19. Performance or Practice and the Nature of Rest with Beverley Nolan

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
practice, asana, performative, yoga, hinterland, yoga teacher, bit, Beverley, Harriet, somatic, rest, fallow, Patanjali, body, talking, movement, lovely, speaking, pleasure, people

SPEAKERS
Beverley Nolan, Harriet McAtee

Harriet McAtee
Welcome to In Our Experience a podcast exploring the many ways of living well with Nourish Yoga Training. I’m your host, Harriet yoga teacher and founder of Nourish. This week I’m talking with Beverley Nolan. Beverley is a yoga practitioner with more than 30 years experience of class teaching and more than 10 years experience of teacher training. Her practice and teaching has shifted from its origins in the Iyengar tradition to embrace an explorative approach that draws on her love and unfaltering interest in experiential anatomy, infant movement development, somatic psychology, and the discipline of authentic movement. Her most recent studies and experiences have channelled her energies into understanding how embodiment practices, including yoga, can be made more accessible through integrating trauma-informed protocols, and how they can successfully migrate into outreach settings. I had a really lovely time chatting with Beverley. I feel like I say this every episode, but the time just flew by. And we talked about finding our way with Asana, the coincidental nature of rest and performance within practice. I think this is a really special episode, and I can’t wait to hear what you think. So do let us know you can find how to contact us in the show notes. Right. Here’s my chat with Beverley. Hi, Beverley, how are you doing?

Beverley Nolan
I’m good, Harriet, how are you?

Harriet McAtee
I’m really well. Thank you for joining me today. I’m really, I’m really looking forward to having a chat with you.

Beverley Nolan
Yeah, I’m excited too but have some trepidation about where we go.

Harriet McAtee
Oh, well, we can? Well, I think that the wonderful thing about podcasting, in general, is that, well, I think the best podcasts are the ones that are just people having a conversation. So you know, we can go wherever we want to go. But we will start with how I start every episode, which is asking you what’s nourishing you this week. And it can be something small, something big, it can be silly, it can be serious. And I’ll share mine to sort of to get us started. So I had actually this week, I had a new 200-hour programme begin, which as, as you will know, as a trainer yourself, it’s always a very exciting day. It’s like a first day of school. And it was really lovely. And the students were really lovely. But the thing that I enjoyed the most about it is that I’m using a studio space where the studio is owned by a friend of mine. And also within it. Another friend has a business. So I sort of had this day of like, being around friends and being at work and I’m very aware that, you know, I live by myself, I work from home alone a lot. And often when I go to teach, I go in and I teach and I don’t have colleagues. So I had this day of being around people. And it felt really lovely because I’m not sure how you feel about I’m sort of I’m a bit tired of doing it all alone at the moment. Particularly work.

Beverley Nolan
Yeah, yeah, I can resonate with a lot of that. Yeah, I also live alone, but with my dog, and I think you have a cat. I do have a cat. So I have my puppy. Yeah. I do have colleagues who teach on the training that I offer. But we’re not often in the same room together. Sometimes we co-teach but very often we’re not, we’re each teaching solo, so I really resonate with that and how, yeah, especially after COVID Just being in spaces with like-minded people is very refreshing. I think, bur very odd, very odd at the same time. Yeah. For me, what I have found nourishing in the past couple of weeks is actually totally unrelated to sort of my embodied work, while, it is embodied work, but it’s not related to being on a mat and rolling around. And that would be I am deep into espionage audiobooks. And I’m in, I’m in the third of a three-set trilogy, which is I’m really enjoying. So that takes me right away from everything else, which I love. And I’ve, I’m wrestling with some crochet. So I’m just trying to Yeah, so yeah, which is great. So it fixes my mind in different ways and allows me to be challenged by my puppy who thinks that yarn is another toy to steal. And as she gets hold of it, yanks it everything comes undone and I have to start again. So I think there’s a real-life lesson.

Harriet McAtee
Yeah.

Beverley Nolan
Yarn and me.

Harriet McAtee
What’s your puppy’s name?

Beverley Nolan
Lola.

Harriet McAtee
That’s very sweet. I am, I’m reading. I’m reading this great book at the moment called Orwells Roses by, by Rebecca Solnit. And it’s about George Orwell’s love of like, gardening and nature. And, you know, I think, you know, usually we associate Geroge Orwell with sort of political writing and his essays and his novels and being this very active thinker. And her, the point that she sort of, Rebecca Solnit makes in this book is that it’s so important to have activities and things that you do that allow your other work to happen. And her point was sort of that, for George Orwell, what allowed his writing to happen was often the time that he spent, you know, in his garden, or tending his roses. So I was thinking about that, as you were, as you were talking about the espionage and the crochet, they’re sort of they’re, they’re things that you do that, like, allow your other work to happen, perhaps.

Beverley Nolan
Yeah, I think it allows, it allows the other work to sort of shift into the hinterland if you like. And yet it’s still there because I can, I can feel it sort of filtering through in, you know, the practice of attention, for example, that practice of repetition, you know, it’s still it just it’s so the work sort of comes out in different ways. But the sort of direct nature of my work is Yeah, much more in the hinterland of the experience.

Harriet McAtee
I love that. I love that way of describing it. I often think about it as like marinating time, you know, if you’re, if you’re cooking, and then like, you put the, you know, the whatever, you’re marinating in the fridge to marinate, but you know, it’s there, you know, it’s doing something whilst you go and do other things. And it’s, I think it’s so important, particularly because we seem to live in a world that really emphasises the like, the active time the doing, and I’m like, No, we got to make room for the make room for the marination make room for the hinterland.

Beverley Nolan
Yeah, that puts, when I think of cooking like that, that puts me in mind of the idea of alchemy, you know, this, we have to the things have to come together, and it’s in their co-mingling that something else comes out of it, like a really good flavour or another experience.

Harriet McAtee
I really liked that way of thinking about it, because there’s also something sort of slightly mysterious or like, unknowable or coincidental about it, as well. I’ve been thinking a lot this week about. I mean, at the end of the first book in the Yoga Sutra, where like Patanjali is talking about, or all of the different types of Samadhi, and how you can attain them. And he, like he talks about them, and then he sort of like, oh, but they happen by accident. So, like, you can do all of the work, but also sometimes it, it’s the word, the word that he uses a Samapattih, which is like, coalescence or coincidence or this sort of like intermingling that happens. Oh, lovely. Lovely.

Beverley Nolan
Yeah. I think actually, he says, I mean, I think he says something a little bit like that in, in numerous places where you can kind of do things or not.

Harriet McAtee
Yes.

Beverley Nolan
And I think perhaps we can get tied up in the doing, as you were saying, Harriet, and we and the doing can preoccupy us. Whereas if we, yeah, that can just get be so dominant. And actually, it can, it can become the obstacle in a way because we get caught up in Am I doing it right? Am I doing it for long enough? You know, who’s gonna judge me how, you know, it becomes a whole quagmire of conditioning, rather than dropping back into the hinterland.

Harriet McAtee
Yeah, yeah. I couldn’t agree more. It’s almost like sometimes I’ll have students who are doing too much yoga. Do you know what I mean, you’ll have somebody in there, like, they’re doing too much practice. They’re you know, maybe doing out you know, and more, more Asana than I would ever Think is advisable. And, you know, they’re like, you know, my, my, my practice is, you know, 30 minutes of meditation and then an hour and a half of Asana and then I do like Pranayama. And I’m like too much, too much. And it says, you know, there’s not enough like fallow, fallow time as well, I read a really great book last year or the year before called Wintering by Katherine May have you come across this?

Beverley Nolan
it was just recommended to me with someone. So it’s on my wish list of things once I get past my espionage craving?

Harriet McAtee
Well, I mean, I would love to, I would love to hear your take on it when you, when you do get to it. But the point of, I mean, that’s a spoiler for you, sorry. But the whole sort of argument is that things need to things need a period of winter so that we can appreciate like summer when it comes, you know, you need you need periods of sort of fallow-ness and barren-ness almost so that you can appreciate abundance when, when it arrives, which I think is a really important, important thing to say. Because I think, you know, if you think about it from, I guess, a cultural perspective, or a social perspective, where, you know, the classic is like, you can get tomatoes year-round in, at the supermarket. And, you know, we live in like climate-controlled homes, and we’re, you know, from a work perspective, we’re always expected to be busy, like, we don’t have those rhythms to our time in the same way that perhaps we could,

Beverley Nolan
Yeah, as you’re speaking to me about that, what’s coming up is about and this individual who has quite a full practice is that the tissues need fallow time, if we’re talking about physical practices, the nervous system needs, you know, fallow rest time as well. And I think there’s something about the perception of resting and fallow time as if nothing is happening, as if it’s just passively empty. And yet, we know, if we come to the body systems that have this, you know, sympathetic and parasympathetic system systems, the parasympathetic system is not passive. It’s not actually doing nothing, what’s happening is I, I am getting out of the way of that system. So it can come forward from the hinterland, it can come into the foreground and be doing all its stuff. I mean, it’s incredibly busy, incredibly active. Incredibly, you know, it’s vital that it’s involved. And it’s and it’s activated, but we activate it by getting out of the way. So I think there can be something about, there’s a misconception about rest, if you like that, it’s it’s, it’s not productive. In fact, rest is a very productive state and a very active state. It’s not doing nothing. And I think, you know, we’ve got caught up in, you know, the times where only when we appear to be busy and appear to be doing things appear to be carrying on through fatigue, and that then we have value in the world. And yeah, that’s, that can’t be sustained, as we all know.

Harriet McAtee
No, I mean, well, I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree with you. I couldn’t agree with you more on that. Wow. I think that that conversation of what’s nourishing us has gone to some, gone to some nice places. But I’m keen to hear a bit about your, your background and how it is that you would, you would describe what you do.

Beverley Nolan
Okay, my background in this context. So I have been a yoga teacher as such I qualified as a yoga teacher, that was air quotes as if watching a video, back in the middle 80s when being a yoga teacher wasn’t kind of a profession as such, it was something I did, most people did alongside another profession, or if they were privileged enough not to need to work so it wasn’t something that you, you went into as a way of earning a living. So I did that for a long time alongside working. And then, so about the time that I had my daughter, who’s now 22 I uncovered a pathway a little bit further, which took me into more of the world of somatics. So, so still movement modalities, but not yoga. So, so that would be things like Feldenkrais’s body mind centring bit of five rhythms at the time and continuum. So those things were floating around for a long time. And then through Donna Farris’s work, I encountered a teacher in the UK called Linda Hartley, who was one of Bonnie’s, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s sort of legacy of teachers. And so I ended up go working, of studying with Linda and doing her programme of study. And then the yoga was still going alongside that and became a tutor on her faculty as well. So the so movement has always been around movement for me, has been a solace and a challenge and a place to encounter myself on many different levels. But I found I needed something, funnily enough, that took me out of yoga, and sort of stretched my perceptions of things. And then I brought that back into my yoga practices and teaching.

Harriet McAtee
I think that’s, I think that’s really interesting, this idea of going beyond in order to, to come back to yoga, and I think it’s a trajectory that is quite common to you. Long term practitioners and long term teachers as well, this need this sort of, like, and I can, I can, I’m saying that because like I can feel it coming in my teaching at the moment where I was, I was actually, I was talking with Theo last week, Theo Wildcroft, who we, we both know, I was talking to Theo about this last week around how I didn’t know like how your relationship to yoga, and particularly, your relationship to Asana shifts. And I was saying to her that I’m really feeling the need at the moment too, I don’t know, to go away and to look at that to like, almost not quite, but to almost take a sabbatical from Asana teaching in particular. And, I don’t know, find a way back into it, because I sort of feel like I’ve I feel a bit withdrawn from it at the moment. Like, I still, I still practice Asina a bit in a way that is perhaps, I mean, in a way, that would certainly be unrecognisable to me, you know, 10 or 15 years ago. So, yeah, to sort of leave and then return and find a way back into it is something that I feel is necessary for me at the moment, but I’m not sure what that looks like.

Beverley Nolan
Yeah, no, I resonate with that. And I think I got to the point where I was at a, an intensive in London with Donna, where I was at the point saying, I really don’t see the point of me carrying on with yoga teaching. I’m not finding what I, I think I need, we were talking about nourishment. I kind of felt I’d hit some dead ends. And it was the somatic movement modalities, particularly authentic movement, Janet Adler’s work that was uncovering for me. Questions around embodiment and spirituality, which I wasn’t really finding the right flavour of where I was, even though I mean, I love working with Donna, I still do. And, and Donna sort of just posed the question sort of, well, can it not be both? And I thought, well, actually, maybe there is, you know, maybe it’s not an either-or maybe there is a way, and it’s been challenging, because this is, again, going back about 20 years when Somatice was kind of like, whoa, what? No one really, really, my hands are reaching out here. It was right out on the edges of any yoga conversations or Asana conversations really was on the edge of things.

Harriet McAtee
So for somebody who’s maybe not familiar with somatics, could you give us a bit of a like a definition or a little bit of an idea of what that word means?

Beverley Nolan
Well, it’s, it’s a hard one, actually, because we could really say that, you know, the yoga that’s modern postural yoga really should be included within the umbrella or underneath the umbrella of somatic practices, because, for me, a somatic practice is somehow involving not just my body tissues, but my thoughts, my feelings. My imagination, my sense of spirituality is, is, is all there my sense of being an individual, my sense of being part of a collective, my sense of connection to universal, it should all be there within MP modern postural yoga, but I wasn’t finding it. And that’s why I think ferreting around in other movement modalities gave me those pathways. So I think there are various movement modalities, somatic movement modalities that will focus largely on the body and the mind if you like. And I think it’s things like authentic movement, where you will get the filtering in of the more spiritual inquiry or the more collective flavour of inquiry. So I would say in answer to your question, which I don’t think I’ve really answered is a somatic practice usually is, is holistic, it’s not just about the body, it’s about the person and all the facets of a person. In my opinion, I could be others might define it differently.

Harriet McAtee
No, I think I think I think that’s a really lovely, I think that’s a really lovely definition. Because I think, if, if you were sort of newer to somatic practice, it might be tempting to think that it was just about the body, which it isn’t, it’s like the opposite. It’s about all of it. As you were, as you were speaking, I was reflecting on, I can’t even I’m not sure who said this to me recently, but it’s, it’s often something that, that comes up, you know, when I’m talking to people about practice, or I’m talking to trainees about, you know, why they love yoga, or what’s brought them into the practice, and they’ll maybe say something along the lines of, oh, I really, I really love it, because it helps me get out of my head and into my body. I think this is a really interesting phrase. And it sort of sort of annoys me a little bit when people say this, and I am aware that perhaps I should be more, more. I should be less nettled by it. But I think the reason that I find it irritating is that they would never separate to begin with. And they’re not like this, this sort of distinction that we have between mind and body is completely arbitrary. You know, that’s whole, like, you know, the Cartesian sort of, like, you know, I think, therefore, I am, like mind and body being separate, is very arbitrary. And I think very recent, actually, like in terms of how we think about ourselves. And it’s also a very, it’s a very western understanding of the body. And I think, yeah, one of, one of the things that is so lovely about, about somatic practices is sort of this, like consideration of the whole person, like there’s not that not so much that split between mind and body.

Beverley Nolan
And I think there’s also something about that there’s, there’s something about a somatic approach that’s not about attaining a specific goal, it’s more about process than it is about goals. And I think that for me, when I hear you and others speaking about, you know, us in a practice or something, you know, question marks, whatever that feels, is, it’s something I think, that we’re where we may have got sidetracked into goals, and challenges and things like that, rather than the process of being a mover on a mat.

Harriet McAtee
Yeah, I mean.

Beverley Nolan
Or not on a mat.

Harriet McAtee
I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree more, I think the, I, the emphasis or the the sort of drive within modern postural yoga or contemporary yoga practice towards this, like, attainment or achievement, I think has a lot to answer for. And certainly one of the, one of the things that I’ve really been trying to focus on, and it’s I’m sure it’s something I’ve talked about on the podcast before, so apologies to any listeners, it’s like feels like it’s Groundhog Day. But what I’m interested in doing in practice and in life is focusing on the quality of my experience over the outcome. And on a practical level, what that means is that what I what I try to do is establish conditions rather than, like attainment. So you know, if we, if we use rest as an example. I love this because normally people can get it straight away, like you can’t decide to rest, like, there isn’t a switch that you flick, which is like, rest mode, you know, you can lie down on your bed and be like, Oh, we can go to rest now, but it’s not like you lie down and immediately like parasympathetic nervous system, you know, boots up, and then you’re rested, like, but what you can do is create the conditions for rest to arise. And then sometimes rest will arise, and sometimes it won’t, but like, but that’s okay. So when, you know, and you can, you can take this, and you can sort of apply it to anything. But, um, but I think you’re absolutely right, I think. And I hadn’t, I actually hadn’t quite hadn’t quite thought about Asana in that way in relation to there. So, so thank you for that. But yeah, I think there is there. A lot of my discomfort around Asana practice at the moment is like, what am I doing? What am I doing in? What am I doing in Asana, like, I’m not like, I’m very clear in my in other areas of my practice, like in my sitting practice is my sitting practice and my meditation practice in my, my teaching in my engagement with, you know, philosophy and anatomy and service, I’m very clear on what those do for me, but I’m not sure what Asana is doing. For me at the moment.

Beverley Nolan
I was just thinking about as she was speaking to Harriet about my Instagram feed, and I do it in or the Barefoot body training feed. And I’ve got I follow some individuals who have quite an I would say, an accomplished air quotes again, and accomplished practice in their tissues and their body. And I witnessed that, and I, I enjoy seeing I enjoy witnessing the complexity of what is showing up in the shapes they make or the, the arm balances and the sequences, I enjoy that as a witness. And I totally know that in my sort of where I am with my own body, you know that half of that is, you know, most of that’s in my past, I would say, but there’s still, there’s still a pleasure in the witnessing of that. And I assuming. But I’m assuming that they have a pleasure in doing that. And that’s probably something an assumption I shouldn’t be making. But in witnessing their movement and their accomplishments, I draw some kind of pleasure in my own tissues, I savour their strength and dexterity. But I’m left with the question about, you know, the why and is it for the pleasure of it? Is it for the process of it? Or is it something else? Is there another kind of relationship with the body? That’s, that’s happening? Sorry, my puppy is chewing my chair.

Harriet McAtee
That’s okay. Hi, Lola, she can’t hear me. But oh, that’s very sweet. I mean, because if pickles was here in the studio, she would be all up in my grill, she would be everywhere. She would, she would be the star of the show. So I think I think that’s a really, I think that’s a really good point that you raise around. Like, there is, there is a there is a pleasure in seeing people like it’s why, you know, dance performance is something that exists within our culture, or circus or acrobatics, or, you know, whatever the case may be. There is a, there is a pleasure to seeing people’s people do wonderful things with their bodies and seeing that sort of embodiment. Like it’s really it’s almost like, you know, it’s the same feeling that I have when, you know, occasionally you’ll teach a class. I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t really teach these sorts of classes much anymore. But occasionally I might cover like, I don’t know, a power flow class or something. And very rarely, but it does happen. And you, I’ll occasionally have a student at one of those classes and I’m just like, transfixed by their practice. I’m like, Oh, this is lovely, isn’t it? But I think you’re right that there is you know, we are making an assumption about why, about why they’re doing it.

Beverley Nolan
And on in Instagram is it, is it performative again you know, am I you know, I’m being bit voyeur into their practice, but you’re that’s why you won’t you’ll very rarely see my bits of practice, there are a few places where you see videos of me doing practice or something that we could call practice. But I don’t do that for the, in any way to be performative. So I have a question also about Yeah. As you speak about dance, for example.

Harriet McAtee
Yeah.

Beverley Nolan
Or gymnastics, I can still take I take a similar pleasure in watching those individuals too. But is Asana a performance? There’s a, there’s a thing, isn’t there?

Harriet McAtee
Well, I think that’s a really important question. And I think it certainly can be performative. I had a bit of a moment recently where, so I sort of similar to you, I don’t often post, I have done so more recently, but I went through a period of like, a number of years where I didn’t post my practice, anywhere. And I recently have started posting a little bit more. And I was talking to a friend who’s a yoga teacher, and I was like, I’m just worried that it’s really performative. And she was like, you can tell when somebody’s doing it performatively. And I was like, actually, that’s a really, that’s a really good point. And, you know, I think I think one of the reasons that I’m interested in sharing more of my practice is to sort of offer I don’t know, nothing that I’m doing is like revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination. But I think the more people see that practice or Asana practice doesn’t have to be this like performative like revolutionary explosive thing every time they step onto the mat. I think, I think that’s, that’s useful. But yeah, it’s a tricky thing. Because like, I’ve also, I’ve also been in a performative space with it. And I think as a teacher, there’s an element of performance to it. Like, if you’re, you know, I feel it sometimes sneak in, like when I’m working with my trainees, and, you know, recently we were doing like a session on backbends and there’s such a performative, like, if you think about the fact that, like a functional range of spinal extension is what like 35 ish degrees, which is a Sphinx Pose. Anything beyond the Sphinx Pose is like, for performance or for pleasure. Like, you don’t need more than that, to be a functional human being.

Beverley Nolan
Yeah, I often speak about functional movement about the things I need to be able to do in my kitchen. And I don’t think I need to open a cup of behind me by doing that. I can, I can twist and do that. I don’t need to. So yeah, I hear what you’re saying. Yeah.

Harriet McAtee
Exactly. I’m like, like, it’s the same thing for like, hip flexion. Like, functional Hip Flexion is 90 degrees, which is like, sitting on the floor in Dandasana. Like, can you imagine I often make the joke of like, you know, if you put most yoga teachers into that sort of L sit position, they would be like, oh, and like, if they couldn’t go any further, they’d be like, I’m so tired. My hamstrings are so tight. Like, I’m not a good yogi. I need to go and see somebody about this. And like the, like little sketch about like a yogi going to a physical therapist and be like, I can’t touch my toes, or like, I can’t get beyond 90 degrees, and then just being like, What are you talking about? This is perfectly functional. So I think it’s also like, there’s, there’s a point in there around like the the framework called, like, the perspective that you have on how your practice fits into your life, like what is your practice for within your life that is, you know, something interesting to think about?

Beverley Nolan
Yeah, and I’m just as you’ve been speaking, I’ve been thinking about because you reference Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras earlier that if you go to those three, is it three or four Sutras in chapter two about Asana? I know the commentary does expand into a number of describing a number of Asana, which I think of all but one are seated Asana that are described in the commentary, but what, what in the little sort of bullet points that Patanjali speaks about it’s almost like he’s describing the overarching flavour of an Asana as being that sphere of Asana bit you know, that is Anna, you know, whether I, you know, it has nothing to do with hamstrings really does it At the end of the day,

Harriet McAtee
No, not at all.

Beverley Nolan
Philosophy of your hamstrings

Harriet McAtee
Well, sort of like, funnily enough, I was my, my first teacher training was a bit wild. The one not the first one that I taught but the first one that I did was a bit wild. And we were taught that if you had tight hamstrings it was because you were having trouble letting go of the past. Which, you know, I can sort of like I don’t know how that factored in but anyway,

Beverley Nolan
Well, I don’t know how that factors in either Yeah, dot dot dot, we need to reach out to those trainers and figure out what their intention was in that moment.

Harriet McAtee
Yeah, yeah, it was an interesting moment. And any issues that you had with had to do with your knees was like a manifestation of any ego issues. Knees were all about ego.

Beverley Nolan
Oh, God. I say oh god because my what my left knee. I don’t know which bit of god that is, but I wonder what?

Harriet McAtee
I wonder what my meniscus tear is.

Beverley Nolan
Yes, exactly.

Harriet McAtee
Well, shockingly, probably, we are already at the end of our time here, which is just remarkable to me. So where can, where can our listeners find you?

Beverley Nolan
So um, for one sort of personal interactions is beverleynolan.com Is a website and for and they’re and for training and CPDs The best place is barefootbody.com yeah.

Harriet McAtee
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining me today Beverley. It was such a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you. Yeah, I’ll see you soon.

Beverley Nolan
Went so quickly. Thank you so much. Take care, Harriet. Bye

Harriet McAtee
Bye.

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