself. I (try) to leave my troubles on the mat. I chain and restrain my chattering brain, house-training it like a peeing puppy with discipline and loving compassion. In 26 poses and 2 breathing exercises that remain the same everyday Groundhog-style, I rice-plant, I plod, and I scrub clean and carry on. A Stoicism-a-day keeps the chiropractor away. I'm a lapsed Catholic school girl suffering through purgartory.

With grace my hot yoga practice is a galvanizing force for my wellness (in my darkest hours). Its tech is far greater than any app (a “sufficiently advanced technology…indistinguishable from magic” indeed). I connect to everything.

Slowly - dripping in my own smelly sweat - I transcend. For about two minutes or so. 88 minutes of hell for a couple of minutes of heaven, its a better-than-robux trade for value.

And then, I go about my day. At work. At home. I do #adulting. And it’s here that the real yoga begins.

“Lock your knee Sara. Pick up your foot. Because no one is going to pick up your foot for you.” What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire, a good writer once said*.

Yesterday I was a Japanese ham sandwich. Tomorrow maybe a Mother of Dragons. Today, I’m just, me. Me – hot and not bothered – walking through fire. Come walk with me.

Walk Through Fire: photo by Joshua Newton on Unsplash

*What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire’ is a poetry book by Charles Bukowski. He writes about betting, drinking and shadow. It’s all very Neptune, perfect for me. In gambling we think about luck and fortune as where we give up our control of our fate. But a magician knows better. The magician and the gambler both know, you can't win if you don't play.

Blog note: The above is a slightly edited version of an old (early 2018) blog post I wrote elsewhere. The irony now is ofcourse I am using an iPad and YouTube for my practice as the studios are closed during Covid. I decided to post it because for about 10 months I stopped practice (through mid 2020 to May) and switched up to Spinning. I love spinning and have a home bike too. But lately to calm my head and open my mind just before the Lunar eclipse and Mercury retrograde Astro madness I felt utterly compelled (by spirit) to start it again. We’re just (hopefully) ending a one month mini circuit breaker (“lockdown lite”) here in Singapore so the timing was right. I’m planning to practice daily until National Day in August (so 60 days solid). I only do 90 mins at the weekend, on a weekday before work (#WFH) it’s a 30 or 60 min whatever I can grab, but I am practising daily. Emmy Cleaves says:

Frequency – Precision – Intensity

Yoga is my alchemy. The fire (I just bought an infrared heater) is my purification through purgatory. We suffer a die a little death everyday, or the ego does. It’s my yoga kinda version of a daily headless rite. I’ll spin again a couple times a week when we can go back to studios but I’ll restart my 90 min three times a week #IRL practice too.

Sometimes the best advice for leading an enchanted magical life comes in all sorts of unexpected ways. Keep suffering through the pain, like a flower petal blooming. I heard this advice from a hot yoga teacher in an online workout last week:

"Effective practice targets content at the edge of our own abilities." - Christopher Totaro

  What matters most? How well you walk through the fire.

  

my garden

in the sun and in the rain

and in the day and in the night

pain is a flower

pain is flowers

blooming all the time.

-  Charles Bukowski