turkey

I don't eat meat, so I can't offer a turkey recipe. Heck, it's a pretty imperialist holiday, anyway - I can't say I identify with pilgrims of the past or present. I've resigned to the fact that I can't avoid Thanksgiving unless I spend it alone. So, I'm going to a friend's parent's house. Practicing gratitude is important any time of year.

Now that the fires around LA give way to the risk of mudslides with oncoming rain, it's a great time to rebuild what's around us and within us, too. I remember hearing from Mela Butcher that this is a good time of year to fortify the body and add, rather than reduce. This season falls within the six months of kapha accumulation. At the end of Spring, we will enter the alternate six month period of airy vata cleansing. And so on, 'til the end of time.

In other words, just flow with it - don't resist. The best lesson I've absorbed recently is that it's usually more indulgent and less self-serving to resist what is going on, whether clinging to thoughts of an ex-lover or "swearing" not to overeat during the holidays. In short, yogic tradition arguably feeds the madness called Thanksgiving.

teaching

We had our last day in class yesterday. We shared in an exposition of the yoga sutras, and more importantly, taught our final poses. Remember, mine was Ardha Chandrasana. Everyone in class nailed the teaching. I was surprised at how powerful it felt to teach a class that size (35 students). It wasn't the kind of power trip you get because people are listening to you, more like feeling enormous support and really just flowing with the class, too. It was totally incredible and unexpected. Contrary to my feelings for the past few weeks, I feel like my teaching is actually up to snuff. I'll start with beginner students.

We had our final exam last Friday, hence I didn't have time to record what was going on last week. The amount of work in this course and the level of study was totally rigorous - not the kind of class you can just glide through by showing up. I wasn't sure what I'd be faced with, but this experience has certainly exceeded my expectations. We bonded in a way I never did with students in a college course.

Now, onto the take home exam....

....Pictures to follow.

Ardha Chandrasana

I feel it's time to devote a little more love to my final pose, Ardha Chandrasana - Half Moon Pose. It's the hand that fate dealt me, and I'm now responsible for instructing the pose to a class of 35.

The pose is known to strengthen legs and ankles, and as with most balance poses, cultivates physical and non-physical balance and a sense of general equanimity. For that reason, it's one of my favorites - despite my early inability to teach it! It's also one of the asanas where it's easy to become a little too confident of your abilities, especially when you learn to balance without your leading hand on the floor. Of course, that's when your ego gets checked and you fall over.

It's common to instruct into the pose from Trikonasana (Triangle Pose) because in this pose you're essentially doing Ardha Chandrasana in a different plane. Trikonasana teaches the extension in the front leg that is missing if you lead from Virabhadrasana 2 (Warrior 2). More balance comes from the lifted leg than you might expect - you will feel it when you flex more energy through the heel and work to achieve levity in the back leg. And contrary to what I've read in some other sources...the last thing you should do is straighten your standing leg! Even though it is the platform of the pose, and you will want to straighten it right away, you need the extra leverage of a bent leg to get extension in the torso and lifted leg. You can also focus on maintaining even extension on both the inner and outer ankle more effectively.

The extension of the spine out of the torso is important to realizing full length, too. You achieve this by both rotating your torso with your grounded hand (which, by the way, is barely bearing any weight). I actually find this extension by keeping my torso slightly higher - parallel to the floor - and lifting my bottom hand. This way, you can fully engage your wingspan, and open your upper spine and neck. It's a tricky modification, but it has worked really well for me.

Somehow, this whole jumble is going to turn into coherent instruction, promise.

home practice

I got a pretty valuable tip about teaching this week:  If you want to be a good instructor, you must keep up a regular practice (thank you, James).  This seems totally rational, but it's something I haven't been keeping up with - particularly since I've been in school.

I attended my first ever Mysore Ashtanga class about a week ago.  I made it as far as Parsvottanasana.  After I completed a bunch of Sun Salutes and did the obligatory rest of the series, the instructor told me to grab a copy of the primary series sheet and establish a home practice.  Wait, you mean I'm supposed to do the same thing everyday and hope to graduate to the second series in a matter of years??  Needless to say, I'm not sure Mysore is for me.  I failed to practice at home even once in the week following (though I did take a couple different classes). 

Shame on me?  Shame on the style?  I'm one of those yogis that requires classroom 

instruction - I just don't do it at home.  Perhaps if I lived in a quieter place.  Unfotunately, my street is the path of least resistance for emergency vehicles, and people seem to prefer getting others attention with car horns, rather than phone calls.  

All this thought of trying to make it work at home makes me again turn to technology.  The home practice is a hard nut to crack - maybe I can embrace distractions like Netflix to stream a yoga lesson?  I've never tried it, but I have the feeling won't come close to the classroom.  

whoops!

We received our "final" poses this weekend. Mine is to instruct Tadasana to Trikonasana to Ardha Chandrasana. I will be alotted four minutes to teach this on the final day.

I didn't practice teach too much in advance, so I indulged my group of students in a little improvisation. Hopefully that original demonstration is NOT an indication of the way I will teach in the future. I was feeling a little arrogant about my ability to basically repeat what I've heard other instructors say in class...this is a pretty common linking of poses in several yoga traditions.

I stammered and struggled, got the asana points wrong - I sounded pretty incompetent. It certainly didn't help that my voice was pretty threadbare from eight hours of chanting the night prior. Might want practice on some of my friends for awhile, instead.

beautiful streets

The night was gorgeous. What started as about 12,500, according to most papers,
ended with a few thousand at Santa Monica Blvd and San Vicente. Drew Barrymore, bless her, marched in support.

During the middle of the evening, around 11:00pm, I banded with a smaller group
of about 150 and embarked from Hollywood & Highland toward Sunset and La Brea.
We were small, because most of the marchers chose to walk from Silverlake...I (and maybe 300 others) took the train.
The police were initially very aggressive, in full riot-ready regalia. The small train-taking crowd wasn't sufficiently large to sway the police to be our friends. Apparently, there's a critical mass that must be reached in order to convince police to act in your safety.

In any case, the hour or so that I spent with the smaller group was the most beautiful outpouring of love I've ever experienced. We walked through traffic, unaccompanied by police, chanting and sharing. This Saturday expect another day of mass protest, this time in cities throughout the U.S. More info here & here.

the strategy

I regret that I've not recorded as much about my teacher training this week. I have been setting the liberation of all souls as my intention in yoga classes, and as a general daily intention.
There is a movement now gaining traction - people are clearly furious and ready to put heat on the gay marriage ban in California. I encourage anyone local, or anyone who can make it to Los Angeles to come support civil rights. We are the impetus for change. It's great that the passage of prop 8 has motivated thousands of people to take to the streets.

There is a rally tomorrow, Saturday Nov. 8th beginning at 6pm at the Sunset Junction.
To get there, take the Red Line train, exit Sunset & Vermont - walk east.

3700 Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

I hope to see all of you there.

There's a directory to events all over the U.S. on Queerty, too!

the streets

Following the passage of proposition 8, people met in west hollywood for a 7pm rally. Roughly 10,000 gathered.

Right now people are (rightly) marching in the streets. It's time.

the wait

I voted at 9:45am, after waiting for about an hour at the polling place. The polling place itself is very curious - a Pentecostal church in the same structure as a gun & ammo shop. I'll leave that alone.

It was excellent to see friends and neighbors and the peculiar demography of my district. No glaring holdups or lack of efficiency, just one volunteer native speaker in each of the following languages: English, Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, and Tagalog. Oh yeah, and Ecclesiastes 4:12.

Thursday we get all our other crumby newspaper headlines back.

almost there

So it's all come down to one last day of shenanigans, then it's all over. Hallelujah.
Dia de los Muertos should have a November 5th revival; enough time to enjoy it.

Well, with luck, this election will tip a lot further in the general direction of least resistance than the last two in '00 & '04. Barack Obama can be the first black "leader of the free world" since, well, Abraham Lincoln. That is, unless you're counting the Moorish rule in place during early Anglo settlement...

I drift.

I'm now within about three weeks of graduation and I'm wondering where this yoga schooling will finally take me. Actually, I've made up my mind: yoga-for-pay isn't for everyone, so why not let the gov't pay the tab (in federal grant money) while I impart health to the masses for free? There are so many ways to apply what I'm learning, and I hope to do much more with it. I'm thinking I'm a pretty prepared, albeit totally nervous yoga teacher. Later, I'll want to really dig in and take the 300-hour training, a terminal degree so to speak.

The past several sessions have focused on dictating instruction. This is no small task when you feel too nervous to speak in front of strangers in your lingua franca, let alone inject it with Sanskrit instruction. Only a few weeks practice until I start on my friends. Mercy.

early voting

Here's a helpful site to figure out if you can vote early. In most states, the last day is this Friday or Saturday.

Remember that most change will not come from the ballot you cast. It won't come from an individual with obtuse promises of change, either.

I grew up hearing folklore about the nearby (and still very active) Michigan Militia. They're an organization of property owners throughout the state devoted to self-policing. Imagine the growth they've enjoyed since the passing of the Patriot Act. We have a similar social structure in place out West, too - albeit minus weaponry. They're small, but growing, and their prerogative is to become landowners in remote places. When you have sufficient land, and dig a well, you will be ready for the precarious future. What do you want it to look like?

Think I'm full of it? Ask Colorado residents who were arrested for collecting rainwater for personal use. In Colorado, the state owns all of it.

In the meantime, substantial change can come from the flow of your money. Being that we are a society of ownership and capital, realize the influence your money will have on our shared condition, for better or worse.

the whole series

I got my first introduction to the Ashtanga primary series this weekend. I've taken plenty of flow classes that are inspired by the practice, but this was my first time diving in. It's a more rigorous practice than I'm used to. There are a total of six series, and it comes as no surprise that there are exactly two people on earth who have graduated to the most advanced series (is life long enough?). Joan Hyman noted in class that the first series is for students, the second is appropriate for teachers, and 3-6 are for, ahem, demonstrations (read exalted)?

The focus is on synching movement and breath much more systematically than most other methods I've tried (Kundalini is one exception). It's typical to focus the gaze. Fortunately, no one broke out the metronome this time!

Centering comes from the drishti (gaze) and ujjayi breath. The drishti is often rather awkwardly focused at the tip of the nose: cross-eyed yogis! It's typical also to focus the gaze at the naval or the sky, depending on the asana. For the time being, I will work on a more passive, inward gaze instead. The ujjayi breath is cultivated in the back throat, just behind the voicebox. It's euphemistically called "ocean breath", or "Darth Vader breath" for the overzealous student in class. The action is similar to the one we do to fog a mirror. If you practice that, but keep your mouth closed, you're ready to flow.

There are, of course, the three bandhas as well. They are closely tied to the flow of breath. I will move into that later, because they deserve a post of their own. The image above is of an asana I did for the first time this weekend. It's the kid in me.

Clutz

I am, admittedly, much less graceful than my other yoga compadres. Yesterday I shut my right middle finger in the car door - of course I was in a hurry to get somewhere. I was with my boss at the time and she asked me "Why are some people clumsy? Do you notice the way that some people are often hurting themselves?"

I remember Russ Pfeiffer alluded to the fact that we create imbalances by the way we interact with the world. His favorite illustration was a little hard to grasp. He'd ask us "When you are walking, do your feet hit the ground, or does the ground rise to meet your feet?" Or "Are you moving with your environment or against it?" When I walked with that in mind, it made an enormous difference. Try it.

Anyway, now I'm working on clearing what I perceive to be the correction handed to me as a result of the finger slam. Lots of reiki / psychic body work, and just plain praying I don't have to go to the free clinic. My mudras will be extra fancy now.

more challenges

Most of my homework this past weekend aroused more of those urdhva dhanurasana (upward facing bow pose) memories from last week's backbend clinic. I completed a pretty satisfactory teaching script leading to a UD peak pose, but I still wouldn't want to take my class that day. I don't think I'm alone in saying that asana is absolutely terrifying...and it's not just my tight shoulders. No amount of preparedness can help me to breathe in the pose.

I talked to a teacher training graduate friend of mine, and she said it's important to do the asanas you most dislike. Incidentally, UD is also her least favorite asana.

It reminded me of the time that James Brown told us in class that we avoid stillness in asanas because we fear the way it feels. In his words, we are avoiding the "path" of yoga practice in exchange for a less fulfilled "destination". It's all about the path, people. I'm guilty of gratuitous foot pedaling in down dog, and plenty of shifting and dithering back and forth throughout the class.

How many times have you let your ego win the practice?

food

Okay, barring some immediate world change resulting from yogic enlightenment, I'm betting money that the revolution is food. I spend nearly all my disposable income on food. My employer uses locally grown, organic produce, and I consume organic farmer's market produce almost exclusively.

At a friend's suggestion I just watched "The Future of Food". It's a play-it-now on Netflix for pc users. I cried twice and I still feel pretty petrified about the state of agriculture. In short, the world's food supply is being jeopardized by Monsanto, a multinational agri-corporation.

The film features a few stories about farmers being sued into bankruptcy by Monsanto after being "seeded" involuntarily by Monsanto's GMO crops (to date, this has happened to over 9,000 U.S. farmers). There's a whole host of other injustices and exploitation to boot.

Vote with your money, people!

prop 8

I'd usually abstain from writing about politics, not because it's "polarizing" or "divisive", but because there's nothing more boring than political ennui.

With that said, I'm going to give a resounding endorsement to NO on prop 8.  This is the proposition aiming to eliminate the rights of same-sex couples to marry in California.  it is backed by mostly out-of-state, hopelessly obsolete institutions like Focus on the Family, American Family Association, et al. Imagine the impact if this energy was spent on things like reducing poverty and homelessness, or, say, praying.  I could go on and on.  Unfortunately, people are too gung-ho about investing in categorically repressing others.  For shame. 

There are several opinion pieces that capture the argument here, here, and here.

    

Limits of the body

I had a real gem in my inbox this morning, and it wasn't a dithery one from the Kabbalah Center, either. A really kind classmate had written to share that she broke a metatarsal in her right foot(while descending stairs, not practicing yoga). I felt that immediate knee-jerk sinking mama response. I would excerpt, but I didn't ask her first! She noted that she was sobbing in her car, feeling utter frustration at her predicament.

I can't help but identify completely with feelings of helplessness and emotionality. The "Why me?" response to every pitfall, initially. Who hasn't felt life dictated by emotion? Reading her note, and the wisdom contained within it, I got around to thinking about how physical practice isn't the goal of yoga. Even though we are the vehicle that takes us to higher levels of consciousness, that doesn't mean the vehicle always works. Nor is it really the part of our "bodies" we cultivate as yogis.

Ultimately, of course, she snapped back and knew her injury wouldn't compromise her opportunity to finish the course. All this in the course of probably only a few hours!? I certainly haven't cultivated my inner yogi as much as this fellow student. I can't wait to see how the faculties of the body, and the lack of being able to count on the physical, helps me be a better student.

Beginner

Of everything I've felt in class, I keep being brought back around to humility. Sometimes, just the half-assed, "okay, let me tell you why I'm humbled" kind of humility. Other times, the more challenging "I will receive" kind. I've (mostly) let go of my totally Aries trait of competition. Of course, there are all kinds of unsavory things I wish I didn't identify with that I still do. Incidentally, I also haven't been going to Flow classes.

This weekend we got a terrific tutorial from Kim Fisch about teaching beginners. Again, since the training started I value the more Iyengar-y qualities of making everything parochial. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I realize I haven't even been performing asanas correctly. I don't mean half of them. Almost all of them. OK, broadcasting that hurts.

In any event, now I am absolutely terrified to teach beginners. Imagine feeling all kinds of anxious pride as you trot into your first class to teach. "I'm so excited to share this technology! Yoga changes your life!" (Read that as objectively as possible) Slowly, you realize that this class is the real world, full of real world yoga pedestrians, not just the cherry-picked kind from the covers of Yoga Journal.

Kim reminded me that your classes have to constantly shape-shift to accomodate people who might not be able to do child's pose or down dog, forget the rest of the script. How do you teach these bodies?

If I may include an anecdote: I was at the Iyengar Institute, trying my best. I was on a yoga tour of Los Angeles, so I'd been to maybe fewer than a dozen classes. I always remove my eyeglasses in class (for obvious reasons). I failed to duplicate a subtle adjustment the instructor was demonstrating. He then rushes over to me, steps on my hand and asks "What are you? Blind?"

We did this NINE times today. I'm still digesting that one.

Bent over Backward

Who isn't challenged by a "back problem" these days, anyway? In our mechanized lives and seated-or-standing society, it seems like everybody's dealing with one chronic condition or another. Mine is a self-diagnosed repetitive stress injury sustained sometime in the past 5 years. Twice, I've sprained the same muscle in my lower back, once while taking the Nestea plunge straight into the refrigerator. Yow! Both times, I was unable to stand perpendicular to the ground for about two weeks.

I was dreading the backbend portion of the training for that reason. I always err on the side of ease and relaxation in backbends. You say camel pose (ustrasana), I do assisted bridge. It's one of those fears I'm afraid to conquer; if not out of fear for my health, at least for the health of my insurance-free pockets.

Of course, Sunday's asana practice HAD to climax in camel pose. And, of course, it follows that Amy Lafond is hyper-finessed and flexible in every pose. I guess I should be able to perform the pose if I'm expected to teach it to students in the future, no? Here's where it all made sense: backbends concentrate on the upper spine, not the lower spine - I just wasn't getting it for the past six years.

Class turned into a seminar on learning how to arch the lumbar spine in everything from chaturanga, up dog, and parsvokanasana to almost every backbend imaginable. Firm quadriceps, scapulae pressed inward to the chest, length in the neck - all the instructions I was either ignoring or in too much agony to hear. They're finally making sense! While I doubt my backbends were as aesthetically pleasing as Amy's, at least I left class on my own two feet.

Debates

So we are, apparently, officially in a time of utter turmoil. Economic turmoil, at least. Granted, there's a whole host of other things that might be wrong. Tomorrow night, John McCain and Barack Obama will hum through the same talking points we've already been inundated by. Change to believe in? If I'm lucky, Sarah Palin will be just outside the headline-making periphery.

Surely this isn't the first or last time you'll read about Dow Jones below 10,000. Maybe I'm just insulated, being in a place like L.A. where there's an enormous supply of career service employees or amigos who will get the job done - for a pittance in hard times. All the hysterical recession talk is making me feel even more driven to teach to people who otherwise can't afford the pay-as-you-go "donation" model of yoga. The more I see where the agenda is in popular media, the more I know there's a way to make measurable impact through yoga. No money: Ah, simplicity.


One thing I could certainly use is some body work. I'll take anything available. Thai, Swedish, Chinese, Rolfing, Chiropractic. It's been many months. Do you know, say, anyone who will do a barter?

Wow!

Something really curious happened last night. I tumbled into class, as usual, only somewhat ready for a two hour intensive in pranayama. I have mild pranayama experience with some of the Yogaworks teachers - Jeanne Heilemann, Whitney Allen, they like to do some alternate nostril breathing and Kundalini-style breath-of-fire. You know, the kind of breath that simultaneously brings transformation followed by instant collapse.

Amy Lafond announced that we would do some "simple" prana. A relief, I'm sure, to a class of students working or schooling everyday of the week til Thanksgiving. We did a few restorative poses that melted into another dimension of existence. Was it 30 minutes? An hour and a half? I don't know.

Meditation is a state I have invested an obscene amount of time trying to cultivate. Predictably, I have had a pretty dismal return on my investment (just like the bailout!) An answer here and there, of course, but more Judy Blume, less Paramahansa Yogananda.

In any case, after some time lying in prop-assisted Supta Baddha Konasana, I experienced a patently unmistakeable out-of-body experience complete with involuntary vision and movement. It was enthralling and omnipotent, exalted and transcendant, of another plane of being, and completely withdrawn from the human identity of a body or an "I". I'll leave it there and hope it happens again.

Instruction

So in the spirit of economic ennui, I flew to class ready to jam! Maybe people will finally bail themselves out of their cash-obsessed brains and, instead, take the opportunity to be truly introspective about their lives??

It began with an impossibly tough quiz. I felt like I was duped, drowning in a five page long ocean of asana points and counteractions. There's one teaching tenet I think I'm finally understanding in some scope: always instruct two points on the body at once, in order to correct ALL extremes of incorrect alignment. Here's an easy example: in Tadasana (Mountain pose) the student should firm the quadriceps back while releasing the tailbone down. We've been talking about it in class the whole month, but I'm finally "getting it". I hope my quiz score doesn't betray that...

We also began verbal instruction of a pretty simple sequence, Surya Namaskara A (Sun Salutation A). Or, I should say, I thought it would be simple until it was my turn to instruct the three other students in my group. I noticed I had to actually perform the asanas in order to instruct them. I noticed most every group was doing it this way. How is it that we have such a tough time distinguishing action and asana from thought? This could, on it's own, probably be a doctoral thesis. Any takers?

Protest

...Imagine my surprise this past Thursday when I was just working as usual at the City Hall Farmer's Market...a delightfully colorful protest of about 200 people stepped right in the middle of the City Hall lawn to bring light to LA's enormous policing issues on Skid Row.

One woman I talked to told me that she was arrested while working construction on one of Los Angeles many new lofts - simply for being homeless! She had no prior record and two kids.
Incidentally, there hasn't been any new homeless housing built in the area around skid row, estimated to have about 7,000-8,000 homeless residents.

THIS is the kind of cause I'd like to donate yoga to! Somehow?

Also, more official coverage of and info about the protest, here.

Eatin

Last night I broke the fast. I finally found a scale and it said 151 - when I started I think I was between 165-167lbs. Whoa! With that said, I didn't do this for the weight loss, but I always lose weight when I fast. After 36 hours of orange juice and more yummy cane juice (following 15 days of detox elixir), I had a small (but totally decadent) salad. small leaf lettuces, olives, orange tomatoes, red onion, sunflower sprouts...and the dressing...I created this one after trying others.

Fantastic Voyage Raw Vegan Caesar Dressing

1/2 lb raw cashews

3-4 lemons (juiced)

1/4-1/2 tsp sea salt

1 medium clove garlic
2 tbls dulse

12 oz water

Add cashews, lemon, dulse, and garlic to food processor. Blend until stuck to side walls, scrape, then slowly add water. Continue adding water, salt and blend until sufficiently delicious.

I felt a little timid about eating because I didn't want to lose the total euphoria I was feeling in the end...you knew Jesus could handle 40 days... Capturing that feeling in words is tough, I think language can't adequately capture all the transforming neural stuff that was going on. What it was, I don't know. I! will! fast! again!

My asana practice has been compromised, because I've been pretty overextended. When I did practice, I was totally down for being humbled. I got served this past weekend with more inversions and asana practice that showed me I am as graceful as a pig with lipstick on. I fell a few times.

Last Friday, we discussed the first six yoga sutras of Patajali. What was particularly resonant was the philosophy discussion, where James noted, quite simply, that every sutra, i.e. everything in yoga philosophy, is contained within the first: atha yoga nusasanam, roughly translated as "now is the time for the practice of yoga". Like most other Angelenos, wish I had the time.

Day 14

So I've done a piss-poor job of journaling my detox experience so far. It's been unexpectedly balanced and pretty serene. I'm been inclined to sniff anything someone in my company is eating, more out of curiousity than primality. I've felt a gradual reprogramming to eating and my approach to food. More toxic foods don't seem as appealing, so I'm not craving anything I wasn't into before. Gabriel Cousens would be happy to know. I have been eating bits of salt off my hand here and there, that's about as wild as it gets.

Well, there were a few expections to the ease of fasting. On Day 11 I got a stomach ache so awful I was doubled over for about 20 minutes. And there have been a couple times I've felt inexplicably, profoundly depressed, albeit brief - I hope it was an emotional exorcism.

I was feeling energized today when I got to class and found out we were going to do inversions the whole weekend. In yoga and ayurveda, inversions are said to be simulateously stimulating and detoxifying. With that in mind, I struggled through the practice - though I did get corrections galore from Joan Hyman, so I felt supported. We paired off to "teach" handstand in pairs. This can be rather awkward against a wall with your pelvis in someone's face. Or, maybe it's the beginning of yoga acrobatics, of which I am so fond?

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace died yesterday. He hung himself.

He was one of those writers whose work I identified with intensely - he captured the peculiarities of American indulgence beautifully. I can locate a particular time in my life when I started to read Infinite Jest. Even though I couldn't swallow all 1079 pages of it, I did devour his collections of short stories "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" and "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men".

He gave one of the most brilliant Q & A I've seen after a reading from "Consider The Lobster" at the Hammer Musem about two years ago. My friend swapped anecdotes about Zanesville, Ohio with him during the signing afterward.

While I process the tragedy of his death, I can't help but think about a later body of work we'll never have the opportunity to read.

Ouch. Oh. Ow. Wowza.

I'm resigned to the pain I'm experiencing from class yesterday. You know, the pain that leaves you dreaming of getting your Natura on, if only someone would carry you to the massage. Amy Lafond sent me and my hips to school. This is, of course, not the unbearable, nasty kind of pain. It's a duller, expansive pain that hopefully means I'm working with ahimsa, not against it. Hey, whatever. Full moon's got me drained...

Gameday

Did I mention that classes last five hours on Saturdays and Sundays? I'm loving what I'm learning, but here's to the marathon. It could also be because I'm on Day 7 of the fast...a fast with no end in sight(?) I haven't experienced any faintness or weakness. I'm still waiting to pass something utterly terrifying, God forbid.

One thing I applaud is the organization of class so far. A few yogi instructor friends of mine have complained about their teacher training programs lacking continuity. We have a clearcut routine of asana on the weekends. Of course, there's enough variety to remain stimulated. We learned a few externally rotated (in the anatomically rotated sense) standing poses today. I should be clear - rotation is, apparently, the orientation of the pelvis to the hips. They included trikonasana (triangle pose), virabhadrasana 2 (warrior 2), and vrksasana (tree pose).

It was great to actually begin physical corrections on people - I'm totally graceless, but I want to have the Midas touch as a yogi! Not surprisingly, the instructors explained, lots of yogis are pretty fickle when it comes to being touched by an instructor. They're probably the same people in the throes of obsession with hyper-capitalist sports like the Ohio State v. USC football game...

Guess I'm a ham, I say "let 'er rip!".

Bones

I'll admit I was kinda bummed when I got the anatomy text and it wasn't the cut-and-
paste Bodyworlds looking one. Our anatomy instructor is a totally animated Burner dude, kind of like a walking qi gong installation. His name is Russ Pfeiffer and he's thoroughly entertaining to listen to. The lecture last night at the Teacher Training Institute focused primarily on the skeletal body.

Fortunately, yoga incorporates a variety of disciplines in anatomy including the more mystical "subtle body" (which we will study later). While we reviewed the skeleton in class I kept finding my hand wandering around my limbs and abdomen curiously thinking to myself "Holy crap, that's there?! What is that!" I bet we all feel kid-like curiousity when we prod ourselves to validate what we see in the textbook. I should probably just buy a box of crayons.

lingua franca

It's been really challenging maintaining an asana practice while being in school. At least I value what I'm learning right now. I haven't been to a class I wasn't forced to be in for over a week. It's funny how there's consensus about getting to class being the biggest challenge - it's really the truth. (Does anyone else identify with this?) Who hasn't thought "Oh, I know how to do a few vinyasas and sun salutes. Why bother driving to the studio when I can do this at home"?? Unfortunately, I usually compress a proper class into 3 minutes of adho mukha svanasana (downward facing dog), utanasana (forward bend), and adho mukha vrksasana (handstand). Nevermind that I don't really do any official sequences at home.



So what is Sanskrit, beyond the language of krishna tongues and yoga poses? On second thought, I'll leave that to the wikis, though I really do intend to read more. I've noticed my own teachers always use both English and Sanskrit names for all the poses. I'm glad my teacher James Brown has a pretty good grasp of the lingo (at least, as it pertains to yoga) that almost noone in the world can speak. I'm lost without a dictionary...apparently, he said, the University of Cologne has the most comprehensive Sanskrit dictionary in the world. I promise I'll be there too, since I'm that special brand of gabacho who can only brave slurring through foreign vocabulary in my head.

Welcome...

I think the biggest surprise last night at our welcome was the sheer volume of the class manual we received. It requires two hands. I enjoy being consistently impressed by yoga’s ability to transform and humble – you know, the way you feel when you know a class of 35 or so is going to explore your body with the most scrutinous and meticulous eyes possible. Kind of like the way people were checking out the collection of Bernini pieces parked at the Getty right now.

There were a few exercises aimed at cultivating such an eye, which is something I'm sure we'll soon improve. What is it, exactly, to examine (or behold) a stranger so intimately?
Okay, okay, so ultimately, I'll probably be forced to get over my insecurities about extreme observation. I can appreciate the relationship a yogi has with anatomy.

Today's classroom practice involved exploring tadasana, or, for laypeople, the “foundational” asana. About an hour and a half of today’s class was devoted to tadasana, in all it’s glory and expression. Talk about a test of mental and physical stamina. Tadasana is not too challenging, but the length of time the pose is sustained can make it dramatically more difficult. Granted, lots of time is spent observing, but if we devote this much time to, say, chair pose, I think I might cry. No doubt there are more extreme things on the way.

And for extreme, I should mention that I decided my new schedule creates a terrific chance to do a detox. I'm trying a prepared raw master cleanse. I've heard it's easier to fast when you're really busy. I hope that's the case, since I rarely control where my mind is. I hope to make it to day 10...

The Countdown

My first yoga teacher training class begins in a matter of hours. Wait, that sounds too fatalist. My revision would read “I’m really amped to go to school again.”
I’m enrolled in the Yogaworks 12-week Teacher Training program with Amy Lafond and James Brown. It’s the 200-hour certification. The training is rooted in Ashtanga tradition.

I signed up for the course over a month ago – I have known this is something I’d like to invest in for the foreseeable future. I’ve been waiting for the opportunity, and more importantly for the flexible schedule necessary to do this without freaking out.
I recently quit a totally mundane job in a shop on Melrose Ave. and I knew this would be a great chance to enroll in class without consulting a full-time corporate schedule.
With that said, I caught myself completely unaware I am a “student” when someone asked the question at a party about a week ago. I haven’t been enrolled in a course of almost any kind since 2003, so I embrace the chance to actually do the required readings, among a host of other things I skipped during undergrad.

Speaking of texts, here's the assigned reading:
1) Light on Yoga, B.K.S. Iyengar (of course)
2) The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, translated by Sri Swami Satchidananda
3) The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice, by T.K.V. Desikachar
4) Yoga Mind, Body & Spirit: A Return to Wholeness, by Donna Farhi
5) Anatomy and Asana: Preventing Yoga Injuries, by Susi Hately Aldous

I've been pretty devoted to yoga for 2 years and was a window shopper for about 4 years before that. Well, lo, it's time to learn again.