The Gurly Life

Celebrity yoga

I could simply write, Bah. But I'm wordy, so I won't.

When I can't make it to yoga class on Saturday morning, I go to a noon class that is taught by a guy who looks like one of my uncles. I've been to his class a bunch of times, but over time he has become more famous. He's an actor, and lately I've seen him in just about everything. The class is more of a workout yoga thing, he's very much of the mind that people's intuition about their own bodies should be trusted, so it's more loosy goosy than the classes I normally take.

As an aside, I can't say I agree with that philosophy, at least as to my own body. After all the wacky stuff that my hip and back went through, in part because my body compensated for an injury, I think alignment is critical. But I digress.

The class is fun, there are musicians who play music during the class. The problem is that because it is taught by someone who is somewhat famous, it is regularly littered with B-list actors and lots of starlets and wanna-be's. It's a bizarre, surreal experience, if for no other reason than people will randomly do impressive poses while everyone else is doing a simple sun salutation (ostensibly as part of their own practice, but I can't help thinking that they're showing off a bit).

I don't really know where I'm going with this, except that I think I'll try a little harder to get out of bed for the earlier classes.

Practice, and all is coming

This is from Pattabhi Jois, founder of Ashtanga Yoga, who very recently passed away. I think what he meant is that not only will you get better at yoga, but also you will get all those other health and serenity and spiritual benefits that come from practicing yoga.

I just got today that it applies to everything. I really saw it: Practice, and all is coming. Practice yoga, practice law, practice being a good person, practice having fun, practice good grooming habits, practice good eating habits, practice relationships, practice friendships, practice whatever. All is coming.

Critical mass

Has been reached when I go to a yoga class and I'm the only woman. Even as recently as a year ago, when I started going to yoga more frequently, the vast majority of practitioners was women. This statistic has changed hyperbolically over the last few months. Even the firefighter I hung out with on jury duty was considering yoga. It is definitely picking up macho overtones, which is very odd for yoga. Either that, or the definition of masculine men is changing. I think I like the latter.

It's a new moon, Part 2

I mentioned the other day that it's a new moon. As such, it is a good time to begin new endeavors. One new endeavor is trying match.com again. I'll probably do the Ivy League thing again, too, but that's it. In truth, the whole online dating thing makes me want to puke.

The other thing I started was committing to the new chiro for 12 sessions, in light of the fact that the first session really helped. So much so, in fact, that I was able to do poses I can't really do that well. For one thing, my twists have gotten crazy twisty. I mean, I could twist before, but now I'm twistier. My upper spine is also opening up a bit. The hips will be the last to open up, as they are the stiffest and where all my tightness gathers, but I can wait a few more weeks for that.

A yoga update

A couple of weeks ago one of my yoga teachers asked me how I was doing. At the time, it was kinda up and down. Mostly moving towards up, but slooowwwwly. I've been doing a variety of types of yoga, and she suggested I focus on one, and that I am more likely to make better progress that way. My automatic response, of course, was YOUDON'TKNOWWHATDOYOUKNOWYOUDON'TKNOW. Fortunately, I know not to articulate my first reaction because it's usually wrong, so I just took the coaching and went home to think about it.

Turns out, of course, that she was right on the money.

For now, I will focus mostly on Iyengar yoga. There is a still a Tuesday class I like that is Vinyasa style but slow and focused on proper alignment, so I'll take that one when I can. And on Saturday mornings there's a class that has a lot of core work, which helps my back. But mostly, I'll be doing Iyengar.

What works about it for me is that the slow pace holding poses for longer allows me to line up all the parts that tend to misalign, namely, my hips. The holding allows me to strengthen the muscles properly, rather than just get stronger in patterns that don't help.

The other thing about it is that at the end of an Iyengar class (which always way faster than I'd like it to), I am in a great mood and superenergized. Not always the case with faster, sweatier classes. At least, not yet.

It's not to say I won't return to Ashtanga or Vinyasa style yoga soon, or later on when I'm free and clear of all my injuries (mmh, if that's the standard, I might never return), but yoga is not about being cool it's about balance, peace and well-being.

No doubt a big fat I told you so from my mom.

Practice practice practice

Today I went to yoga, Iyengar class, but the instructor didn't show up. There was a scheduling snafu and the regular teacher's replacement wasn't booked. So several of us hung out and practiced on our own, which meant just doing whatever yoga poses felt right for today. Somehow, I managed to do an hour's worth of asanas (poses). And frankly, I could have done more. I guess after a year of doing yoga, it's sinking in.

In other news, I still have trouble with my hips. I don't feel like I'm any closer to a lotus position than I was when I started, though of course I am. It's just that the progress is so freaking slow that it's almost imperceptible. And I'll be damned if I can do a headstand for longer than a minute (against the wall) and still can't balance. I can go up with my knees still bent, but that's it. Again, it is progress, but slooowwww progress.

Well, as Candace Shivers-Morgan always said in our Introduction Leaders Program at Landmark: practice, practice, practice!

Today I was able to do...

...this pose. I don't look nearly as fabulous as this person, nor as graceful, and I fell out of it a couple of times, but I did it. The full pose in Ashtanga has you lean forward with your face towards the floor, then straighten back up, uncross the ankles and straighten the legs out. I was able to do that, too, for a few seconds.

Weakness

Recently I was confronted by my fear of weakness. The question was "What is your core fear?" My first response was to go to some well-worn favorites: being alone, not being loved, blah blah blah. I even got a little emotional. In case you haven't noticed, it doesn't take much for me to get emotional. Anyway, the therapist shook his head at me and said something about my core fear not being something familiar. After a while he asked me how I feel about weakness.

To be honest, I burst out laughing. Which is not the usual response when I uncover something hidden and icky. Normally, the discovery is tinged with sadness and the cost to my life and the impact on other people. Oddly, this made me laugh. I think the truth of it was so immediately liberating that I had to laugh.

It still took me a few minutes to see it, and to be honest I'm still seeing new facets of how I feel about weakness, but the short version is that I despise it, have no patience for it, and certainly no compassion for it. I can see that my life is arranged around strength, and therefore around eliminating weakness. I have a strong personality (there's really almost nothing I can't handle), I am attracted to physically very strong men, I always gravitate towards strong things, like Ashtanga yoga, which is a strong practice, running, and so on. I am frustrated by my body's limited athletic ability and have a hard time accepting that, or that I need to slow down when I have injuries. There's lots of other ways in which this yin-yang between weakness and strength plays out in my life, but I think anyone reading this who knows me at all will recognize this immediately. We are, after all, always the last to see things about ourselves.

From this place, of strength vs. weakness, I've been looking at Ashtanga yoga. It's all been about how I'm not strong enough, I need to get stronger before I can really tackle the entire primary series, it's a strong practice, it will kick my butt (as in, it's stronger than me and will make me weak), and so on.

I was confronted with this conflict this weekend because I signed up for an Ashtanga yoga weekend with Tim Miller. I figured that a master teacher is always worth being around, even if I'm a beginner. Well, maybe especially since I'm a beginner. But frankly, I thought the weekend would do me in. It didn't help that I got my period on Thurday, the day before the weekend began. Friday night, after the first session, during which we only did 30 minutes of yoga, I was pooped. I almost didn't go back Saturday. I was all, this just isn't for me. I'm not strong enough for this. Etc.

But I had paid my money and said I would go, so I went.

On my way there I began reflecting on weakness, and on surrender. Surrender has come up before in Landmark courses, and came up again during the conversation with the therapist, and once more on Friday evening when Tim was talking about yoga beyond the asanas (poses). As I understand it, surrender is a high state of being.

So I chose weakness and I chose to surrender to the primary series. I did the series from a place of weakness and did not resist anything. I didn't resist my injuries, I focused on my breathing, I didn't try to do it right. I just practiced. Wouldn't you know it, the series occurred to me as gentle. There are still LOTS of poses I can't do, but suddenly the series was not something to slog through, with the goal of being able to do it all, but just the context for practice. Nowhere to get. Commitment versus attachment.

I should add that the primary series is called yoga chikitsa, which also means the cleansing series. The point of the series is to bring the body back to health. It is the foundation before going on to the higher series, and the idea is that the first thing you must do is bring the body to health. This is totally in alignment with my focus the last 2 years.

That also affected the context of the series for me. If its purpose is to bring the body to health, then that includes injuries. It doesn't mean ignore the injuries, but I can see that over time the series can support my body in its natural ability to heal. Sweet.

Today I go back for the third day. We will do a more free-form Vinyasa style yoga today, and begin to look at yoga beyond asanas. My muscles are sore. Therefore, I am weak. In the past, I would have dreaded this day, and viewed it as something to survive. Instead, I'm comfortable going and doing what I can and not doing what I can't.

Embrace the weakness.

Caving will be postponed for another day

I am an advocate of procrastination, in moderation. To misquote the great bard, procrastination "does make cowards of us all;/And thus the native hue of resolution/Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,/And enterprises of great pith and moment/With this regard their currents turn awry,/And lose the name of action."

But sometimes procrastination is a good thing. For example, I'm a great advocate of putting off all those choice and cutting little phrases we want to say to people we're angry at until we're a little less angry.  Or putting off acting on kneejerk reaction decisions until cooler heads prevail.

Another way procrastination might be helpful is in taking an anti-inflammatory for my back. As I very recently mentioned, I suspect ibuprofen of not being helpful to my immune system. I haven't taken it since Hawaii, 2 weeks ago, and so far so good. But the last couple of days I had a lot of pain in my lower back. Not enough to keep me awake, which makes it easier, but enough to consider taking some ibuprofen. I didn't take it, I decided I'd wait a couple of days and see what happens and if it didn't get better, then I'd take some. This morning I went to yoga, it's a 90 minute class that basically gets us through the first half of the Ashtanga yoga primary series (it can take 2-3 hours to do the entire series). I was a little worried about my back, but by now I know how to do the poses so as to protect my lower back, so I went.

I mentioned to Jodi, our fabulous teacher, about the irritation. A couple of us, actually, were having lower back issues. So Jodi modified the class slightly to support us with our issues. It made the difference. My back got looser, as did my left hip, and Marichiasana C set me right again. This is what the pose looks like (of course I'm not as twisty, but I can grab my hands behind my back):

So, ibuprofen is postponed to another day in the future. I'm shooting for no ibuprofen for a month, which means I really have to pay attention to my body and manage myself so that I'm not just white-knuckling it but actually don't need it.

And speaking of Ashtanga yoga, one of the most awesome teachers is coming to do a weekend in So Cal, and I signed up. I did. I will be the least experienced person there, but WHO CARES! A great teacher is a great teacher is a great teacher. There is a possibility that I might collapse in a heap and embarrass everyone. I can live with that.

How to deal with the afternoon doldrums at work