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Slept pretty poorly last night. The dog kept getting up, so I’d go open the door to let her out. She’s been feeling kind of stiff lately, or so it seems, and she’s developed a bit of reluctance to go over the back door threshold, which is metal and a little slippery. I had the bright idea of putting an old yoga mat over the doorway to give her more purchase. So there I was at 1 AM, 2AM, 3AM, rolling out the yoga mat like a runway for her into the back yard.

So I’ve finally started getting into my shoulders, which is evident by the soreness that greets me each morning. Took a little time to research this morning and verify that it’s what I was thinking: yup, the insertion points of the deltoids. That’s what’s killin’ me these days. Right where the heads of the delts insert into the humerus. I imagine most people struggle with the lower back in kapotasana — for me, it’s a shoulder thing. Found a nice, concise page on shoulder anatomy. Scroll down almost to the bottom for a picture of Flex Wheeler. Oh yeah, that was me for years and years (except for being a white girl and weighing less than one of the dumbbells he’s lifting). So I made pretty much all of this shoulder karma I am now trying to burn through. Day after day at the gym, doing shoulder presses and delt flyes. Silly me. Shoulders were always my bane — I had to work very hard for very little return. And now? Trying to undo it all.

Mysore practice was good this morning. Day before a day off, which always feels a little challenging — at least psychologically. Once I got started, though, I felt nice and strong. Definitely was in a deep, dreamless trance by the time I got to the end of primary. I actually got off my mat and made a loop around the room before I started in on intermediate poses: I felt like I needed to bring my consciousness back to the room a little bit. I wonder if there is a level of meditation that’s too deep for physical practice? I felt fine with it in primary, but a little leery of being that deep during kapotasana. Laghu vajrasana is like magic lately — I used to have to keep a very specific amount of tension in my muscles during the five count, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to come back up. Today, though, it felt like I just breathed myself back up — very much like a helium balloon. I am not a floaty type, so it was quite a fun feeling.

Supta vajrasana was self-assisted with my trusty Manduka. And the roll actually does a very nice adjustment to the arms/shoulders that you don’t get with the human adjustment.

At the end of class, I rolled up my mat and put it in a corner of the room. We can leave mats at the shala now. Very convenient. Volleyball Guy mentioned that we could leave them a few days ago but no one did. I think we were all kind of nervous about the idea, since we’re accustomed to toting our mats around. Now, though, people are starting to leave them, and it’s very charming. Very much like home.

When I signed up for my eyelid surgery, I got six microdermabrasion/chemical peels. Because nothing says, “thanks for paying us to cut your eyelids,” like a few free chemical facial masks. Needless to say, once I had the surgery, I wasn’t in the mood to be slathered in acids. So I waited a bit. Until this very week, when I went back to claim my prize.

First the microdermabrasion, which is applied with a pretty cool tool: a hose shoots aluminum oxide crystals through a wand that has a vacuum system, so it blows the crystals onto your skin and sucks ‘em back up as they bounce off the skin. The whole thing was entirely painless. Then there’s the application of chemicals. In layers. After the first one, the technician paused for a few moments, then said, “On a scale of one to ten, how painful does it feel?” My skin pretty much felt like the inside of your mouth feels after you eat a few Red Hots. “I don’t know,” I told her, “Maybe almost one?” That answer meant I got another coating of chemicals. Still nothing more than a few more Red Hots. A couple of other layers, none of which felt bad, but a few of which smelled pretty awful. One last layer, and suddenly my skin felt like the inside of your mouth when you eat too many jalapenos. But that was the end, so it wasn’t bad at all.

I looked a little red and shiny, but that was the extent of it. Until the past couple of days, when I find myself all peely — and broken out on my chin. I hate it! I think I have more zits on my chin than I did throughout all of my teen years. I took one look at it and decided, “That’s it! No more chemicals!” This is supposed to be a six week process. No way. It’s one thing to pump me full of chemicals and cut me up and sew me back together. I mean, that’s a one day thing and then it’s all just getting back to normal. Dramatic but quick. This slow, drag-on-for-six-weeks thing? Nuh uh. Not gonna happen.

I think it’s a vata thing, not unlike my response to a slow adjustments, lengthy explanations, drawn out meetings: UGH! Sanskrit Scholar laughed one day when we were doing something slowly and I told her I get confused and disoriented if I can’t move quickly. Kind of like how I read two books for work over the past two days. Great books, great ideas — I read ‘em, documented the important parts for our project, and will pretty much forget 99% of it within a couple of days. Except for a few important bullet points. I guess that’s why I’m so addicted to documentation — without it, I’d forget everything.

Improv class this morning. Started right off with vasisthasana and vishwamitrasana. Uh oh, I thought. But we settled in and spent some time on my current hunk o’ second (pasasana through supta vajrasana), which was nice. Since the new shala opened, I’ve been doing the usual Monday, Wednesday and Friday Mysore practice, along with Saturday led primary. Used to be that I’d do home practice on Tuesday and Thursday, and take Sunday off — all of which added up to 5 shots at the intermediate poses per week. With my new schedule, I take Tuesdays off and do home practice on Thursdays. And while I was eager to attend the Sunday improv class, I was a little concerned that it’d mean I’d only practice the intermediate poses four times a week. So anyhow, I was happy to hear Volleyball Guy call for pasasana, and happier still as he proceeded to move us through the rest of the series up to supta vajrasana.

Speaking of supta vajrasana: yesterday, in a comment to my posting, Inside Owl (I’d link to you, A, but looks like your site is off-line today…) mentioned a Manduka-prop self-assist for supta vajrasana. What?! I am the biggest tool nerd in the world, so the very thought of using my mat to assist me in supta vajrasana was just thrilling. (It’s not just electronic gadgets that I love, but any tool. From smart phones to butter knives, any tool that gets a job done makes me curious. Nothing more delightful than images of chimps using sticks as tools to fish for termites. I have no idea why tool-use pleases me so, unless it’s some kind of flashback to a previous chimp life.)

Anyhow, IO wrote back and told me how to use the Manduka to self-assist. Roll it up, use the very end of the roll to sit on, then push the roll into your sacrum and lean back over it. For sure, I thought I was going to crash on my head, but no! It really works! Yay for self-sufficiency! Of course I had to show all the Mysorians this morning, because a chimp always shares this sort of thing with the rest of the tribe.

I also shared “the rack.” Brought it along to do show and tell. Everyone got on it and stretched and groaned and asked where it came from. It got set aside for a bit, until Volleyball Guy turned it on its side and sat on it during class. “A very good prop,” he joked as he sat there. “I’ll do five more breaths.”

Other notable entertainments during class were eka pada sirsasana and yoga nidrasana. I have some claustrophobia issues with hooking my leg behind my head, and I’m hoping it diminishes by the time I get to those poses in my own practice. For now, I’m not stressing. They’re off my radar for the time being and no sense creating a mental block.

About an hour and a half into class I felt exhausted and starved. Pretty unusual. I limped through to the end of practice and had a deep savasana — and immediately thought of a leftover burrito in the fridge as I came to. How yogic and mystical. The burrito was left from My Gift’s visit this week. She forgot to bring it with her when she went back up north. Handy for me. I talked with her a little last night: she went hiking at the creek yesterday and burned her foot on a rock. Badly enough to blister. It’s unnerving to have to do Mom first aid from a distance. But I also recognize that it probably wouldn’t be healthy for me to drive 2 hours to inspect a blister on an almost-20 year old. Believe me, though, the impulse is there.

Nice led class today. Then lunch with The Sicilian, Sanskrit Scholar and The British Director. The Sicilian is moving to San Francisco soon, and The British Director showed us plans for her new home in Utah. She won’t be leaving for a couple of years, but the writing’s on the wall: things don’t stay the same. I write that with a little smirk, that the writing’s on the wall. I mean, it is, all the time, in all situations. Still, I always try to hang on. My little conditioned existence.

Volleyball Guy talked a bit at the end of class. Suddenly he asked me to critique his zazen posture. I had to grab my glasses out of my bag, because I skipped the contacts this morning. He got into padmasana, then started fidgeting. I asked, “Do you want me to respond like a zen monk?” and followed up my question with, “STOP MOVING!” I saw my opportunity to add in an extra tidbit: “AND NO YOGA BREATHING!” Everyone laughed. The point of this was the distinction between zazen and asana practice. That they’re heading in the same direction, but distinctly different in practice. Just as your consciousness stays awake in zazen (though you are perfectly still), so your body stays awake in asana (though you may appear to be still).

During class, Volleyball Guy used the phrase “move around under the skin,” which I took to mean that practitioners shouldn’t crystalize in postures, instead remaining sensitive to the moment, and careful to not fall into habitual kinesthetic patterns. That it’s essential in a physical practice to destabilize habit — to not hang on to being able to do a pose in a certain way, at the expense of exploring it more thoroughly. God, so finger-pointing-at-the-moon. As soon as you use concepts and words, you have to wonder what people are hearing, what they are intuiting, whether you can point them in directions, whether language can work at all. As always, I am flummoxed by the very idea of trying to explain what needs to be explained in order for people to practice yoga.

You can make the case that nothing needs to be explained. You can make the case that there’s an enormous reservoir of knowledge about yoga that should be explored. As usual, when it all boils down to words, I feel vertiginous. Hmmm. Is there a yoga of words?

This morning, as I did my dutiful kapotasana, assisted by Volleyball Guy, I thought: “Yes, I have my toes, but getting to my heels is gonna be a looooong haul.” Of course, I didn’t actually think it in words — I just had the strong physical realization. The inches between my toes and my heels have never seemed like a big deal at all, but from the perspective of kapotasana, they are a long journey. A whole ‘nother island, to think of it in Second Life terms.

Volleyball Guy doled out some super-good adjustments today: hanumanasana (a rare, 50%-word-based adjustment), supta kurmasana, and an astonishingly good baddha konasana assist. And as per usual, he was right there for kapotasana, supta vajrasana and dropbacks. Great moral support.

I took a moment to help… gosh, I don’t know what to call her. “Noodle Girl” doesn’t do her justice, because she has a very elegant beauty. I guess I’ll go with “The Swan.” Anyhow, this gal has become a regular Mysorian, and she is a backbender by nature. Chakra bandhasana? No problem! She was setting up for laghu vajrasana and kind of puttering about, and made a laughing reference to performance anxiety. I had finished my regular poses and was taking a breath before urdhva dhanurasana, so asked if she wanted me to spot her, and she said, “sure.” I then witnessed an exquisitely delicate backbend that ended with her head on her feet and her hands on her knees. Very much a different laghu vajrasana than I do! It was as if there is no muscular tension in her body at all, or if there is it is so evenly dispersed that you don’t notice it. She can’t get out of laghu vajrasana — I’m assuming because there is no muscular tension and she just sinks into a kind of equilibrium. What kind of life (or lifetimes) brings you to a place where you have so little tension? I wondered. I often wonder about the karma that brings us to our physical realities. Hers was so remarkably different from my own.

Note to self: Still very taken with the laghu vajrasana/kapotasana combination. It’s genius.

Yes, there are natural forward benders and natural backward benders, and people who tend to be strong and people who tend to be flexible. It makes perfect sense to me that I am a forward bending strong person. It was astounding to so closely watch a backward bending flexible person. Almost as if we are different species. All of the energy in my body runs in habitual manners — and when I get into a pose, I am conscious of the energy in the affected muscles (whether contracting or stretching) and all the connection points (usually joints, but sometimes bandhas) where it seems like the energy turns into motion and/or strength. I’m sure this same thing must be going on with The Swan, but there isn’t the same… well, I can only describe it as “explosive” energy contractions and surges. At least nothing discernible. For her, it all seems to be very smooth. It must be cool to teach different students and see these things: we take it for granted that every person’s psychology is highly individualized, but tend to think that body mechanics are relatively similar. Very much not so, apparently.

Tova asked me about fear. Specifically, about why I feel fear in kapotasana. When I think about it even for a minute, I realize that I am not afraid of kapotasana as a particular asana. I do remember, though, that when I first started doing backbends, I was astonished by how hard my heart beat, how frantic it made me feel. It didn’t make sense. Why would a backbend kick off such strong physical reactions? It was like a huge unmoderated dose of adrenaline.

I am 105% forward-bend prone. My default mode is forward bend. It’s my physical (and, likely, psychological) preference. Ever since I was a kid, bending forward was more fun than bending backwards. Is it old karma? I don’t know. At the very least, it’s a habit of this lifetime — which I intend to reverse. So it’s not that I fear kapotasana, it’s that backbends kick off the physical responses that humans get when they feel fear. And, in the interest of just labelling things without closely examining them, I then identify it as a subset of fear.

Kapotasana is the most intense backbend I’ve ever confronted, so it is the current focus of my backbend-adrenalinized attention. It kicks off the racing heartbeat, the constricted breathing, etc., etc. Add onto that a few horror stories I’ve heard (and make note, they have all been rumors) of people being hurt in this pose, and now there is (or was) a sketchiness factor in my mind.

The interesting question, I think, is whether feeling the physical stuff means I am feeling fear. For some reason, I vote no. I imagine I am just feeling the energy of something I don’t do naturally or easily. Is feeling the energy the same as feeling the emotion? Is it all just semantics?

Lots of incoming viewers with keywords that include: kapotasana, sacrum, pain, ache, too much pain to sleep, lower back, injury, etc. Yikes. Kapotasana, which is, I think, probably at the heart of most of these keyword searches, is quite the challenge.

Yesterday I wondered a bit: why haven’t I been feeling the fear? I used to have a good bit of dread as soon as I hit pasasana. Avoiding the dread made me happy to do all of primary before launching into intermediate. I am very good at saving fear until I really need it: it’s a little something I learned during my climbing days. Terrifying climb coming up? No sense feeling fear on the road trip to the death trap. No sense worrying about it while camping out the night before. Won’t help to worry on the hike to the site. Standing at the bottom of the climb? Well, too late to spend time worrying now. And so it goes. I use the same principle in practice. I have some rules: no worrying in the morning when I get up; no worrying during standing; might as well enjoy primary. That’s where the discipline used to end. Once I finished primary, it was off to get a swallow of water or visit the ladies room. Just to take a bit of a break and psych up. I knew I couldn’t hang on to that habit, so now I soldier through. And sure enough, today I realized that I’m not feeling any pre-kapo dread during the opening backbends of intermediate. I’m even fine when I get to ustrasana. Laghu vajrasana is a pose I actually enjoy, so no worries there. And then… there it is… the leviathan before me. Except Volleyball Guy always comes over and helps, so I can’t get too undone. Just a quick sinking feeling in my tummy and then it’s time to just get on with it. So today’s realization is that the mental part of this new hunk of practice is settling down. Sure, there’s plenty of physical work to be done, but that’s just about putting in the effort.

At the beginning of practice today, I noticed a stuck place in my left mid-back. Like something was askew. Something like a vertebra. “Oh gosh, this may be bad. Kapotasana may put my back out since it’s already kind of weird.” But I put off the worry and figured primary would likely work out the krink. And it did. I can finally understand why people who get their practices split can be reluctant about giving up poses. I always imagined I’d be thrilled to split and ditch a whole bunch of poses. As it turns out, though, I am feeling pretty attached to the long warm up that is primary.

Tuesday is the new day off. Yay! I was feeling like I really needed it. For one thing, my foot is is killing me. Plantar fasciitis. From back in the days when I ran. Which was a long freaking time ago, so I’m not happy that it still recurs. All the other aches are pretty much as per usual — oh, except my shins. Shins?!! What’s up with that? All I can think is laghu vajrasana and kapotasana, maybe. Oh well.

So since there was no practice today, last night I did what all teeny Ashtanginis do: ate a lot. Spaghetti AND ice cream. And even a drink. I’ve been totally off the booze for weeks — after noticinig how even one drink in the evening makes me feel vaguely depressed in the next morning’s dawn hours. Kind of hard to give it up: The Cop and I generally had a drink together out at dinner on “date nights” (Tuesday and Sunday evenings), and it was a nice ritual. He’s been gracious about my abstinence.

Spent some time last night (since I got to stay up late! like 10PM!) goofing around with Second Life. As My Gift said, when I asked her if she was familiar with it and told her I am looking at it as a potential environment for virtual class events: “Your plans sound like ‘The Sims: Business Edition.’ Kind of lame, but probably more fun than people who work in offices usually get to have.”

I got myself all set up with the software and launched into the program. Had to pick an avatar. Well, a harajuku girl, of course! Then I found myself “born” (you see yourself fade into view, fully grown) on “Orientation Island.” Humorously, and kind of freakily, and also kind of touchingly, you can see all the other new players coming alive around you continuously. Offers a rather visceral notion of population growth.

I looked around, and all the people looked like… like regular people (jeans, ponytails, sneakers). Huh?!?! When you can look like a goth anime or a harajuku?! Then I saw a guy with an animal avatar, like a fuzzy animal fetishist. “Weirdo!” I thought. And then, “Oh wait, people are probably thinking that about me, too!”

Some people started trying to talk to me right away. But I wasn’t socializing. I tried flying (yes, flying!), and then I made my legs more muscular. Hey, this is kind of like real life! With no easily discernable instructions, I set off. Eventually found a car, into which I climbed, and took off. Drove with no sense of direction and rather clumsily in what turned out to be useless circles. Yes, this is JUST like real life!

People tried to engage me in interactions, but I just wanted to look around. As soon as I found a sign, I headed toward the tutorials on how to communicate, feeling rather alien and disoriented. Yup, like real life. All of this took at least an hour.

And so today, in the spirit of being myself in both real and second lives, I’m going to search for information about this system and figure out how to optimize my performance.

I wonder if they have yoga?

Apparently when you post an entry that includes the word “ass,” your blog hits go through the roof. Who knew?

I’ve been struggling through the longer practice, until this very morning. No idea how this happened, but all of a sudden the trek through primary and one third of intermediate seemed perfectly normal and do-able. Each step along the way, even from the very beginning of standing, seems to unlock whatever needs to get unlocked as I go along. One pose makes the next possible (not always in a perfectly sequential manner, but something like that). I just patiently went along, unlocking, popping, snapping and stretching all the weird little idiosyncratic knots in my body. (How odd that I take them for granted, and actually think they are “me.”)

I had a nice glimpse into the beauty of the sequence. The logic of the structure. I mean, I always know (intellectually) that it’s there. Today, though, I really felt it. Truly, a beautiful design.

Volleyball Guy is reliably helping me get my toes in kapotasana each morning, and the backbends are starting to make a kind of sense, starting to feel… well, comforting. I am very surprised about this.

Sleep is a little off-kilter: a little hard to fall asleep, lots of wisps of dreams each morning, a general preference to be awake. Someone was talking about nerve cleansing this morning, and I laughed and thought, “Yeah, cleansing. Like you rip the brittle tumbleweed of your nervous system out of your body and rinse it in the kitchen sink. With scalding water.”

I am impressed that an experience can be both so soothing and so unnerving. Very create and destroy. Or, rather, destroy and re-create.

So today was improv Sunday. Very nice, too. We did suryas and standing poses, and then Volleyball Guy did a workshop of the first third of intermediate. Right up my alley, since this is what I’m working on every day. Nice to stop and talk about what was going on with the poses, and to learn the adjustments and to help out other folks in class.

Here’s the deal, though: we have new people at the shala. This is a good thing. Volleyball Guy is taking the opportunity to teach more, to bring these folks along. The catch is that he asks us Mysorians to throw in our opinions. On the one hand, I think that’s a nice idea. On the other hand, I kind of hate it. Why? Well, because I talk out of my ass.

Isn’t it enough that I do out-of-the-ass-talking at work? I manage a substantial team, so I talk out of my ass to the designers, and then I talk out of my ass to the executives. I am never, in any way, trying to put one over on anyone. I really try to stay agenda-free and have some kind of integrity, and I try to offer solace and motivation as needed, etc. But I can’t get past the feeling that I wish I wasn’t being called upon to actually know what I am talking about.

Of course, I love the sound of my own voice as much as the next person. But gee whiz, how much ass-talking can one person do? I mean, I have this blog: this is the perfect place for me to make up whatever reality I damn well choose. But everywhere else? It’s starting to be a burden. Maybe I am feeling particularly sensitive because I have a new supervisor for the design team, so now I’m doing an extra level of ass-talking: design pronouncements to the designers, management pronouncements to the supervisor, up-the-chain talk to the executives. I keep trying to just say what I think/feel, but it never feels terribly steady. I mean, I don’t know anything more about anything than anyone else.

When Volleyball Guy asks me to help define the term “yoga theory,” I can certainly go off on some explanation, and it’s even an explanation that I’ve thought about a bit, and that I hope is useful to people, etc. But in the back of my mind, I’m going, “Should I point out at the end of this that I am totally making it up as I go along, based on my current best experience and basically I have no idea if I am on track or entirely delusional — or will that tarnish my credibility?”

Maybe this is the downfall of thinking. I am loving Carl’s thinking blog, but I am also finding that sometimes I totally believe what I think and say, and other times (often within a split second) I think it’s all just a pile of crap.

Here’s the deal: I can tell you what I think and believe, and I’m happy to do so at any given moment. Will it be true, and will it continue to be what I think and believe? Like, even for the amount of time it takes me to type or say it? Oh hell, no.

Sorry.

In other news, Sanskrit Scholar, The Sicilian, Crim Girl and I had lunch after practice. Lovely to kick back and laugh and talk about yoga. (Please God, don’t make me say anything authoritiative!) No worries. We all take each other at face value. Such a thing to be grateful for, that there are people who can accept that I don’t know what I’m talking about pretty much 99.9% of the time.