Forest Yogini

Soccer and Spirituality

2010-06-28T00:14:00.000+02:00

An unlikely duo, some may think, but as this World Cup progresses my certainty strengthens. Whether watching on TV or revelling in the atmosphere of the stadium, I sense an undeniable spiritual aspect to this game of 22 men and an Adidas Jabulani soccer ball.

The utter discipline and focus it takes to become a top professional footballer parallels the dedication needed to follow the path of yoga. To show up each day to practice, even if your mood is low or the body aches or feels heavy and exhausted. The mind rises above this. There is no question: just be there. Practice. Play.

Good soccer is about surrendering ego. In yoga we surrender to gravity. In an honest practice we relinquish goals and let the body guide us. We become passengers. Yes, we need strength, we need to stay present, but ego can dissolve. Watching the good teams play, they operate like well-oiled machines, each part supporting the other. The timing is right and it works. If one player seeks glory he is like a spanner in the works. Alone it is impossible. When ego moves out the way the defenders challenge, the passes are made and a flow begins that opens a window for a goal.

Just watching the game reveals the spirituality of soccer. A truly skilled player is not attached to the ball. He can kick it around an opponent, divorce himself from it and then duck around to the other side to reclaim his prize. In this willing separation from the ball to throw the opposition the player trusts that although the ball has been given up physically for a moment, it is still his. This speaks so clearly to me about confidence and faith. If we can let go of the reward we are fighting to hold, we become stronger and can regain it. A truly great player has no doubt he can do that. That same unfailing aim to succeed glints in Diego Forlan’s eagle glare as he launches a penalty onto its target. A yogi must have unwavering trust in the ground’s support to lift effortlessly into a headstand.

There are mysteries I wish to question, like the concept of country karma. Do ancestors crowd behind the German team avenging old wartime rivalries against the English? Do the ghosts of Ghanaian slaves rally against the descendant s of their American masters? Do Latin American footballers with their cocktail of Spanish, African and Indian blood avenge the sins of the conquistadors as the ball slams into the back of the net? If this is karma, or some form of justice beyond mortal hands, the players are merely pawns on a huge chessboard encompassing the souls of nations. I like to think these grand thoughts sometimes, dreaming of a world where soccer games could replace armed battle.

In Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium I felt the fire when Korea Republic raged out after half time to drive an attack against the leading Uruguay. I felt their unbridled wish to score. It was as clear as a Karoo night sky. So too did many other fans who had started out supporting the South Americans but whose hearts were warmed by the sheer wilfulness of this small country’s team. The Korean despair was piquant in that moment of loss, when all the players fell to their knees and bowed their heads to the ground. I wanted to hug each one of them. Uruguay won Match 49 but the humble South Koreans won the hearts of the spectators.

After the final showdown, when the players parade their chiselled physiques to soak up their glory or mourn their defeat I observe how a team treats their opponents. I notice if they hug and swap shirts or barely nod and walk away. Eastern spirituality highlights releasing attachments. Once the game is over, that same player whose shirt was yanked like in some schoolyard scuffle or who was slyly tripped up in a mishap revealed by slow motion replay to have more ominous intentions, gives a friendly pat on the back to his rival. The events are left on the field. Perhaps in reality there are footballers who lie sleepless reliving a missed goal, but I think a yogic player would let it go and accept what is unchangeable.

What I love about this game is the constant possibility for change. A team can rise so fast from nil to goals. Balance is redressed. Nothing is certain until the final whistle. This consoles me when I feel life is so uncertain. Just when something seems sure, it can back-flip the next day into chaos. The soccer field does not escape this natural law. Maybe that’s what infuses the game with such drama, such passion. Glory and disaster dance a wicked tango at the players’ feet.

For me there is comfort is witnessing unity triumph. The unity between players that creates a goal is like the unity of body and spirit that is yoga. So the vuvusela’s monotone becomes a primeval bumble Om that reminds me I am not just me, but could be part of something much greater.

Whether we dance on land or water, the music is the same

2010-02-10T21:32:00.000+02:00

It could be one of those days when I feel directionless in my work. Or powerless in the smoke of raging fires that sprout from the forests like red cacti. I may be adrift, but when I enter that room and begin to let the music move me, I am like a planet without orbit that has suddenly found a sun.

Ten, sometimes twenty of us gather barefoot each week in a room with wooden floors. Some faces are familiar, some not. Together, we journey through the five rhythms: flowing...staccato...chaos...lyrical... stillness...

As the dance deepens the walls become mirrors reflecting the music – shifting scenes of crystal starry beaches, Himalayan peaks, Moroccan bazaars, gnarled tree forests, sweaty dancehalls, Hawaiian waves. Tonight I gather old selves. Those parts of me that were asleep in corners and have suddenly been dragged to their feet. The me of 90’s London love dove raves strutting in platforms and multicolour flares, the me of smoke-hazy dub nights – Jah Rastafari! That fresh young ballerina arabesqueing to Hooked on Classics in her nightie in Fresnaye. A black-clad headbanger in the dinge of the Slimelight’s witching hour. Eva Luna swinging her hips to salsa in some latin beach bar, in Quito’s tequila-fuelled nightspots or pounding out that dudup beat with Nostalgia Steel Band in the carnival streets of Notting Hill. Wherever I move my feet, especially where the lingo is foreign and undecipherable, dance is my translator.

Barranquilla carnival, Colombia 1997

Still moving, I become those selves that I have not yet been, or maybe once was in a realm beyond memory’s reach. A Thai temple dancer, a bead-bedecked Swazi virgin offering to the Rain Queen, a Japanese Taiko drummer beating my gong with martial precision...Is this me? Who is dancing this dance? Who is moving my body because this feels like more than just self.

Next we pay homage to the animal kingdom with roars of fury and snakelike gyrations. We crawl on the ground, we track, we hunt, we prowl. We yowl like wildcats. This room no longer has four walls!

Flowing in roundness, smooth sculptural curves, like painting with our bodies. Staccato like a hip-hop rude boy like a tantrum child like a dancefloor Mafioso : I hold you to ransom. Chaos! Short circuit, pure madness. RAW. I vomit out with movement all I have held in my body. Nothing is sacred in the jaws of chaos. Lyrical like a monkey’s wedding. Surprise gifts from the skies. I am a child in Eden.

Liberation! Sweat washes away all traces of pain, loss, confusion and sorrow from deep in my pores. Again I am reborn. Again I am renamed.

I dance out my troubles. I dance the longing for a lover I can no longer touch. I dance the anger at all I cannot control. I praise all that is beautiful. I hold all that is precious. In my footsteps are messages in morse code, in my gestures all my stories are told. And when we connect in this room, for a portion of time, you share it all with me. I am no longer alone but just another colour in this ever-changing kaleidoscope of dancers.

And then it all implodes. Particles condense and fuse into one pinpoint of silence, the eye of the storm. Stillness. We slow down. Some remain standing, moving with the half presence of elders lost in senile dreams. Many lounge on the floor, furling and unfurling limbs, as the last of the song ebbs through us, leaving our skins. Saturating the earth with dreams, hopes, memories, visions. Set free from the musty pockets of mind where they sat for so long. I am curled in the cocoon of stillness. Scorched by ecstasy’s cool fire.

So when the music’s over, turn out the lights.

For more info on 5 rhythms dance visit:

http://www.gabrielleroth.com/

http://www.5rhythms.co.uk/

For dance on the Garden Route email samanthabrauer@gmail.com

The Finger

2009-08-25T21:32:00.000+02:00

Yogic surfing. Surfic yoga. So many parallels. Both can be said to be chasing bliss, that elusive dragon that breathes into the lungs its fiery ecstasy then vanishes in a smoke stream...In their practice much is learned. Yoga, ever Yin, teaches to surrender and receive, bringing focus, balance, alignment. Surfing, as Yang as a warrior, fuels strength, bravery and determination.

In my yoga practice, the room is identical each morning; the mat unrolls onto the same surface. But oh, those unpredictable waves. They choose. The swell rolls in at the mercy of Neptune’s’ mysterious sea storms; the winds conspire in all directions, bestowing an offshore breeze when the mood takes them. And those days when I’m amped and ready for battle the sea can lie as flat as a lake.

Yoga is gentle. Nurturing. Even when I push the boundaries and flip into handstands and headstands and backbends, it ‘s safe. Not so with the wild sea. While it has meted out immense spiritual teachings, alas! What strange secrets and twisted dangers hide in its murk.

When I first felt what it was to stand on water, it was like in that action of wizardry reality and dream morphed into one. It didn’t matter if I was asleep or awake, the feeling was the same. That was the beginning. In surfing I could sense something majestic. And in the taming of the elements, something shamanic. Like the relentless dreams that call a sangoma, each surfer has had a calling. A tidal pull to battle the sea’s power. A sangoma endures trials of the body, internally, through visions, rituals and potions. A surfer endures trials of water. Shaped and sculpted by it like a stone.

When I began, like all bright-eyed young acolytes, I flung myself in head first. Knowing I would still be tested. Knowing I would be broken down by the might of the sea at some point, that I would need to sacrifice something. Little did I know what.

So a year down the line the scene shifts to Mozambique where I spent some idyllic weeks teaching yoga, giving Thai massage and surfing. And that’s where I made my offering to Yemaya, the sea goddess. The top joint of my right ring finger. Swept forever into the depths of her watery womb.

Even when I entered the water that day I felt fearful, without knowing why. Underlying everything like white noise on the radio. I made it out to the back line, but nosedived gracefully. I caught another and was slow to stand. Then I got pulled right down the beach by the current. I started walking to shore, being pounded by breakers in the shallows and somehow forgot what I had been told sometime before: “don’t hold the leash.” I did. It twisted around my finger and pulled hard as a powerful wave ripped my board to shore. I felt an intense pain for a second and looked down at my hand. My finger was gone. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Some B-movie horror scene glared back at me. My first thought was: “where is it? I should get it so they can sew it back on...” Ah, Yemaya. No returns on this one. No rewinds.

I zombie-walked to shore and lay on the sand, where I was encircled by mermaids, holding my legs up, stroking my head, giving me reiki. Telling me in soothing voices: “everything’s going to be just fine.” They wrapped up the finger in my t-shirt, but there wasn’t much blood. No pain anymore, only pure shock. “Just keep breathing”, the French lady said. “That’s the one thing I should know how to do” I replied. And that’s where my yoga training held me. I plugged into the source and just hung on, ever-present.

Nina the Swedish siren

From the mermaids to the surf doctors. I was in good hands. Peter and John like good disciples ditched their boards and picked up their medical kits. The universe provided. Peter the Czech trauma surgeon, who happened to be staying at the backpackers, teamed up with John the ex-doctor now meditating psychiatrist. I lay on the couch in the surf yoga lounge and Peter operated right there. No forty-five minute drive to the basic hospital in Inhambane. (“Mozambique is not a centre of medical excellence, Madame” said my health insurers later). He cleaned the wound, gave me local anaesthetic in the base of the finger (ouch), cleaning it again and stitching it up. He cut off a small piece of bone to prevent infection. Each step of the process the doctors told me clearly what he was going to do. But I was damn relieved that when he discussed the details in Czech with his lady (the obstetrician) I couldn’t understand a thing! I just closed my eyes, breathed and hummed. Sang softly. When they were done the doctors asked me to look at it: a stub with stitches. My hand.

It was a scene, there in the mellow lounge. John’s two totally un-squeamish little daughters watching the whole operation in gawking fascination. Nina, Swedish surf buddy and whale listener, always by my side, holding my hand, making me smile. While Shona the tipo tinto-swilling renegade filmmaker of Torture Cove got it all on digital video.

Doc Peter in action

And I lived to tell the tale many times over. So lucky. So blessed. The unbelievable coincidence of this fleet of incredibly kind and gentle doctors being present still shivers my spine. Many thoughts prickled my brain like urchin spikes: “will I be able to write? To type? To beat my djembe? To play guitar?”

I have made my sacrifice. As in the ingqithi custom practised by some Xhosa tribes, the top joint of my second last finger has been removed. Traditionally this gift appeases the ancestors, gains their protection. Some say it signifies belonging to the tribe. With this act I hope to journey safely into the waters. I have been inititated.

My fingertip: Nibbled by the fishes. Swallowed by the great Sea Goddess.

And I hope that from this point forth She will always be good to me.

Links

More about ingqiti http://www.sacultures.org.za/nemisa_2578.htm

Mozam surf mania http://www.youtube.com/user/umzimkulu1

Scaling the walls

2009-03-05T16:09:00.004+02:00

There are many challenges on the yogini's treacherous path . One that I have been confronting a lot these days is the rise of the ego. So much practice, so much dedication and I was starting to feel a bit too invincible. In my yoga I can twist, balance, unravel, bind and it all happens almost effortlessly. There is a flow as natural as breathing. Which led me to believe that out there in the world it would be the same.

So I tried rock-climbing. "I have flexibility and strength from yoga", my arrogant mind insisted, "it will be no problem". Until I found myself in blazing tropical sunlight clinging by the ends of my fingers to the rocky face of Crazy Horse Buttress. Voices from our Thai adventure guides rose up into my panicked psyche: "left foot acloss more", "light hand up fuhder..." But I couldnt move. And no amount of yoga breathing reduced the feeling that I was hanging like a roach on bathroom tiles, on the verge of being shattered to a million pieces on the rocks below. This was NOT my idea of fun. I just wanted to get down.

I had watched Simon, the man from Berlin and Taing (sp?) from France whisk it in a few minutes. Adrian, the German undercover climbing pro got to the top like she was tying her shoelaces. I had no idea it would be so tough, or terrifying.

Fear, that old friend I hadnt conversed with for a while, shook me to my core. So there I was like a fly on the wall, frozen, desperate. "Just let me come down" I begged the man with the rope. I did come back to land, but this was a ruthless team. They plastered over my bleeding finger and cleaned up the graze on my knee. My guides gave me 15 minutes to take off those agonizingly tight climbing shoes: " and then you will go up again". It had been so long since something felt so impossibly difficult. I sympathised with stiff yogis struggling to lengthen their hamstrings and panicked students afraid to turn their worlds upside down by going into headstand. I had forgotten how tough it could be. But I went. With patient guidance from earth below about hidden footholds and which leg to raise next. I pleaded twice to be let down and was refused: "come on! You can do it". I reached the final metal ring. Peace. Vistas of crackling leaves, bamboo forests and distant hills. Ants below me cheering.

I have never found a guru in my life, being to cynical to kneel at another human being's feet in adoration. But my guru appeared today as a Thai adventure guide with a taste for a quick shot of whiskey after a hard day scaling the rocks. From here the only way is up.

The Washing Machine of my Mind

2009-02-04T21:36:00.007+02:00

Photo by Skye Indira Couzyn

A yogini maybe, but could I be still? Truly still. As in seated and meditating for over 10 hours a day. For 10 days. I ruminated like a mad cow chewing the cud, as the date of the retreat approached. I could dive into my yoga practice and journey through poses into strange corners of my psyche, but meditation...that was the realm of shaven-headed monks and other serious people.

Did I want to spend 10 days churning around in the washing machine of my mind? Reading through the code of discipline on the Vipassana centre’s website, I wondered what kind of self-torture I had signed up for. Complete silence, no singing, dancing, writing, reading, no communication with fellow meditators or the outside world. And most terrifying: no yoga. What confused me slightly was that the code agreed yoga was compatible with the meditation technique, but should not be practiced as there are no “proper secluded facilities” at the centre.

But I knew how my old friend Resistance rears its head before many truly liberating experiences. So with that in mind I faced the panic and drove south into the mountains of Worcester to the Vipassana Meditation Centre. The timing was incredibly auspicious: beginning the retreat at a new moon framed by Jupiter and Venus in some rare planetary alignment. In perfect cosmic synchrony my own moon time began.

I embraced the challenge of acceptance and discipline. I dressed in kaftans and shawls. I stared at the ground and avoided all human contact in noble silence, like a pathologically shy teenager. And so began the dive into the murkier depths of my consciousness. All instructions were given by tape recordings of the teacher, Goenka. Slow, drawn out words dressed in a heavy Indian accent, echoing with careful repetitions that imprinted their message even deeper. “Scan the body from head to feet. Be alert. Work diligently. Work equanimously...equanimously...” Besides speaking, Goenka likes to chant. This is not done as a rite or ritual, we were told, but to calm his students. His vocals had the completely opposite effect on me. The sound was horrendous. Like the dying groans of a Galapagos turtle, syllables stretched out to their bitter ends, then collapsing like the creaking drones of an unstartable car engine. I painstakingly smoothed my wincing face day after day, reminding myself that this too was important. This suffering too, would ultimately end.

The first 3 days were hell. The washing machine was on spin, throwing back the same thoughts at me in an endless cycle. I tried to focus only on the sensations between my nostrils and upper lip, as Goenka instructed. It was like trying to teach algebra to a child with ADHD. My unruly mind wanted to muse over Christmas shopping and family gossip, to untangle the threads of my past romances and weave future dreams. What was sacred about this?

And there was the pain. I moved into every sitting position in my yogic repertoire, with various arrangements of blankets and cushions and a block, but the muscles of my neck roared in fury. The tension crept all the way up to the back of my head. When the tape-recorded voice encouraged us to adopt adhitthana or “strong determination” by holding one sitting posture without moving for the entire hour of group meditation, my body reared up and screamed. It was so contrary to everything I’d ever learned in yoga. For years I’d been unlearning the tendency to push myself that had been instilled by sports and dance teachers throughout my schooling. Through yoga I’d found a way to be kind and gentle to my body. This felt so wrong.

So when it came to Question Time at 9pm and meditators could test whether our voices still worked, I asked the Assistant Teacher about this problem. Although I phrased it carefully, so deep was I in silence that I could only squeeze out a whisper: “I feel that I should treat my body with kindness. So how can I sit through this pain?” His reply got a smile out of me. “Nobody ever broke any bones from meditating”. But later I reacted to the comment. What about postural injuries or muscle strain? My neck muscles were in spasm. Should I sit through that like an ascetic on a bed of nails? My inner yoga teacher panicked about permanent structural damage and physical safety. But then, somewhere in the mists of Day 4, a new understanding came.

In early stages of the course, when the gong marked breaks between sittings in our 10-hour meditation days ,the grounds in the women’s area were littered with forward-bending females. Ladies walked with arms twisted in yogic contortions, desperately attempting to release our aching shoulders and necks. But by Day 4 I noticed the tension had lessened. My shoulders felt softer, I could sit more easily and in the midst of a meditation it dawned on me: physical tension is mental tension. I’d spoken about it in my yoga classes, I knew it theoretically, but now, cell by cell, I was experiencing it myself. I didn’t have to do anything with my body. As my mind quietened, my body let go.

Realisations about yoga crystallised. How can we just stretch the body by twisting and contorting it into shapes if we don’t first undo the tension in the mind? Otherwise we are just gymnasts or circus performers. We as yogis need to work from the inside out.

But we yoginis can be strong-willed. I bent the rules against practising yoga in public. Yoga became my secret lover. I did it behind the curtain on my bed, in the shower, under the shade of that big black wattle tree during lunch hour while other meditators strolled or slept. Just a few choice poses: leg out to the side to release my thighs, sage twist and, inspired by the wildlife at the beautiful dam, heron pose. I realised I didn’t need to follow rules blindly if they made me feel trapped and prevented me getting the most out of the course. I began to follow my body’s instinct.
No setting could have been more fitting. Each day the weather played a different song. Winds from the west scattered delicate clouds, morning mist shrouded the peaks, and evening light drew red out of the rocks like blood to the surface. Eastern breezes whipped up mischief of flying hats and popcorn. Gentle rain blessed us one night as we slept and Orion’s glittering greeting at the 4.30am bell drew sleepy smiles from me daily. Through it all the mountains held the space, encircling us like a row of wise elders.

Photo by Skye Indira Couzyn

Noble silence was a bizarre and magical experience. My eyes sharpened. Bird song became more musical, more rhythmic. Each day after lunch, under the wattle tree, animal theatre entertained me. It was as if nature sensed the vibrations of my inner work. I had slowed down and become one of them. So they came closer. The dragonfly landed in the speckle of sunlight just beside me, the fiscal shrike perched on a branch shouting rowdy rantings. As I lay on my jacket in the heat I became so silent I could detect the scratching sound of a tiny woodlouse underneath me. I watched a rotund black beetle chomp through all the green plants in its path like a hungry mower. It even took a bite into my fingernail, making me break my silence loudly. The peacock was the star of the show, strutting his lurid feathery stuff in the women’s dining area or on random rooftops. His unanswered pleas for a mate punctuated many hazy meditation moments like a raucous wake-up call, snapping the wandering mind back into the present as instantly as elastic.

Photo by Garth Ensley

Living with housemates I couldn’t speak to for a week was its own quirky mime. Washing lines and bathrooms were negotiated by gesture or look, with a diplomacy only meditators know. Getting to know strangers only through their actions, without hearing them express their thoughts or stories often revealed a persona very different to the one they presented to the world.

And then it all came together. In yoga. Union. I was sitting with that searing spasm on the right side of my neck, resisting the urge to move, observing the pain, detached from it, like I was watching a stone drying in the sun. In a while I shifted my attention to the next body part and the pain had gone. It had melted before my inner eyes. From then on I was fired up. I discovered sitting. My neck rose up from between my shoulder blades like branches inching skyward. It was like another body within mine, my true body had been unpeeled. I felt such strength in my core, from all sides. Like soft pulsating armour surrounding my belly and back.

Then I could face anything. Crown chakra streaming I galloped on a stallion across skies, roaring into battle. Each time my mind tried to slip away I grabbed it and faced the task with the determination of a meditation warrior priestess. Undefeatable I was in those moments. But of course they were just moments. Beads in that long string of time that ultimately give way to the next.
I sat through intense boiling anger and frustration that made me want to burst out of my skin. I had to rouse willpower in all its legions and armies to support me, but I sat it out. And it passed, as storms do. That was followed almost immediately by my peak experience. A sensation of total bliss- a sudden shift into “free flow” when I felt a multicolour serpent of energy gyrating through me from head to feet, feet to head. A slow vibration, that effortless dance of Tai Chi. I just sat, amazed, watching and feeling with all my senses. Spotlighted on a stage like all else in the world had become darkness. People left the room one by one and there I was motionless. My body opened. Wide. Lotus-like. I became a carving, morphed into wood or stone. In the heat I sat with legs spread, extending into far horizons, my heart limitless, my sitting bones rooted into the earth’s core. I no longer held my body up, it was held. It settled into a statuesque stillness while my awareness levitated above, charmed by the constancy of my breath. And when the gong rang that day I felt an up-welling of gratitude, so close to tears. I wanted to fall down but I pulled myself up to my feet and slow-motion stumbled to eat my 5pm fruit. Beaming like a loony, tottering like a drunk. Feeling like my hips had been loosened by the gods, like I’d rolled out of some ecstatic love nest. The whole world had been shaken and rearranged. I called out to Rumi the Sufi poet in solidarity, suddenly knowing how a man could write passionate love poems for the Divine. This bliss too was mine. But it was not. For as Goenka reminded us, all is ever-changing, in constant flux. All is anicca, anicca, anicca.

I could hear the echoes of Goenka’s warnings: Do not crave pleasant sensations. Do not crave bliss. Even the joy will pass as the pain will pass. Again I returned to many hours of feeling dull or feeling nothing or feeling so bored with the same constant pattern of sensing each part of the body from head to feet that I could have shed my skin. But from that point forth there was no need to run to my yoga practice. It all became integrated. Sitting was yoga. My body understood and it gratefully accepted. It confronted, it inhabited each sitting pose from the ground up. The more rooted my hips and pelvis became, the more my spine could fly as powerful as a cobra arched in combat. The magic carpet was ready for take-off.

Body and mind merged seamlessly. In my thoughts I went back to all those people I had cursed during the course’s early days for telling me about Vipassana, and thanked each one of them.
So yes, I did enter the washing machine of my mind and it spun me into all dimensions, through all emotions. But when the many wash cycles were done, I emerged spotless.

Fellow meditators

Photo by Skye Indira Couzyn

For more info on Vipassana meditation worldwide see:

http://www.dhamma.org/

Mother Nature's Dark Side

2008-04-28T18:54:00.007+02:00

The psychologist Jung said we each have a Shadow, the suppressed and often dark facet of ourselves that is hidden and denied. Many ancient peoples realised that Mother Nature, for all her harmony and abundance, has her Shadow too. In Hindu cosmology the dark aspect of the Goddess is revered in the form of Kāli Mā, the black mother. Adorned with a necklace of skulls and surrounded by a halo of flames, two of her four arms grip a sword and a dismembered head. She is the slayer, a drinker of blood, whose devotees may carry bones and lurk near the thick smoke of the cremation pyres.

One Sunday, during my morning yoga practice, this crawled into my own awareness in the 6-legged form of the Pompilid wasp.

Better known as a spider-hunting wasp and built like a jet-black fighter plane, it rudely interrupted my yoga by dragging a very large rain spider onto my stoep. So my mind left its focus on the breath and became mesmerised by a gruesome circus.

Predators who slaughter with jaws and claws bring regular gore to nature TV. Thanks to footage of wild dogs launching their attack on a victim’s intestines, we are aware the killing is not always quick and painless either. But paralysing your prey, then keeping it alive to meet a grisly fate, brings up issues for me.

Paralysed rain spider (Palystes)

The Pompilid wasp takes its spider hostage to a lair where it then proceeds to lay eggs into the creature’s body. The young eventually hatch and feed on the live spider from the inside. This is why, when the wasp flew off on an unknown errand and left its prey unattended, I watched the huge spider, on its back with legs folded in the air, with morbid fascination. As I noticed two of the legs move slightly, I couldn’t help wishing the poison would wear off so it could escape before its captor’s return.

The eternal dilemma: to interfere with nature or not. Did I leave this brutal insect to get on with its cruel scheme? I decided to play the war journalist and hide behind the lens.

The wasp was hyper-aware of me. As I grabbed my camera and crept closer the macro adjustments made a series of tiny clicks, setting the insect off on loud circular flying sprees around me. Sometimes it just stared straight at me. And I mean STARE. I wondered if it thought the camera was some kind of square insect trying to steal its prize.

I left it to its devices and it laboriously pulled the spider to a hole in the brickwork of my house. When I returned from my pranayama the dragging was complete. Only the tips of its legs poked out of the nest. Any attempts I made to get closer were scarpered by the vigilant Pompilid surging towards me like a kamikaze bomber.

The fact that this whole incident coincided with my yoga practice got me deliberating. Yogic thought reveres buddhi, the power of discrimination and understanding as something uniquely human. The ability to distinguish between just and unjust, kind and cruel, combined with the discipline to control our drives, is said to set us apart from the animal world.

That didn’t stop me from analysing the creature’s ethics. Why did a wasp evolve this fatal relationship with one unfortunate spider? Couldn’t it just lay its eggs somewhere else with a nearby food supply? The part about the young eating it alive from the inside is what really sickened me. It was all far too much like torture. As if it’s not enough to trap a prisoner in a dark hole, unable to move, yet possibly aware of what’s happening. I wondered how many millennia it took to develop that paralysing poison.

Many who hear this tale may shrug their shoulders and say: “that’s nature.” If humans behaved this way they would be punished, but animals: who are we to police them? Imagine lining up all Pompilid wasps and giving them a stern talking to. Or imprisoning them in miniature stocks and throwing tiny berries at them. Maybe they need counselling about rearing their children in a more moral environment.

Do we just let this cycle repeat itself over generations of buzzing, stinging, paralyzing parents?
Faced with that spectacle I cannot deny I beheld Mother Nature’s hidden face, pre-menstrual, devoid of make-up, raw. It was Gaia at her most ruthless.

Tachypompilus ignitus in action

A visit from the neighbours

2008-04-02T20:40:00.004+02:00

One from June 2007...

It started as a blissful day. Yet I could sense something was slightly strange as I floated in a waveless sea in early winter. When I saw the first whale of the season spouting and thrashing its flippers, I smsed my neighbour Madelen ecstatically:

“Watching a whale from the beach. Think it’s a humpback!”
She replied: “Watching a baboon from the stoep. Think it’s a hooligan.”
I should have known then.

When I came home, hours later, some bright green packaging outside my door caught my eye in the fading sunlight. Has some one left me a present? I wondered. Yes, they had. Closer inspection revealed my gift was a ripped packet of sesame seeds. My Atwell’s hulled sesame seeds. From my fridge. But my front door was closed and locked! At that moment the horror struck me.
THE BABOONS!

I opened the door and tumbled into chaos. My kitchen looked like a ransacked health shop. The fridge loomed open and greenery was strewn across the floor. Cauliflower leaves, avocado skins and pips, lettuce, onion peels. An imaginative installation had been constructed from cardboard boxes decorated with basmati rice and dried chick peas, topped with my inverted kettle. Rice had erupted over the table where it soaked up water from an overturned cup of herbs. The floor was smeared with egg and buckwheat flour, like a clumsy toddler had mixed a cake on the carpet. I followed a trail of baby marrow ends to my bedroom window, which was wide open, its sill adorned with the culprit’s calling card: a huge black turd, steaming in the late afternoon heat.

“The bastards! They got into my house!” I screamed to Madelen who in a blink stood gaping in the doorway. She chivalrously asked: “Can I do anything to help?”, but somehow I felt I had to face this alone, like a woman. I retorted sharply: “No. I just needed a witness.”

When I contemplate that phrase now its ridiculousness hits me like a bad hairdo. What? A witness to stand and testify in the SANParks Wildlife Court, while the dominant male baboon is cross-questioned for trespassing and theft? So I can present the mischievous troop with a bill for the damages?

The cleanup operation absorbed me for the next two and a half hours. Finally, my extensive experience in cleaning up after wild student parties came in handy. Not that different. Except that drunken students have a higher frequency of finding the toilet. A bizarre fascination crept in, making me feel like a nature detective piecing together the evidence at a particularly brutal crime scene. I learned a lot about baboon nutrition. They eat eggs whole and spit out a few masticated shells. They munch onions like apples. They bite chillies in half and leave it at that. And they love oats. Whole oats, quick oats and oat bran. Not a trace was left. So maybe they are not that different to me? Except that they left the leeks and celery.

They could be classified as a healthy bunch of ovo-vegetarians, who seem to prefer the organic vegetables. Those were the only ones they devoured completely (like me they relish kohlrabi.) Discovering the similarities I shared with my furry brothers and sisters did not console me as I wiped baboon crap off the stove. When I removed the splodge of mashed avo beside it, my anger erupted in full force. The meal I’d come home to savour: tacos with guacamole and aduki beans, was totally obliterated. The ripped taco box lay on the carpet and the cardboard inner that stops the precious crispy corn half moons from being crushed was under my bed with not a crumb to spare. My real favourites were their favourites. That made me squirm.

I ran outside and found the culprits lurking just beyond my window, a youngster taking a bite out of a butternut that was clenched in his lumbering paws. I picked up a plastic chair and wielded it like a maniac, raging at them and roaring so they scuttled off into the forest. A wounded bag of soya lecithin lay abandoned on the grass.

As I cleaned, I seethed. How could they? Did they really have to throw rice all over my bed? Did they have to get their teeth into the plastic bag of readymade soup and drag it into the bush? Did they have to pull my bathroom cabinet off the hinges and snap the leg of my laundry bag stand? Were they going through my papers? The box file lid was off...

I tried to think yogic thoughts as I wiped of the bottles of sesame oil and aloe vera juice that lay on the floor. I thought: “maybe this is my lesson. I must release my attachment to food; it takes up too much of my time and attention. I needed to clean out my fridge anyway. Maybe this will help me move forward in my life...” and other delusions that were quickly exchanged for warlike visions when I found my organic soy sauce in a shit-smeared glass bottle. I pictured myself running into the forest toting a rifle and suddenly understood why farmers want to kill pests. It’s the rage. Didn’t these animals know their place?

After all the wiping, scrubbing, mopping and vacuuming, after changing sheets and bedding and washing soiled mats , I sat on the floor to make a call. Feeling calmer I acknowledged that we humans were in their territory. That the golf estate being built next to the national park was obstructing their natural migration path. They were just behaving like any intelligent, hungry animals. And that’s when I saw it: the piece de resistance: two nicely rounded turds deposited under the table...just out of sight of the average human eye. The damn creature had to crawl under a chair to make the extra effort for that perfectly-placed poo. I was finished. No more rationalising. It was disgusting!

Maybe I haven’t reached enlightenment yet, or oneness with our fellow creatures. Maybe I am too attached to my clean house and animal-free existence. I admit it! I have a long path to walk. But one thing is loud and clear. I am so glad that t human beings have invented glass jars with metal snap-down lids. It’s the one thing those furry rascals can’t yet get the hang of opening. At last, some evidence we have evolved beyond our fellow apes.

Worlds within Worlds

2008-03-02T14:32:00.000+02:00

My feet bring me here at low tide. I clamber across rocks that test my balance with their sharp teeth.

The water’s slippery translucence invites me to lay aside the day’s thoughts. Heeding the advice of a rock pool- regular: “just watch and wait… and eventually you will start to see things”, I allow patience to undo me.

Once I become still, I notice movement. With time, each pool opens, kaleidoscopic. A periwinkle slowly revolves. A limpet slides across a patch of rock. Then, the blossoming of a fan worm, unfurling its feather boa for the visiting tide.

There is a scuttle and a splash as two crabs flee the tentacles of a hungry octopus who leaps out the water after them. Losing, he skulks back into the pool, retracts his eight appendages and reinvents himself as a sulky lump, matched to the nearest rock. I watch him for a while. Me, squatting at the poolside. He, so still, but for his pulsating centre as he breathes.

As my eye adjusts, they appear, creatures gathering form out of the camouflage. My mind begins to dance and sing and fly. Each pool is a unique suburb of this shoreside city. On its outskirts are the hard-shelled: tough littorina, colonies of volcano barnacles and limpets tending their algae gardens. In deeper water, tiny cuttlefish orbit like planets, condensing the universe before me. Where rocks form channels, sea hares, those lush marine snails, graze leisurely on soft frills of seaweed. I am mesmerised by their fashions, some wearing earth tones flecked with pale, others in pink with rainbow detail. I wish to shrink and undulate with them in their perfect unawareness of clumsy humanity.

When its surface settles, so much is revealed. The water mirrors my mind.

Otter Trail 2008

2008-02-29T10:46:00.004+02:00

Garth Ensley's stunning photos of the trail grace this blog.

A 42km journey on foot by 12 rucksack tortoises along the breathtaking, rugged Tsitsikamma Coast. The steep climbs like hellish stairways to heaven and sheer drops of this 5-day quest were peppered with hidden dangers. It was punishment for the calves and quads plus a test of endurance for the minds.

More info on the trail from SANParks

http://celtis.sanparks.org/parks/tsitsikamma/tourism/otter.php

HIKER PROFILES

2008-02-28T20:52:00.002+02:00

Slumber Cat : La Italiana hiked in her father's footsteps complete with cafetero. When she wasn't walking, she was sleeping.

The Champ: Fearless rescuer of slip-slops and Dionysian bearer of whiskey and wine .

Forest Punk (and the Funk Bunk): You can hear the sweet voice of the Forest Punk Yoga Pixie who kept us all together with her teachings of the Lores of Nature.

Bos Bev: High Energy and Solid as a Rock. Otherwise known as the Human Jukebox with her endless stream of 80's nostalgia tunes.

Aqua Loverboy: Master of the waterfalls, knotter of talismans and our official photographer, he puts the Boy in this family.

Sammy the Sailor: A Garden Route old timer and rock pool sprite. Faces her fears head on!

The Other 6: Sweet Family Robinson: Adrenalin adventurers Wim and Andre, world travellers Mariki and Alex and veteran hikers Sartjie and Albert. Natural blitz for the fire, magic chinese oil for aching muscles and healing hands for the injured. Thanks to them we are all still alive.

Day 1: White Spectral Mirror

2008-02-27T11:05:00.001+02:00

Reflects, Endlessness, Order

Through quiet forest to the soaring Twee-Riviertjies Waterfall where Aqua Loverboy led us all to dip and Sammy the Sailor to leap!

Past the corridor of uncertainty...

Ngubu Hut, evening beach yoga and sunset pasta meditation

Dissolve, Release, Liberation

Day 2: Blue Crystal Storm

2008-02-26T11:42:00.000+02:00

Catalyze, Self-generation, energy

Forest nymphs bathed and our legs battled some stupidly steep climbs until total collapse by the roaring waves of Blue Bay. But still, the only way was up...

Dedicate, Universalize, Co-operation

Day 3: Yellow Cosmic Sun

2008-02-25T12:03:00.001+02:00

Morning yoga by the river

Enlightens, Universal Fire, Life

After some morning madness, there were river crossings and much mischief. Here we ford that sneaky Kleinbos River...

The rock sentinel towering on a peak was given many names: God's finger, the Eye of the Devil and the Guardian of the Threshold.

Just before reaching Oakhurst Hut Forest Punk's left foot ended the trail for her. A fleet of nurses, healers and nurturers took care of her and even provided some live music. Read more in her personal account.

Endure, Transcend, Presence

Day 4: Red Magnetic Dragon

2008-02-24T12:18:00.000+02:00

Nurtures, Birth, Being

Farewell to Forest Punk at dawn as she lay in wait for her rescuers. The Adventurers took on the raging Bloukrans River where Slumber Cat and The Champ were almost swept out to sea...

Unify, Attract, Purpose

Day 5: White Lunar Wind

2008-02-23T12:32:00.000+02:00

Communicates, Spirit, Breath

The final stretch to Nature's Valley.

Polarize, Stabilize, Challenge

The Menu

2008-02-21T14:41:00.007+02:00

A real troupe of gas-cooker gourmets, we never went hungry. The Mediterranean partnership even lugged Giancarlo's cafetero to kickstart their mornings with proper coffee.

Day 1: The Italian Connection
Pasta alla arrabiata with Lynette's homemade sauce
Tomato and lentil stew

Day 2: Vegan Protein Booster
Quinoa with lentil palak curry
Rice spaghetti with red pepper pesto and sundried tomatoes

Day 3: Curry Bonanza
Aloo Matar with lemon rice

Day 4:
Miso Soup with instant noodles and lemon rice

And nothing like a wee dram o' whiskey to ease those achey limbs...

Wildlife

2008-02-21T14:02:00.012+02:00

The forest is never short of small things. Above left is a giant millipede or songololo in Xhosa. Our first visitor was a striped mouse (Rhabdomys pumilio) at Ngubu hut, but too quick for the camera.

Copper trumpets

Kelp Gulls (Larus dominicanus)

Most creatures lay low until day 3. At first the stars of the trail taunted us with their footprints in the sand and later otter scats in their fishy glory punched us in the noses. The heap of crushed shell dung told us they were near. At last, as we stood on a steep ridge the culprits were revealed, a pair of otters swimming, tails trailing in the clear rock pools below.

Cape Clawless Otter (Aonyx capensis) footprints.

Rock Hyrax (Dassie) family Procavia capensis

Possibly a common slug-eater (Duberria lutrix)

Small-spotted genets (Genetta genetta) were our nocturnal entertainment. These wily cats were living it up with the rich pickings offered by tourists all year round. They had no fear even when we shone our torches on their beautiful coats.

Sammy the Sailor with a Southern Cape Bushbuck (Tragelaphus scriptus) doe.

Personal account: Trailing the Otter

2008-02-21T13:59:00.004+02:00

It was overwhelming to know that we had this huge expanse to ourselves. Our own Eden to wander through, pools to explore, waterfalls to frolic in. Is this how the Khoi-San felt?

So happy my soul was, to reconnect with its nomadic nature. Somewhere in all of us is that longing for the travelling life, to carry only a few belongings and wander. That sense of being a clan: sharing, helping, protecting each other. Singing silly songs, crossing rivers, confronting fears, pushing our bodies to their limits like hunters on the stalk. Like gatherers, except forbidden to gather a single flower, rock or shellfish from the Nation’s Park; instead my spirit gathers it all in like nets from the deep, to feed me now while I lie wearing an aircast boot, nursing my cracked metatarsal like a one-legged bride of Frankenstein.

On Day 3 (Yellow Cosmic Sun), I began to sense a strangeness from the start. When Aqua Loverboy discovered his huge bags of biltong and trail mix vanished from the hut. Genets are fast sneaky felines, yet still we will never know.

The path that day swerved through extreme beauty. Sight after sight appeared like Ayahuasca visions: gentle forests where friendly climbing milkwoods offered picnic shade, soft streams where we soaked like bags in strong tea. At the peaks Fynbos meadows brushed the sky while sea pools below hid their bounty in a poachers’ paradise. That was the day I connected to the place. That stretch of sand tempting me into cartwheeling, handstands, headstand, backbend – arched like the vaulted cosmos, completely in my body, pulsing with energy. I was the orgasm between Mother Earth and Father Sky.

Yet magic and mischief began their dance. From Aphrodite’s pool, domain of the sprites, through clumps of scrub where bony trees grabbed at us to swamps that sucked our shoes into their squelch. At the Kleinbos River Mouth a sneaky incoming tide dipped our backpacks and floated our slops like little boats.

So maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me when I crossed the Lottering River that even with the support of a walking stick, each step felt uneasy. A premonition of what awaited? On the last stretch where the steps descended to the Oakhurst Huts nestled below, the final prank crouched, and then pounced. It foiled my left foot, the one with the aching arch. The left: Ida, the feminine moon side faltered and took me down with a twist and a small scream. Trapped by the weight of my pack I wriggled free and then pain and nausea began. I fought tears that finally broke when I lay with my foot up on a bag of clothes feeling fires of fury roar under my ankle bone, knowing that was it – the end of the trail for me. A rude awakening from my reverie. My heart broke that this trail I had booked a year ago and waited for with such anticipation, was ending this way: unfinished, alone.

So I lay in the hut, the twist in the tale. Until teams of my colleagues, the rangers would carry me out on a stretcher, switching in a bizarre relay up that steep, steep path. The rest of my hiking clan had left at first light to cross the notorious Bloukrans River. I closed my eyes to shut out the roller coaster height as I felt my body slipping downwards under the straps. Exit Forest Punk (without her Funk Bunk).

My rescue team