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I totally forgot (amid all my wondering about how my Ashtanga practice would affect a full day of zazen) to think about how a full day of zazen might affect my asana practice.

Answer this morning at Mysore practice: krink in the sacrum. You know the little sacrum place that pops in trikonasana? Well, it cracked a little, but the crack didn’t relieve the pain/tightness. So today’s title was “Full Practice with Krink.”

Another notable result of a day of zazen: a night of REALLY good sleep. Empty mind is peaceful deep sleeping mind.

Okay, so it took from 5:30 AM ’til noon for me to get the zazen dialed in. Figure that’s about 6 1/2 hours of sitting. And I’ll need 90 minutes for asana practice to keep my body on track. That’s going to eat up 8 hours each day. Gonna have to quit the job, obviously.

I was just in a team meeting. One of the designers made some reference to winning the lottery. “If I win, we’ll all go to Disneyland,” she said. Then she looked at me and said, “You won’t be happy there. We’ll send you to Tibet.”

I was highly amused, and strangely touched by her compassion.

Oh, and in other news, while I was getting my beauty sleep on Friday night, in anticipation of a long day of sitting retreat, The Cop was busy confronting and disarming a guy who was walking around with a loaded shotgun in a crowded parking lot.

A good zen question, looking at this, might be: Are our lives the same or different?

Om.

Yogamum left a comment on my last entry:

I am so intrigued by the idea of a sitting meditation practice. It’s one thing I’d love to learn more about someday. Right now whenever I try it, my mind will NOT shut up for even one second. It’s comical, actually.

Can you recommend any good books or other resources? I don’t know that I have time to seek out a teacher right now.

***

People have asked about this before, so I’m going to just write a little something about getting started with sitting.

First off, there are a million books on sitting and zen. As The Cop knows, because they are all over our house. There are books about the physical aspects of sitting. There are books about theory. Books about teachers. Books about individual practitioners’ experiences. Traditional inspirational tomes. There’s even a “Meditation for Dummies” book.

It does not escape me that I probably collect all these books because reading them is easier than just sitting. Sitting, as Brad Warner (yes, author of more books I can’t seem to resist) has pointed out, is boring.

It’s also fascinating, but perhaps not in the way one might imagine. For one thing, you don’t get to just sit down and experience enlightenment. Bummer.

And if you strive, you fail. (Flashback to asana practice!)

If you just sit there, though, you’ll find it is pretty funny, frightening, frustrating, irritating, horrifying, humiliating, humorous, amazing, boring to watch your own mind.

Much as my cat dislikes it when I watch him pee, so my mind seems to resist my prying eyes. It almost inevitably tells me that I don’t want to sit. Just like getting up for Ashtanga practice in the morning, as soon as you ask yourself if you feel like doing it, all is lost.

And if you keep asking, “What am I getting out of this?” you’re probably gonna crash and burn. You pretty much just have to do it without thinking about it.

And you’ll get to see your mind at work. Being busy and delusional and all that.

It’s not all that dramatic, but it is rather instructive.

For just a plain ‘ol primer on sitting, check out this link.

The sad fact of the matter, I’m afraid, is that you actually do just sit there. You try to meditate by some method (I’ve always liked just counting the breath to 10) and then things come up in your mind and then you start over. Again. And again. Ad nauseum.

But what else have you got to do? What better way to spend some time? Have no fear: your mind will think up ALL kinds of better things for you to be doing. But you know all the things your mind says? Well, they’re not always true or necessary or in need of immediate attention. In fact, many of the things your mind thinks of actually don’t need any attention at all! Big freedom just in realizing that.

So don’t worry when you start off. Quieting your mind really will seem impossible. It happens to everyone. One way to deal with it is to forget about trying to make it be still, and just be open to seeing how it jumps around. You really do have to spend some time watching just how wild your mind is. After a while, it’ll slow down. You know…with practice

Retreat at the zen center yesterday. We started in at 5:30 AM. Though somewhat light outside, it was quite dark in the zendo. Thirteen women. We started off with a silent tea, and then chanting. For some reason, the chanting in the dark stuff at the beginning of retreats always makes me feel just awful. I get too deeply inside myself and then feel kind of existential and bereft. No idea why.

Delightfully, it always disappears as the dawn breaks and the light creeps into the zendo. Then I feel crazy manic happy. Is it biorythms, I wonder. Ah, no matter.

So we sat and sat and sat, and as it turns out, Ashtanga practice makes sitting painless. I have to temper that statement, I guess. I felt no pain whatsoever for the entire day, but it was, after all, just a one day retreat. Usually the real pain kicks in late on the afternoon of the second day.

There are zafus at the zendo, but I dispensed with mine and just sat on the zabuton. Plain old siddhasana for the vast majority of the time, but towards the end, I threw in a few sets of half lotus. I considered trying padmasana for one round (25 minutes), but decided against it. In the zendo, there is utter silence. If I tried padmasana and then had to give it up in the midst of a sitting session, moving out of the position would have been a dramatic disruption. So I gave that little ambition a pass.

So the results of the experiment are in: Does practicing Ashtanga make sitting zazen more comfortable? Yes.

Did Ashtanga practice advance the way my mind feels in zazen? Oh, now there’s a whole ‘nother question…

Answer is: I don’t really know. Quite possibly so. Though not in the way I might have expected.

Whereas the asana practice made a direct and kind of linear improvement on my physical sitting, I can’t say it made my mind go deeper in the direction it seemed to be taking with just a zazen practice. Hmmmm. This is hard to explain.

In the old days, when I sat zazen, my body might be quite uncomfortable, but there would be moments where my mind was unbelievably quiet, just remarkably still. Of course, when you then notice the stillness, the whole deal is over, but that’s another story.

I did not, yesterday, find that I got to that stillpoint more quickly as a result of Ashtanga practice. If anything it was more elusive than ever. Interestingly, though, I was MUCH more accepting of the elusiveness, much less inclined to “chase” it. I had the sense that I just needed to keep sitting. Very much a sense of…well, practice and all is coming. I had MUCH more strength and elasticity of mind, if not quite as much (or so it seemed) sensitivity of mind.

Obviously, attaching words to all of this kind of turns it into something other than just the raw experience, and certainly here’s a good example of what Huang Po meant when he said: There is just a mysterious tacit understanding and no more.

Here’s the other thing that came up: At the end of the retreat, everyone had tea and coffee and sat around for a bit of a chat. There was a lot of talking about Roshi, and anecdotes about different teachers, etc. Just like you find when a bunch of yogi/nis get together.

I didn’t feel a part of the discussion, nor did I feel apart from it. More, I felt like it was lovely to experience the sangha feeling. But it didn’t feel like my sangha. Interesting. In terms of an actual community of people who I am affiliated with, I thought of the Mysorians.

And that’s when I realized I do not have a guru. And then I wondered if I’m really supposed to. I practiced with the Kwan Um school originally, and I did a retreat with the founder of the school, Seung Sahn, who was just a lovely man. But I always felt (and still do) more of an affinity for one of the zen masters in the school, who is now head teacher in Korea. Now I practice at the zendo in Tempe, which is affiliated with Joshu Sasaki Roshi. I did a retreat with Roshi, and he is just terrific. Again, though, I never felt that sense that I’d found a guru.

I suspect that if I ever met Guruji, I’d have the same experience: I imagine I’d think he was a remarkable man, and very dear, but I don’t think the guru thing would kick in.

Maybe that’s why Volleyball Guy is my teacher. He has that very American “no guru” thing going on. It kind of cracks me up, because Buddha told his followers: Be a light unto yourself; betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth. Look not for refuge to anyone besides yourselves.

Which of course, can only remind me of Brian in “Life of Brian,” when he says: Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t NEED to follow ME, You don’t NEED to follow ANYBODY! You’ve got to think for your selves! You’re ALL individuals!

The guru question remains open for consideration. It was weird, though, truth be told, to be around a group of people who consider someone their guru.

Me? I’m gonna turn to my buddy, Huang Po, who surely woulda been my guru, if I’d lived around 800 AD:

As to performing the six paramitas* and vast numbers of similar practices, or gaining merits as countless as the sands of the Ganges, since you are fundamentally complete in every respect, you should not try to supplement that perfection by such meaningless practices. When there is occasion for them, perform them; and, when the occasion is passed, remain quiescent. If you are not absolutely convinced that the Mind is the Buddha, if you are attached to forms, practices and meritorious performances, your way of thinking is false and quite incompatible with the Way. The Mind IS the Buddha, nor are there any other Buddhas or any other mind.

*Charity, morality, patience under affliction, zealous application, right control of mind and the application of the highest wisdom.

Past couple of days, every so often I’d think, Gosh, I’m looking forward to the retreat on Saturday, but HOW will I stay awake?

Ever since I started practicing Ashtanga a year and a half ago, I’ve pretty much been sleep-deprived. It really is the only down side that I can see to my practice.

I hate hate hate falling asleep during sitting. It’s reminiscent of falling asleep during classes in high school or college. You SO don’t want to, and yet there you go…drifting off into nee-nee-na-na-land.

I woke this morning at the sound of The Cop’s car alarm beep as he locked his car in the driveway. Uh oh, he’s home really early — I hope everything’s okay, I thought. He doesn’t usually get home from a shift until after I get back from Mysore practice. Ohhhhh, wait a minute. I vaguely remember turning off the alarm clock…

So I’ve had my first practice over-sleep since I started practicing Ashtanga. How convenient that I wrote just yesterday about the inevitability of failure

But wait. When I surfed over to Ashtangi.net, I saw mention on KJS’s blog of the Moon Day. Woohoo! Absolved by the universe!

I still need to get a nap in later and try to get to bed early. Still, no way I can catch up on 18 months of too little sleep before tomorrow.

Luckily, the retreat is a one day deal, and we start at 5:30. When Roshi is here, practice starts at 3 AM and goes ’til 9 PM over the course of a number of days. Yikes. Tomorrow’s a one day 5:30 – 5:00 schedule. The easy, informal schedule. I’ve not sat all day since I started practicing Ashtanga, and I am so curious to see how asana practice will affect zazen.

Happy Moon Day to all. Whether you’re conscious of it or not.

Lately, in my work life, I’ve been thinking about why folks are so afraid of failure. And, conversely, why I’m not so concerned about failure. Is it me? Am I a slacker to think failure’s okay?

At practice this morning, I realized I’ve always failed. Practicing taekwondo, climbing, running, even lifting weights — the rule is: go to failure. Same deal with Ashtanga. And zazen.

In taekwondo, or any sport, you practice a move repeatedly (to get it into muscle memory) until your form breaks down. That’s where you stop. Obviously, you don’t want to keep going once the form breaks down, because then you are teaching yourself the wrong kinesthetics — but you do have to push yourself to the point where things go to hell. And you have to do it every time you practice.

Climbing: sure it’s fun to climb easy stuff, but it’s instructive when you push your limits. You’re never going to improve if you don’t try climbs that are over your head. Not wildly beyond your abilities, but enough to give you a serious challenge. Enough that at some point you’re going to wonder, “Why am I here?!?! What do I do now?!” So you feel that stab of fear and despair and frustration — and realize all you can do is take the next step. Whether you nail it or not is immaterial. You can stop and cry, but once you’re done, you’re still going to have to continue.

Zazen: You sit, your thoughts come and go. You’re on a meditation roll. Then, boom, you realize you’re daydreaming. Or obsessing on a thought. Uh oh. Back to the drawingboard. Is that failure, each time you have to start over? No. It’s practice. You do it over and over and you fail again and again. Sure, you can spend time berating your performance and hating yourself and hating practice. But in the end, you’ll save time and energy by just getting on with it. Again. And again. Forever.

And all of this, of course, brings us to Ashtanga. Ashtanga is designed to bring you face to face with what you can’t do, every single day. Even if you have an exquisite practice, you will, every day, end with a pose you just can’t do. Is that failure? Yeah, it is. And it’s exactly where you learn about acceptance and patience and humor and despair and ambition and greed and humiliation and grace.

I’m so tired of fear of failure. Fear of failure is all about letting the ego think it’s better than reality. Reality is where clumsiness is, and gravity, and obsessive thoughts, and resistant muscle and bone. It’s where we’re human.

Maybe this is why I’ve always loved to be around “edgy” people — whether writers or musicians or extreme athletes or Ashtangis — these folks are always trying to get a little further than they’ve been before, with their art or their sport or their practice. And that means they fail often and fail big.

I often feel isolated in the professional world. People seem to believe that being “professional” means being expert and invulnerable and polished and perfect.

Blech. I am so OVER that facade.

***

Master Hyang Eom said, “It is like a man up a tree who is hanging from a branch by his teeth; his hands cannot grasp a bough, his feet cannot touch the tree; he is tied and bound. Another man under the tree asks him, ‘Why did Bodhidharma come to China?’ If he does not answer, he evades his duty and will be killed. If he answers, he will lose his life.”

If you are in the tree, how do you stay alive?

Felt yucky at practice this morning. I’ve had what keeps promising to be a cold for about a week. But nothing really ever comes of it. Last night I had a sore throat and runny nose, and I thought about taking the day off, but then of course I decided to just wait and see in the morning. But who knows how I feel at 4:30? Basically I am just an insensible entity padding into the kitchen and pouring coffee. I took my temperature to see if that might give me a hint, but it was fine. Did I feel bad? Heck, I don’t know! I wasn’t even awake.

So I went to Mysore practice. Felt a-okay once I got started, except for a kind of runny nose. And dizziness. Which is what always happens when I get a little cold. Parivritta trikonasana was pretty tricky, with the weird equilibrium and all. I had to actually abort two attempts on the first side, stand back up, and start from scratch. LOL! It brings yoga to a whole ‘nother level, when the internal monolog is simple: “Don’t fall! Don’t fall!”

Despite the dizziness (whoa! look out for parsvottanasana!) I felt quite good. Strong. Zipped right along through practice. Everything felt lovely and stretchy and pleasant. And then Volleyball Guy adjusted me in upavishta konasana. Usually I have my chin on the floor and my shoulders, but not my tummy. Today, though, I sure did! It was one of those dealios where you actually get scared. I was tempted to say “five” as soon as he smooshed me, because I could tell I was going to go way further into the pose than usual. It is fun, though, to be really scared and then just see what happens, without calling it off prematurely.

I rolled through practice at a really good pace today (in part because I had a meeting at 8), and plowed through the beginning of second (some day those poses will shape up into something more than the formless blob I force my exhausted self through at the end of primary). Then I got up to go to the restroom. Not actually because I had to pee, but because for the past couple of practices I’ve taken this little walk before urdhva dhanurasana. I know, it’s dawdling. Honestly, I do NO other dawdling ever! Still, though, it was noticed. I was almost out the door when Volleyball Guy threw his arm out to catch me and said, “I know what’s coming up next. I know the series!” I had to laugh. Okay, time to knock off the weird little walk before urdhva dhanurasana.

Tomorrow is home practice and then Friday Mysore. Saturday is a day off because of the retreat at the zendo. I’m looking forward to it, though the zendo is an even worse place for a cold than the shala. You are not supposed to move AT ALL, or make ANY noise. What’s the advice if your nose runs? Just let it. Yeah, no kidding. Everyone gazes at the floor of course, so I suppose if I need to I can stick wads of Kleenex in my nostrils. Some of the monks are pretty strict. I wonder if that’d get a chuckle out of them.

It was freezing this morning. Seriously. Our pipes froze, even. Yeah, the new ones we just had put in. Nature is stress-testing them for us. So sweet.

Anyhow, I put the Meow hat on, and the fuzzy slippers, and a BIG hoodie — and then I drove to Mysore in my Jeep, which does NOT have a good heater. It doesn’t matter usually, of course, since I live in the desert. Not so great this morning, though.

When I got to Mysore, I kind of squeezed into a small spot between Returning Guy and Renaissance Man. I usually try to get a nice airy spot, with lots of space, but not this morning!

Practice was sluggish and kind of yucky. Why? Last night’s Mexican food and tequila. Too much fat, too much onion, too much lime juice. Oh yeah, and did I mention tequila?

It wasn’t awful; it just wasn’t great. One good thing: I used to only be able to bind in marichyasana D if I was really empty. Now, though, a puffy tummy doesn’t prevent a bind. Haha! Now I can eat donuts with sprinkles and STILL do marichy D! Maybe that’s not the right attitude to take…

Pose of note: supta kurmasana. Despite my chat with Volleyball Guy on Saturday (when he reiterated that pasasana is what I’m “working on”), when supta kurmasana rolled around, he wanted to try something new. He gave me a small band for my hands to grab, and then crossed my ankles over my head.

At this point (and for a good while now) I’ve been able to bind my hands, but progress on the feet has been a little slow. Not impossibly slow, mind you. I can get my feet half crossed on the floor and still keep my hands bound, but it’s all pretty tight. Using the band for my hands gave me a little slack to work with. He crossed my feet over my head, picked up my feet and let my torso fall through. Well, “fall” sounds rather graceful and dramatic, like a waterfall — it was more like I kind of smooshed a little deeper into the pose. Like a puffy burrito in a Prana tank top.

That’s good enough for now, though.

The Cop and I have been on a Leonard Cohen jag, kicked off by The Cop hearing this interview on NPR. We watched the documentary, Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, and I’ve been listening to his music this morning.

We feel an extra connection, too, because Cohen practices with Joshu Sasaki Roshi, who is the head teacher at the zendo we attend.

And nerdily enough, both The Cop and I are great fans of how Cohen uses language. Not just in his poetry or song lyrics, but even just in the way he speaks extemporaneously.

Quiet day today — a usual Sunday. Cleaning while listening to music and podcasts, general household maintenance projects. And this evening we’ll go to my favorite Mexican place. The Cop disowned the place during the holidays, when we went only to find that they were closed for a corporate event. Employees were outside, distributing tickets for free margaritas and guacamole, so we’ll go and use those, and perhaps The Cop will forgive them for not calling us to let us know they’d be closed for a private function.

Oh, I have the NPR interview playing in the background as I write, and I just heard Terry Gross talking a bit about Leonard Cohen’s work, how it so frequently is about lust and love and appetites, and then she asks: “Did you become a Buddhist because your desires were so dominant?”

Haha! That’s always such a funny question. I think people often assume similar things about yogis — that mind, spirit and body are somehow incompatible, or always destined to be at odds. People always worry about desire and Buddhists — like we’re these huge ascetics. I always want to answer the question in a robotic voice: I am a Budd-hist there-fore I de-ny all feel-ings.”

Cohen rocks because there is desire in his work, and spirituality, and humanness. Well worth checking out the documentary, too, because he is delightfully straightforward and humorous and disarming. Not at all the tortured Buddhist one might expect

Saturday led. As I signed in at Starbucks of Yoga, one of the employees asked if I was there for Ashtanga. Yes. Well, class is probably going to start late, because there is a workshop by a Famous Yoga Teacher going on. Famous Yoga Teacher can’t read a schedule? I wondered. Perhaps that was too harsh a response?

The Ashtangis, all having received the same message, sat, stood and hovered around in the hallway. Tick tock tick tock. Time passes. Someone asks Sanskrit Scholar if Volleyball Guy is aware of the hold-up. She rolls her eyes and nods. Volleyball Guy appears. It is ten minutes past the appointed hour. He puts down his mat, takes off his jacket, opens the door to the room, and announces, “We have a class scheduled.” He closes the door and sits down. I say, Why do people say Ashtangis are pushy and aggressive? Everyone giggles.

Eventually the door opens and people start to exit. They look dazed. One of the Ashtangis says, “What class was that?” A workshopee pronounces Famous Yoga Teacher’s name. Ashtangi looks confused. Apparently it’s a name he’s not familiar with. Famous Yoga Teacher dawdles, chatting with people. I think she has on a unitard, which is something I’ve actually never seen in real life, but I don’t want to stare. The Ashtangis unroll their mats and make preparations.

And so the class began. Good class, too. A nice big, post-holiday class to generate heat. Mmmmm. Love it! On the down side, I forgot my hand towel AND my rug. Patagonia jacket had to sub in as hand towel. Its performance fabric is decidely not absorbent. Which is, admittedly, part of its performance criteria. It is not supposed to work well as a towel, and indeed it does not.

I practice next to Crim Girl, who actually runs across the room to hurl her mat down between me and Sanskrit Scholar, which makes me laugh hysterically. A woman with a mission.

Practice in general was uneventful — just nice and calm and strong. My allotted adjustment was in janusirsasana A. Volleyball Guy gives a janusirsasana A adjustment that is totally The Exorcist — your whole torso pretty much spins around. Alrighty then.

I’ve got baddha konasana happening as a balancing pose at this point. No kidding. If I push myself forward enough to tip my weight so I can get my head down to the floor, I end up balancing for a moment on my ankles. Butt not quite on the floor, head not quite on the floor. I keep going forward, though, so my head goes down (rather than my butt). I’m assuming gravity will eventually sort this out, and I hope so because it makes me feel kind of ridiculous.

A little hilarity ensued around urdhva dhanurasana, when Volleyball Guy asked those who usually stand from urdhva dhanurasana to work on chakra bandhasana. Earlier in the week, someone on ezBoard commented about chakra bandhasana feeling “delightful.” Characterizing the feeling one might get from chakra bandhasana as “delightful” was enough to start a humorous email thread between Sanskrit Scholar, The British Director, Crim Girl and myself — one where we speculated on some more accurate characterizations. So the very mention of the pose this morning started us all giggling.

I was decidedly NOT one of the chakra bandhasana attemptees. Crim Girl was, though, and I adjusted her (if by “adjusted” one means in a very awkward and likely somewhat painful manner) so her hands were closer to her feet. Bottom line on the chakra bandhasana adjustment is this: Crim Girl was willing to let me push her hands closer to her feet, and she knows better than to expect much finesse from me. Luckily, the quality of my adjustment isn’t gonna make or break her progress — she doesn’t have far to go before she’ll be able to get it on her own.

Between laughing and bending my friend into a loop, I managed a good number of deep, painless, core-engaged urdhva dhanurasanas. I’ve been doing a prep pose on Tuesdays and Thursdays that involves lying face up and threading my arms through the space in the back of a folding chair, then lowering my butt toward the ground while hinging with the lower ribs against the edge of the chair. Seems to be aiding the shoulder-opening — I was able to push my chest further forward and more perpendicular to the ground than usual.

All that said, there does seem to have been a hiccup in the backbending festivities. I believe it’s a nadi issue, as well as an alignment one. Yesterday morning, after practice, I was at work in a meeting and I started having the neurological effects that usually precede a migraine. I was taking notes and realized that there was a little squiggling blind spot in my vision. This was always the most common visual effect I’d get, back in the years when I had migraines frequently. A few minutes later I lost a good bit of the peripheral vision on my right side, and then my right hand got all buzzy with nerves. The pain, as usual, came about 45 minutes later, but it wasn’t a bad migraine at all, just a dull headache.

This morning, I felt a little migrainey before practice, but it actually cleared up during the backbends. Go figure. I feel like I’m jiggling a little nervous system switch that’s always been a bit poorly wired in me. It’s very much connected to my shoulders/traps somehow. I’ve always understood this as a “weird link” in my wiring, though I can’t say it’s ever been a particularly conscious awareness. Woohoo! Maybe it can be revised via yoga. Actually, I’m pretty sure it can.

I like how yoga ups the ante. Not afraid of the physical challenge to hamstrings? Willing to mess around with your spine? Okay, how about we threaten to explode your your nervous system or your head?!? Obviously I’m being silly. Right?

After practice, Volleyball Guy asked me what I was most concentrating on these days. I had my list all prepared: legs crossed behind my head in supta kurmasana, head to floor on baddha konasana without any push from a sandbag or adjuster, dropbacks, and pasasana. “Pasasana,” he announced. I’m amused he decided to trim down my answer.

So that’s it for the practice front. My Gift returned to college after a month-long Christmas break. You know, I knew I’d be sad when she moved in August, and then I thought I’d get better and more used to it, and then it’d all be easier. Duh! I felt pretty much JUST as sad this time around. What? No linear progression?

The question should really be: How can I always be surprised about lack of linear progression? I’ve been experiencing reality for decades now, and still it always catches me off guard.

A couple of posts ago, Vanessa left me a comment reminding me to engage the front of my body in backbends. She said Hamish had told her that many times and that it took her a while to “get it.” I certainly understand that, because I can be remarkably obtuse about obvious things. But son of a gun, for some reason I remembered what she’d said when I went to practice, and wow, what a difference!

I had, of course, heard the “engage the front of your body” advice. But I always tended to engage my abs only, and then push up through my hips. All of that is well and good, but this time around I engaged my whole core, and that made all the difference in the world. Seriously, it feels rather revolutionary. The first couple of times I did this, I had a heck of a time even understanding what it was I was doing. It is definitely reminiscent of the way you stabilize your core when you do heavy squats, a kind of pulling in of the muscles, balanced by a pushing out. I’m pretty sure it creates some intra-abdominal pressure, but I’m not savvy enough about anatomy to really explain it.

And the other detail is this: instead of just contracting my front abs, I am engaging the muscles all the way around my body. It kind of makes a muscular girdle around the lower back. I imagined that’d make the bending stiffer and more resistant, but it actually doesn’t. All it does is make the “edge” of the backbend recede by about 90%.

Very exciting, and I’m sure I’m overthinking and being awkward since it’s new, but I imagine this engagement will refine itself with some time and practice. And in the meantime, backbends feel rather thrilling. Oh, and one other thing: this engaging the front of the body business is a lot easier going down (e.g., dropbacks, ustrasana) than going up (e.g., dhanurasana, urdhva dhanurasana). If I can stabilize the core and then go backwards, it’s a lot easier to understand than trying to come up from the floor with the engaged core. I imagine that’ll clear up in time, too.

I’ve been wanting to blog about this for a couple of days. It’s the most exciting thing to happen in practice in a good while, but work has been a hellfest, so there’s just not been a moment to sit and write. The thing that’s interesting about work is that the hellishness is not because I don’t like the people I work with or for, and it’s not because I don’t like what I do. It’s just so freaking busy. All of the wigged-out-ness is something I make inside myself, and I guess that’s why it really starts to bother me. If only I could be better about putting it all down.

Over the past few days, two colleagues have asked me about yoga. One said that her stepmom, who is a practitioner, said that yoga is about balance. Both physical and mental. I agreed and told her that it was also about the breath — about being with the breath and using that to recalibrate continuously, both physically and mentally. She said something about how lovely that must be. We were both at work, late, talking about work stuff — and I had to laugh and say, “Yeah, well, this work stuff always reminds me I have more practicing to do!”

So that’s my problem with work. It messes with my perfectly calm sensibilities. Aside from that, it’s just fine. I say that half-jokingly, but I really am determined to find a way to balance this out — to be less affected, less attached, less inclined to go all vata. Yup. That and kapotasana some day.