Snow Day! Well, sort of...

Yesterday was another yin day.

Got up my usual time, saw snow outside the window, then went back to sleep. You see, I live on a hill in a park, which makes it nearly impossible for me to get out of the driveway in conditions like this. Usually what I have to do is park my car at the top of the hill the night before. But I was too lazy to do it this time.

Now just a note about snow in Seattle. It doesn't snow here very often. It usually melts in few hours, but when there's snow in the forecast, people freak. Seriously. Schools close. People stay home and call in sick. Those who do venture out in their cars, see a snowflake, wig out and drive into the nearest light post. Check out this crazy video. It's not from Snow Storm 2008, but you'll get the gist.

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to have everyone in our little plat of homes shoveling and sanding the driveway. It was a lovely community effort. My nice neighbors and dear partner (recovering from a cold) were huffing and puffing their little lungs out. They needed a good cardiovascular workout actually. I helped too, but I had to tough it myself, y'know. I had to go back to the bedroom looking for something appropriate to wear for the inclement weather. Big dilemma. I ended up having to forsake fashion for function by putting on this fugly, beige down jacket from another fashion decade. Armani was not happy, especiallly when he was looking like a overstuffed pillow.

It looks better today. It's supposed to snow again but I'll wearing my fugly down jacket, just in case.

Name this pose to impress your friends.

I know everyone's been losing sleep over the Sanskrit name of the pose I've blogblabbing about, but it is called Agnistambhasana, according to the yoga fashion bible, Yoga Journal.

I don't think I've ever heard an instructor call out this pose by that name before. Usually people call it Fire Log Pose, Box, Square or as I think I heard the Diver murmur yesterday morning when I asked him, Hips on Fire. That's a good one. As far as I'm concerned, any name containing the word, "fire", describes this charming little pose rather aptly.

It's perfect for a winter's morning practice.

Furniture Yoga (Take Two)

Yesterday was Day 26. It's the home stretch, people!

In the morning I did my usual Saturday yin practice, adding to my repertoire gomukasana, a not-so-favorite pose. Later that evening, my partner and I went to see the closing night of Pagliacci at Seattle Opera (Gordon Hawkins playing the murderous clown was great!). Usually these gigs are 3 hours plus, but luckily this one clocked in only a touch over 2 hours.

Before the show we went to Crow nearby. I had the manila clams with chorizo sausage and sun dried tomatoes. He had the duck confit and lentils. This place is not bad, even though it's usually crowded and the food is a little oversalted for my taste.

When you think about these situations, there are lots of long stretches of time when you're just sitting and not doing a whole lot. Plane rides, movies that never seem to end, opera. Shit, if only I could sit on the floor of my office in baddha konansa while I work through my emails. I would be so uberflexy by now. I know it's all that damn sitting at work that tightens my hip flexors and hamstrings.

So to make the best of the situation last night, I tried to squeeze in a pose or two. Hey, it's dark and no one notices. Doing half padmasana works. So does half-square or half-box pose with one bent knee resting over the other (what's the Sanskrit name for this?). I've also done it at the movie theater which is particularly good for boddha konasana if I can hook my knees under the arm rest and not bug my neighbor. I'd like to work up to full padmasana on a plane if I can.

But let's turn our attention to Lax for a moment. She has a lovely figure and mad-sexy hips. You know that she's pure as the driven snow (as reported in HER BLOG), but she has these envious "whoring" hips. I mean, if I had open, slutty hips like her, I could hang out all day in uptavishta konasana while reading a book.

I can't even begin to imagine how productive and flexible I'd be.

Here we go again!

Cripes, I don't want to move again!

I've been following The Diver since he moved here to Seattle from Colorado about five or so years ago. First, he subbed at the Practice Space (a lovely boutique space), then when it folded he moved a few students to his Loft/Studio in Ballard. In honor of his guru Richard Freeman, he called it the Yoga Workshop. Hardly anyone came cuz no one knew his brilliance and since this town is filled to the gills with yoga studios, anyone who was practicing already had a plethora of choices at the nearest street corner. Then he went to Belltown Yoga, where they were teaching hot yoga classes. Not much activity there. So he relocated to Eight Limbs in Capitol Hill. It's one of the largest and busiest studios in Seattle. Nice and stable. The Diver stayed there for a year, if I recall, then decided it was time to make a break. Hence the move to Velocity Dance where we're at now in the very cool Odd Fellows Hall. A huge, beautiful space but with great potential for high-end condos.

We have until July before the lease runs out. The new landlord is reportedly tripling the rent, but he wants people not to hate on him. He is supposed to be very supportive of dance and the arts. At triple the rent.

Oy! I don't know where we'll be next. Apparently there are discussions to finalize a place nearby in the neighborhood, but nothing's firm yet.

I know myself well enough that if I don't go to a studio, I don't do my practice other than maybe a few lazy-bones yin poses. It's too hard to motivate myself to do anything more serious at home. :(

Do you believe?

Perhaps I was beating myself up too much over the handstand issue, or that after I purged all of my fears in my previous blog, things started to click for me. Thank you, gentle readers, for the kind support and validation.

This morning I got up to my navasana/handstand combo, and as I was getting ready to do the first one, I could feel The Diver's attention zeroing in on me as he was about to help someone across the room. So I made sure I was away from the wall, pressed down on the front palm mounds and went up. Hm, felt much different than usual. I even had a moment or two to RELAX into the handstand which helps a lot. Duh, when my body tenses up like a wood plank of course it's going to timber, but this time, I'm actually hanging out in the pose.

The sound of The Diver's feet comes padding towards me. "Exactly," he says. Then I did four more with my navasana and miracles of miracles, I didn't touch the wall on any of them.

I'm HEAL-YALLD!

Praise Jim and Tammy Faye. People That Love.

I missed practice or oh yeah, it's a moon day!

OK, I'm going to make it up tonight by doing some jazzy yin poses.

Actually, I skipped this morning because of a tweak in my right shoulder doing a mod version of dwipada viparita dandasana. Mine doesn't look anywhere as beautiful as Tias Little's. At a workshop some time ago, he recommended that we work up to holding that pose for half an hour. Mmn, sure thing!

Knowing my wrecked body the way I do, I called my friendly neighborhood chiropractor for an appointment and got him to salvage the wreckage before it gets even worse. "C7 (or something like that)," he says. "Gee, that's kind of uncommon. Are you feeling any elbow pain or tingling radiating through your fingers?" "Uh, no." It is a new tweak, but I don't even talk about yoga with him anymore. He's totally old school and thinks yoga is the devil. But he knows why the bodies continue to pile up in his waiting room. Yeah, he's told me to quit a few times when I've shown up with some pretty spectacular injuries, but now, we both know the drill. When I'm wrecked; he fixes me. I know this doesn't healthy. It's probably even more puzzling for people who don't get chiropractors and their Watchtower-like magazines that they have in the treatment rooms.

But I LOVE him. And my massage therapist, acupuncturist, my back-up massage therapist...

Tomorrow, I'm back in the saddle.

Adho mukha svanasana or the Hat and Ha of it all

Talk about frustrating. I can't tell you how many years I've been working on doing handstands away from the wall. I find them so elusive. The progress I make is so seemingly incremental. Some days are better than others. The Diver sees how close I am yet so far away from nailing this pose.
It's interesting to observe that this pose is a deal breaker for a lot of students. I see people take their bathroom break when the teacher says, "Let's go to the wall." A colleague at work who is a serious marathon runner expressed an interest in doing more yoga, but has bailed out on the teacher she likes because they've started to do lots of handstands.

I do like how The Diver introduces them to his students early on. Hee. It humbles you really fast.

I have to also say that in his mysore classes The Diver is relentlessly patient and encouraging to keep me and other folks working on them when most of the time, I just want to race through my 5 lame attempts very quickly when he's out of the room or while he's helping another student.

What I've learned about myself and handstands is this:

1) It doesn't come naturally to me. Apparently I have oodles of strength in my shoulders (so he says), but I have a mental block about possible falling and cracking open my head or knocking the wind out of myself when I flop down on my back. This is very rational fear though, don't you think?

2) There are many elements to this pose. The kick-up, the breathing, the balancing, the exit. Just to make things even harder, the Diver likes to make handstand part of a whole sequence: navasana, pull it up into adho mukha svanasana, hang there for an eternity or so, then slowly squeeze your body down into navasana again. Easy! Yah.

3) It's possible to think too much while trying to do it. Feel the pose! Do this! Don't do that! So much inner talk for my little brain to process. Usually thinking less or not thinking comes so easily for me, especially at work. All of a sudden my mind is now filled with terrifying thoughts.

So today I got a clue. The Diver has been trying to wean me off the wall, while I've been secretly inching my way back towards it. This morning, he moved me so far away from the wall, I knew that if it I went overboard, it wasn't going to help me much at all. Then he reminded me about my hands. Shift the weight, spread your fingers, work your hands. All of my weight is on the back part of my hand. Not stable at all. And when I feel that I'm going to lose it, my fingers go into a death grip and the fingertips go white. So he talks me through an similar pose that I know--bakasana. Shift your weight forward like you're almost going to plant your face into the floor.

Ahh, ok. Then I try handstand.

Ding.

I feel it. All this time, I've been hearing him say this repeatedly and I understood the theory of what he was saying. I thought I was doing it but I wasn't really. Now he's given me a new idea to work with. Press down on the front mounds of my palm. Now when I'm in downward dog and other similar poses, I notice how I'm doing the death grip all over the place. Need to rewire. But now at least, I have that awareness, which is very informative.

Chitta vritti nirodha or meditate on this

Sorry, this post starts off with a pic of raw meat.

Yesterday my practice consisted of yin poses. It's a great complement for an ashtanga practice, which Paul Grilly says is yang or has "rhythmic movement" and works the muscles.

However, holding still in a pose like eka pada rajakapotasana, double kapotasana (Box?) or boddha konasa with a set of crim sandbags is a real test. It can certainly make me scream and release before the prescribed 3-5 minutes. While sitting yesterday and trying to cease the fluctuations of my monkey mind, my thoughts turned to food. Raw chicken wings, to be precise. I couldn't get the image out of my head and thinking how my thighs were just like the little chicken wings I like to chomp down and snap into pieces. As gruesome as that might sound to my vegan friends, it's not going to turn me off meat. I'm definitely eating a lot less of it these days, but I do love food too much to cut myself off. Hats off to Arturo for being so disciplined and doing the CRON diet. I will have to ask him more about that sometime.

Back to the chicken wings. So my mouth is pooling with saliva and I'm trying to breathe through these poses. I continue to imagine the chicken wings and my thighs with all this "gristle" and similar connective tissue. More saliva, more breathing. And my legs are going to snap off any second.

Furniture Yoga

Today's practice was pretty good. If I get in around 6:00 am, then I know that I'll have enough time to do a decent practice, clean up and get to work by 8:00 am. Crazy, isn't it? And this is coming from someone who is not a morning person. At all.

Two hours is ideal. I know. Crazy, but those days are gone, now that I have a less flexible job and more early morning meetings (try putting together a coherent thought at 7 am). Shit, I hate it when work interferes with my yoga schedule.

When I got my first 9-5 job after graduation, I was terrified and worried about how I was going to be able to get up every morning. How do people do it? Prior to entering the work force, I was living the high life of a carefree student. Late nights hanging out (on weeknights no less) and sleeping in until 10 or so, thanks to a carefully selected class schedule. I even missed a class or two (or a bunch, can't remember) if I was feeling a little sleep deprived. Geez, you school-age kiddies don't know what a life you have. Just so you know how good you have it, listen to this brilliant riff by Ernie Cline: When I was a Kid. (Word up, it's got some profanity in it, which should actually appeal to some of you out there.)

Nowadays, I'm liable to start making my way to bed by 10. Woo! Life as such for a yoga nut. I live for the weekends just so I can sleep in, work in a nap or go to bed EARLY.

Oh, getting back to today. I found it rather amusing how everyone was doing their own thing in morning mysore, but in such an unconventional way. I LOVE IT. Other than Mr. A, we're all being crim, doing mods and using (dig this...) props. Balls, blocks, slant board, straps, and even a ballet barre. I liked watching Lax squeezing a handstand over the big black cube with The Diver spotting. (I still can't believe what I'm seeing when he does it.) You'd think that we were in Iyengar-land or something.

Hey, I'm just as respectful as the next person about the method and SKIPPY J, and I will do the classical practice if I'm visiting another shala. But that's the beauty of what The Diver teaches. After 10+ years of practice, I've concluded that it's an intense, hard-core practice where you can quickly accelerate your progress in gaining strength and flexibility, but it can also contribute repetitive stress to your body and you can hurt yourself if you don't clue in to your limits, what your body is telling you and practice ahimsa. That's a huge part of the practice. Mr. A is definitely the exception to the rule, although he says it's tough for him too. He really does have an amazing practice, on and off the mat. For me, kapotasana is going to be lifelong effort. I'm not in any hurry to get it cuz I know there's going to be another freaking impossible pose around the corner that I won't be able to do. It just doesn't end.

Mea Culpa.

I missed practice this morning. *gasp!* I don't have any excuse really. Uhm, the male version of Lady's Holiday, perhaps? I know if you asked my partner he'd say that I'm bitchy and cranky everyday. Shit, now I've blown my record for YaMoYoYo or whatever it's called. Although if someone gives me a hall pass, I could still finish the month.

I could never know what it's like to be on the rag like my unfortunate sisters, so I won't even try. But I did feel a little bloated, a little more moody than my normal sunshiney self.

Lax calls it her "pyramid." What would you call it, gentle reader? Male stroppyness, manstruating, Lady Boy's Holiday?

I do like to feel fresh everyday.

We've only just begun...

Welcome to my new, shiny blog, gentle reader.

I haven't figured out yet what the theme of this blog will be, but it might be related to ashtanga yoga, food, mobile technology, photography (things that happen to interest me) or perhaps, it might be a shout out for self validation, a call to action or just something I want to get off my chest.

I know it will be a challenge to come up with something interesting every time you visit. I know you have only a limited amount of free time during your workday to cruise the interwebs on the company computer, but I want you to know, dear reader, how much I appreciate the gracious donation of time you give up every time you find your way here to read this little ole' blog.

I'll try to do my best to post a pretty picture or two, my deepest thoughts, a beautiful insight I've gained while The Diver squats on top of me in Marichiasana A until I grind my nose into my shin, or something that just cracks me up.

I'll also do my best to maintain civility, demonstrate kindness, ahimsa and all that stuff, but once in a while, I might just need to take someone down for some dumb shit they post, or because I've had a bad day and I'm in a bad mood. You know, keeping things in order, and making me happy.

It's all good, right? Many paths, one truth.

Next post: More about me....