Carbon Monoxide in the home Shala and facing Winter practice from AYA2

Warning they stuck on my Boiler

So all these years I've thought I'm getting nice and healthy with my practice and it turns out I've been practising in the home shala next to a boiler spewing out Carbon Monoxide, well perhaps not spewing.... chucking? churning? pumping?...how about just dumping a lethal gas into my practice space.... nice. OK, perhaps it's only a trickle or the gaseous equivalent of trickle but still ( no idea how much or for how long but the deposits look pretty bad).

Carbon Monoxide deposits

Scary thing is that I lay down for savasana with my head right next to the boiler and more often than not fall asleep for a few minutes listening to Ramaswami's chants....luckily, I've been waking up, some are not so lucky, forty deaths a year in the UK... they just don't wake up again.



Get your boiler checked and/or one of these Carbon Monoxide detectors

Still no Central heating- laying down in Savasana my head is this end right next to the boiler.

Luckily the ruddy thing blew up a couple of days before Christmas which meant the the landlord had to bring somebody in, seems it's supposed to be checked yearly, by Law. While the boiler guy was checking it out the thing went up in flames because it hadn't been cleaned ( dust/cobwebs), I heard the WOOSH and saw the guy shaking the flames off his hand and arm and running outside to turn the gas off at mains, sure can move for a big guy.

I say luckily but it's meant I've had no heating Since Christmas although in the new year ( Yep, Christmas and New Year without any heating) the landlord came around with a couple of heaters, practice is .......tolerable.

Do I sound irritable? It's because I'm sick with some virus or other and even with all these layers, a hat, scarf, dressing gown, two duvets, an electric blanket and space heater, I'm still shivering. Aching all over but tempted to shove all four space heaters and radiators in the shala and practice like a mad thing to try and get a sweat up, get rid of this bug once and for all.

M. will call up as soon as she reads this saying "DON'T YOU DARE!"

: )

Stil, I think I have it bad but I'm in the UK and it's only a balmy -1, in Ann Arbour it's around -60 or something, at least it sounds that way from the AY:A2 post.

Angela is very much on form in this one...

How to practice when hell’s freezing over
by Angela

"1.

One easy way to stay in your practice when there is resistance is by deciding to be awesome. The dead of winter can be a kind of hero’s journey. And you can use it to discover – and to decide – what you are made of.

The dark side of being a hero is that any stories about how hardcore it is to do what we do will just have to get dismantled later. If it gets you across the squalls of February to think like a badass, ok. But leave the sleek fire-powered Batman wetsuit on the shore when you get to the other side. That thing will get hard to carry, especially when saturated with last season’s stories".


There are another TEN, tips, hints, suggestions, whatever you want to call them, in her list HERE

Me, I'm going to throw the poncho around my shoulders, sit up in bed and get on with some serious pranayama. Supposedly Krishnamacharya melted snow with his pranayama practice near Lake Mansarovar at the foot of Mt. Kailash in the Himalayas.



...after a nap perhaps.