PRACTICE. Yeah thanks I needed that.

Three for three this week, four drops/stands per, 12 for 12.

I believe it's time that I actually began BELIEVING that I bend backwards.

Determination simply hit a head, I'm not sure quite what happened, but I had officially had ENOUGH of my own nonsense for August-September, and practice just erupted out of that, no holds barred. Kid wakes up at 4 am and keeps us up until 6? Doesn't matter; practice at 9, ends at 10:30, and was brilliant. I SHALL NOT be stopped in this.

So what's it been?

M: Primary, backbends, close.
T: Primary, Pasasana (didn't bind), backbends, close.
W: Primary, Pasasana (didn't bind but got further), backbends, close.

I think right now that I'm going to rebuild Intermediate the "right way," because I am very confidently dropping-and-standing and so I have the "proper" Primary for Intermediate. Poses have retreated a bit from spotty practice: right foot up in Marichyasana D makes for one HARD twist, but it'll return. A year ago I was binding Pasasana to the WRIST, and that'll return. I can put lefty behind my head in an upright Supta K entry but CANNOT hook righty back there (that'll return too).

I take six wheels in two sets of three, then come down, and drop-and-stand three times, no misses, no aborted attempts. I then do a fourth and final backbend, Kino style, with two walk-ins, a fingertip creep-in and a pressup for five from which I then stand. It's intense, but basically it's Kapotasana in an Urdhva Dhanurasana position and it gives me confidence for ACTUAL Kapotasana which I'll add in later.

I take the long closing, 25 breaths in each inversion, 10 everywhere else.

There's a tweaky ligament inside my right knee, from doing Lotus the wrong way (too much up and not enough "outside") and I'm fixing that. The major pose I cannot do is Urdhva Padmasana in closing, without my hands. That's simple to fix. In a couple weeks this'll be healed and then it's REALLY on.

I'm not that sore. Some in the outer hips, some in the mid back, some in the shoulders. Not that sore at all. Outstanding.

Onward.

If it's lyrical enough, it's not obtuse.

Last week I saw a former roommate get married in a town hall ceremony, and it's cool because he and his bride live in the UK now, and it's a hell of a long story why they chose Bloomington Indiana as a first marriage site, with legalese and visa trouble and all sorts of other loveliness including Jersey lawyers and a road trip to the South.

We got talking about Facebook (because we are friends there as well) and I said, "I'm terribly obtuse on there, but people who know me well enough can read between the lines" and he said, "Yeah, when Emily came to visit, she filled us in" which was actually shocking in its revelatoriness because Emily, very unlike me, does not pull punches and does not euphemize by means of lyricism and code like I cannot seem to stop doing (on Facebook, anyway).

I enjoy occasionally not pulling punches and not using code here.

I am friends with many current and former students, some faculty and staff, some family, and a bunch of other people besides (aren't we all a blend like that, in our Facebook friends?) and so I have to be VERY CAREFUL what I post there, given those widely divergent potential reading audiences, and so I code everything.

Most of the time what I write is a quote that I detourn (reuse) to my own meaning, which is probably obtuse in its original and is CERTAINLY obtuse in its reusage. This makes many people happy (numerous of my former students tell me that I write the chewiest and most fascinating updates of anyone they know) and everyone else leaves it alone. Sure, sometimes it's for communication that I'd like to have but am afraid of having out loud (on that, remind me to talk about photos again), but sometimes it's purely to have said a thing out loud without having actually said it in a way that people can recognize.

Tonight I went to a show at the main gallery on campus (which is in the building in which I teach) and the billing was all "these two artists have communicated between Chicago and Slovenia (I think it was) by email, Skype, and even occasionally in face-to-face meetings" which led me to think that the piece was going to be about COMMUNICATION. Sure, globalism, technology, blah blah. Let's have it.

Not so.

The installation is a whole collection of paper cloud pieces hung from the ceiling, tiny Buddhist peace flags with print on them, and a lot of wooden trees, again, covered with print. A massive paper Octopus occupies the central space and there is a fort of sorts with meditation cushions in it. Two artists collaborating on a Buddhist space. Brilliant. I was so misled about what I thought it was, that it blew my mind purely out of suprise.

I haven't been practicing much. 1-2 a week, maybe 3 when lucky, for about two months. J says delicate things like, "If you'd just do less yoga, you'd have more time for the family," to which I do her the honor of not responding. But it's ok, because she works roughly 8:30-5, five days a week, in an administrative office that has to handle both confusion down below (undergraduates) and confusion up above and mostly FROM above (authorities who are interested in programs that SOUND GOOD but without regarding what the human and/or financial and/or institutional and/or bureaucratic COSTS of what said programs will be). It's phenomenal stress. As I've said before, J privileges this and her kid over our relationship, and baby takes all of the hours between 6 and 9 pm, and then J tells me "well just come to bed when I do" which means that I get to watch her sleep but do not get to read my Trungpa or do any seated meditation. Frustration for free and no enlightenment. Thanks.

Almost all (and I'm not exaggerating) of my obtusities on Facebook are about that situation. The ego pain, the past, the dying, the frustration. For some reason--and I think it's reduced yoga practice--September has been the month of CEASELESS LUST and no gratification. It's been positively ADOLESCENT in its intensity. Un-freaking-REAL. So I intend to begin, 5/week, however little or much, on MONDAY.

Here's where that'll go wrong:

October 11 (Monday) there is no daycare, so I'll do babycare all day BUT, there's an Intro to Intermediate that night, and I'll go. Hopefully.

October 15 (Friday) we take a flight to Colorado to see family at over 11 thousand feet. It's gonna be four days of altitude sick and headaches and last time we were that high up, the kid didn't drink much, which made J insane and unbearable to be around. It'll be madness. We come back, probably well-beat and unrested from our short "fall break" on Monday.

October 22 (Saturday) I plan on being at Kino's Chicago appearance for morning Mysore and then "hips and hamstrings." This isn't purchased yet, and I should fix that soon so that it has a chance of happening. I'll probably do Primary and up to Kapo.

Thanksgiving, someone'll probably ask us to travel somewhere, and now, with a kid who is intensely peanut allergic (something we learned by skin test in the past month), I more and more just want to say FUCK YOU PEOPLE, YOU FUCKING COME TO SEE US FOR A CHANGE GOD DAMN IT.

Winter break, of course, we'll be asked to do some kind of fucked up travel that wastes all our time and doesn't let me practice. If we're in Boston and for long enough, I'd LOVE to hit K's room again and see if she remembers me. I had fantasized about a south Cali trip over winter break but I know right now that I can't afford the time or the money. Dang.

I'm going to revisit the Buddhist art exhibition (and actually sit on those cushions in the meditation "fort") as often as I can. Daily, if I need it. Chill AT WORK? Not often you get to do THAT.

They had an interactive "write your own positive message" thing at the end, where you could add a paper "flag" of your own.

I wrote,

"Unanswerable question. It's fine; let it be. Act around it."

On Having Too Much to Do and Advanced Poses

As always, I have too much to do. Everyone does.

Having repeatedly failed to establish a practice in the house, I had planned to move to the Y (at the north end of town, same as last fall/winter/spring) and just set up the ritual early.

This of course did not happen (yet). There were days off daycare (and with no daycare run, said Y yoga is a waste of gasoline) and then there's a grandparental visit going on and that requires management of vehicles and which car is where when, and who has a carseat and who's doing pickups and at what time, and all of that alongside who teaches when and has to do what research and then suddenly time and space simply don't permit any yoga time.

So be it. You do, or you do not.

I still have an article to compose and no time in which to do it. I get two practices a week if I'm lucky, both at the studio, and so the yoga is also getting shortened, and the kid is often at daycare for an 8 hour shift. HOW can this be done? There's no time for anyone anywhere and everything is virtually overwhelming. It's like the new semester beginning, and you find that you must undertake what seems like an inconceivable amount of compression and productivity in order to move from summer to fall. It's a seasonal change, what Jim Bennitt, who was here two weeks ago, called a vata time (seasonal changes are vata apparently).

To paraphrase Ayurvedically, said flightiness requires more fire (determination) and more earth (groundedness). Precisely, if metaphorically. So be it.

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

Less than a week ago I did my "Intro to Ashtanga" workshop for the studio. I opened with a pose demonstration, modeled on and inspired by the ones that Kino does on her tour this year (I think of travelling yoga teachers as something akin to a Grateful Dead tour; you get groupies and discussion and "trading of sets" as it were, with all the videos that get bandied about).

Said pose demo had a pack of advanced poses in it, many of which look pretty in the photos which I arranged to be taken. But I'm not totally settled on this photography. Let's take a climbing detour in order to explain this ambiguity.

I used to set routes, when I had time. I like the combination of mental puzzle and physical movement, and so I set pretty hip-swingy technical-movement-oriented routes, which if I'm not there to give the "beta" (to hint to people what to do), are VERY hard routes to climb. Without my regular presence, people found these too hard, too challenging, and eventually frustrating, and then my "ratings" began to sink, largely because I was not there to teach. It's like taking a course that is very challenging and having the professor point you only to online lectures, without either translating the content or being around for questions and consultation.

Exactly like that. I was not there to consult, so people had to take their not-as-technical experience and confront my maze, and only Theseus was going to make it out alive.

So that ended.

A photo cannot teach you; it might inspire or it might frustrate, but it cannot communicate, and that's largely why I'm allergic to photography. I'm allergic to YouTube "teaching videos" for the same reason. A practitioner can only teach his or her own body, in a video, because the listeners are not REALLY THERE. If you're listening and your body simply WILL NOT DO what you see, then you're stuck, because the "teacher" is literally talking to him/herself. It takes some SERIOUS skill to be able to teach through a video (Kino has skill in this department).

So people have commented on said photos, mostly in the "wow, yikes, eek" vein, which is fine, but I notice that I want said photos to communicate, and they don't. I do like seeing what the inner experience looks like (how it manifests, if you will) but that's all for my own research, and I also like that the human spectators IN THAT MOMENT were able to have something that spectators of the photos were not.

How can one address the fact that an advanced pose in a photo is probably more offputting, more terrifying, than it is instructive and inspiring? How does one resolve the "Yoga Journal paradox"?

I have now succeeded in NOT posting during Mercury's retrograde.

Hah!

They say that the past comes to revisit during the retrograde, and optimistically, that one can make peace with said past.

Nope.

Past too ugly, too ferocious, to make peace with. It's been head down, helmet on, charge, daily tasks, concentrate on the moment, survive, hope for Sunday night.

There have been relationship difficulties, massive communication clusterfucks, and a lot of seventh series pressure. A whole Mars-Venus thing (note: I give no credence, NONE, not even a subatomic amount, to essentialist gender crap like that, I'm simply referring to it to characterize the vast difference between the priorities that J and I hold and how we communicate about them).

And, I'm doing an Intro to Ashtanga workshop next Saturday (six days from now) and so I feel that I really need to get that regular practice going. I promised that I'd open with a pose demonstration and I need to confidently be able to FBH and some other stuff (although I'm not going to rehearse that unless I end up doing some Intermediate this week).

So the idea is, practice each day. As close to classical as I can get it. I've had decent drops-and-stands recently and on Saturday, a very pleasant full Primary. Everything's as I left it. Always good to see. Feet still duck some, and heels com up, in the drops/stands, but when non-regular, that's how they get. All is as it should be.

See ya later, Mercury.

Seventh Series Aphorism

It is as if my life pre-seventh series is a wood-stemmed plant in the garden. A pepper plant, perhaps. A thing with age, generations, able to withstand the weight of the heavy fruit it produces. But that plant is dying, or dead, now.

And my seventh series life is a seedling; feels like it has just poked its head up. Unsure of its capabilities, new, vulnerable, shy even. But certain, and not to be destroyed, and in fact, invulnerable. In an almost Kafkan way.

So most of my experience is still death, simply because of time, because of memory, because of history, stories told. And the part that is life is still life, itself, but is new, is different, is a thing which will produce we're not sure what, yet.

When the seedling comes to greater maturity, there will be wonders and fruit and stories, and indeed, generations. But for now, the tiny green bud next to the tall fading browning powerhouse doesn't seem to be the most significant thing.

Now, on Rebuilding that Regular Practice, Right?

I have at various times held a 6/week ashtanga practice. It's hard. But it's not hard in the same way as trying to build a 2-3/wk ashtanga practice BACK into a 5 or 6/wk. Here are some of the notable difficulties:

1. When I practice say twice a week, I have big powerful practices, because I have plenty of rest. However, I usually only have that power for the poses I know well and can retain on a level of practice that sparse. This is not a building practice, not something where I can try to deepen my dropback or something like that. Twice a week is a keep-what-I've-established practice. While doing intense seventh series, it's sufficient, but unless I'm highly stressed, I want more of it.

2. There's a question of going for the NUMBER OF DAYS or the NUMBER OF POSES. Do I try to do SOMETHING six days a week, or do I try for my "classical practice" (whatever that is) for as many days a week as I can pull it? I am a fan of trying the classical practice as many days as I can pull it, or at least as much of it as I can pull as many times as I can. This is not what many people choose. In particular, people who don't practice ashtanga (or who practice some variation of it that's not classical) will practice "something" each day, and that rules if you're doing a studio promotion where you have to "bend for 30 days in a row" or something like that. Do a forward bend and some nadi shodana pranayama and you're "done." However, if you're an ashtangi and you're classical about your practice, even solo at home as I often have to do it, then taking the "eh, I'll do sun salutations" or "eh I'll do a Swenson short form" isn't quite the magic. I find myself actively reluctant to cut my practice short unless I HAVE TO (for, again, seventh series or whatever). This has had the effect of actually making me NOT practice rather than do reduced practice (and that's dumb in its own way).

3. So you've chosen, "as classical as possible, as frequently as possible." Ok. When you try to do that from a 2/wk practice, the first thing you'll find is that you are SORE on that second day. When you move from rest day to practice day, the soreness is notable. It tends to limit my second-day practice. This is a roadblock I'd not expected, but one that I'm used to when I'm doing 5-6/wk. Sometimes you're sore, you do less or you do less well, and it's fine, because tomorrow you repeat. But when you're doing limited days of practice and are used to easy power, that soreness hurts the ego more than it hurts the annamaya, you dig?

4. Conspiratorial things seem to appear to halt your regularity. For example: seventh series means I can't practice in the early morning, ever. Baby wakeups are random and my sleep is shot enough as it is. So today with a 10:30-1:15 class followed by a 3:45 doctor's appointment for the kid, practice time just gets squeezed out. Sure, I could have stuck a partial in there, salutations or even standing, maybe. And I may have to. Weekends and vacations, I usually can't practice unless I can get into someone's Mysore room and in Indy, that's impossible because there is no such thing. And Monday is Labor Day and studios are closed and so is daycare, and the led part-Intermediate is on Monday nights. So no yoga, followed by no yoga, followed again by a double no yoga. These kind of situations have to be negotiated.

5. Increasing the regularity of practice often has the side effect of DECREASING the intensity of your poses. At the start, and maybe for a while. When I go to increase my backbending, my outer hips tighten up, and last time, it was for MONTHS, and that means more difficult twists. Also, take Kapotasana. At the start, with regularity, the pose gets HARDER all week. You have to get used to it, and not just to having a final pose or any of that, but simply used to practicing THAT MUCH. This means that if Janu A used to be easy, it might not be some day. If Mari C is deep, it might not be. Poses get REALLY fluid when you charge up the number of days you practice, and you WILL lose some of your "full" full expressions. This is not to be worried about. Another way to put this is, you've chosen NUMBER over FULLNESS. Again, the ego burns at this "loss" forgetting that regular practice is itself, a gain.

6. The ego demands that full-power, well-rested practice. In my bodymind, this takes the form of imagining "performing" for a Youtube video or a senior teacher, anything that will actually GIVE me performance anxiety. What I do to contradict that is imagine demonstrating for my students. That pulls me right into bandhas-dristi-ujjayi and it mellows out the us/them of performance. Really regular (and I mean 5-6/wk not just 4/wk) practice doesn't so much burn out the ego as just provide no room for it to do this revving-up, performance-anxiety show. Ego wants me to do bigger practices (i.e., Intermediate instead of a Primary-and-some mix) and to hit the poses more deeply (i.e., to showboat). Oddly--and I think we all know this--true showboatability comes from focus and what's elsewhere been called good energy management. But then you're not looking at being looked at, so it's not showboating, which is one of the marvelous paradoxes.

7. Memory, desire and wishfulness. "Last year the pose was deeper, it didn't take as long" and so on. I'm filled with a sort of light terror about this one where re-inventing Kapotasana is concerned. In April before my shoulder injury I was climbing up the feet in Kapo A and seeing my feet in Kapo B, arms totally straight, like Urdhva Dhanurasana straight. I STILL can't fully believe I did that much pose. And it shows that I don't believe it. The key here is to abandon all of that. You achieved what? Uhh, I can't recall somehow. It's like abandoning practice notes; first I kept rigorous track (and I sometimes still measure hand-to-foot distance day to day in backbends) and now I'm more and more reluctant to talk about it, to "put it down" over there, to make it a thing.

Onward! Let's see if I can slip some practices into this vacation weekend.