Recently I spent eight days with my brother on his boat. Doing a yoga asana practice while on a boat trip of more than 700 nautical miles, going no faster than 15 knots or about 16 miles per hour means that many day light hours are spent moving on the surface of the water, not on the surface of your yoga mat. It is a meditation all of its own to move with the boat.
When the boat stops is when I do my practice on the yoga mat. One morning it is early in the day before my brother wakens. I just unroll my mat on the rear boat deck and move a few life preservers and a cooler out of the way. I barely feel any motion from the water at dockside. Another day I unfurl my mat onto the dock as soon as we tie up. Once the stern and bow lines are secure, I'm off and running fluidly into the standing poses, followed by Halasana and forward bends. The air is exquisite coming off the water. It bathes me with steadiness.
When the boat stops is when I do my practice on the yoga mat. One morning it is early in the day before my brother wakens. I just unroll my mat on the rear boat deck and move a few life preservers and a cooler out of the way. I barely feel any motion from the water at dockside. Another day I unfurl my mat onto the dock as soon as we tie up. Once the stern and bow lines are secure, I'm off and running fluidly into the standing poses, followed by Halasana and forward bends. The air is exquisite coming off the water. It bathes me with steadiness.
Another morning I knew there would be a very long day ahead on the ocean, but I'd slept in and then realized the only window of opportunity for a brief yoga practice before dark was during the time when the boat left the harbour mouth, in the no-wake zone. I unrolled my mat and did Setubandh Sarvangasana and Supta Padangusthasana and Savasana. That practice was so deep I barely heard the 400 hp diesel motor revving underneath the floorboards below me, as I lay upon my mat. That practice of maybe 30 minutes settled me for the day.
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| view from the wharf at Annapolis Royal, N.S. |
So really what I learned was that you never stop moving on a boat trip. Even at dockside there is gentle movement. In your sleep you feel it and certainly the Utthita Trikonasana you do on a floating dock is not the same as the Utthita Trikonasana you do on the floor of your house. My headstands were forgotten, seen as too dangerous to try when I had only about 20 inches of wooden dock on either side of my mat. If I fell out of headstand, the water would have been quite cold, as it is in late October in the north east. I do love water but that wasn't the way I wanted to experience it.
I now know that being on the boat with its constant movement was a metaphor that spoke to my animal nature, especially because of my daily yoga asana practice. An animal moves quite naturally. Modern humans sometimes lead very quiet lives with little movement or else they move frenetically without awareness. But if you practice yoga asana daily it serves as a reminder that you are an animal, you move your animal nature in much the same way as a boat moves constantly as it embraces the fluid nature of its chosen medium, water.
Do you move every day with awareness? Do you make time for yourself and welcome your animal nature?
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