Finding Balança

"O meu Mestre quer ver voce balançar"

The chorus to this song is basically "My master wants to see you balance."  In the most literal sense, it could be referring to a movement called balança where you swing around a little bit, break the rhythm and let go of the rigid, robotic movements that are easy to get stuck in.  Mestre Foca would always say "put some funk in your movement!"  In the past I would cringe when I heard that in class.  I wanted things concrete: kick, dodge, cartwheel, rinse, repeat. It was so hard to put funk in my movement when I was so self-conscious. Maybe he could demonstrate this funk for me and I could just copy the movement....

I first started this blog to document my journey into yoga by trying to review as many different yoga schools as possible and using that as a way to get more flexible to physically serve my self expression in capoeira.  As I started, I expanded that goal a little bit to include a basic spiritual tenet that seemed to come with the territory: be more open.

Looking back at those posts, it's clear how rigid, robotic and closed off I was in my life.  It may have had to do with where I was at the time, reeling from the end of a relationship, desperately grasping at square pegs and trying to fit them into round holes and searching for anwers. My spiritual mentor kept telling me "pain is the touchstone of spiritual growth"but I didn't really believe him.

In those early yoga classes, I was pretty self-conscious.  I was scared of chanting, even just "Om" at the beginning of class. I was worried when I was only the guy in a class.  I was interested primarily in getting a good workout.  Physically, I could do the postures, but not very well, and I was definitely muscling through them.  In dietary terms, I was eating well but still eating meat 6 or 7 days a week. I wasn't meditating.  My capoeira game was stagnant. And the best part is, I thought I was doing great.

I decided to give it 90 days - I bought an unlimited class card at Jivamukti, made the commitment to go 5 or 6 times a week, embraced veganism, followed suggestions, read a lot and dedicated myself to the practice.  The benefits are too deep and wide-ranging to explain in this post - but they affect my mind, body and spirit in ways, layers and directions that I wasn't prepared for. And I can carry them from the mat into into my daily life and from my daily life into the capoeira roda.

My capoeira game has improved, but not necessarily because I am more flexible -- there's a little more funk, a little more swing in my step or my ginga and my "conversations" in the roda are a little more complete (Think of a capoeira game as a conversation between two people through movement.) I'm more interested now in what my partner has to say, and because of that I can listen and respond thoughtfully (with a nice kick or floreio)

They talk about yoga as creating union (coming from the word to yoke) - and for me that was always hard to see, isolated on a mat in a class, focusing on my breath or my posture.  But I'm starting to think that my daily moving meditation brings me closer to "God" and by being more in tune with the  God/universe I can connect better with people off the mat, in my daily life and in the roda.

I used to think capoeira and yoga had a zero sum relationship - do more of one, you had to do less of the other.  But the more I do yoga, the more I want to do capoeira and vice versa.  And somehow I'm finally finding balance between the two.  They're separate, but attached, things. Now when I hear "O meu Mestre quer ver voce balançar,"I think about finding balance in my life, (which has never been easy.)  Or maybe that song pops into my head when I struggle with balancing postures like standing split or tree pose. Maybe, capoeira, like yoga, transcends....

The direction of this blog is starting to change, especially since I'm focused more on my regular practice than trying as many different places as I can. I'll still make field trips and definitely go to cool workshops like "Yogaeira" and contemplate how much extended side angle pose looks like a rastiera.  But I intend to dig a little bit deeper and be a little bit more open.