The End is Near

We don't usually get too heavy around here, but as the old saying goes, the only constant is change.

For the past few days, the building we're in has been abuzz with activity. There's draped plastic in the hallways. As early as 6 am, construction workers are tromping around, dropping things and starting in on their hammering and sawing two floors above our little yoga space. Somewhere outside our window, it sounds like there is a mini-excavator at work hauling dirt around. I suppose we've had it good up until now, but geez, it truly is a supreme test of focus and patience. I don't how long much longer we'll be in here. In my previous post in January, I had already lamented the fact that we will become yoga vagabonds soon, because the new owner has converted the building, which housed a vibrant collection of dance and arts organizations, into condos and more profitable renters. As far as I know, nothing is firmed up after July. The Diver is still deciding.

You'll also recall that I noted that the Other Yoga studio in town is up for sale.

Earlier this week, Laksmi announced that she has quit blogging. WTF?

Today, I saw Carl in savasavana with a sandbag draped over his face. WTF?

I was annoyed by this morning's New York Times article. People crying about moving to a new city and not being able to find an advanced yoga class. Hello? Self-practice ashtanga, anyone? Have you finished all SIX series at home already?

I swear the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

All we need now is an earthquake in Seattle to make the Apocalypse totally complete.

When the going gets tough, the tough get a box of Theo's chocolates. The instore chocolate confections are the best and freshest ever. Right up there with La Maison du Chocolat, Recchiuti Confections and Thomas Haas Fine Chocolates. Really. Trust.

Oh, and in keeping with the theme, photo credit goes to yogafortheconstructionworker.com. It's yoga "with your boots on" and emphasizes "job site awareness and wisdom."

I'm done.

Sparklepony, Heeyyyyy!

A lot of people have been asking about Sparklepony, so I thought I'd give you a little more background.

Sparklepony has many talents, but she has one that any ashtangi would kill for. She is a smart and sparkling TV producer, photographer (currently snapping with a holga)and powder skier. I first met her when a colleague recommended her as a massage therapist. (I trusted her opinion because she had been one as well.) But Sparklepony is not just any ol' LMT that you find next to your neighborhood corner Starbuck's. She has magical, healing powers. Years ago, she helped put me back together after my body was abused and ripped apart by sadistic Iyengar teachers. She continues to work on my body now that I have made the switch.

Sparklepony comes from Planet Unicorn where she lives and plays with her unicorn friends. If you are nice and fun, she might consider taking you on a client. But my appointments always take precedence. Just so you know. And her name is not Jennifer, either.

Here is a video of her life and friends. Enjoy!

Omakase, OMG!

I took my partner to a cool place in town for his birthday.

Kappo is a small, hidden away gem of a restaurant in the Fremont neighborhood. It's located upstairs from the owner's earlier and very popular sushi bar called Chiso. Kappo basically has a small sushi counter for eight people and a couple of private dining rooms. Taichi Kitamura is the talented, young chef who serves a prix-fixe dinner omakase-style, which basically means the chef decides to prepare whatever he chooses. No menu. You give him a heads up of any allergies and food preferences. Usually the chef prepares what's fresh from the boat and whatever seasonal ingredients inspire him. Chef Taichi is also a fisherman who knows his fish and puts together each dish with a lot of careful attention. We had a great meal that I would consider more casual and spontaneous than the formal and fancy kaiseki meals you get in Kyoto. But still a lovely experience to have right at home.

Of course the pictures don't do it justice, but here's a small sample. This is a plate of super fresh, sliced Alaskan red snapper and some vegetables that you dunk and poach in the bowl of boiling water, just like a Mongolian hotpot.

Here is a chicken dish with fresh shitake mushrooms and asparagus.






All in all, it was a special evening, and my partner who is a super demanding eater was happy with the meal. We even got a chance to chat with Taichi a bit while we were feasting on his creations.

Oh, and Sparklepony told me to take a picture of the bathroom wall which has a photo mural of Taichi fishing.

Kleenex: The spring collection

This is a belated post, but I needed to blog this and thank Laksmi for this darling, little gift from her recent trip to Canadia. It's Princess Hello Kitty. "How fitting!", she says.

You see, I have this approach-avoidance conflict with Ms. Hello Kitty. There are others who do too. Check out this guy who blogs about One Man's Life with Cute Overload.

I think it all started for me with an arts exhibition I saw at the Japan Society in New York called, "Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture." It helped me understand this Japanese obsession with cute cartoon characters, connecting them back to post-war corporate mascots (e.g., Sony Boy) and to the ornately costumed Japanese geisha dolls that previous generations collected. At this show, I was particularly struck by a Po-Mo commentary that deconstructed Hello Kitty in a psychosexual context. The New York Magazine also talked about this theme: "It has no mouth and no developed limbs--an image of powerlessness, and (guest curator and artist, Takashi) Murakami suggests, sublimated hysteria."

Yeah, man, that's it...

So, people who have heard me talk about this seem to want to bring me Hello Kitty gifts. A hint to folks reading this blog: they have to have a bit of IRONY to them, folks! Usefulness is also good. So to give you an example, a former employee gave me a HK plastic drinking glass that looked like a tall beer stein. Ironic and useful! Cute for cuteness sake isn't enough. If you want to give me a Hello Kitty coloring book, it's nice and cute as shit, but really, it's not fucked up enough for me. To wit, another example: Lax made me a homemade HK eye pillow filled with lavender. That was wacky enough, it warmed my stone-cold heart. Then when I visited my friend, Caroline, in Vancouver, I saw her VERY PINK HK umbrella. I had to get one for Laksmi. Very useful and very ironic, especially for Lax when she was going through a dark patch with long stretches of no sun in Seattle and she was swearing a lot. Well, a lot more than usual.

Back to the Kleenex. Here's another pack with the Hello Kitty theme. Isn't that cute enough to rip your heart out?









And this one, not related to HK but is part of the collection. It has this schoolboy doing samasthiti. (There's your yoga content.) I got this from Sparklepony.








Onward, Hello Kitty, worldwide domination!

Random practice notes for criminals

The Diver was out this weekend, so he announced a sub in advance.

Just like in high school, attendance for class was lower than usual this morning. It was a shame because our sub had a nice, graceful style and stuck with the Diver's approach for most of the class. My feeling is that anyone who is asked by Diver to teach is going to be okay by me.

Some might have thought it was Diver Lite, since she dialed things back and broke down advanced poses into easier-to-approach parts. She skipped a few of poses from primary and I don't think we did anything that took anyone over the edge. She did however add a few poses that mixed things up a bit and kept it interesting. For us criminals, she threw in parvritta janu sirsasna inbetween the janu's, a pose which I haven't done in ages. There was also a familiar hip flexor sequence beginning with a forward lunge, then straight arms over the head and lifting the hands that go over and keep reaching back. That's a Diver favorite.

One of my faves was a mini-set around eka pada raja kapotasana with some nice variations. After folding and laying your torso over the shin of your bent right leg with hands and arms straight in front of you, you then bend your straight left leg, reach behind and across your back with your right hand taking the left foot. After working the hip flexors, glutes, back thigh and piriformis, it's a bonus pose that stretches your quads.

And as a final random practice note, I liked how she intro'd navasana and said to roll your shoulders back, keeping your chest lifted before you straighten your legs and extend your arms. It's easy to cave your chest in while you're trying hold the pose with your abs.

Photo credit to houseoflucas.com. Thanks, Rob!

Yoga all-stars moving forward

This morning's class was smaller in number than its usual packed-to-the-rafters Sunday crowd. The Diver said this was perfect, and with the "yoga all-stars" in attendance (the inner core of regulars, I'm guessing), he didn't need to give as much instruction, meaning he wasn't going to have his voice intrude and break our inward focus. There were a few disbelieving giggles, but he did pretty well actually. He also made an interesting comparison about not playing music during classes because it adds to your practice with "sentiment," distracting you away from what's going on inside. Makes sense to me.

So we went through half-primary with an emphasis on vinyasa transitions between poses and navasana-handstand combos (he loves this!). Specifically he wanted everyone to jump back by "crossing the legs, lifting in lolasana and bringing the legs through to chat." I've found the trick to this is to cross high up on the shins, make a tight ball and tilt my weight forward as I uncross my legs.

He continued this theme of tilting forward when we were working on the navasana-handstand combo by the wall. Same deal with crossing legs and lolasana after 5 breaths of boat.

Specifically for me, when I've been in morning mysore, he's wanted me to lift it all the way to handstand. Of course, he does this so effortlessly. Flotation Device and another dude can do this as well, but I've put it on my list of long-term projects.

Anyway, getting back to the tilt forward, when we're done hanging out for 5 breaths in handstand, we're supposed to come down as slowly as possible ("slowly, slowly") and land back into navasana.

To help us get the feeling of having our shoulders over and past our hands, he had us partner up for a little exercise. Partner One goes into plank pose and Partner Two stands over P1's feet while lifting their feet about a foot off the ground. Then P2 gently moves P1's upper body forward and past the shoulder-hand plumbline.

For part two, P1 goes into a half pike hand-stand and P2 moves P1's upper body forward and past their shoulders. The shoulders don't have to move as far forward as the previous exercice in order to get this feeling.

Then we go back to the wall to apply what we've just learned.

I don't remember doing this particular exercise with the Diver before, but it was helpful to reinforce the concept of shoulders forward and shifting my weight while upside down. Must recreate the feeling in tomorrow's class.

Oh, and see my previous posts on handstands in January 21 and 23, 2008.

Photo credit to bitsandpieces1.blogspot.com

Crowded house

There were about 14 students in mysore this morning, the most I've witnessed in a long time.

Now that there is light early in the morning, I think people are starting to return to their practices. At first I thought it was the beginning of an exodus of students from The Other Studio that is currently on the selling block, but there were only two possible refugees that I noticed (Carl being one of them). The rest of the gang were regulars and semi-regulars.

I'm really hoping that the Diver will have more students making the switch and coming to our shala, but as Pi'ikea mentioned, there's a part of me that is selfish and wants to keep the class sizes small enough for focused attention on ME, ME, ME!

It's funny that I used to fear being the only one in class when I first started going to his classes. I wasn't used to getting so many intense adjustments. Now, I want as much instruction as I can get. Often, it's just one or two adjustments he does on any given day.

This video above is kinda cool. I know, models doing yoga. Try not to hate them for being so twisty and beautiful. Agustin's not too much like a mannequin though and his accent makes him seem so sweet.

This morning the Diver did a similar backbending partner yoga pose with me that opened up my chest and upper back tremendously. He didn't twirl me around and it wasn't so intimate, but it was good.