Practice, practice, practice

I wanted to spend the past week or so just focusing the blog entries on practice notes. I kinda liked it, but it is repetitious. Practice is, after all, essentially the same thing over and over again, day after day. The only way to get some variability is to hyper-focus on details. Not sure how helpful that is. Need to think about it a bit.

LOL! It is very tempting for me to write about this morning's practice, but I think I will restrain myself.

Lunch blog

Mysore this morning. A few really cool things. For one, marichyasana D. This morning was the very first time that I really felt the work of the lotus foot in the abs. It was quite intense, the combination of the twist and the deeply pressing foot. Up 'til now, my marichy D has been all about containing centrifugal force as my limbs tried to spring out of the pose. Today, though, it was all centripetal energy, and it totally rocked. Kind of like a marichy B feeling on steroids.

Next good thing: kurmasana. Heels up and no pain. There's a big fear factor, still, because I think this pose (well, actually, my bullheaded attempts to get into this pose) is where my hamstring drama started.

After kurmasana, I was flailing for supta kurmasana and Chanting Man asked me if I wanted some help. He gave me a great adjustment--hands bound really tightly, and soles of my feet together quite painlessly. At the end, I said, "Thank you. That was good." He said, "I read your blog. I know your issues." I laughed and said, "It's my cry for help." LOL!

Baddha konasana: Volleyball Guy draped two sandbags on my back and I managed to get my forehead to the ground after about 7-8 breaths. Woohoo! I still am thrilled by this pose. I especially like the cracking sacrum sound effect.

Savasana involved a lengthy fantasy. First, I thought about the upcoming rope wall in the yoga room (which The Cop claims I am obsessed about). It occurred to me that if we were going to have hooks on the wall, we could easily install some climbing holds. But just straight up climbing? Booooring. Wait a minute, the ceiling slants up rather nicely from the yoga room into the livingroom, where it makes a sharp peak. It's a big open space with a half wall/fireplace separating the two rooms. You could cover the whole thing with holds and it'd be a climbing dream. I thought about our couch and chairs and end tables and TV all surrounded by walls and ceilings of climbing holds. The Cop is handy; he could do this. Oh wait, we'll need anchors for belays--but that's do-able. And rebar grids to reinforce all the walls...hmmmm, maybe this is not quite so simple as my savasana dream...

I told The Cop all about it when I got home from practice. He shot it all down with a "diminished resale value" argument. Right, like the heavy bag he installed on the back patio is an upgrade, but my climbing wall interior would be a problem ;-)

I'm gonna keep the dream alive. Maybe one day it'll manifest.

Bowing and praying

Nansen asked Joshu, "Have you a master of your own or not?"

Joshu said, "Yes, I have."

"Where is your master?"

Joshu replied, "In the middle of a severe winter, I bow and pray that the Master may thrive and prosper."

Nansen realized that Joshu was a vessel of dharma and permitted him to become his disciple.

I love the master koans. I use them often at work, and now, with My Gift moving, I am bowing and praying in a severe winter.

Yesterday, after led, Crim Girl and I went to lunch. We got to discussing Iyengar ropes. I've never tried them, but I've seen pictures, and they seem like such a good idea now that my practice is at the point where I want to really try to open my shoulders for backbends. Hip opening has come along really nicely over the past year, but as my hips open, it makes my shoulders seem even tighter by comparison. Gotta focus in on the shoulders for a while.

The Cop is uber-handy and I have a devoted yoga room, so last night I ordered the ropes. Can a home climbing wall be far behind? ;-) Yes, secretly I just want to hang upside down like a bat for fun. But I can use the ropes for yoga purposes, too.

My cousin wrote to me today, and sent me a link to a shaman woman. My cousin's daughter, who is in her late 20s, has been trying to find herself, but kind of spinning her wheels for a long time now. My cousin wondered if I thought this shaman might be able to help. This is a really interesting question to me. For one thing, I am amused that when people in my family see or hear something that seems wacky to them, they turn to me. How many times has one of them said, "It's a really weird [book/movie/place], you'd probably really like it!" LOL!

In this case, though, I am out of my element. I know next to nothing about shamanism, But I do have the feeling that it would be good for my cousin's daughter to find some sort of spiritual system that might offer her perspective on life. This side of the family, though, is famous for being entrenched in their idea of reality. They are heavily invested in rejecting anything that isn't familiar.

I have no idea if Cousin's Daughter will be able to suspend her disbelief long enough to find whatever she might need in a shamanistic experience. People often feel like they have to either totally buy into, or totally reject, belief systems.

What I told my cousin is that maybe her daughter would find something--a kernel of personal truth, a metaphor, anything--that would be useful. And it may not be immediately useful, but something that she needs later on. Who knows. At the very least, a new experience with an unfamiliar belief system is always enlightening on some level (even if not conscious). Cousin's Daughter has struggled for years, trying to find some inner peace. Maybe this will be a teeny step in some direction.

Oh, the practice report: Led class yesterday was good. Volleyball Guy's son, Muscle Man, taught. He gave me a really interesting adjustment in ardha baddha padma paschimottansana, which involved the turn of the binding shoulder toward the extended leg's hip. Haha! This sounds like one of those, "my aunt's husband's stepson's daughter's boyfriend" kind of explanations. Suffice it to say, it was a nice, subtle adjustment that gave me something new to think about.

My hamstrings, which were entirely pain-free on Friday, felt a little hinky on Saturday. No great surprise, I suppose. And they weren't all that bad, so I can't really complain.

To my right during class was a very languid practitioner. A teacher of a different style of yoga. Her Ashtanga practice was interesting to me, because it seemed super languid. It made me think about styles of yoga (yin immediately comes to mind) where you get into the pose and then kind of go limp.

I hurt myself pretty much every single time I try yin practice--not serious injury, but tweaks--so I am very suspicious of this idea of totally letting go in poses. In terms of the Middle Way, there's the stiff-as-a-board mode (Volleyball Guy calls it being "a yoga statue") and the floppy mode--and somewhere in the middle is the engaged mode, where the inner experience of the pose modulates with the breath and the mind.

Anyhow, the floppy practitioner seemed pretty tired at the beginning of class and utterly exhausted by the end. I was wondering why I felt fascinated by this observation--what the lesson was--and then I thought about Mysore the other day, when I had my super-adrenalized, speedy practice.

Okay, fair enough. So whether in the middle of a speedy practice, or upon observing a floppy practice, I will bow and pray that the Master may thrive and prosper.

Crackpotting

Sometimes I wonder if practice makes me more sensitive, and other times I wonder if I'm just a crackpot with an obsession.

Mysore this morning. I was running a little late, and when I got there, there were three new people! What?! Actually, one was a guy who comes to Saturday led quite regularly. Then there were two women I've never seen before. One of the new people was just to my right. It didn't take me long to realize she was doing "yoga improv." How did I know? Well, the sequence, of course, but also the fact that she turned to her left and faced me on some of her poses. LOL! I felt like a kid in a classroom, when the person in front of you keeps turning around to talk to you during class and you want to tell them to knock it off and face in the right direction.

Does practice make OCD tendencies worse? ;-)

Practice felt great right from the very beginning. Is it because I've been icing my hamstrings twice a day and always after practice? Or is the extending from the spine (hereafter referred to as the "Jody Maneuver") helping? Or am I just finished with whatever realignment was going on over the past few months? Who knows. And who cares? All I know is practice felt wonderful.

Strong and flexible and a little over-adrenalized--I think because I've been eating meat (well, fowl and fish) again. I'm also kind of aggressive lately, but that's a story for another entry. Anyhow, I rolled along at a very good pace. Maybe more than a good pace--I think I was actually a little speedy. For some reason I felt like I wanted to hurry up. But for what? Here's the crackpot part: I felt like my over-adrenalized feelings were coming from The Improvisor. Like I was getting a jolt of nervousness from her. I had the impression that she was giving off "What do I do next?" vibes and I was caught up in them. Even though I knew what I was going to do next--I do the sequence almost unconsciously at this point. All of a sudden, though, I had this feeling like I had to move along quickly because if I didn't I would forget. Weird, huh?

Whatever. When I got to kurmasana, my legs felt totally relaxed and pain-free, so I just lifted my heels up and it felt totally effortless and light. It's been a looooong time since my legs felt okay in kurmasana, so I was psyched. Volleyball Guy always keeps an eye on me in kurmasana and supta kurmasana these days, and as per usual, when I got to supta k, he let me grab my hands, then stabilized them and got my feet together. The feet dealio is coming along.

On ezBoard there is discussion about supta k and the length of people's legs and arms and backs and whatever. In the end, of course, we probably all can do the pose, provided we patiently persist for however long it takes.

Baddha konasana was terrific. Usually I grab a sandbag and put it on my back in this pose (usually I have one pose where I stop and take time to set up and try to really work it--and currently baddha k is that pose). I was doing pretty well (my back seems to be "getting it" finally--for a long time, the very idea of deeply folding forward in this pose has seemed so weird and undo-able) when Volleyball Guy came over and draped a second sandbag over my back. It was just enough to help me touch my forehead to the floor. This is a really big deal, because I am not a natural baddha konasan.

What's next? Well, I often dream of doing durvasana. Of course, in my dreams, it is very, very easy.

Home Practice: 8/17/06

Take-away from today's practice: I know I need to extend more through the spine, particularly the lower spine, but this morning I realized that I tend to be slightly afraid of extending this way, that I kind of contract my lower back a bit to "protect" it--in part, I think, because I grew up among people who had lower back problems (which is quite common in America), and in part as a remnant of weightlifting days, when I protected my lower back by flexing the muscles. This slight ongoing contraction, or pulling back, is pretty much unconscious--it's just the way I hold myself, and I never really noticed it because it is so "normal" for me. Anyhow, I have to work this through. This morning, with some extra attention, I managed to extend more from the sacral area, which felt quite good physically, though a little scary psychically. The extension takes some of the stress off my hamstrings, and when I do it, it seems kinesthetically "correct."

And there was a side bonus for my sore hamstrings: instead of blindly cranking my quads to protect the hammies, I focused in and applied quad tension with more discrimination. Tried to modulate it to work with the stuff going on in my sacrum. Seemed to help.

So many things to focus on while I'm not thinking ;-)

These days, I feel nervous as kurmasana approaches, so I just tried to breathe through the nervousness and pay attention to how the hamstrings responded. I'm not going for perfection on the pose, not trying to work around the left hamstring, but just trying to feel it out. Hopefully the relaxed approach will, at the very least, get me past the bad association (kurmansana = strain & pain) that I've established. Then when my hamstrings are healed, the pose can be a newer, gentler kurmasana ;-)

Here's a quote from Hakuin. (Editorial note-to-self: the "valiant heart that presses forward" is not equivalent to the hamstrings that press down in kurmasana.)

Such knowledge as originates from outside yourself can never assist your arriving at a great Satori, the big Awakening. Whatever you do, you must once see for yourself the fact that that buddha-nature you sought for was always yours from the start--there is nothing more important than this.

How can we see for ourselves this fact that buddha-nature was originally ours?

The Buddhist teachings have assumed various forms in the course of explanation: sudden and gradual, greater and smaller vehicle, revealed and esoteric, indeterminate, and so on. But in the realization of the Buddha Way, the most important thing is to evince a valiant heart that presses forward and never falls back. Until you can taste the joy of great Satori, the big Awakening, never fall back--it is in this spirit you must enter into practice.

Practice Notes: 8/16/06

Another quick debrief as I gulp down some lunch then run to the next meeting. Work is a madhouse lately. Very exhilarating, but also daunting--multi-tasking is definitely the devil's invention. I won't even get started about the logistics of getting My Gift relocated for college, never mind the emotional energy of letting go. And hey, I'm a manager--wouldn't it make sense if I actually had some time to talk to my team? Oops, had to stop to take a call from the orthodontist My Gift will be transferring to. Oh wait, I have to book boarding for the cat for the nights we're delivering My Gift to college... Okay, you get the idea.

Thank God for Mysore this morning is all I can say. My hamstrings actually felt pretty darn good, especially considering I actually thought about skipping practice on Monday because they hurt so much. I've been icing three times a day--though who knows if that's what's making the big difference. Maybe it's Jody the Yoga Star's advice about extending through the spine more. I'm actually too crazy busy to think about why things are happening, which may actually improve my practice ;-)

The only place where I felt particularly nervous was in kurmasana. And again, with his uncanny perceptiveness, Volleyball Guy came over and helped at the most painful part of my practice. I was going easy on my hamstrings, trying not to use my legs to squish myself flat, when he picked up my heels, nice and gentle. My thought? Oh, I'm supposed to extend through the hips and legs to get my feet up, not just crank my muscles until my feet pop up. Okay, that's a good lesson for today.

Quiet morning: British Director, Other Dave, Mr India, Chanting Man, Cat and NYChick. Lovely practice buddies all. I hope Friday practice is a nice, crowded, raucous one. I think we're about due for that kind of fun.

Oh crap, I forgot about my sister's birthday! Happy Birthday, Lynnie!

Home Practice: 8/15/06

Woke up worried about my hamstrings. I think it's interesting that my system can hook onto things and kind of mull them over at night while I am unconscious. It makes the whole idea of keeping a clear, positive mind very compelling: I know I stabilize and solidify belief systems during the night. Some of it is physical in the gross physical sense (e.g., my hamstrings are sore these days), and some of it is energetic (e.g., I can invest emotional energy into the underpinnings of the gross physical aspect). And all of it can happen as I sleep. Uh oh, it's probably too early for thoughts like this.

I considered a day off today, after yesterday's practice and subsequent attempts to help the poor hammies with ice, but My Gift told me she was going to wake up at 4:30 so she could go help a friend move into her dorm. There are so many kids moving in that there is a schedule, and My Gift's friend got a 6-8 AM slot. Anyhow, I figured if My Gift was getting up, I would just go ahead and get up with her. That way we could have a little coffee and I'd see her on her way.

As I said, I woke with worry about my hamstrings. I expected them to be really sore, but as it turns out, they're not too bad. My half-awake (half-aware? ;-) musings during the night last night pinpointed the hamstrings as a repository of fear/anxiety, and the insertion points as the strength I mount against fear/anxiety. Oh great, a pulling in two directions. No wonder they hurt.

Jody suggested yesterday that I try for more extension through my spine, so that was my focus this morning. Seemed to work pretty well, too. I know my focus has been really deep in the hammies for the past few practices, which is, I suppose, a reasonable response to pain, but today I tried to pull the center of my focus up into uddiyana bandha and then extend up from there. Makes for a nice, light practice.

I figure all of my quad engagement efforts may have been too unyielding (in essence, I tried to just "lock" the quads on every pose to cut the hammies some slack), but I guess (duh!) my response is going to have to be more subtle. No matter what, I'm going to have to back off on the left side, while ratcheting up a bit on the right. I have to give the right side a chance to open up more: the imbalance in openness on the right and left sides are likely at the root of a lot of this.

Good news of the day, though, is that marichyasana D is finally settling down. I've been able to bind my hands for a good while now, but only by putting a lot of my weight forward onto the foot that's flat on the floor. Initially, I had to lean way forward, to the point of taking all of my weight on the foot. It was the only way to get compact enough to bind my hands. So then I'd have the bind, but at the expense of being a crunched up and twisted little person balancing on one foot. No extension through the spine whatsoever. I started leaning back more and more after I made the bind, which seemed to open my hips a bit and give me more space for my back, but I always had to start the pose off with my weight far forward. Today I managed to build the pose from the floor--with bent leg foot, knee of lotus leg, and lotus leg sitting bone making a tripod on the floor. On both sides. Woohoo!

When I got to kurmasana, I backed off on my legs and just worked my back/chest. I am surprised to find how much I drive that pose through my hamstrings, and pretty much forget about my back. Like I can flatten myself using my legs and totally leave the back/abs out of it. Yeah, um, but only at the expense of your hamstrings, Karen. Another duh! moment. For supta k, I just bound my hands and then breathed. Left my legs alone entirely.

As Jody pointed out in his comment yesterday (quite rightly, I think), a lot of this hamstring stuff may be coming out of the kurmasana/supta k work. I tried to barrel through it, but it seems I'm going to have to double back and be more sensitive. If there's fear stored up in those hamstrings, I'm probably not gonna be able to steamroll my way through.

Home Practice: 8/14/06

Wake with a burning sensation in both hamstring inserts. Not good. Home practice today--no Mysore, as Volleyball Guy is out of town.

As usual, the morning begins with coffee and some reading:

When a person faces the great doubt, before him there is in all directions only a vast and empty land without birth and without death, like a huge plain of ice extending ten thousand miles.
--Hakuin

Decide to use the space heater, to try to bribe my hamstrings with heat. Think this might be a bit crazy, seeing as we're in the desert and all, but tough times call for tough measures.

Practice totally revolves around the pain. Poses of particularly excruciating note are: padangusthasana, padahastasana, parivritta trikonasana, and the most horrifying of all: the prasaritas. By the time I get to prasarita B, I decide to try bending my knees a bit. Seems to help. Not sure if this is kosher or not, but the pain to pleasure ratio of practice is starting to list hopelessly toward the pain end of the continuum, and bent knees are the only solution that comes to mind.

Plod along, making note of the "sensations" ;-) and trying to back off just a bit, until marichyasana C, at which point I finally start to feel some relief. Decide to really be diligent about icing four times a day for a while (I'm sitting on ice as I type this entry). How can I spread the stress of stretches throughout the whole hamstring? Why does everything seem to be converging at the inserts?

A quick note about the dinner party at The British Director's house. It wasn't such a big collision of worlds. I met The British Director's boyfriend, who, like The Cop, is not an Ashtangi. I think by the end of the evening both he and The Cop probably felt pretty satisfied that we aren't all members of a cult.

The British Director, I am very happy to report, is one of those people who reads cookbooks for pleasure. Gosh, can she cook! There was grilled salmon and a mango salsa, endive and avocado salad with mustard dressing, quinoa with corn (my favorite!), pasta with pesto sauce, and bread. And The British Director's boyfriend, who will from here on in be called The Wine Connoisseur, chose and served some unbelievably good wines.

Also in attendance: Mr India and The European Beauty, Volleyball Guy and Sanskrit Scholar, Chanting Man and The Cat's Mom, Crim Girl and her consort yet to be named. It struck me that The Cop might feel like he was in the movie "The Big Chill," and I leaned over to whisper that to him. "What's 'The Big Chill'?" he asked. Never mind.

A lovely time was had by all. The Cop felt slightly out of his element, though he enjoyed himself. Perhaps like he was with a close group of hippie-ish friends. You know, like in "The Big Chill"? Okay, okay--never mind ;-)

Home practice: 8/12/06

My Gift's rheumatologist said she should have a flu shot before college, so we are off to a flu shot clinic downtown when she finishes up her morning shift at Juicy Yoga Studio. No led class for me.

Wonders of technology side note: This week, My Gift was given contact info for her roommate. The two girls talked on the phone, then connected via their My Space pages. This morning, My Gift casually mentioned that she and The Roomie have been chatting via instant message. I'm pleased to hear this, because they'll have a chance to get to know each other a bit before they're thrown together in a couple of weeks.

So, home practice this morning. A really exuberant, happy practice. One where the vinyasas are just such a pleasure, and poses and vinyasas flow together seamlessly. Left hamstring is cranky, but not impossible. The most interesting thing, though, was this practice felt joyous, and really well-integrated. Somehow, it understood that it is not the point--though it is a means.

"Truth can be compared to the moon," said Hui Neng, pointing to the moon with his finger, "I can use my finger to point out the moon, but my finger is not the moon, and you don't need my finger in order to be able to see the moon."

Tonight, dinner at The British Director's house. I get to meet Crim Girl's new partner in crime, and The Cop meets the Mysorians. What happens when worlds collide?

Practice notes in 5 minutes or less (8/11/06)

Mysore morning. The British Director, Crim Girl, Mr India and NYChick. A small turnout for a Friday. I miss Returning Guy. He is visiting with his son, and the shala just isn't the same. He is always the first one in, surya-ing away as the rest of us enter the room.

Practice was good. Warm and a little ponderous, but not too bad. All of my energy is focused on the quad engagement, and my hamstrings are very happy for it. Additionally, my drishti stays on my nose/shins in forward bends--no looking at my toes. I miss them, and I miss the intense focus of that particular gaze, but my hamstring inserts are really feeling alot better with this small shift in drishti. I'm sure it's because my lower back is rounding more, but hey, I'm one year into Ashtanga practice and I have to accept that it's gonna take a while for those hamstrings to release. I need to cut them some slack.

Handstands have been particularly fun: Volleyball Guy has me holding my knees in tight until my hips are up, and then I extend my legs. It feels like swimming in air. Same dealio on the way back down to the next navasana: hold the crossed legs in tight all the way down from handstand.

Supta K was the usual: I get in, grab my fingers, scoot my feet. Volleyball Guy put his hand over mind, then pushes my feet closer. I don't think I'll get my feet crossed, because I am short and stubby. I think I'll have better luck getting my feet cross behind my head.

Therefore the usual foot behind the head goofing around after backbends. If I just do it persistently, eventually it'll happen.

Home practice 8/10/06

Home practice with Sharath's CD, because I felt like moving along at a good pace. Kept the focus on quad engagement, which really seems to be doing the trick, hamstring-pain-wise.

After backbends, played with putting my feet behind my head instead of paschimottanasana. What fun! Wasn't as heated up as yesterday morning, so I couldn't straighten my back up once my leg was behind my head. Persistance, though, will do the trick. And as I said, it's such fun that it doesn't seem like work at all.

Savasana with Simon and Garfunkel on the iPod. Relaxed, lying in the sunshine of the yoga room, I had, suddenly, the strongest sense of uddiyana bandha that I've ever felt. Very cool. Interesting when these things happen, because I can chase the feeling (make a vow to consciously reproduce it in practice), or I can set it in the back of my consciousness, like a koan, and trust that it is developing. I guess this circles around to the thoughts I've been having lately about willfulness and the role it does, or does not, play in my practice. Those thoughts, too, though, have to be left alone a bit. They remind me of the seeds I planted in the front yard on Sunday. Left alone, they'll sprout. (And then, if it's anything like the seeds I planted two weeks ago, the rabbits will come and eat them one morning. LOL!)

Practice notes: 8/9/06

Yesterday The Cop and I drove up to Sedona, because my sister and her girlfriend were up there vacationing (they live in San Diego). We went up for lunch, and a short visit. The Cop laughed at me when I explained that today was a Moon Day, so I would take it a day early and then go to Mysore practice this morning. He is amused by my poor rule-following skills and my excellent rationalization skills.

This morning's practice was all about quads. My poor hamstrings have been so tortured. I did some more reading in Gregor Maehle's book and decided I would devote today's practice to making sure my quads were mindfully engaged the whole way through. Heels pulled to the floor on sitting poses, feet flexed, the whole deal. This is, at least for me, a daunting challenge. I like to drift off into my yoga bliss, and sometimes that bliss doesn't include quadriceps mindfulness. But I managed well enough. And sure enough, I remembered something Crim Girl told me months ago: she suggested I pull up through my arches, which seemed like a fine idea, but I had no clue how to do it. This morning, as I engaged my quads in down dog, those arches just popped right up. Nice.

Practice felt a little plodding at the start--perhaps because the air is rather humid here in the desert, and we aren't accustomed to that sort of heaviness. But the poses and vinyasas were pleasant and I managed to keep doing the quad reminder.

Supta K went well--I managed to grab my hands, and then Volleyball Guy put his hands over mine to stabilize them while I tried to cross my feet, which at this stage in the game means I try to touch the soles together. "Close, very close," he said. Volleyball Guy does not dole out lots of verbal feedback, so I was happy to hear this.

And this morning, I did normal urdhva dhanurasanas, instead of my usual ustrasana/dhanurasana combo. I asked Volleyball Guy if the switch would be okay, and mentioned I wouldn't mind skipping adjustments, since his back has been sore. Of course, he couldn't resist adjusting. I did a couple of urdhva ds myself and then one holding his ankles, where he then supported my upper back and had me take my hands off the floor and just open my arms like an airplane--well, a relaxed airplane, anyhow. It was a great adjustment! He reminded me to work my legs, and with him supporting my shoulders and pushing just a bit toward my feet, I could work into the backbend with my feet and legs and abs and really feel the form. All I need to do now is find a way to always subtract my concrete shoulders from the urdhva dhanurasana mix.

Then a few dropbacks, which felt great. As I sat down after backbends, I noticed The Other Dave (who was practicing second) showing The Cat eka pada sirsanana. Then they played around a bit with kashyabasana. I was nice and warm, and I've been messing around with yoga nidrasana in the evenings (in hopes it'll aid my supta kurmasana), so I tried putting my feet behind my head. To very good effect. I managed to get first my left and then my right foot situated behind my neck. I don't know why, exactly, but I sure do love those foot behind the head poses. They're challenging and funny and scary and cool. And way more entertaining post-backbend poses than paschimottasana, which is usually just excruciating.

One From the Books

My own little koan of the past year: Are meditating while practicing Ashtanga and meditating while sitting zazen the same or different?

From "Sitting with Koans":

Hakuin...emphasized practice in the midst of activity... 'I am not trying to tell you to discard completely quietistic meditation and to seek specifically for a place of activity to carry on your practice. What is most worthy of respect is a pure koan meditation that neither knows nor is conscious of the two aspects, the quiet and the active. This is why it has been said that the true practicing monk walks but does not know he is walking, sits but does not know he is sitting.

For penetrating to the depths of one's own true self-nature and for attaining a vitality valid on all occasions, nothing can surpass meditation in the midst of activity.'

Mysore practice was good this morning, though I couldn't get my hands in supta k. It felt rather tragic for a moment, but then there was the next breath, and time to be off on other pursuits.

I ate fish twice yesterday--mercury...uh, I mean, tuna for lunch, and sushi for dinner. I generally don't eat much animal food at all, so this was a big dose of it. My mind felt really pointed this morning, but maybe a little too hard, like its surface was steely, somehow. So I wasted some time thinking about my diet during practice. Maybe the supta k problem was from stiffness due to eating animals. *Sigh.* Like my thinking about it would change the situation. Not.

Anyhow, I've been thinking about willfulness the past couple of days (most notably, yesterday morning while I washed the venetian blinds in the kitchen by hand). Willfulness is interesting: people love it or they hate it. I want to play around with some ideas, and then maybe write a bit about it. I think it may play strongly into my practice, and may even be a large part of why karma brought me to practice.

Happy Monday! (and yes, that's sarcastic ;-)

Plain old practice notes

Woke this morning with some sore spots (piriformis, most notably) and thought "Hmmmm, this must be from playing around with yoga nidrasana last night." This playing around with yoga nidrasana is, of course, part of my attempt to understand supta k. Yesterday in led, supta k was terrific, at least the bind was. Still have some work to do on the hips (hence yoga nidrasana). Anyhow, the hand bind is getting very straightforward. Jody mentioned something in his blog about the set up of the hands, which I've found to be true. For a few weeks now, I've had to put a lot of energy into the correct set up of my hands, in order to have any hope of getting the bind.

When I first started practicing the pose, I would reach back with both hands--and with a huge sense of blindness and futility. The whole back body was just a vast uncharted expanse my hands/arms couldn't possibly encompass. Then one morning, as I was flailing, Sanskrit Scholar said something about turning one hand in the opposite direction (I was reaching with both palms facing up). Duh! With both palms facing up, my fingers would occasionally brush, but I could never grab the other hand. One palm had to face down and one up in order to pull this off. So I started setting up with the right hand facing down. That was the key to the whole bind, that the right hand be extended as far across my back as possible (by scooting the right shoulder under my leg) and held in place as strongly as possible. I would feel with my fingertips and try to be sure that my fingers were past my spinal column (basically, that the right fingers were more than halfway across my back). Then I could reach my up-facing left hand across my back to look for the right. Basically, the right always waits in the same place on my back, in the ready position, and the left seeks it out.

This solution is somewhat unbalanced, as it plays directly to my strengths and my weaknesses. I had a rotator cuff tear on the left side a few years ago, and the left shoulder is my weaker link. I suspect it may be psychological, this perceived weakness, but I suppose that doesn't matter. So I use the right side to be strong and still and "correct" in set-up, and then I use the left side to "find" the right and stretch toward it.

At the same time, I am also really focused on back bends these days. Finally, I am starting to understand the strange (to me) kinesthetics of backbends. I am all about forward bend consciousness: internal, quiet, intuitive, etc. (Last week, I was composing an email to Crim Girl, as we chatted about the energy of back bends, and I realized that I have all kinds of adjectives for the energy of forward bends, and pretty much no words for the energy of back bends.) So this business of turning my heart out is quite a project. Hampered, to the nth degree, by decades of weightlifting, where heavy squats were by far my favorite thing to do. Psoases of steel. Quads like stretched cables ;-)

Slowly, slowly, slowly, the back bends are starting to come clear.

It occurred to me this morning that by focusing on supta k and backbends, I am working both ends of the spectrum of primary: supta k is the deepest expression of forward bending in the series, and backbends, well, the only expression of backward bending in the series. The image of a paper clip being bent back and forth comes to mind ;-) It's kind of funny, but also an interesting idea: the bending has to be thoughtfully dispersed along the full length of the material, or else the whole thing eventually snaps. And it's really interesting to mess around with the energies of forward and backward bending, to compare and contrast, to feel around in it, to (maybe?) try out a zen thing where they are different but the same, and both the same, and both different. And then, of course, just do it.

B*tch

Yup, that's me. Saturday led class. I think I might have been cranky right from the get-go. There is something about Saturday led that makes me weird, emotionally, but I can never quite put my finger on it. I know, though, that the way I most like the class is when I am surrounded by a few of the Mysorians.

This morning, though, it was me and Sanskrit Scholar. That's it for Mysorian representation. Sanskrit Scholar does the teacher training at Starbucks of Yoga studio, and as I rolled out my mat she introduced me to a few teacher trainees who were taking the class to experience Ashtanga. Did I have kind of a bad attitude about this? Okay, yes, I'm going to admit it. Not a terrible attitude, but not as open and welcoming as I might like to be, and certainly not as welcoming as Sanskrit Scholar (who, as I've mentioned before, is really a teacher by nature).

Okay, so we start practice and I wonder why I am so loose so early in the practice. DUH! It hits me: because it's 10 AM, not 5:30 AM. I think I realized this a long time ago, but then forgot it and managed to experience it again today in a realization of the utterly obvious.

I think I'm putting off my story because I'm feeling bad about it. Okay: we do hanumansana and upavistha konasana after the prasaritas. As I am leaning forward into upavistha konasana--slowly and with some fear (because my hips/hamstrings are so weird lately, and prone to sudden pain) and attempting to really pay attention to the sensations--the gal behind me reaches forward and starts pressing down on my back. I scoot forward to get away, and she scoots right after me. I turn around and say I have a hamstring issue. She grabs my my legs. "No!" I say, shaking her off.

And of course I felt rude afterwards. But mostly I felt really irritated about this whole episode. Maybe I can't practice with the yoga folk anymore. I am losing my socialization skills. I really don't like it when people I don't know touch me. This is true in real life and slightly adjusted in yoga situations, because I recognize the fact that yoga is "touchy." It's part of the culture, I guess. Though, truth be told, I find Ashtangis as a whole to be more reserved than other practitioners--less likely to bust out with lots of PDAs. But I do understand that the commonly accepted culture of yoga is one of softness and touchiness. The thing is, though, I am not in class to experience the "yoga lifestyle" (seriously, there's reference to this on the Starbucks of Yoga promotional material). I am at Saturday led to do my practice. With my teacher.

I think Adjustment Gal probably wondered what the dealio was and if I was lying about the hamstring problem when Volleyball Guy came over and crushed me flat in ardha baddha padma paschimottanasana. But the plain old fact of the matter is: he's my teacher. I work with him four days a week and I trust him. He knows what I have invested in my practice and he invests himself as my teacher. When Volleyball Guy gives an adjustment, he is listening intently. He does not approach it with ego. He totally respects your space, even as he gives close adjustments. It's the perfect mesh of the impersonal and the intimate, with a dash of egolessness for boundaries.

And when I get adjustments from the Mysorians, I know they know what I have invested, and we both know that there are two objectives: 1) further the adjustee's practice, and 2) give the adjuster a chance to work on adjustments. It's experimental, it's part of participating in the community, and it's rooted in the understanding that everyone is clear about how important each individual's practice is.

Wow, I'm not sure why I was rubbed the wrong way SO intensely, by what I am sure was a perfectly well-meaning attempt by Adjustment Gal to help me out. Something about it was off, though, and I think it may be that I didn't like having someone presume to hand out a generic adjustment on someone they never saw before in their life. If it's not a real adjustment (i.e., helpful to the individual, and significant enough, physically, to make an impact--and that implies a trust relationship that includes understanding the possibility of injury) then all it's about is someone putting their hands on me for THEIR reasons. Whether it was to be helpful, to show she knew something, to practice her skills, it did not take into account MY relationship to the touch.

I guess I'm back around to whether touchiness from strangers is just something you have to live with in yoga. Pretty funny, if so--because while I am at a studio devoted to the "yoga lifestyle" (which presumably values this kind of touchiness), I am also going more deeply into my practice, which seems to push me further and further away from the "yoga lifestyle." Is this part of my practice, that I'm getting too cranky to go out in public? ;-)

Self / Consciousness

Talked, via email, with Crim Girl this week about the difference between Mysore practice and home practice. Obviously, both have their advantages.

This morning at Mysore, we had some new folks. One gal practicing second, and one who seems to be new. About three quarters of the way through practice, I noticed that there was so much energy in the room: people helping each other, people talking, people walking around. Very busy. Of course, this kind of energy can fuel a practice. On the other hand, it is rather distracting. Maybe that's just me, though--I am way out there on the introvert scale.

What I mentioned to Crim Girl, as we discussed this issue, is not that I feel self-conscious in the sense of worrying about people watching me, but that at home, practice feels more intuitive, more flow state, more improvisational. Even as I stick to the primary series.

Sanskrit Scholar said something last week about how each pose is new, how you have to approach it and feel inside it and discover it each and every time. Sometimes I find that easier when I am at home and The Cop is sleeping and My Gift is sleeping and the dog is sleeping and the only thing I can hear is my breath and, occasionally, the cat walking by on his way to look out the window.

It's a very specific kind of consciousness, and it reminds me of a few lines from a book I'm reading:

Prajna is not a special, privileged, "correct" way of knowing events but rather is the knowing of events in the total absence of all viewpoints and perspectives...

...Practice...is a process of digging down through the various layers that cover the light of clear knowing, a kind of spiritual archaeology, so to speak. In human beings, these layers are made up of such things as concepts, symbols, language, categories, habits, ideological presuppositions, and the natural, innate tendency to divide the world into "self" and "not self."

...To experience events as they truly are, one must experience them without the least bit of personal or cultural meaning added to them. This kind of knowing might best be called "no mind."

... "No mind" is not confusion, uncertainty or blankness, but, rather, an extremely clear knowing freed of all conceptualization and symbolization.

--Sitting with Koans

Maybe it seems a little tough to access no mind at Mysore because of the community feel. Perhaps that group energy, which is quite compelling, subsumes no mind. Or maybe it's something that comes in time.

This morning The Cop called to say he'd be late getting home. Usually he's back by around 7AM, but it looks like he'll be putting in lots of extra hours. At the end of his shift he had an assault arrest. I always wonder if these events are taking place at the same time I'm doing handstands, for some reason. It makes me curious about time and the nature of simultaneous events. If we are all one, how does it happen that someone is being violent when another is balancing on her hands? Not sure why that fascinates me, but there you have it.

More Psyche/Somatic Musings

My usual modus operandi is to keep drishti on toes during forward bends. Which means keeping my head (and, consequently, torso) up a bit. This morning, I tried keeping nasagrai drishti and just letting my head fold down to my shins. This seemed to reduce some of the tension in my hamstring inserts, which seemed to offer more chance to meditate (rather than just weathering the pain), and the closer drishti and less painful hammies made for a nice, soft practice.

At the end of my daily backbending session, Volleyball Guy's modus operandi is to have me kick up into a handstand, then drape me upside down over his back as he bends forward. Like a human backbending rack. Today he disappeared after the upside down draping session. I wondered if he'd gone out back to cry in despair, because I am too darn heavy to pick up at 6:45 every morning, and he does it EVERY freaking day, and will my back and shoulders NEVER open? It's his Sisyphean task. And I am the stone.

Seriously, my shoulders are stones. I am having a physical education--care of Ashtanga and weekly massage sessions with Koko the magical massage therapist--and what I am learning is the strange emotional geography of my back. Shoulders house all of my ideas about strength. Every moment I spent as a single Mom trying to protect My Gift and make it through the world has congealed into the toughest part of my body: my shoulders. Yeah, I know: cliche. Shouldering the weight of the world and all that.

In the middle of my back, right at the center of the thoracic spine, is grief. Every last bit of any deep grief I've ever felt is all balled up right there.

Left sacrum contains my fears about my own mortality. Every time I looked down off a cliff I was climbing and thought about what it would feel like to suffer equipment failure right then; every time I held on by my fingers and had to let go of my feet to climb an overhang; every time I noticed the car in the next lane suddenly swerving toward mine--all of those feelings are squeezed into a small space that sleeps in the left sacrum. Around it, all through the lower back, my awareness that I will eventually die.

And in my hips sockets: sadness. Plain old garden variety human sadness. I am digging into this during baddha konasana, which is the pose I am working most diligently these days. Different from grief. Softer and oilier. Kind of a perfect focus during this time of preparing for My Gift to move to her dorm. She was off visiting her Dad's family this weekend. When she got home last night we talked a bit about her upcoming move. She said she feels excited and scared and sad. I asked her why she feels sad. She said, "Because I won't wake up here and have breakfast with you." A very touching comment. I've worked long hours and did my second round of grad school as My Gift was growing up. We definitely did not have an All-American routine of family dinners. We did, however, always manage to sit for a few minutes and have breakfast. So I am touched that this is what she feels she will miss.

After all this mapping of the back's emotions, I've gotten to wondering about where my other emotions are. Quite honestly, the emotion that I feel most routinely and most easily, as if it isn't "stuck," as if it flows easily, energetically, throughout me, is joy. It's really easy for me to feel joy when I look at mountains or birds or people. It's a gift from my Dad, I think, who used to always get up early in the morning before work so he could have his breakfast and sit on the deck and look at the birds and squirrels. Contentment. He cultivated it quite diligently when I was growing up. And he still does.

I wonder what happens when the clotted places in my back loosen up and flow? Maybe I keep it all separate like this because I'm worried it might impinge on my contentment and joy. Not really sure. Very cool to have this opportunity to mess around with it, though. Even if it sounds crazy when I write it all out in words ;-)

Life is like a hamstring

No, not really. I was thinking about the Forrest Gump "life is like a box of chocolates" line. The hippie music Volleyball Guy likes is actually from that movie's soundtrack.

This morning, life was like the chocolate that doesn't want to practice. Yup, the chocolate with the resistant mind in the middle ;-) It told me my knees were tired (kind of a new trick, you sneaky mind!) and my hamstrings were going to hurt again, just like yesterday.

I frittered away a little bit of time reading:

Yunyan asked Daowu: "How does the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion use so many hands and eyes?"
Daowu said: "It's just like a person in the middle of the night reaching back in search of a pillow."
Yunyan said: "I understand."
Daowu said: "How do you understand it?"
Yunyan said: "All over the body are hands and eyes."
Daowu said: "What you said is all right, but it's only eighty percent of it."
Yunyan said: "I'm like this, senior brother. How do you understand it?"
Daowu said: "Throughout the body are hands and eyes."

Sigh. You gotta love these guys.

So I found myself chanting the vande in my head, and went to my mat, figuring I ought to be standing on it by the time I finished. Practice was quite sweet right from the start, with, rather miraculously, no pain. How does that happen?! I was dying yesterday, and today everything felt lovely.

So lovely, in fact, that I not only paused before dandasana to put down my rug, I also put on the iPod so I could listen to Coldplay as I did seated. Just utterly delightful. Even the urdhva dhanurasanas.

Slowly, I am starting to understand the role my legs play in urdhva dhanurasana but I feel totally TWISTED from the weightlifting years. Actually, I guess I feel kind of "clotted" in spots--hamstrings/quads & shoulders/traps especially. Like the years of focus on those muscle groups kind of coagulated the energy into lumpy spots. Not as bad as it sounds, but when I see Crim Girl do backbends, her whole body/energy flows back and forth in a smooth arc.

I have these hunks of energy-sucking areas that I made with my mind and the weights. Black holes! ;-) I don't really regret it--it made climbing possible, and I suspect it's made learning Ashtanga a bit easier than it would have been otherwise.

I just need to smooth it all out--which ought to be a pleasant enough process. You know, provided my mind doesn't psych me out. I'm willing to ply it with Coldplay, though, as I reach back in the middle of the night, searching for a pillow. Whatever's necessary.