July 2019: On Boredom

I have just returned from 10 magical days in the Spanish Mountains with Kia and a fabulous group of yogis. A lot of what I have learned will make its way into my classes so I hope you can join me from September. Part of the marvellous effect of a retreat is the interesting conversations I have with people. In one of such, my dear friend V, who is reading this, asked me: do you ever get bored in your practice? On my mat, I experience everything: joy, frustration, fear, compassion, disquiet … and of course, boredom. I am not bored easily, but I know that doing the same thing every day does get to some people.

Why do we get bored? Is it the repetition? Repetition is not in itself boring. We have plenty of it in our lives but we are not constantly bored. I think boredom is related to expectations and what we ask from our practice. Forward folds, repeated this way and that, can be boring, but they are also an invitation to experience sensation, to open the mind, the body and the breath to the present moment. The depth of nowness can never be boring because there is no expectation, there is simply being. I used to dislike sweeping the floor, however this changed when James Boag told me to meditate while doing it. Now, I do it in silence, mindfully, as a practice. I still cannot say it is my favourite thing to do, but it is not frustrating either.

No feeling is bad in itself so rather than trying to escape  boredom, we can practice pratyahara (sense withdrawal), acknowledging the boredom but not reacting with aversion. So, the next time you are bored of the forward folds in primary series, my invitation is to experience the subtleties. Try to feel your pelvis, concentrating on what it is doing and how it is moving; or maybe follow pulsations in your body. Or, even better, follow the great teacher within: your breath. 

Laura x
https://www.lauragonzalez.co.uk/yoga

What I have been watching
I am lucky enough to know the world’s foremost authority on boredom, James Ward. James writes about stationery and has organised the Boring conference for 9 years. I attended a couple of times, and saw Jon Ronson and Adam Curtis speak. I have been watching this video on YouTube, where he explains how the conference came about. The video is a treat because James is a wonderfully funny guy with very interesting sources and, actually, something quite profound to say. He quotes John Cage:

If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.

Precisely how I approached Ashtanga when I experienced boredom!

What I have been reading
Some of you know that I have a passion for psychoanalysis. One of my favourites, Adam Phillips, wrote a marvellous book called On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored. I have been re-reading the chapter on boredom and it is full of beautiful, insightful gems: 

Boredom is actually a precarious process in which the child is, as it were, both waiting for something and looking for something, in which hope is being secretly negotiated […] The child’s boredom starts as a regular crisis in the child’s developing capacity to be alone in the presence of the mother. In other words, the capacity to be bored can be a developmental achievement 

Boredom is integral to the process of taking one’s time […]
that state of suspended anticipation in which things are started and nothing begins, the mood of diffuse restlessness which contains that most absurd and paradoxical wish, the wish for a desire […] it’s just having nothing to do. But moods, of course, are points of view.