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I know, it’s Nadi.

So I had my nerves cleansed on Tuesday night. Perhaps a bit too well-scrubbed. I have only toyed around with second series a few times, and each time I’ve been aware of pretty intense feelings the day after.

Yesterday, for example, I was simultaneously buzzed and exhausted–and curiously loose through my shoulders and lower back. Kept trying to eat a bit more than usual, to bring myself back to earth. By late afternoon, though, I was kind of headachey. All of which was cured by giving in and eating the dinner I craved: a large coffee and potato chips. And some candy corn. Seriously, it totally set me straight, physically. And I never eat like that. So no idea what that was all about.

Still, strange emotional feelings lingered. Because I brought My Gift from the Universe to her lupus doctor yesterday afternoon? Because while we were in his office, I was thinking about how she’ll be packed off to college at this time next year? Hard to imagine sending a kid with a chronic illness off to fend for herself, but of course, she has to grow up. Still, it’s haunting my psyche.

So how much of these anxious feelings are a result of Tuesday night’s practice? And what does it all mean? The traditional answer, of course, that I shouldn’t be messing with 2nd series. So I have to laugh–I’ve always been the person who tries everything, who does what she’s not supposed to do–why am I suddenly gifted with a teacher whose answer to my What should I do? type questions is always, “Well, try it and see.” Why does the universe never give me a straight, definitive answer? Haha. I know. The joke’s on me. Once again it’s my favorite zen answer: Just don’t know.

Or, I should say, interlopers. Doing rabbit.

Mysore morning at Volleyball Guy’s included a couple of Bikram practitioners workshopping poses like rabbit and head to knee pose. Volleyball Guy, truth be told, has a Bikram problem. As he’ll tell you himself, he complains about how lame it is, but he can’t seem to kick the habit. So now some of the Bikram folk have been appearing at Volleyball Guy’s.

I don’t feel very gracious about it, I’m afraid. But I assume I’ll get over myself. Ideally, they will decide they want to learn Ashtanga, and then he can teach them, and Mysore practice will feel normal again. You know, because the universe revolves around my desires.

Aside from my wanting everything to be the way I want it to be, practice was pretty good. Light and strong. As happened last week, led at night followed by Mysore in the morning added up to a nice, bendy morning practice. Sleep last night, though, was a little weird. I think my subconscious was wigged out about the unexpected eka pada sirsasana. A little disoriented by the bizarre new kinesthetic experience. What’s that I feel on my outer ankle? Oh yeah, I think it’s the back of my head.

Beyond the weirdo kinesthetics, there was also the sense that I don’t usually move my back quite that way. I imagine it’ll be quite instructive as regards kurmasana and supta kurmasana next time I do led primary–which is tomorrow night–but the fact of the matter is, I think of my practice as what I do in Mysore, which is up through Marichy D. So all of this eka pada sirsasana and kurmasana/supta kurmasana business is kind of hard to integrate. I guess I’ll think of them as research poses.

Only other really notable things: pain in my left ankle in Marichy D–no idea what that was about, but it seemed like a temporary glitch, and pain my my right wrist as I push back into down dog. It lasted just until I was warm, which is a little scary, because I remember the same effect (hurt, warm-up, feel fine) when I had tendonitis in my fingers from climbing. And it took a long time to heal.

Yup, Volleyball Guy likes to do led second series on Tuesdays. I was kind of overwhelmed, in my mind, when I stepped on the mat: long day at work, traffic on the way to Volleyball Guy’s, 5:30 PM when I am used to practicing at 5:45 AM…blah, blah, blah. Once we began, I was happy as a clam.

The Sanskrit Scholar was there, The British Director, The Other Dave and me. It felt great to do so many backbends! I’m still new enough to second series that there is a good bit of anxiety on my part–oh geez, what’s coming up next?!?–but in the end I had a grand old time. And I got eka pada sirsasana A & B on the left side for the first time. All of my practice of this pose as I watch a bit of TV in the evening–which I started doing because it gets the kinks out of my sacrum–has paid off. Sure, My Gift from the Universe rolls her eyes and says, “Oh Mom, do you really have to do that?!?!” But in the end, it was a good idea. Still, it scares the heck out of me when my foot hooks around my neck–totally feels like I’m going to get stuck somehow.

Volleyball Guy left us to do our own closing sequences, and as he closed the door and went into the house proper, I looked at the others and said, “Do you think it seems to him that every time he opens that door, we’re here?” Because we’ll all be back tomorrow morning at 5:45 AM Mysore practice. Home practice has much to recommend it, but it sure is lovely to practice with these people.

Mind itself is buddha.
Practice is difficult. Explanation is not difficult.
Not-mind. Not-buddha.
Explanation is difficult. Practice is not difficult.
–Dogen

Had to include this poem–it made me laugh, as I could imagine Dogen writing about Ashtanga and blogging.

The moon was beautiful over the desert last night. Evening practice today. Volleyball Guy likes to do second series on Tuesday nights. That ought to be interesting.

This morning, Neti had some interesting thoughts about how to deal with conflicting information about what is “right” in practice.

This post made me think of a story that Zen Master Seung Sahn used to tell about chanting. In the story there is a question about what kind of chanting is “correct” chanting. Folks in the story are unclear about which is the best chant. Here’s a bit of Soen Sa Nim’s comments:

Practicing will not help if you are attached to your thinking, if your mind is moving. Taoist chanting, Confucian chanting, Christian chanting, Buddhist chanting: it doesn’t matter. Even chanting, “Coca Cola, Coca Cola, Coca Cola…” can be just as good if you keep a clear mind. But, if you don’t keep a clear mind, even Buddha cannot help you. The most important thing is, only do it. When you only do something one hundred percent, then there is no subject, no object.There’s no inside or outside. Inside and outside are already one. That means you and the whole universe are one and never separate.

Seung Sahn died in November of last year. I miss having him around. His stories were remarkably simple and remarkably instructive at the same time. I was both naive and arrogant enough to think they were unsophisticated when I first heard them. Duh! Not.

Perhaps the best thing about the stories is the compassion that they suggest. Soen Sa Nim always said “Just do it,” which in Ashtangi-speak means “just practice.” But the underlying assumption is that one should practice with compassion. For everyone. Including oneself. Which is easier said than done, as I’m sure many Ashtangis know.

I wonder if we don’t, as a group, tend toward the hypercritical, toward lots of thinking. Like Neti, I overexert, I think too much, I am critical of my attempts. I have to be really careful not to disparage myself moment by moment as I practice. And that’s perhaps my biggest challenge and the greatest opportunity of practice–I can spend time on the mat being critical, or I can let go of that mind and just practice, and feel the grace and the acceptance and the love. And maybe if I do it over and over again, I can bring that clear mind into everyday life and share it.

Thanks for the good morning post, Neti! And here’s the link to the whole chanting story, if anyone’s curious: http://www.kwanumzen.com/primarypoint/v14n1-1996-spring-dssn-kobongstrymind.html

Doing zazen is a bit like putting your whole life on the stove, turning up the fire and watching the dross you had unconsciously presumed to be yourself bubble away in the misery of self-confrontation. In the beginning years of zazen, you are many times brought face-to-face with dimensions of your personality that you did not know were there and did not want to know were there. Often you experience emotional and physical pain that represents in an unmistakably primal way your own resistance to transformation.

–Spacious Body: Explorations in Somatic Ontology

Familiar, huh? Easy to apply this to an Ashtanga practice.

An interesting thing about this book is that the author relates many of his zen experiences, which most people think of as “mind” experiences, and then applies them to the Rolfing process, which most people think of as a “body” experience.

Good passages in the book about the creative process, from which all transformations arise, and the necessary “allowing” that fosters the creative process. He speaks about passivity and about willfulness, and suggests that both come from a conflicted, defensive orientation to the world. And that that orientation, built and reinforced over a lifetime, hinders full awareness. If your being is a manifestation of defensive responses accreted into physical form, it’s going to take some adjusting and burning off to clear things up. I can’t help thinking of Ashtanga as a mode for attempting this. But perhaps any practice that forces you to confront yourself would work? And what practice, practiced mindfully, doesn’t force you to confront yourself?

Today is my day off from practice. So it’s all about coffee and football games and lounging around. Tomorrow is a Moon Day. Yay! Last night The Cop and I went out for dinner (standard Saturday night behavior) and then came home and tried to watch a movie. Miraculously, he fell asleep before I did (usually I am the party pooper), but I wasn’t far behind. Perhaps I will never view a movie in its entirety for the rest of my life. Are all Ashtangis exhausted in the evening?

Sad to say, the super-flexible morning practice I had yesterday at Volleyball Guy’s did not repeat this morning. Oh well. It would have been a lot to ask for–after all, I was tied up at work until 7PM last night, and then we went out for dinner, and yes, my one drink did taste especially good and strong–and this morning I discovered that it tasted really strong because apparently it was really strong. Duh.

A couple of times a year, my work requires a Saturday half-day. And today’s the day. We host VIPs from all over the world who want to audition to teach seminars for the company. So today was home practice, much too early, a bit hung over, stiff, sore, and distracted about how much time I have before I have to be at work. LOL! Not the most conducive conditions. And yet, it was just fine. Moments when I was really present, moments when I was concerned with all the other stuff.

Last night at dinner, The Cop and I discussed Ashtanga (well, I discuss it on a daily basis, but this time he brought it up in relation to himself). As I’ve told him before, he would 1) be a talented practitioner, being long-limbed, light, strong, and quite flexible, and 2) benefit greatly, from a meditative perspective. He is curious about the practice, but he also has many job-related practices he needs to keep up with–martial arts/fight training, practicing at the range, running, weightlifting. He has a full plate.

But he seems to understand that his job puts him in a position to always take a rather negative view of humanity, of always expecting the worst. And somehow he sees Ashtanga practice as a way to curb this tendency. It’s interesting that he senses this. Also not quite time yet for him to practice, I think. But I imagine he will eventually. When I hear people being curious, I always sense the karma bringing them to practice. It’s like hearing deep, deep into their pasts, before they were even born.

Usually the 5:30 PM practice followed by a 5:30 AM practice is pretty daunting. At least one of them is usually rather lacking. But this morning, I must have still been warmed up from last night’s practice. I felt raring to go after my first surya A.

Volleyball Guy was very hands-on today, and highly experimental. I got deep adjustments on trikonasana and parivritta trikonasana–usually he just does adjustments to the surya down dogs and then leaves us alone until the prasaritas. But today he was busy right from the get-go.

And I got great adjustments in Marichy A and B. He left me to my own devices on C, but was back for D. D is what I am really working for–he knows it’s where my focus is–and he adjusted me until I was nice and compact and pretty well-balanced. My wrapping arm isn’t making it around the knee tightly enough, but my back arm is working well, and the base of the pose is strong. Volleyball Guy never says too much about one’s progress–so it was especially sweet to hear him say, “This is good. Keep working the problem. I think you’ll get the bind in November.”

And then he went into total experimental mode. Before backbends, he had me doing Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana and Eka Pada Setu Bandha Sarvangasana. Uh, okay, I thought, bemused. So then we went on to backbends and dropbacks and everything was back to normal until sirsasana. I felt his hands on my heels and he said, “Go into a backbend from here.” I’ve never entered a backbend from headstand, but I’ve got to say, it was quite instructive. The weight of my lower body floating in the air somehow showed me how to work into the thoracic area in a way I can never quite find during backbends. It was almost like doing a backbend underwater–free of so much gravity.

So I have no idea what Volleyball Guy was thinking, or even if he was thinking at all. Maybe it was just instructor intuition. I feel more coordinated and kinesthetically aware in headstand than I do in Urdhva Dhanurasana so it was easier for me to work with and feel my spine in that crazy backbend. For whatever reason he thought of it, though, I am impressed, and I am grateful I get to practice with him.

A little something from the new book (listed in the side menu–Anatomy of Hatha Yoga–and yes, I have a “book problem”):

Practicing with total attention within the body is advanced yoga, no matter how easy the posture; practicing with your attention scattered is the practice of a beginner, no matter how difficult the posture.

Terrific book: printed on that shiny, “slippery” kind of paper that makes a book feel really dense. The opening chapter is heartening, because you can tell the author is a devoted yogi. And then he launches off into all the anatomy questions one could possibly have: chapters on standing poses, backbending, forward bends, twists, headstand, shoulderstand.

Here’s one interesting tidbit/experiment: he talks about flexion reflexes (pain reflexes) and reciprocal inhibition (flexion reflexes activate flexor muscles to get you out of the pain situation, and at the same time, they relax the extensors–which allows flexion to take place more effectively): okay, now when you are stiff in your back (e.g., first thing in the morning), try lowering yourself into a standing forward bend with your fingers extended. Note how far you get. Come back up and flex your elbows a bit and flex your fingers tightly (make a fist). Holding that arm/hand position, bend forward again. It’ll be easier and deeper. The tightly flexed hands inhibits the motor neurons in the deep back muscles, allowing them to extend more.

I love this stuff. People have been talking on the Ashtanga board about how happy they are with their practices lately, how it feels exciting and playful–like being a kid again. I’ve been feeling it, too–that sense of devotion bordering on mania.

Yesterday a magazine editor who has published some of my writing wrote and asked for more work in December, and it made me wonder if I’d have time to do much writing, if I want to do much writing. Mostly I’ve been spending my creative energy on yoga. I’m sure other writers might wonder why I find so much gratification in exploring physical poses with my body–after all, there is no “final product”–but on the other hand, I’m accustomed to “normal” people wondering why I spend time writing poems on pieces of paper. Guess it’s all relative. I have a mania for playful, useless pursuits

Well, sometimes it’s all about letting go. Of attachment to daily practice, in this case. Ladies holiday: to practice or not to practice? I would not, if I attended a traditional shala, out of respect to the tradition of the community. But I don’t practice at a traditional shala. So inevitably I just go ahead and practice, since I’m making these decisions on my own.

Listen to my body? Ummm, that can be rather problematic. I have kind of ignored it over the years, when it didn’t want to go to the gym, or when it wanted to sleep instead of going to work or school, or when it didn’t think climbing a particular rock face was a good idea at all. I kept being suspicious that it was my mind that was complaining or being scared, and that perhaps my body was okay with everything, and that if I just take one physical step in the direction I intend to go…voila!, here I am, a couple of hundred feet up in the air, and hey, easier to climb up at this point, rather than down!

Okay, so I am attached to practicing 6 days a week. It’s well-defined and easy to remember. Sundays off. Period. But this morning I had an idea: gee, you’ve been awfully tired, the tradition says to lay off today–how about trying that out?

So I spend time reading instead of practicing and eventually find myself looking at a calendar of Moon Days, with this nice metaphorical explanation of the effects of the moon:

The full moon energy corresponds to the end of inhalation–an expansive, upward moving force that makes us feel energetic and emotional, but not well grounded. The new moon energy corresponds to the end of exhalation–a contracting, downward moving force that makes us feel calm and grounded, but dense and disinclined towards physical exertion.

Huh. Perhaps I will pay attention to how I feel around Moon Days. Which I usually also ignore. I know, I am revealing my ignorance–I should have attended to this sort of thing long ago. But here I am, making note of Moon Days in my calendar and thinking, “Whoa! If I don’t practice on Moon Days, I will actually be practicing 6 days a week one week and 5 days a week the next!” And the thought of a little extra rest, a break from my headstrong 6 days a week, sounds just delightful. Like a little present from the practice. To me, who always has to do things the hard way.