Quick rant on the city's ashtanga scene.

The studio that I call my base studio, is moving today. I'm beginning a probably 8-week series on Ashtanga there, in about a month. In that time, my regular Sunday class seems to be cancelled until the series begins. This is news to me.

A student, in fact, found me on an errand at the art school and pointed the new schedule error (??) out to me. I said, "Well, if there's a slot, I'm teaching in it," and left it at that, but at home, checking the studio's site leads me to believe that I've been cancelled for a month until I "re-start."

Now this makes good studio sense, good financial sense. They've just moved, have overhead to handle, and need classes to cross a half-dozen people in attendance, for the income. My Sunday class in the 2 years that it has been there, has crossed a half-dozen students, maybe 10 times. MAYBE.

However:

The other ashtanga teacher retains both of her classes. Admittedly, I've been to both of those classes several times in the last month and they both crossed the half-dozen students line. Not every time, but a couple times, and I'm sure the studio has noted this.

This situation speaks quite clearly to the city's ashtanga scene.

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Here's the deal: There is me and there is Carol. Carol is still my main ashtanga teacher, and she's totally and undeniably fantastic. However, Carol teaches to the levels that come in, and she cuts and modifies whatever is necessary. She has a massive following, because she's fabulous and nurturing and doesn't sort of "stiff-arm" people with the stouter poses in Ashtanga yoga. The way that I learned hard stuff (like jumpbacks) from Carol is that she saw my ability to do them and my enthusiasm for them and basically led me through it, in a one-on-one within a group class, just giving me a piece at a time to work through. Same with the Kurmasanas and with developing Lotus.

So often, Carol ends up "teaching down" to the level people fear crossing, but now and then (as in my case) she "teaches up" to what the practitioner can do. Sure, there are egomaniacs once in a while and I've seen Carol intentionally "down-teach" those people, and that, it seems to me, is typical of Ashtanga. Even Sharath will "not see you," right?

But when I'm teaching, I really don't want to play the "teacher cult of personality." I have what people have told me is a vibrant personality, and I know that I love to perform, but in an Ashtanga room, I really stick hard to a "the practice is the teacher" mode. I like to challenge people, and so I have EVERYONE "take it up" between seated poses. EVERYONE. Especially the people who "can't do it." I might make jokes or make light of how hard it is, but we DO NOT SKIP IT.

Similarly, EVERYONE does Kurmasana if I lead it. I might have people modify or I might have someone back off for whatever injury (if I'm aware of it), but if you can, YOU DO.

This is not to say that I take a strict line of forcing people to suit the yoga. I teach with substantial enthusiasm and I'll openly tell people that there are going to be poses that are beyond them, but I also say that I can teach them to do those poses, no matter what. I can also read people's enthusiasm as early as sun salutations, and so I know who to push where, and how hard. I'll intentionally pitch the more challenged and/or less interested, an easy mod now and then. My classes are full of questions like "Where do you feel that?" and "Where did that pose fall apart?" so that I can learn how those bodyminds work. Every class is a bit of a workshop.

So our modes are somewhat different: Carol comes across as more chill than I do. I come across, I think, as teaching a more challenging class--a tighter clothesline, if you will. There's less slack in my classroom.

I know that I come across as "more advanced" in my poses; the vinyasa students who see me in class and the people who have seen me in Carol's Intro to Intermediate session, know that I bring the juju to the yoga mat. I also talk quite a bit about "the tradition" (it probably wouldn't be incorrect to say that I know traditional ashtanga better than anyone in the city, and perhaps even the state; gotta take into account the northwest near Chicago and the southeast near Louisville, however), and so I probably, and especially to newbies, sound kind of esoteric and "extreme sports" and such.

I know that students somehow believe that in my class you "have to" pull the advanced moves, and what's refreshing when I'm teaching is that I don't have people do that. Or, if we do "advance" something like the jumps in sun salutations, I put it in concrete language. How the hands work, how the hips move, where the weight goes. An advanced pose isn't magic anymore when it becomes PHYSICS.

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Nonetheless, I am apparently cancelled for a week. This is obviously because the studio does not know how ashtangis work. REGULAR PRACTICE makes you an ashtangi (well, that and ujjayi/bandhas/dristi; I'm not willing to "discount" someone as an ashtangi simply because they cut a pose here and there; Cody, for example, always counted as an ashtangi to me).

The point of this series that I will teach, as the studio sees it, is money. The point of it, as I see it, is an ashtanga soak for my lucky students. They are going to get ALL the teaching I can possibly put into 90 minutes. They're going to get freakin' WORKSHOP quality.

So the studio sees it as a wise move to cut my poorly-attended class, in the name of money coming in from the series. I see it as ironic, that I can't offer teasers to my mini-crew of ashtangis, before the real action begins.

Also, the classes in this relocation have all taken on names like "Yoga For X and Y." I also have to name my class "Yoga for X and Y." Strength and Endurance? Flexibility and Balance? Breath and Gaze? So many choices, none quite right. It's HARD to market ashtanga yoga here.

Because no one knows what it is (and this also goes for Iyengar and Anusara classes), students here find it "clearer" to take a class in vinyasa than they do a class in Ashtanga. The "name" yogas are somehow esoteric, hard to explain, while the nameless, faceless endlessly variable "vinyasa" yogas are somehow easier to handle. What the FUCK is up with THAT????

So as little as I care to relabel ashtanga "Yoga for Strength and Flexibility," it might well make it an EASIER sell here than telling people what it REALLY is.

The studio does not seem to realize that ashtanga is NOT something you do one day a week for 75 minutes "to feel good after." Oh sure, the various yoga's for x and y will go on about how they bring inner peace and such and how the teachers have "discovered yoga" at age whatever, and so forth, but this city is so full of "yoga shopping" that nobody actually builds a home practice. If they want there to be ashtanga students, they need to GIVE SPACE FOR THAT PRACTICE.

It's fucking ironic that the point of my series is, as the studio said to me, to BUILD an ashtanga community. People trickle out of the woodwork to classes as it is; the community I'll "build" will likely be people that I know are IN THAT COMMUNITY already. It's hard to build a community out of a larger group that still only trickles in. The best thing that can happen city-wise from this series is that WORD OF MOUTH gets out. THAT's how you build an ashtanga community here. The more people who hear, "omg I went to this class and it was just awesome, omg omg" the more students I'm likely to see. And that experience needs to be EXPERIENTIAL, not just postering, flyering, advertising.

Again, THAT's the problem of doing ashtanga HERE. In a city full of yoga shopping where the simple "vinyasa or hatha" (which is of course a ridiculous dichotomy which only in the WEST means "hard or easy") is somehow a clearer description than "Ashtanga, Anusara, Iyengar," people are going to drop in to an ashtanga class AS IF it were a vinyasa class, and they'll one-time it. "Oh I didn't like that sequence" or "Oh it was too hard." OF COURSE an ashtanga class is too hard; it's too hard for EVERYONE the first time.

Because it's an "I'll try it once, oh that was for me/not for me" town, it's nearly impossible to BUILD a community of repeat students. These are the same students who appreciate variability, who think that "well roundedness" in yoga means varying the sequence each week.

So maybe the series classes that I'm planning will solve this.
1) People will buy all eight at once.
2) It's the same sequence each week, with changes of focus that I determine.
3) It's the same group of people, which promotes at least in-class community.
4) I will be offering my BEST teaching.

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I'm thinking about emailing several of my regulars and just telling them to meet me at the park out behind the art school, on Sundays at 12:30. I'll bring sunblock and we can get it on for FREE out there. Group ashtanga practice. I'll lead as I practice. The hell with money, with doing it for income.

Re-intending the long asana program.

The last time I set this intention (last week), it blew up. So I'm intending again: the LONG program this week. Primary and to Kapotasana (and/or Supta Vajrasana; we'll see how my right knee likes lotus at that point).

On April 21, I had probably a breakthrough Kapotasana (I checked; this post answered my own question from last week). It came from the long program. I was not standing up at that point.

I took all week off, to let the overstretch in the right side of both knees, heal. Three days, it hurt. Now it does not. Vinyasa class this morning, which included Bharadvajasana, did not reinjure. This is good.

The plan is this:

Primary and to Kapo/SV. 5 wheels, minimum, 3 drops back and stands therefrom.

Thursday, I do Intermediate to keep it in shape, and because Sweeney said so (right Karen?).

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The system--referring obliquely to comments Sharath made in London this past week--seems to be teaching me, BY PRACTICE ALONE, to master standing up before Kapo, AS WELL AS to add poses one at a time.

Intention set! Onward!

Seventh Series, Hips and Knees

This is three months, any way you cut it. Sunday was 12 weeks, and by next Sunday it'll be 91 days. There you have it, "fourth trimester" is now over.

And right on time, there are all kinds of happy developments. Avid gazing, hand control (sloppy, but it's totally a type of control), concentration, ability to attend to things that are definitely external (my hat, the ceiling lamp, the crib mobile, etc), the ability to become distracted AND not cry, the ability to "hang out" and be a happy baby. To just chill and be.

I waited HARD for this.

Eyes are big and blue. Hair looks to be red, probably. Plumping up from extra formula (nursing has been a mess that I don't want to get into; let's just say that medical personnel have advised us to let it go slowly). Face very like mine. Noises that aren't cries, but aren't the regular "coos" either. Some kind of attempt at dialogue. Big, frequent, goofy, shameless smiles. Interaction with the external world RAPIDLY increasing.

Independence and interactivity. As predicted (at least I know myself THIS well), the more of both there are, the more my affection increases.

I see now how the early days are going to go. This is also a new discovery. They sit. Just still, and aging, and getting dusty. Eventually they will be covered over, and become part of the geological record. They are like the umbilicus node that falls out of the navel, with time.

I think that healing and perhaps even pleasure are on the way. Just in time, of course, for the fall semester to crash like a tsunami.

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Did I forget that backbending developments make my outer hips get crazy tight? I must have.

The week that I stood up, I also very slightly tweaked the lateral side of the right knee, doing foot-behind-head. In a couple poses, I forgot about it. I also noticed that the medial side of the left knee, with practice after practice, got a little tweaky in Padmasanas (all of them). But that happens now and again. No biggie.

But with time, those get bigger, as I didn't lay back on the backbending AT ALL. The backbending itself, never hurt. It didn't always feel good, and it was sometimes pretty ballistic, but it always worked. Even standing-to-knees and the occasional crash landing I had in the back yard. I kept my attention on it.

Should have kept more attention on the knees, as the hips tightened up, because the lateral right knee and medial left knee ache slightly, like ligaments are bruised. So I'm taking a break from all hip openers, for a while. The "stacked" nature of the knee ache is actually fortunate for icing: I lay on one side, put one ice pack between the knees and the other one on top. Sit for ten minutes and ta-da!

Nothing palpates swollen; it's all internal sensation. Nothing is clearly disabled either, although I notice that I don't like to squat and stairs are VERY difficult; all the sensation goes right to the appropriate side of each knee (just like after knee surgery, actually; similar sensations).

So today, no asana. I'll see how it feels tomorrow and build it all from sun salutations (they're pretty straight-legged all the way through). I'm recalling my pre- and post-surgery physical therapy: a lot of work with making circles on a stationary bike (range of motion), quad strength, step-ups and downs, and eventually one-legged weight-bearing and dynamic lateral motions ("cariocas" are what they were called, like side-stepping down a hallway, each foot alternating in front and then in back).

So we'll see. The big lesson in backbending from this, is that I should probably expect tighter hips with each big development: dropping back brought it. Kapo to toes brought it. Standing up brought it. As I get closer to the feet in each backbend, I think I can expect more action in the hips. If I ever get to grab an ankle (or higher!!??), again, I can expect to get some action in the hips. Let us remember this. Last time, my hips got so tight, so much of the time, that it was keeping me from sleeping comfortably, so I backed off a bit on the backbends and it all got better. This time, I had more endurance for hip tightness, and marched onward. It never felt like any kind of ahimsa; more like tapas, focus. Unfortunately, gotta see the WHOLE picture. Look at one thing, to see everything. Tunnel vision's not the same.

Ok then: onward!

What Did/Does Kapo Feel Like As It Progresses?

To anyone at all:

What, if you remember them, did your degrees of progress in Kapo feel like? There's a post on the green board about "ripping in the pecs and triceps" but many other people refer to "years" spent in the hip flexors. I don't care if you're adjusted into it or not, doing it only Mysore-style or not. I want some verbiage about what the march from "omg I'll never do that" to "hey, are those my heels?" feels like.

Tonight's adjusted Kapo saw me drop over and then be TOTALLY UNABLE to move my hands. It was as if someone capped my shoulders with steel epaulets or something. Immobile. But the teacher was able to pick my hands up and slide them onto my toes, and I even got a sort of weak but effective hip-press-up-and-forward into it.

After I came up, I felt like I'd been hit in the low abs with a MEDICINE BALL. And I mean LOW abs, I mean like pubic-bone-to-iliac-crest abs.

"Am I from Outer Space?"--W. Reich

I have the ODDEST feeling--and not just now, but regularly--that I'm not here, but somewhere else. Almost as if I could walk outside to go to the...the....wait, where the fuck am I?

There is a "slice" of me, if you will--I don't want to invoke anything specific by calling it an alter-ego or an inner child or an inner teacher, any of that--that doesn't live here. And it's not the past either. It's never that I'm "back in such and such." Never.

I feel that if I trusted the inner inertia of this thing, that I would walk right out "into my life," in a fashion. I would wake up ALL the way.

Let us speak of asana, instead.

Now, as soon as I write that, I realize that I'm also speaking about several other limbs of the famous eight. Asana without pranayama? Would be either gymnastics or asana without oxygen. Asana without pratyahara? Is asana without concentration. Asana without tapas, without aparigraha? Also would be asana without concentration.

So basically I've euphemized, in the title, to indicate a switch of topic.

I did barely any asana practice yesterday, which again is due to evil mood and low energy (that's all it's ever due to). Tomorrow I am scheduled early and late, and teach in the middle. I won't be able to practice until maybe 6 pm and then that's baby time, and I'm willing to give it. Tomorrow, I know in advance, will be an asana mess.

So I doubled today instead. Yes, I know it's a day off in the ashtangaworld. But my ashtangaworld here is untraditional, and so I usually practice vinyasa in an 8 am class and recently I've also been hitting the 11 am led some-of-Primary, in which I cannot seem to "turn off the remote control," which means I end up doing the whole thing.

I was thinking of bandhas, today.

Often in the vinyasa class we come up to Utkatasana and then right back down and vinyasa down. So I started wondering, if instead of half-Uttanasana and then jumping back, could I do the liftoff, the sort of half-Bakasana or as the exercise guys would call it, a "planche" of sorts? And it turns out that I can.

I put the hands down in front of the feet, while in a deep squat, and then I lean in, bend the arms, take the feet up, and HANG it. I even took a breath in that evil thing today, twice. I think I did 3 or 4 of them in the first class.

This seemed to guide my practice with ease and power. I hung half-moons with prayer hands, Dighasanas (Warrior 3's), Utthita Hasta variations (including a squat in the pose and the return to standing, which Tatsouline calls a "pistol"), and did a handful of backbends and a heels-up dropback. Very good practice for getting the sitting out of the glutes, out of the outer hips. I felt pretty worked out of yesterday's tightness and frustration.

Then I went to the car for about 75 minutes and read about art methodologies, for the grad level theory course I'll be teaching, and then I went to Carol's some-of-Primary, intending just to advertise my "series on the series," but there were 8 people in class and the extrovert in me, who is always starved for human activity in this freakin DESERT of a city, said, "YOU DO!" So I did.

Sun salutations and standing were very sweaty; I had to rug the Manduka after the Prasaritas. I cut my usual Hanumanasana/Samakonasana; no need to be showy for the beginners. But then seated had some of my best, highest, easiest, smoothest vinyasa EVER, and I mean in my entire yoga-doing life of five years. Absolute ease, back and through. I think it was the bandha rehearsals with the "lift-ups" in the prior class.

I wrist-bound all 8 Marichyasanas, which is still not a regular thing, and the five Navasanas were easier than they'd been last week. I still land feet-flat and then float them, in the entries to Bhuja and Kurmasana. That was OK in C's room and it was OK in Matthew's room and K's room too. So I'm not TOO tempted to work on the clean jump-in. When I do it, I often land low, which leads to flubbing my exit, particularly from Bhuja.

Maybe if this bandhas-revving continues, however, I'll work on building it again.

No flubbing in Kukkutasana, threw the lotus back nice and high, got face to feet in Baddha Konasana, which had been difficult of late with this tight right hip that doesn't like to Eka Pada much anymore, had easy Chakrasanas, had big nicely balanced Setu Bandhasana, with four wheels, three heels-up dropbacks and three messy but successful standups. It took multiple throws for each one, and I usually "folded up the wall" from the pubic bone to the sternum, but standing up is standing up. It's raw and I know it.

I'm thinking, actually, that I don't need a wall. It's not that my knees collapse, it's that I THINK they will. It's a shift of attention. Instead of "weight over knees, collapse, rise," I'm more and more thinking, "hands up, feel it in the navel." When I can't feel the bend "RISE" to the navel, I know the hands will drop. When I do feel the bend rise to the navel, I come up.

Trust the hands and the navel, and do away with the prop. STOP thinking with your knees. Hands; Navel; You have no Knees. Make it your mantra.

I saw this morning that someone said at Linda's place that Christopher likes his students to have a "no-hands" lotus. I'm going to make that a project. It'll take for EVER, but still, I want it.

There; asana. No bitterness, no resentment, no dreaming. No bullshit about life. Bending, present tense, nothing else.

Perfect. May all of my time on the planet be like this.

End Vacation, Incipit Labors

That first week of daycare saw magically intense asana practice, because work hadn't really begun, and vacation, since May, had never happened. In a way, that was my first week of vacation all year since LAST SUMMER.

Our pregnancy was a vile, life-killing curse. We asked for it, of course, but we had no idea how thoroughly it would negate and kill the happy people we'd been. So from September to May, there was no vacation and no happiness.

From May on, of course, you have my record. Insomnia, bottomless pain, someone screaming all the time. It was like living in hell for six weeks, before it got better. I taught both summer sessions, and class times were the only times of the day when I forgot about my newly acquired seventh series. I taught pretty much solid until August 5th, when classes ended, and then it took me an additional week to get my grades in.

So suddenly, there was this post-hell, pre-semester blip of fair happiness, with blazing summer sunshine to boot. The kid went to daycare, J went to work, and I was totally by myself for at least six hours a day. So I did a week of Intermediate and then did it again on the Monday night following, with a crowd of nine people in the yoga room (9 is of course unheard of numbers here).

And it was marvelous. It was like a slice of someone else's life, stuck into my filmstrip. Someone got creative in God's editing room.

And that's the week that I stood up, for the first time. Figures.

Then, this week, school suddenly appeared out of nowhere, like a black obsidian tower built with impossible time-lapse speed. I will be teaching two auditorium-sized sections of a 100-level course, six days from now. So I began hurriedly putting syllabi together, trying to clean my office, trying to get my act together. Stress radically increased. This isn't a life I want, and I have to quickly force myself into a tiny little box again, directly after a week of nice oceanic expansion. EVERYTHING in me resists this.

Predictably, my hips tighten up. They've been sore and achy all day, every day this week, either from the backbending or from the stress, or from the combination. Wednesday I did Primary and a Pasasana that I thought would rip me open in the outer hips, they resisted it so. Monday night, they barely resisted. Today, I just did up to Parivrtta Parsvakonasana and got so much agony in the outer hips that I called it a practice right there, 20 minutes in.

This always happens when the life I want vanishes into the life I have. It happens every November when weather chases me inside. It happens at the start of every semester. It happens for a week when I get bad financial news. It chased me around at the start of seventh series.

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So let the syllabi and householding and seventh series, begin. The kid had a bout of diarrhea/vomiting yesterday afternoon, but was fine both last night and this morning, so he's back in daycare for about another 90 minutes. He and I went on a sling walk (he's in a sling around my shoulder) four times this morning, in the backyard. We got along ok. Usually if J leaves us alone, he cries for hours and I try not to go insane. Today he cried on demand, and I could answer those demands (in order: I'm wet, feed me, I'm wet, feed me, I'm tired and need a nap, feed me).

We get along much better when he does what I call "make sense" and when I am more receptive to reading his pre-linguistic signals (hand in mouth...aha! that means feed me!). I'm stil not certain that I'm glad we did this, but glad or not, it makes no fucking difference.

One week of inspiring vacation. That'll have to do me until, probably, summertime next year. Thanksgiving and/or December break will be family tours. I don't think I'm going to like those. Take a six month old on an airplane? For three hours? Have everyone "understand" me as father, when I barely understand myself as "masculine" to begin with? Have no one speak my language, have J continue to be too busy with kid and with householding, to reprioritize us, to put us (and I don't care how shameless this sounds) where we BELONG in the order of priorities?

Only once, one time, have I been in a relationship where personal contentment outranked house cleaning. We cleaned--sure--but we made certain that our routine house maintenance never outranked our personal satisfaction with the relationship. That, to me, is right thinking. The HUMANS come first and the DOMICILE comes second. My ex-wife used to use householding as an excuse to avoid an uncomfortable conversation about our anti-relationship. J and I used to hold a fair balance between time with ourselves and time with the house, but as with all things, that balance has been completely destroyed by seventh series. I said in a phone conversation earlier that I had done and was doing some householding and she said that over the weekend we'd do a whole lot of it anyway, no matter what I did, because that's how householding is, you never finish it.

We used to do OTHER things on weekends.

James Joyce famously said, a long time ago, that one must deploy "silence, exile and cunning." I can and do work hard; I've handled this whole fucking place in four hours before. I know what the life I want has in it. I had many of those elements a year ago. Our exile from the easy days is on and will be until we die, because that is how seventh series works, but we will not ALWAYS be dead to each other from this. Not always. We shall return.

But for now, I have householding to do. Checklists to eliminate. Free time to create. Suggestions to make. The older you get, seventh series, the less time you take, the less dominant you become. I WILL SEE DAYLIGHT AROUND YOU.

Let us set an intention for summer 2010.

In spring/summer 2008 I had brief classes with Kino, Matthew Sweeney and then four Mysore-style days in Boston. Very good stuff. Lots of backbending developments. The spring/summer of Kapo to toes.

Naturally, summer 2009 has been dominated by seventh series. As I've said a hundred times, seventh does not negotiate. What did you THINK you were doing? Nope, you're doing this instead.

I find myself wanting some serious exposure to some high-level training for summer 2010. Why not during the year? I can't spare anything more than a weekend during the school year. When there's a break, family OBLIGES me and J to go on tour. No freakin' way can I take a yoga training vacation.

Two things come to mind, right off. Sweeney is doing a month-long program (August into September) in Durham, NC. Two weeks is an option. It's heavier on Chandra and Simha Kramas than it is on traditional Ashtanga, but should be pretty deep nonetheless.

Tim usually runs a summer Primary series training, for two weeks; this summer it was late June to early July. That comes with access to the center's regular classes.

Much less expensively, if I were to take a hunk of time in Boston next summer, with access to family (this would probably be a family tour), I could revisit the 2008 room. Likewise, a tour of SF (say, two weeks) would be delicious (and there's Mysore-style all OVER that city), but it's hella expensive.

What do I want from summer 2010? Mysore-style. I want a traditional room, or if not strictly traditional, a room that has OK'd its own deviations (i.e., see Craig's reviews of Tim's place).

What do I want, specifically? I want an end to the Kapo struggle. I want it OVER. This has everything to do with my psychology and not much to do with my pose. I am willing to practice regularly all year if I can just get a SOLID, STRAIGHT-UP assessment of that pose. I want expert hands, expert eyes, on it. Tell me what it is, what I can do with it, what I cannot do with it. To quote someone else about something different not long ago, "WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN."

The Long Program, Fitness, Whitwell

I may be petty in the upcoming paragraphs. Just to say it up front. Today I wanted to return to the long Primary-and-up-to-Kapo-or-thereabouts program, and only made it to Pasasana. The outer hips were too full of white electricity, as you've read about in these pages before.

I've not lost endurance--not really--to the week of Intermediate. Sure, Navasana's harder than I remember it being in May, but Navasana is never easy for some reason. I've lost the jump-ins to Bhuja and Kurmasana, but those never seem to stay around anyway. Probably the biggest disappointment was lame backbends, and no dropbacks (therefore no standing up either). Big, big frustrated, mourning tightness in the front hips. Hanging back was PLENTY. Eh. So be it.

I'm not sure if I will stick to the long program idea tomorrow or not. Roll out the mat and see: wait, both East and West coasts finally agree that it's a new moon tomorrow (so be it).

Just doing Primary is not responsible for this hip tightness; it's more mood, loneliness, things I will now proceed to be ranting and petty about :)

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The following has annoyed me for a LONG and DEEP time:

What the FUCK is up with yoga being advertised as "fitness" in this town? Now, fitness itself is quite fine. Yes, nationally the US is massively overweight. Anything that says, "get in shape" (well, anything that MEANS it and isn't just advertising some new trend that may or may not have any actual life-changing effect) is probably good for someone.

What I properly mean is, what is up with yoga being advertised as MERELY about fitness, about body-carving? It's hard for me to indict this without also seeming to indict a class in town that I quite like, so let me pick some specific examples that I don't like:

1. There's talk about "bring the thunder" and "only one person hurled!" in one corner of this city's yoga scene. ONLY one person tossed cookies? Uh, great; remind me where the YOGA in that is? Bring the THUNDER?

2. Teachers at another place are all about multiple certifications in things like spinning and have a history with triathlons. OR, they are just "increasing their flexibility and peace of mind," with yoga. I see; so it's either "I'm a hardcore" OR "I'm euphemistically so 'yoga.'" THESE are our choices?

3. "I lose myself in the sweat on my yoga mat." This is what passes for Vedanta here. It would be more noble to do that on a BIKE or in freakin' RUNNING shoes.

Admittedly, as a runner (in high school), I understand GETTING IN THE ZONE, and as a climber (in my mid 30s), I understand the focus and present-tenseness of the hard move. But the binary that tends to underlie so much (not ALL but so, SO MUCH) yoga here is of the most tired POSSIBLE variety:

a) we will do ass-kicking moves;
OR
b) we will achieve inner peace.

In the very notion of "kicking" is a kicker and a kicked. Unless we wax metaphysical and assume (heh) that the ego is the kicked, that's nothing more than aerobics, pure and simple. There's no yoga in that.

Inner peace? You really think so? How are we gonna KNOW when we achieve it? I don't even know what people who claim this will happen in their classes, are possibly thinking.

This is a big vinyasa town, and there is a lot of "beginners' flow" and "advanced flow" and of course the new trends, "heated flow" and such. Or the numbering system that you even see in cities like Chicago: Yoga 1, Yoga 2/3, and so on.

"Heated Flow"? "Yoga 2/3"? How the FUCK do I know what I'm getting into? No wonder people just surf class to class here until they find TEACHERS that they like. I know a handful of people who go to different studios (like, multiple ones, like three different places) each week, just to go to different teachers' classes.

There's even a high-powered vinyasa teacher coming to town soon, whose classes are advertised as "faith flow" and "alignment flow." FAITH? ALIGNMENT? What the fucking fuck should I expect to find in THERE? I mean, QUITE LITERALLY, a flow called "faith" gives me NO FUCKING CLUE what I'm getting into, aside from the "nationally-ranked teacher" PRICE TAG. Is it fast, is it slow? Is it hot? Is it going to involve inversions? I have NO FUCKING IDEA. This is probably the single thing that I despise MOST about the various "vinyasa" yogas.

Conversely, I am trying to recruit for an Ashtanga series class, right? To run six or eight weeks?

My advertising suffers in reverse. If I say that I come to yoga from rock climbing, it makes me sound "extreme," which, combined with poses that people have seen me pull in classes, makes my class sound like its only for those "flexible white women" that Whitwell talks about, when that's not it at all.

BUT

if I say that in five years I've gone from not being able to touch my toes to being able to do quite advanced poses, then it makes it sound like I'm a magician or have some inexplicable native talent.

People here want me to BE one of those fitness gurus who has taught spinning and who is working on my next triathlon or something. That is the only way that I can make SENSE here. If that were true of me, then people would immediately be able to grok my "teaching persona"; the moves that I pull would "make sense."

I am, of course, not that. None of it. I didn't do any regular exercise besides walking around campus and occasionally running long distances while out of my head on various intoxicants, between the ages of approximately 20 and 34.

I weighed 195 pounds in December 2002. I weighed 160, maybe, in March 2003. Mostly, that was lack of appetite from the MASSIVE detox after the divorce. But the climbing also figured in. I climbed a 5.7 in January 2003, on my first day, and was climbing 5.10 regularly by summer 2004 when I first began an ashtanga practice.

I was 34 when I began ashtanga, and it took until I was 37 to get the right hip to allow half lotus. It took until I was nearly 39 to drop back into a backbend.

People tell me all the time that five years is a "short time to have such advanced poses." That's funny to me, given how massively impatient I've been to advance in certain poses. I've said before that the secret is not native giftedness, but regular practice. That seems to bounce right off people; I hear a LOT of, "I could never do that." It makes me want to just shout, "HAVE YOU TRIED IT TEN THOUSAND TIMES?"

All of this frustration makes me want to teach people even more, even though that's where I can't seem to get any interest going. If I could just HAVE these people IN MY ROOM, I'd strip all that negativity bullshit straight out of there. "I can't do that." Oh yeah? Modifications for less pose; adjustments for more pose. "Don't think." "Well that's just beyond me; my arms are too short, etc etc." NO. Breathe; DO.

There's a self-possession, a clinging, here. Fear in some cases, arrogance in others. I've had both, probably still have both. The formula is breath-bandhas-dristi, as we know. That could even be taught in vinyasa classes, and true to life, in the class I DO like, there are always multiple reminders about breath and bandhas.

Fear surrenders to breath, gets overwhelmed by it; arrogance dissolves in dristi; the concentration needed on "self" is replaced, turned inside out. FIND the hand; FIND the foot. FIND the third eye. I always give physical directions in hard poses. BRING ME THAT FOOT. SWING EM BACK! CHATURANGA! And so on....it's all very "move, don't think."

Fitness has nothing to do with it; fitness is a self-assessment made later in front of the mirror. You know what? If it will bring you people in, then sure, hell, why not. Bring me your less fit and I'll give you back more fit. So be it.

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I mis-spoke in a comment about Whitwell, before. There's a link to an audio file that you can get from his site; it's August 13. He talks a lot about "the yoga" not coming from text, from authority, but from the "ordinary state," and how pain is healing and how life is experiential, how it is immanent, how it is now, not later, not elsewhere. It's a far-out talk; you should check it.

Anyway: I found that it echoed through many, many things that I have read seen and been. Echoes galore, all over the place. It touched on things that I still have pain about, reached right in there and patted those things on the head. Let me try to lay out some of the echoes.

Wilhelm Reich wrote about "body armor" back in the thirties. One becomes armored by a civilization which privatizes sex, body experience. Whitwell uses suprisingly similar vocabulary and about suprisingly similar things. When I said that I mis-spoke, what I mean is that I don't AT ALL mean to say that Whitwell is "doing" Reich or that Reich is "right" or in any way to establish a textual authority here. ECHOES. All I am doing is seeking out the echoes that I heard, looking for the lights that went off.

I have to write a book review for a thing called TERROR AND JOY: the films of Dusan Makavejev. Makavejev is one of my seventies guys; I wrote a dissertation chapter on him. In 1971 Makavejev made a film loosely about Reich, where the Stalinists are criticized on the one side for being asexual fascists (one of Reich's big themes: "fascists are sexual cripples") and various sexual libertines in the US are criticized for turning the sexual drives into commodities and fetishes (Whitwell also basically says that: we only understand sex as perversion).

This book that I'm reviewing, briefly takes up Makavejev's films as stories of humanity amidst massive social changes: Nazism, Communism, Stalinism, capitalism. Huge movements that have overt potential to crush human lives in their gears. Against this, Makavejev's films put contradictory, marvelous humans. It would take the book itself to describe any of Makavejev's films, but they are essentially films of human experience amidst massive political-social machines, and not strictly in opposition, but simply in the middle. Some for good, some for bad, some self-destructive, some hopeful, some magic.

Human life, for my money, still works like that; there's something universal there, in the "humanity amidst massive once-created-and-now-virtually-autonomous habits, morals, nation-states, apocalypses."

From there, I heard echoes coming from the current vogue of "affect studies" in media studies. How does viewership FEEL? One is not just a disembodied eye; one is a body that REACTS, a part of a cosmic sensorium. Theory, basically, is rediscovering what Laura Marks has called "the sensorium," and going, in some writings, back to basics, back to what is called "primitivist" film theory, before we were all just "eyes" floating around, analyzing semiotics and saying that THIS signifier is feminist/Marxist/whatever and THAT one is not.

This return to the body has really nothing to do with Whitwell other than that I heard a "ping!" from it, while listening to his talk. Nonetheless.

My favorites--Nietzsche and Deleuze and Guattari--of course also do "return to the body," but to get into this, to translate the experience of listening to Whitwell INTO these texts, really WOULD ruin the very experiential nature of the memories and the associations. Let us simply state that a "ping" was heard here as well.

There are so many delicious moments in Whitwell's talk--and I mean on a PERSONAL level, on the level of my OWN bodily sensorium, memory cache, as a listener--that it's hard to record them here either in toto or in isolation.

"You want intimacy with your life." Yes, of course, since for ever, since puberty, when I found out that I was a body, not a M/mind.

"You do the yoga for your family." To model joy, to be experience, presentness? This line alone, which I think I've misquoted and paraphrased, totally redefined seventh series. Washing bottles OR doing Karandavasana, it is presence and joy. Be it, model it, convey it, it is.

"Re-generation, a new generation; your mother wants this for you." YES. The feminine forces in my life had been given too much to old tradition, to fear, to a patriarchy that they could not see, precisely the one Whitwell talks about: know what renunciates want? SOME GOOD SEX. That's a marvelous quote from MW. The body has a femininity, in sweat, in fluid, in BEING. Only perhaps because masculinity has somehow come down to me as ever evasive, distant, fleeting. Masculinity hides in idealism, which FORCES femininity to incarnate in bodies. Of course my body isn't feminine, but in these gendered metaphysics that MW uses, which have nothing to do WITH GENDER ROLES, of course I'm feminine.

"Pain is healing; you feel it, you release it." Again, paraphrasing, but again, yes, completely. Let us not FEAR to feel pain. As Erich Schiffmann puts it, differently about something different: "What do I do with my sore throat? ENJOY IT!" Pain is not suffering INFLICTED; it is suffering EXPRESSED. "Old pain," somewhere is brought up. YES. I carried old pain with me from 1993 to 2003. It was the first to express, and then it was gone.

Body armor; undefended; sensorium. Affect; generativity; healing.

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To return to--and close on--fitness again, and teaching: this kind of MAGIC is what the "bring the thunder" yoga and the "sit in your inner peace" yoga miss. Neither grabs the handle of the caboose of the Transformation Locomotive.

After my knee surgery (this was probably June 2004), I literally RAN up a 5.9+ in the gym. It was taped in bright orange, and I just moved/saw/oriented up the whole thing; my eyes turned, saw hands moving, feet stepped, head reoriented, ALL AT ONCE. This had nothing to do with "pulling the hard bouldering move" and nothing to do with "chilling with the endorphins." There was no sound, nothing but the movement, utter holiness. I had eyes EVERYWHERE. It was DUNE: "he will know your ways as if raised in them." No worry, no thinking, no time. NO TIME.

Earlier, in April, after that knee surgery, I remember my first run, around a track in a school gym. 7 laps to make a mile. I'd been gently hobbling, caring for the ligament rebuilt; torn in February, building quad strength so as to walk, and then surgery in April; rebuilding quad strength. Time to take a running step. I took one and another. And another. I felt air move, quickly, past me, lion mane expanding. Memories collecting, swimming about. Time stopped. Motion did not. Running. Turning. Body angling in for the turns, like on tracks of old. Reborn. Becoming the participle, like when rain dancers understand it thus: I AM RAINING.

I do this unpopular, unsellable kind of yoga here because it brings the MAGIC.

How the fuck should I even TRY putting THAT on a flyer?

Kapotasana, "Progress," a Series on the Series, Chicago?

Last week, starting on Monday, daycare began (that's been the big development of seventh series; that, and more smiles, which rule). I immediately kicked off a week's practice of full Intermediate, inspired largely by Karen.

This practice, for me, includes all poses as well as "Kapo dropbacks" after Kapo (four is my regular number of those), and now, dropbacks WITH attempted standups. Otherwise there's no deviation or fooling around unless I need to catch my breath (hi Tittibhasanas, pre-Pincha) or unless I need to open a hip (hi, compass pose pre-Eka Pada, right side). But as little tangential experimentation as possible.

Kapotasana remains, as always, interesting. I taught the last two Monday nights, so as of tomorrow, it's been three weeks since I got a Kapo adjustment and, counting today's short practice (to Eka Pada, rushed for time), I have only grazed my toes, and only the left one, TWICE. As you know, when adjusted on a Monday night, I can get my toes, and I mean a full toe-grab. I was starting to think that this was my usual Kapo. Last week instructed otherwise.

Facts are hard to come by; I don't even have video of my Kapo. All I have is the internal experience, so my "records" of Kapo are highly subjective. So it's not as simple as saying, "Why is the pose retreating, with MORE practice?"

That already creates a reality and I'm not sure it's an accurate one. The sensations are familiar from February, from March. Weird inexplicable tightness in the right glutes (and I mean straight across the glute max; WTF?) and then I'm all but certain that the thighs tip back too far (come out of vertical, that is) and then I know that I collapse in the pose, and suddenly I'm a big horizontal pile trying to reach my toes.

All three major adjustments that I've had in Kapo (in MN, in Boston, and here) involve the adjuster taking my hips HIGHER, and then bringing the hands CLOSER. I KNOW this, I KNOW that's how to do it. I've even written that here: TRIANGLE TALLER. So WTF gives, then?

Tomorrow (either night or morning, before; I'm not sure which or whether or not it'll be both) I will try new advice from Karen's comment thread, which is to build the bend FIRST and THEN drop.

Now, I usually do Ustrasana with prayer hands, and then bring the hands over. What I've been up to lately is arms extended, then hands in prayer, and then hanging back, looking at the hands, and then inhale, exhale drop. Press toward straight. Walk in. The collapse begins. At this point I can EITHER press toward straight, which really smokes the thighs, or I can walk in, through the collapse, and try to get my feet. Notably, the adjustment takes care of BOTH of these, and the feet, I get.

Here's the plan: arch back, hands over, hang. Hands to floating ribs, increase the overall bend. Listen for WHERE it increases. THEN drop. Hope to land closer, hope that the arch DOES increase the triangle height. In short, hope that the added height from the added bend, eases the collapse. Might be easier to get the height FIRST then to try to press UP to it from the floor.

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Today I missed standups entirely, didn't get a one. I was pretty bummed about that for a minute or two, but then figured I'd breathe through it and now I realize that this "missing it" really takes the pressure off. "What if I can't do them tomorrow or the next day?" Well then, you'll have given them back to the bank early. This is an essential piece of suddenly having a new pose appear; to GIVE IT BACK almost right away, to sort of fight how much I've wanted it to show up. That's ESPECIALLY true with standing up.

So there is a certain acceptance, a "that's right!" to be had in the fact that I can't get my toes by myself and that I haven't yet stood up without a wall in front of me to keep the knee-collapse from coming.

And there is also fight in this, and I'm actually interested in watching "myselves," as it were, figure out this drama. There is a positively GITA like movie to be watched. I'm not kidding. Early on, I chase them, I self-talk it up, I get my intense asana "voodoo chile" on, I do all that. But then when I'm intently backbending, arms extended, it's all BREATHE, no room for anything else. Then down, move the gaze, hands catch floor/ground, and again, there's a cheerleader. STAND! But in the actual standing, it's all space and slow motion. No voices. And when this does NOT come, as today in nine throws, it did not, there is simultaneously a sort of "our team lost the sporting event" defeat and ALSO a sort of "still waters untouched" effect like something out of a Bill Viola video.

All of these voices exist in "progression through the series" and I don't think that the goal is to do without ANY of them. At the same time, if any of them decide not to play this game any longer, that's fine too. I notice that I tend to feed the win/lose players and then later to put it all aside. First the sports, then the Viola.

Physically I retain Kapotasana and standups, by which I mean that my outer hips are all tightened up and cranky again. One day Pasasana will be crazily difficult, but the next day, Marichyasana C and D are as deep as ever. But really, since about Thursday, I've had soreness in the outer hips, every day. What to do? Too much Intermediate? Too much computer-desk sitting? Too little of something else? Puzzles. Hot water (tub, shower, the Y's marvelous sauna) makes it better; sitting still makes it worse. Practice SMARTER? This, intuitively, I believe is the way...

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I may be teaching an 8-week "series" on Ashtanga yoga. I have a syllabus all drawn up for myself (of course I do; I'm an academic). The plan, as I've heard it, is this: my main studio, the one I call home, is moving uptown about 20 blocks. That's out of the college zone and closer to the arts district. I think the move is also part of a gentrification of an old neighborhood that died, but am unsure about that.

Anyway: ashtanga classes get small attendance: 0, 1, 2, 4, maybe 6 on a brilliant day. The studio wants us to get SEVEN people per class so they can be sure of affording the new overhead (apparently they want ALL classes to get this). Now seven people SHOULDN'T be THAT hard. However, ashtanga's so hit-and-miss here that the idea is to get a regular crowd to sign up for WEEKS at a time, to build enthusiasm. It's a good idea.

Tomorrow I'm going to talk to the boss if I can find her in-studio, and find out how this would work, who pays how much, how much I get, how long the classes are, what day and time (which I then need to pass by my own classes to see if I can pull any of my regulars into this), and so forth and so on.

***********************

Chicago. Moksha Yoga Center. Halloween Weekend. Kino MacGregor. Two days Mysore, and also "Strength," "Intro to Second" and her INFAMOUS led Primary, with a big workshop on adjustments. The center has workshops 20 percent off if purchases are made in the month of August.

In large part, I am doing all of this Second in prep for THAT, but I've purchased nothing yet. Do I expect to do Second in the Mysores? No, not really. But it's weird: it'll be FOURTEEN MONTHS since my last Mysore-style room, by Halloween. It was to Kapo with MS and in Boston.

As when I went to my first Mysore-style room in 2007, and did morning practice 6/wk (admittedly, with some of those practices being mat naps with the cat), this backbending marathon I'm on, is in a sort of unstated prep for this Chicago weekend.

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That's what set off this whole post, that's what integrates it. Lots of backbending is going on right now; it leaves physical traces on me that I feel all day long. Is this excessive? Is this just hard training for an upcoming Mysore-style session? I train for those rare gems as if they were fucking triathlons. This isn't very "yoga" of me on a certain level, but then, yes it is. The GITA is both a wisdom story and a war story. I don't aim to hurt myself, not at all: but I do aim to practice as hard as I reasonably can. If I'm in a Mysore-style room, knowing how rare that is, I want to come away from there with freakin' DIAMONDS, the way I did in summer 2008.

This psychology will sort itself out; the more regular I can get about "doing" standing up (for success or failure; it's the regular DOING that counts), the new movement, the more settled I will get about it. It is still hot off the boil right now, still if you will, (ahem) newly born in me.

Ashtanga and Art Pedagogy (warning: geeky)

I was reading a late-80s piece by Thierry de Duve, on art pedagogy, which said that the old school ("academic") of art education was "talent, metier" and then the modernist school turned it into "creativity, medium" which has "now" (again, late 80s) become "attitude, deconstruction."

Once upon a time, then, artists were those who had talent, and talent was cultivated by masters whom the apprentices perhaps imitated. One chose a metier; a painter had a career, a place in community. A "painter" meant a social location, a cultural role.

Modernism, according to this argument, substitutes "creativity," which everyone (potentially) has (and de Duve gives a wonderful quote about how, with clockwork timing, we hear, from Rimbaud to Beuys, the clarion call: everyone is an artist!). Now the artist is someone, anyone, you, me, everyone, all of us. And we all work in, with and against, "the medium." Abstract Expressionist painting, for example. Pollock apparently asked Lee Krasner, after painting, I believe it was, what came to be called Autumn Mist (named by Greenberg): IS THIS A PAINTING?

Not a good one, not a bad one, not what do you think, but IS THIS a painting. The existential artwork, the existential artist. THIS definition of artist, while linked by a perhaps Jungian creativity to EVERYONE and to, eventually, the COSMOS, is still existential: creation in the dark. Defenses of one's own project, obligatory insults to the bourgeoisie. Minimalism. Formalism.

Finally, we arrive at what de Duve argues is simply the dark, now self-awaredly pessimistic side of the same coin: artists are those with ATTITUDE, who DECONSTRUCT things. Media, pop culture, body image. Identity politics even (I'm adding that; de Duve never mentions it). Now, there is good work being done in this phase, or at least famous work (big names that I can think of, who do deconstructive art, would include the ever-famous Cindy Sherman and also Adrian Piper). But looking back at metier and talent, de Duve doesn't see much promise here (I wonder what he'd think of citation-laden and yet obviously creative stuff like Matt Barney's CREMASTER).

What does this have to do with ashtanga yoga?

Well, let's see if it has ANYTHING to do with it.

As the very existence of an "ashtanga blogosphere" testifies, ashtanga comes with community. People gather in many, many MANY cities of the world, AT DAWN or before, to do ashtanga in a group.

One does, in some cases, imitate a teacher. Imitation brings mastery; so does repetition. Repetition moreso. And yet, repetition, following of all people Gilles Deleuze, also incarnates difference. The pose never IS the same, even when it, day after day, LOOKS the same. That's because ONE is never the same. "Same river twice" and so forth. How many triangle poses have you done? Well, literally, 2,178. So might a conversation go.

But unlike (post) modern art, ashtanga doesn't do semiotics. Or, if it does, one almost INEVITABLY says, "come back to the breath." 99 percent practice.

Ashtanga does NOT believe in "creativity" in that everyone is potentially a yoga practitioner (in the sense that everyone has "a yoga": from this, we get a thousand varieties, and all of the ashtanga offshoots, even though some of them are cool and interesting; wouldn't it be cool to place ashtanga practice, in America, alongside a history of PEDAGOGICAL strategies, not simply alongside capitalism?).

However, ashtanga DOES believe in creativity in that, to quote the family (hah, that sounds so GODFATHER), "everyone can do yoga, except for lazy people." But does it take TALENT? Well, even as art pedagogy, talent was probably always, in part, cultivated. Let's not turn the Renaissance into a nature-nurture debate. Plus, when it comes to ashtanga vinyasa yoga, who is to say WHAT counts as "talent"? Are dancers more talented than long-term meditators when both come to this practice?

But the historical pedagogical discourse on "talent" wasn't about interiority, the way that "creativity" is. "Talent" is about the CULTIVATION of skill through method. Boy howdy, does THAT sound familiar to anyone?

Metier and medium. Is yoga a "medium"? Is it a "metier" (and yes I know there should be an accent there)? Again we need context: de Duve defines "medium" as something the artist wrestles with, something the artist defies. "Metier" comes down to membership in a learning community, with a hierarchy. What are you? I am a PAINTER. A "medium" answer to that, depending on who you ask (again, Pollock is the poster child here), might be "I paint," or something more metaphysical such as Pollock's wonderful rejoinder to Hans Hofmann:

HH: "You fail because you paint from nature."
JP: "Put up or shut up. I AM NATURE."

The classical strategies (and the very use of the word "classical" gives it away) of ashtanga pedagogy (the "Mysore" style of pedagogy, if you will) are those of metier. "Don't learn this from a DVD or a video; FIND A TEACHER." And furthermore, LOOK, HERE'S A LIST. And what will you do? You will add poses one at a time under said teacher's direction, in some cases having to demonstrate DEVOTION to the PRACTICE before getting more regular instruction.

So ashtanga vinyasa yoga has the potential (I use this "creativity" lingo because we're talking about how it is ACTUALLY conveyed, not strictly about the most classical format) to be taught very much along the lines of talent and metier. de Duve's essay characterizes these as belonging to "academic" art, by which he means art taught in Academies, not art which is (necessarily) intellectual. Academy as a BUILDING, not academy simply as an adjective referring to educated people's discourse.

HOWEVER, as we all know, ashtanga vinyasa can be both taught and practiced as "creativity" and "medium." It can also be done and taught with AND AS "attitude" and of course it can be and has been deconstructed (particularly, the classical method of pedagogy has been so treated).

One could insert what in politics would be called a "partisan view" here about which ashtanga is "truer, better, purer, more superior, better for you, more realistic" and so forth. Note that my selection of comparatives is intended to reflect both the "medium" and "metier" sides.

Bur the chewier question is about mastery. WHAT does one master? One becomes, in painting, a MASTER, after being sufficiently apprenticed. One goes from painting background trees to painting hands, where the real detail is. But in ashtanga vinyasa? What is mastery there; of what does it consist? IF it were comparable to painting, one would see "God in the details." Maybe that means beautifully executed vinyasas, in public. But, like the painter in LA BELLE NOISEUSE, maybe it means never showing the work where perfection was achieved.

Here, our marvelous comparative tour crumbles. Ashtangis, with the exception of Krisnamacharya and his kin being asked to do poses for royalty, are not commissioned to "do work." One profoundly does not "create objects" with ashtanga vinysasa (not like paintings, anyway, and video doesn't count; I'm discounting it).

"The practice is the teacher." Whooo, spooooooky. That sounds awfully, well, POLLOCK, doesn't it? No, actually, it only seems like it does. Pollock wouldn't have accepted even "nature" as a teacher. Remember: I AM nature. Put in a yoga context, that sentiment (I am yoga) sounds weak, like coffee table metaphysics. All of Pollock's self-sacrifice and heroism (the heroism of the New York School generally, myth or otherwise) is emptied from it. It becomes advertising: "You are your own yoga." You see it laser-imprinted carefully on rocks and sold as garden decor.

No, existentialism will not suit us as a metaphysical backdrop for ashtanga vinyasa. The most potent criticism of Friedrich Nietzsche (who is NOT for my money an existentialist) that I've yet seen is that the overman's quest for "mastery" MUST turn on itself, and thus make the master a slave. I don't think this is accurate, but Nietzsche never posited an end point to mastery (that's why he's not a fascist, also), instead founding the whole procedure on the eternal return of the same events, which does not mean the same tests, but the same ACHIEVEMENTS. One does not SUFFER the eternal return like some unending purgatory; one CREATES it. The problem with the criticism is that it needs an endpoint: where does conquest end? and I think that Nietzsche's own philosophy does NOT need an endpoint. It's not a matter of CONQUEST and how broad and far, it's the achievement of a state of mind that is free of ressentiment.

This would not be a poor statement of the goal of the "mastery" we were discussing earlier. To create a state of mind that is free of ressentiment, of "feeling it again." If you follow me this far, then great; there is reading elsewhere about the tripartite formula, ujjayi-bandhas-driste.

The Curse is Ended, Pull the Trigger, Get Over it, and Practice Report.

The curse is over. A teacher in May 2007 said, and I quote, that he'd love to show me some Intermediate, but CAN NOT, until I can drop back and stand up. I could neither drop back nor stand up. So like a good little Taurus, I obsessed about this. Ten thousand angsty blog entries later about which or how or how much Intermediate to do, the curse is lifted.

Three standups out of four dropbacks. The only one I missed was the first one, and the fourth one was the best of the bunch. Second was another "fold to the garage" and third was another "whoa, hands in front, catch me" sort of "Wile E Coyote" show. But the fourth one was a springy standup, no garage contact, and I came up on the second throw. That's ALMOST down and up, the way the cool kids do it.

I described the sensation as this (yes, I talk to myself): "Raise the energy from the knees to the glutes; put it in the hip flexors. When that tension feels like it's gonna SNAP, like you're pulling a TRIGGER, you'll come up." It's like an energy slingshot. In my case, the glutes and low back sort of CONTRACT, like pulling a slingshot back. There's tension in the system. When the energy releases, and shoots OUT THE HIP FLEXORS, forward, up I come.

Now, I can relate to this practice (this specific one) in a couple different ways. Sure, part of me is pumping a fist with a mighty BOO-YAH! Sure, that happens. But another part of me is playing it down, intentionally playing it down.

The curse was like this strange ressentiment version of tapas. It made the whole practice into "Get this! Why am I not getting this??" and insofar as that inspired, great, but it also--as you and I both know--created a ton of resentment and frustration. Why do that? Why make a big toxic relationship out of it? Well, for one, it did have the inadvertent side effect of making me less aware of poses developing elsewhere. When was the last time I talked about something that wasn't hip flexors, for example?

Standing from a backbend is a thrilling motion. It's dynamic, but controlled (ideally), and it feels marvelous. However, it's a motion, it's a pose. It will eventually go back to the bank, like the other poses. This is the wisdom of the curse: an ironic "congratulations, you just spent over TWO YEARS of your life trying to achieve a physical position." And so it's important to drop everything, now that the curse is lifted. Drop the curse, drop the expectations and the desires that backed up the curse, kept it afloat. Drop both failure AND success. Float away from the achievement; the achievement is, on a certain level, DEADLY.

It was a practice of fall-overs, all of which were funny. Practice notes for myself, just in case I ever decide that I want a detailed record. It was a freakin BEAUTIFUL day, about 79 degrees, blue skies:
*Pasasana, tight. Tiptoed both sides, couldn't get heels touching.
*Easier backbends. Grazed a toe in Kapo but did two deeper Kapo hangbacks after.
*Close, again, to holding the feet in Supta Vajrasana.
*Right leg could be convinced (compass pose) to Eka Pada; lefty always agrees.
*Feet hooked overhead, again, in Dwi Pada, but was able to get two breaths seated and balanced. Five breaths lifted up is always easier.
*Nearly fell out of the Titti walk; hilarious. Titti D was a burner in the quads.
*Pincha, very nice.
*Two Karandas; I lowered to the ELBOWS the first time, no bouncing, no impact with ground, butt UP. Does this count as a successful lower? Second one was just make the lotus, unmake it, exit (bellyflop, profoundly; hilarious).
*Shallower Nakrasanas: more FORWARD than up. Easier. Breath able to be kept.
*Fell out of Vatayanasana at the start of the vinyasa in. Howling funny.
*Can't keep the toe with the rolled-over hand, in SUPV. Eh; not worried.
*Six of seven headstand timbers. Oddly it was the seventh that could not be done.

Intermediate, Standing up Continues, Less Caffeine please.

Standing up continues! Took five dropbacks and over a dozen tries (a "try" is a pelvic thrust/toss forward, where the hands come up; maybe they land again, maybe not) before it was smooth, but I got up twice; two days in a row now. Should mean less anxiety about it tomorrow.

Friendlier Intermediate today: heels down in Pasasana, both sides. Easier backbends up to Kapo. I made Kapo itself about moving my right elbow IN and my hand OUT; as it creeps inside toward my head, I lose the backbend, so instead of heading for the feet, I made the whole pose about the elbow/hand. Then did (as I did yesterday) four of my Sweeney-style Kapo dropbacks against the garage. 7 breaths, then 7, then 5, then 5. Getting deeper.

Right leg agreed to Eka Pada today; very excited. Left hip is still distinctly more permissive. Work on balancing this. Dwi Pada was a box of Slinkies(tm) again. Pfft. It'll be back.

Lost the breath all over the place, but this isn't a traditional Intermediate. I don't want to justify it to no end; basically I'm doing all Intermediate this week and maybe for a while, both because my hips love it (it gets into my outer hips more intensely than Primary does and seems to build dropbacks-standups better) and just to get the range of hip motion that Intermediate both demands and builds (I think this is why Karen's teacher recommended that she do it; that's my inspiration also).

Pincha was, again, very nice. Karanda is coming along; most noticeably of all of my Intermediate postures, it's this thing, this very challenging pose, that's marching right along. Up three times, made a big successful lotus each time, and snugged it in, each time. Lowered twice; once came down quick just beyond the arms, second time came down, hit the arms just over the elbows, and bounced off. Third time just made lotus, unmade it, did the exit (bellyflop more than chaturanga, but hey, that happens).

Nakrasana takes SUCH bandhas, and it comes SO LATE. I think that with Kapo, Nakrasana might be my hardest pose in Intermediate. By the time I got to Parighasana, I could feel myself just bleed out into the universe; with the relative (!!) ease of that pose, I felt like Picasso's sugar cube that dissolves in tea. It was freakin' GREAT. I do the "old school" Gomukhasana because I need someone to teach me the new-fangled one. I can't get anything into the hips when I try to fake this leg-under business.

I still find the seven deadlies to be fantastically focusing. Breathe, bandhas, lift, tripod, timber. Repeat. Smooths out everything. I'm glad they're there.

Backbends:

Five wheels, trying to come down to my forehead after each one, walk the hands in a little, and press up again. Repeat. ALL of the sensation is in the pelvic bowl and the quads, low by the knees. SO intense.

Dropbacks facing the garage. FEET FLAT. I let the heels come up on the third one, and I just could NOT get the feet to stay flat, trying to come up. I got confused today with all of the different things to think about:

feet flat, inhale hips forward, hands come up. walk in after the dropback, coordinate the breath. if you miss one, re-set the breath and the hands and try it again. It's a lot to think about, especially if it takes multiple "throws" to get upright, as it does for me right now.

I failed entirely to come up after two of the five dropbacks, came to my knees once because I was too far from the garage, came up sort of "front body flat to garage" once (knees, then navel, then chest, then cheek, just sort of laid flat against the garage; that was funny), and then got an honest to goodness springy standup, FINALLY, after over a dozen "throws."

It's work. I don't know that I should say that "I stand up," but I do, with these efforts and developments of coordination, come to standing. It's nowhere near the pretty back-and-ups of the skilled backbenders, but it never has been, with me.

Finally, note to self: less caffeine, please. I was nervous about all of the "big" postures, which only really laid off, after Dwi Pada. Shucks! Need to chill the jagged "omg, omg" of overconsumption of coffee pre-practice. As SKPJ apparently put it once, "One cup dark coffee, even lazy man, full energy coming!"

Tomorrow we do it all again! Rawr!

Intermediate is Hard, but Standing from Backbend is Worth It.

A humid, outdoor Intermediate, after a week off, full of computer sitting, baby care and course preparation for fall. Hips tight, and I could tell beforehand.

Yes, with all of that, "Body flexible! Mind stiff!" in my head. Poses got easier (well, in the sense of mind-body adjusting to movement, presence, "being there") as the practice went on. We forget that a pose being "hard" or "easy" is not a matter of how able or not one is to put one's X over or in front of or in some other position of relation to one's Y.

Anyway: heels up in both Pasasanas (tighter than usual), Kapo shallower than usual (hands inches from feet; my rug is striped, so I can tell), Dwi Pada sort of hooked over my head (yes Liz, I'll get you a photo). Right hip not willing to Eka Pada, but willing to Yoganidrasana. A lot of modifications, "be carefuls" and "not yets." Far from my most "in the zone" Intermediate.

BUT

Pincha was light and easy; got it in one go, up and down. Even Karanda wanted to play; I took it up, and made the lotus and even SNUGGED IT IN, on the first go. Lowering, however, was kinda ballistic, knees landing RIGHT behind elbows. So I made it again, again made lotus, and then unmade it and exited. One to get in, one to get out. All is coming.

Mayurasana was stable (YES, "Supta K shoulders"), Nakrasana was lower to the ground (and harder, but less cheating), and Vatayanasana was "feet touching," which is SUUUUUUUPER hard on the balance. Hot damn!

Couldn't stick the wide-hands headstand or the bound half-lotus toe in the rollup before them, but all else was good. I even took the Tim's place "showy exit" from the seventh headstand (which as I practice them is the tucked-hands pincha position one), and clapped before tripodding and timbering down.

Backbends.

I'd been imagining, for about four days, doing my dropbacks both near and FACING a wall. What happens when I try to stand up is that my knees bend and the whole stand up becomes a knees-down topple, from which I then basically "Laghuvajrasana" myself upward. It's cool and it gets in my hip flexors, but standing it is not.

I was wondering if facing a wall would make the knees make contact WITHOUT toppling and therefore invite me to come NAVEL up, not KNEES up (figuring that the higher up I imagine myself coming, the higher I will, in fact, come).

So I stood about six inches from the garage, and dropped back. The heat and the intense practice were great for a deeper bend, and I was able to drop with my FEET FLAT, for the first time in probably ten weeks.

I could feel the feet turn out as I dropped, but I turned them back in (Matthew said that last summer: in answer to "Is it ok for the feet to turn out?" he answered something like, "Well, if you turn them out, just turn them back in when you land"). Then basically the formula was this:

1. Walk the hands in (my walk-in was about four inches).
2. Rock forward. Knees touched garage after each dropback, doing this.
3. Rock back. Intensify and repeat. Throw self toward garage.
4. Hands come up, but then gravity wins, and so I was back down. Over and over.

Inhale, come up. The first attempts saw me trying to get the breath pace right. The second attempts saw me doing it on breath, but not being able to beat the pull of gravity (like some kind of early rocket experiments; you flame out and then crash and burn). The third set of rockups saw me doing what I think probably looked a LOT like Grim's first backbend-to-standing.

Here's how it went: Inhale, rock, throw self toward garage. Hands come off rug and do little "jazz hands" movement in air, and then re-catch the ground. Second try: rock, throw, and hands come up HIGHER, like notably higher, and then gravity wins, re-catch the floor. But I FELT IT. I BELIEVED. "It shall be done!" So on the third rock up (which was the ninth, considering I'd done three dropbacks) I repeated: inhale, rock forward, throw self toward garage! And the hands left the ground and they KEPT leaving it. I saw the left one float, and then suddenly I was nose to nose with the garage! Shocker! I had to catch myself from face-planting right into the garage, and then I laughed out of the sheer absurdity of it. Then I cried for a couple minutes. Yes, a couple minutes, I'm not kidding.

Let us see if I repeat it tomorrow. The curse may be lifted. I may be developing a plan that I'll tell you all more about later.

Burst of Positive Energy, Sunshine, Block Party

It's all been very good today, except that the boy will not remain asleep, and no naps usually mean a big super-ugly fit of overtired-boy later at night. Currently he's asleep about seven feet to my north-northwest, in a chair with J.

Very positive vibes today all over. I taught an 8 am vinyasa class, and it was stouter than I'd planned. The deal is that the regular teacher is growing an ultramarathon practice (that's 50 miles, yo) so he's sometimes out of state running courses. Thus the subbing. Numbers tend to drop off when I sub (as all subbing yoga teachers discover) but I still had 15 people (that class is usually somewhere around 19-20; it can cross the 30s when New Years comes around, with resolution-makers joining on and whatnot).

It was great; we did a lot of salutations, a ton of standing flows, with binding everywhere, such as hands-behind-back Warrior III (Dighasana?, I think, in sanskrit, yes?), Utkatasana with Gomukhasana hands, bound Parsvakonasana (side angle), a Dhanurasana variation in Ardha Chandrasana, all sorts of stuff like that. I was thinking, "laps and circles," so if it could be bound, we bound it. People pulled "bird of paradise" (for which I've NEVER known the sanskrit), we did Dhanurasanas and Urdhva Dhanurasanas, Baddha Konasana, and a whole lotta "take it ups" from ashtanga vinyasa yoga. We did Janu Sirsasana A and then a bound, revolved version, we did Compass pose (sometimes called Sundial pose), and I led an ashtanga-ish shoulderstand closer. Two people asked where and when I teach, and a lot of folks just packed up and headed out. Maybe they were fleeing the scene :) or maybe they just always do that. It was a STOUT class.

But the energy of teaching a class of 15--when my usual is 2,3,4--was powerful magic. I went to my office, for school, which is nearby, and graded a handful of papers, and then headed back an hour later to sit in on an ashtanga class, where as usual Carol (who has been teaching me ashtanga for almost my whole five years at it) let me pull a full Primary. I was spotlit for Supta Kurmasana, where she got both my feet behind my head, and also my third dropback, still heels-up, but unassisted and less ballistic. I was thinking, "hands closer to feet!" and they were.

Sure, you're not supposed to practice on Saturdays, but I haven't had any practice outside of demo-ing poses for classes, since MONDAY NIGHT. I was freakin' desperate for some down-home ashtanga vinyasa, and I got some! Booyah!

The sun is out, and a recent Facebook quiz from Sonya has me thinking of tunes that I really like, such as the Doors' "Land Ho!" The lyrics are about a kid listening to his sailor grandfather's stories:

"Singin' songs of shady sisters,
and old time liberty,
songs of love and songs of death,
songs to set men free."

Plus, Krieger's outro solo is freakin' KILLER. Fat 1970 distortion, fingerpicked, slick and legato, quick stacks of pentatonic blues with delicious bends. Did you all know that I've apparently played guitar since 1989? That blows my mind: that's TWENTY YEARS. You'd think I'd be better at it. But I never really lived-and-died for guitar mastery, anyway. I like it, I can riff any guitar hero from the sixties or seventies, at least a little. But the two main problems are that I can't keep any rhythm but my own, and also that I'm an inveterate wanderer from mode to mode and artist to artist, so I'll start off in Hendrix and then detour into Garcia and then wind up doing some major-sevenths-filled Jane's Addiction jazz riff parody.

Anyway, post-practice, I was driving home in sunshine with "Land Ho" on in the car, and it was magnificent. Presence, summer, actually BEING THERE. Once I finish grading my class' final projects for the Dada/Surrealism session that just ended, I get full-on summer vacation, except that I have to read two theory books for the class I'll be teaching in three weeks.

*******************

Block party: about 40 minutes north of here. Just back. Spent about three hours, with a big yard, and probably 30 various grownups and 2 dozen children from ages 3-12. There was a 3-member jam band, a mostly-female drum circle, and neighbors wandering in wondering what the action was all about. Friendliness and badminton net and kids on bikes and scooters and people in the flesh that I'd formerly only seen on Facebook pages. Very cool. Parents can STILL BE RAD. This is the big lesson. We took the kid and went public. All kinds of people met him for the first time. The "nesting in" introversion, which was bad energy for me anyway, is OVER.

So, all good. Really, my favorite day of probably the last four months. There are some runners-up in there, but I taught, practiced, got my extroversion on, the kid was marvelous to everyone and got a thousand compliments on his cuteness, he didn't freak, didn't scream (until he was back in the car, HAH!), and we're back in the house, he's already asleep, and it's 10:30.

Let us wish for a good night's sleep for all involved.

Enough Fucking Seriousness.

Let us dream a little:

Nine hundred dollars a month goes into the (let's call it) Portland fund. Anywhere cool will do. What's cool? Coastline, progressive politics. Sorry, but this dream is pretentious.

Time heals all wounds: emotional stressy wounds, physical wounds, and most of all, memories and samskaras (as the yoga would put it).

Interactivity increases. ENGLISH appears. Skills can be shared. Stories told. School begins.

There are local studios. More than one. There's a basement that the local gym guys can move a home wall into.

Teaching continues, even at high schools if need be. Art, film, screenings in the other half of the basement. Uh huh: half 45 degree wall, half projection room. Yes, my friends. Let us dream. Indeed.

A base of education: physical, emotional, intellectual. Discussions and movement. Young people everywhere. Perhaps sponsored band rehearsals in said basement (J would never go for that in a million years, but I would).

Bending, concentration, candles, possession of the space, no room for insecurity, no interruptions. Purity. Asceticism.

Until I get over "doing" and "being" and there is just, as one teacher put it on my copy of one of his books, naught but "Enjoy Life!"

No history, no past, samskaras drying up like pods in desert sand.

Second, Seventh, Euphemism, now with extra Edit!

Karandavasana dreams. Lowering, now that I think I have a good foothold, as it were, on making the lotus upside-down. Dream dristi, inhabiting a gaze that's imaginary but still useful for reality. Good stuff, dreams.

I did Primary with my 2 students (regulars, used to the sequence) on Monday night. It was *fantastic*. Smooth, flowing, over, done, not enervating. The twists were a bit tighter than they've been in the past and the dropbacks more ballistic, but whatever. Everything worked.

But since then, seventh has taken over again, as it always does, as it must, as it cannot but do. J is working, pretty much 8-5, with an extended lunch break she takes here. We have company, but I'm pretty much doing baby care or at least baby observation, for that whole time. Then the kid's cranky hours are 4-8 pm, and then it's time to start putting him down. No practice time; no way to find any.

This is fine, because I have accepted seventh series as the truth. It's not a truth that I enjoy or get any self-realization out of, especially, but it dominates all of my other expressions of everything, and so be it. It is the truth. Newborns are totally selfish and self-centered and they can't help it. They cannot take no for an answer, and they can't negotiate. This one is especially fussy and noisy and still prefers carrying with movement. If you stand still, crying begins. He's a very, very difficult baby. Not easy in any sense of the word.

J once said to me that in Eastern terms, the newborn is the person with the highest suffering, because s/he is the most self-centered that s/he'll ever be in her/his entire life. But in the West, we think that newborns are the most innocent, a sort of tabula rasa, the "as yet unruined by experience" innocent soul.

This child proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Western view is utter bullshit and the Eastern view is completely accurate. It's not that he's not "innocent," it's that he's in what sounds like constant pain, simply from being BORN itself. He's dissatisfied, he's insatiable, he's incomplete, and there's nothing, NOTHING, that can be done to fix any of it. It's unfixable, and THAT is the tabula rasa. Broken agony craving a wholeness that NEVER EXISTED.

Now in Eastern terms, there's no angst to this. The child has maximum self-centeredness and therefore maximum suffering. YES, that is PRECISELY CORRECT.

What behaviors can I LEARN from this? That's not a question I can answer right now, but it's a persistent question.

***********************

While we're at it, let's tear a truck-sized hole in one of my favorite bullshit euphemisms: "You have to stop living for yourself, and live for your child."

I've already covered this: what's implied here is that the PARENT had been selfish and self-absorbed, and NOW, due to the child, has to SUDDENLY turn around and start being altruistic.

Bullshit.

So as a human being, I've always been self-absorbed? That's the start assumption? I've never loved anyone? Never served food in a soup kitchen? Never sacrificed my place in line to anyone else? Never let another driver cut in front? Never sacrificed my ego for any purpose at any time, to anyone or anything? It's all fucking "survival of the fittest" in its purest form? Life itself as LORD OF THE FLIES?

And then wait, it gets better:

ALL OF A FREAKIN' SUDDEN, a Neanderthal personified by selfishness MAGICALLY GROWS compassion and does an UTTER ONE EIGHTY and suddenly is entirely other-directed, right? Same error, different direction:

So now I'm all about the other, and I don't feed myself, don't take time for my personal hygiene, don't keep up my social networks, don't go anywhere; it's all about "living for the child," right?

Know who's selfish all the time, like our Neanderthal? THE NEWBORN is. Know who's incapable of "living for the other"? THE NEWBORN IS. Know who makes this fucking idiotic euphemism swallow its own motherfucking tail until it chokes? Yeah.

***********************

Now, on a mellower note: daycare begins on Monday, coming up. It's an expensive venture per week, but it buys us time to work, write, research, do all that good academic stuff. It's also going to buy me time to practice. We'll see how he adjusts; generally he likes visitors, so I think he'll like having different people around (seems to be extroverted, as I am). He might also learn some scheduling, as they will feed on a schedule and nap on a schedule. This might be very good indeed.


**************EDIT**************

Wait, wait, hold that train for a minute. I thought about this over lunch and saw the following:

I postpone my OWN quest for self-realization SO THAT I can assist the self-centered child in becoming LESS SO.

I reduce his suffering, by means of holding my own development at bay.

This seems true.
Still, I resent it. I resent ANYTHING that pulls me from my beloved warrior quest.
What is there to do?
Well, as I've said above, daycare may be a gift where this is concerned.
This would explain the viciousness of the first two months.
Quest on hold, COMBINED with exposure to pre-linguistic highest suffering.
Yes, this all makes better sense now.

Breathe, Karanda, Students

With five sun A's and 3 B's, Intermediate to Karanda with 5 wheels, 3 drop-backs and knee-stand-ups, and a 15-8 closing, in 65 minutes.

Emphasis on breathing, made this happen. Hangin' out in Pasasana, looking at the back yard grass, and breathing. Lookin' at the bean stalks, hangin' out in Shalabhasana B, breathing. And so on. No toes in Kapotasana, which is fine. No hand bind in Supta Vajrasana, also fine. Feet locked overhead, not behind it, in Dwi Pada. Again, fine. I made three lotuses in five attempts at Karanda, which is a record, but in two lower-downs, no success. One went to pieces and the other landed in the famous butt-"flump!" for which Karanda attempts are famous.

Dropbacks, hard. Hands and head, practically, for all three. Tighter today. But still, who cares? Breathe and you do.

The Tittibhasanas were still delicious; love that sequence. Yoganidrasana, while maybe not legal this way, is VERY much deeper when I hold the left leg back with left hand, and then work righty under the shoulder and hook the feet. Right hip did not permit a full Eka Pada Sirsasana on that side, so I held the foot with the left hand and did the pose that way. Breathe, do not think.

Then I went and taught a most-of-Primary (we cut 10 poses, I think) to five students. Yesterday I also had five students (all different ones). Perhaps there's some ashtanga interest in this town yet. There was a dude who can jump back and a flexible art student who I know can be carved into an ashtangi. There were two women who I only later found out were 50, who had great practices. It's cool to look at people ten years older than I am and still see them breakin' it down.

Tomorrow and the next day I teach a class, one at the studio, one at yet another venue, probably with yet new students, then Thursday my usual yoga gig, where we do Rocket, and then vinyasa on Saturday morning, and my usual Sunday yoga gig, and then a Monday night Intermediate.

There was weird ENERGY, like enthusiasm, not exhaustion, in Pincha and Karanda today, I was somehow very excited about getting vertical after all that back-and-forward of Intermediate. I no longer dread either Kapo or the Pada Sirsasanas; it's just move and breathe. Of course, my Kapo is totally half-assed, but I can breathe in my half-assed Kapo, and so it is NOT as half-assed as it USED to be, even though it LOOKS the same. I think that's a valuable lesson. The change in the pose has NOT been in how it looks.

I hope for more regular practice, so that I can add in the Kapo dropbacks. When I just get to practice twice a week, there's no time for screwing around with those, plus, practice isn't regular enough to make their benefits stick. Consider this my newest intention.