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Set the clock for 4:30 PM. Duh.

Woke at 5:44, jumped up, gulped some coffee and hit the mat at home, since I’d blown the Mysore opportunity.

Oh wait, I have a meeting at 8AM, and I have to take it in the office.

My solution was a one second inhale/one second exhale, standing through navasana, pasasana through supta vajrasana, quick urdhva dhanurasanas, rope wall dropbacks, no closing or savasana practice. Whew!

Know what though? I felt fantastic driving to work. My breath has been slowing down as I grind through my daily primary plus part of intermediate practice. It’s been taking close to an hour and 45 minutes lately, and truth be told, I’ve been feeling tired and burnt out.

So today’s zippy split practice was great!

I wonder if I have the psychological wherewithal to apply what I’ve learned. That some days are good with a shorter practice. Argh! It challenges my methodical mind that likes to be repetitive and not expend energy thinking about what I ought to be doing at the crack of dawn. My default is to do ALL long practices or ALL short practices. I like to be extreme.

I may do split practices for a while and see how it feels. The stress of leaving it open and deciding every day would kill me.

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Just a post ago, I talked about wanting to go to Australia. The 22 hour flight kind of put me off. A long way to travel for a yoga class.

Interestingly, my boss asked me yesterday to go to Singapore at the end of October. A 23 hour flight. Which will bring me tantalizingly close to Australia. I’ve never flown for such a long stretch, and I wonder if I’m going to go berserk. Tempted to book an interim flight to Australia before heading back to the US…

A great laugh and 100 percent resistant to dogma.

With thanks to (the newly engaged) (and remarkably humble) Sanskrit Student.

The Transformations of Thought and Material Nature

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The transformation of thought leading toward its own cessation is accompanied by moments of cessation, when subliminal impressions of mental distraction are overcome and those of cessation emerge in their place.

– Barbara Stoler Miller

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When the subconscious imprint (samskara) of mental fluctuation is replaced with an imprint of cessation [of mental activity], then there is a moment of cessation of mental activity, which is known as transformation (parinama) towards cessation (nirodha).

– Gregor Maehle

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VYUTTHANA NIRODHA SAMSKARAYOR ABHIBHAVA PRADURBHAVAU NIRODHA KSANA CITTANVAYO NIRODHA PARINAMAH

Vyutthana = arising; nirodha = suppressive; samskarayor = of the impressions; abhibhava = disappear; pradurbhavau = appear; nirodha = suppression; kshana = moment; chitta = mind; anvayah = conjunction; nirodha = suppression; parinamah = modification.

The impressions which normally arise are made to disappear by the appearance of suppressive efforts, which in turn create new mental modifications. The moment of conjunction of mind and new modifications is nirodha parinama.

– Sri Swami Satchidananda

Practice was all about breath this morning. The harnessing of the breath during the standing poses. That’s par for the course. Always a bumpy ride, but one I don’t fuss about, because I know by the time I get to the end of the standing poses, the breath will be back on board with the whole project. Some days it starts off like a cranky horse — running off, stopping and starting, shying, being just plain wacky and recalcitrant.

By the time I got to primary poses this morning, the breath was nice and relaxed. Very expansive. The kind of breathing where it seems like minutes are passing between each inhale and exhale. I love when time stretches like that. And best of all, the pauses. It happens in zazen, and I always wonder if it is the seed of rechaka: at the end of the exhale there is a sparkling moment or two of utter stillness. No breath, no desire for breath. Timelessness.

And then I do my intermediate poses and am all about thinking and trying to coordinate and trying to absorb my own anxieties. That’s slowly starting to smooth out: today I could relax enough to really feel the breath in these poses. It’s a challenge: the very thought of some day being as relaxed breathing in a deep backbend as I am when breathing in a forward bend makes my head spin. Maybe it’s not even possible, I think. But maybe it is.

Here’s why it can be difficult to practice alone: you hear everything you think and feel everything you feel. Distracted, bored, angry, disappointed, depressed, joyful. And those are just a few. And they move at light speed through your system, changing from one into the other and back again. Whew. What a ride.

When your teacher’s around, and a bunch of other practitioners, you can be distracted by the environment: everyone’s practicing, so it’s easy to join in. Feel like just giving up? How could you, with your teacher there?

At home, you deal with each instant on your own. And it’s astonishing to see how much happens in each instant.

You can hear important stuff too. Yesterday I heard that I need MORE savasana. Otherwise I’m going to burn out. Today I heard that the TV’s been on too much and that it is pulling me outside of myself too much. More quiet time is necessary.

Interesting, when you’re with yourself, how it seems remarkably empty of a lot of the stuff we’re brainwashed to want: noise, visuals, food, interaction, chaos, stuff. Nice to get a break from that. And interesting how it can feel like an alien environment. Just the self.

Led primary this morning. Nice. Lots of people, lots of heat. A new guy who came out of nowhere and seemed to know most of the poses. No idea how he found the place, but a good sign, that new folks are finding the shala.

I played around some more with the hamstring thing. I’m finding that it’s useful to do bridge pose and think about the medial hammies. I have to admit that up ’til this point, I’ve never had much use for setu bandha. It just seemed like what you’d do if you couldn’t do urdhva dhanurasana. As it turns out, though, it’s perfect for exploring the actions of the glutes, hamstrings and feet in urdhva dhanurasana. So between all urdhva dhanurasanas today, I spent time hanging out in setu bandha.

The new thing in urdhva dhanurasana is the sensation that I am going to go rolling forward and face plant. I guess this is happening because my shoulders are loosening up and I can push my chest further forward past my hands. Sitting here at the kitchen table, I just put my arms in the air a la urdhva d, to remember what the feeling is all about. Whatever it is, it’s weird. I guess my hands and feet are getting closer together and my body is turning into a wheel and as far as I can tell, when I do finally roll, it’s gonna be chest first. This is one of those sensations I am very surprised to experience. When I think about it, it makes perfect sense, but I hadn’t thought about it ahead of time.

Perhaps this is one of the coolest things about practice: you hear things and see things and think about things, and then when you are in the midst of the actual experience, it is quite different than you might have imagined. Kind of puts it all in perspective, how useful it is to think about things ahead of time. I’m sure every thing I “discover” as I go along is something that someone already told me, or I read somewhere, or that makes perfect sense — the thing is, until you can use it, it’s of no use whatsoever. I’m like a monkey with a bunch of shiny tools. Damn, they look nice, and I hope some day I figure out how to use ‘em.

Something’s going on with the hip flexors. What, exactly? I have no idea. It all started when I read something I’m sure I’ve read before, and did something I’m sure I’ve done before — but finally it all came together and the sum yielded more than the parts. In other words, I moved the stress of urdhva dhanurasana to the right part of my hamstrings. Specifically, I finally keyed in on the semimembranosus and the semitendinosus. I’m a geek, I know: my body doesn’t work until I figure out what muscle to move, how to spell it, where it’s located, and how it functions in relation to the other muscles.

The rocking part about the semimembranosus and semitendinosus, though, is that they help rotate the knee in, whereas using the butt and biceps femoris to push into the pose makes your knees splay out.

I blame all of this inclination to use the biceps femoris on decades of weight-lifting. Of course you can’t totally isolate muscles, so it’s not like I only used the biceps femoris (to the exclusion of the semimembranosus and semitendinosus) for all those years, but if you think about doing, say, a prone hamstring curl, it’s easy to see that you can spend the bulk of your time working the belly of the muscle. And that’s the whole point, really, from a bodybuilding perspective — because you want to focus on the bigger muscles, not the smaller, in order to get more bang for the buck. Weightlifting machines tend to isolate specific muscles, which is why I always tried to default to free-weight exercises that required supporting muscles to kick in, but even as I think back to stiff-legged deadlifts, I know I tended to toe out a little, which is very effective for pushing all of the stress into the biceps femoris.

Okay, enough of the nerdiness. Suffice it to say that if you move the stress of urdhva d from the hamstring belly to the inner heads of the hamstring, you get a hell of a lot more lift.

We had a visitor the past couple of days at Mysore practice: Suzie Columbus, of the ezBoard, came and practiced with us. It is such a trip to practice with online people. She won’t be here over the weekend, which is a drag, ’cause it would have been great to go out for lunch after led practice on Saturday. Maybe next time.

Meanwhile, back on ezBoard, I’ve been asking about peoples’ experiences with the 6 day practice. I guess I am harkening back to my gym days, because I have been wondering about the physical effects of the same practice six days in a row, week after week. I know it brings “progress” (i.e., “getting” poses), and I know it has a very calming effect on the mind. But I am curious about its specific effects on the body. Vanessa said: “by practicing before ingesting food, and practicing daily, the muscles stay small-ish (I think it is due to a process called gluconeogenesis, but I hesitate to write more because I really am not an expert) and the body fat stays low.” I think this is a really interesting idea. I’ve always done practices where the idea is to break down the muscle with intense practice, then rest it so it can rebuild and be stronger. Vanessa’s theory posits a whole different purpose for the physical practice.

Just something I’ve been thinking about. Jason S also had some interesting things to say on the subject. I’m happy to see him back on ezBoard.

Missed led primary yesterday. The dog was up all night, drinking buckets of water and peeing in the backyard. I actually just propped open the door that leads from the bedroom into the back yard and went to sleep. Didn’t want to have to get up every time she asked to go out. So she was back and forth all night — pacing, pacing, pacing. I called the vet in the morning and they said I could bring her and just wait to get squeezed into their schedule. Best case scenario is that it’s a urinary tract infection, less-best cases would be kidney problems or diabetes.

The dog loves people, but is a little sketchy about other animals. So I drove to the vet’s, checked in at the desk, and told them the dog and I would be waiting out in the car. Where we sat for 2 hours. I was a little hyped about getting her over there and examined in time to make practice, but it became clear pretty quickly that class wasn’t going to happen. Okay, fine.

After 2 hours in the car, we were called to sit in an exam room for another half hour. Then a checkup, a blood draw, some antibiotics, and we were on our way. The diagnosis is UTI, and they took blood, too, to check her kidney function since she is such an old girl. She is a pit bull, so vet assistants tend to approach her rather gingerly. It’s very funny to watch, because she is the gentlest, most human-loving creature ever — and within a minute, the initially cautious assistants are loving on her and getting kisses and giving her treats. When we were leaving, the assistants were all waving goodbye to her.

I had been planning to take today off, in honor of the Moon Day, so missing yesterday’s practice kind of threw me. I decided to go ahead and take the Moon Day anyhow because I realized that I haven’t had two days off in a week since I got back from surgery. So it’s been 3 months. I think it’s a healthy idea to rest. I tend to incorporate routine very easily — I have to reel it in a bit and break the pattern of practice-practice-practice. I always wonder if my (seemingly) correct practice routine isn’t a bit lacking in mindfulness. I don’t want to introduce the habit of thinking about whether I want to practice each day — that’s just too much additional thinking, but every few months, I need to reassess my energy. If it’s all focused into a singleminded practice habit, I need to try to push it off those rails a teeny bit, to bring it back to a gentler place.

To reinforce my plan not to practice Ashtanga today, the universe sent me a spider. Which bit me on my eyelid. I woke up with a hugely swollen left eye. Okay, vanity will keep me out of the shala, if nothing else. The Cop, getting back from the nightshift, was appalled at the bite. Not the swollen eyelid so much as the idea that there’s a rogue spider roaming the bed.

Speaking of the bed, I think our bed is done. I got this idea last night, as I tossed and turned and ended up finding a comfy spot right smack in the middle of the mattress. It was a great bed, but it’s more than 10 years old now, and I think it’s been slept-on to death. I had some nostalgia for futons, as I drifted in and out of sleep on the crappy mattress last night, but when I uttered the word “futon” this morning, The Cop blanched. Guess we’ll be looking for a new mattress. I don’t care whether it’s a futon or a mattress, I just need a harder surface to sleep on. Preferably sans arachnids.

Hey Suzie C, if you are reading this, I wanted to give you slightly more detailed info re: finding the shala. I know you have good enough directions to get to the strip mall, but here’s some more info. The center of the mall is ProTan. If you are standing at the bottom of the stairs that lead to ProTan, look down and to your right. You’ll see a wig store called…oh heck, I can’t remember. They have a huge sign that says, “Hair Something Something,” and then there’s a little sign next to that that says, “DFC.” We’re in there. If you get there early, you’ll see VBG standing at the front desk looking at the AZ Republic while everyone wanders in. If you come in once the majority of folks have shown up, the front desk area may be empty. Just go past the desk and then take a left. At the end of the hallway, take a right and you’ll see us in the back room.

My office has summer hours, which is great. The place closes up at 2PM. The downside is that Fridays are madhouses, as everyone tries to get stuff done before close of business. Usually I end up there past 2, which is kind of cool, because it’s quiet and the air-conditioning goes off, which is a lovely change of pace because the office is generally kept at refrigerator temperature. Today, though, I left on time because I wanted to go to the mall and find some new pants. Now that I have clogs, my pants, which I got for flat shoes, are too short. And while I may be willing to be a dork who wears clogs, I am NOT willing to be a dork who wears clogs with pants that are too short.

For a long time I thought I wore a size 4. Actually, back in the bodybuilding days, I did wear a 4. I also weighed about 15 pounds more than I do now. So I gave up the lifting and started practicing and somehow I just couldn’t quite figure out why my size 4 clothes were too big. I didn’t want to wear a 2, because it seemed… I don’t know, unseemly, I guess. Not mature. I don’t mind wearing small jeans, but I feel dopey wearing teeny business clothes. Anyhow, I did finally break down and buy size 2 business clothes. Except, yes, you know what I’m going to say: they are kind of big, too. I went to Express today and tried some slacks, size 2. No go. So I gave the 0s a whirl and they fit. I really didn’t want to buy them, though, in the weird reverse of the I-don’t-want-to-buy-shoes-bigger-than-7 1/2 rule. So I went to The Gap and found some 1s. I know I’m supposed to be happy about this, but mostly it makes me feel uncomfortable.

In my last post, I wrote about how I’m not feeling nauseated or breaking out in cold sweats during backbends anymore. gartenfische asked whether I used to get nauseated because backbends are hard, or whether it was an emotional thing. That’s a really interesting question. And I don’t really know the answer. I do know that the first time I had that reaction (intense nausea and cold sweats) was when I was learning to do free squats with pretty heavy weights. My brother, who was my trainer, explained that it was a reaction from stressing my nervous system. So I always chalked that reaction up as a physical thing, but then I had it happen a few times on really scary climbs. I chalked those nausea-episodes up to an emotional reaction. Looking back, though, I see that the weightlifting wasn’t just about physical stress; I was also scared about crashing and burning under a pile of heavy weights. And the climbing nausea wasn’t just about being emotional about finding myself clinging to a high cliff; it was also because I was exhausted from hiking to the climbing spot (often a 2-3 hour ordeal… in the desert… in the summer) and at least mildly dehydrated from the climb. So my reaction to backbends, I imagine, was both physical (I’m not a natural backbender and don’t tend to use my body that way) and also emotional (I can get anxious when I’m trying new things). Since (0v0) is away in NYC, and likely not reading blogs, I won’t taunt her by adding a spiritual interpretation of my malady.

“Keep this,” VBG said this morning, pressing his hand between my shoulderblades after the last prasarita. I pulled my shoulderblades together even more tightly, and he said, “Don’t stress it that much.” So I backed off a bit but kept the “shoulders engaged” energy.

And I stayed with it throughout practice. All I could think was that it felt like I was pushing my heart more to the center of my body. From the back. Aw, I can’t explain it well. Suffice it to say, it was a different kind of core awareness, a heart core.

I think I was heart-sensitive because I was worrying about My Gift. Apparently she slipped on the stairs at work on Wednesday, and caught herself using her right arm, wrenching her shoulder. Back when she was 16 and had a bout with lupus, there was some damage to her right shoulder. So the little accident at work has left her very sore. And me rather worried. It’s funny how when your kid is sick, it helps immensely just to go look at them. Now that she’s out of the house, I don’t have that option. I’m sure I would have peeked into her room this morning before practice, just to see if she was sleeping well. Not that I would have been able to tell anything about her injury just by looking, but somehow it settles your mind.

During primary these days, I think about a paperclip. That’s what my back feels like, going from the forward bends into the up and down dog vinyasa, over and over. Just like one huge preparation for kapotasana. The back and forth bending of my back makes me think of how you can bend a paperclip back and forth, loosening it up. It’s very funny, how primary feels nice and soothing — I am at a point now where I don’t feel panicky about the upcoming intermediate poses. I lull myself with the primary and then just make a point not to think / freak myself out during the intermediate poses and dropbacks. One thing I noticed this morning (and am VERY grateful for): I no longer get the nauseous, cold sweats feeling I used to get during all the backbends.

Lately my little morning aches are simply about feet, shins and forearms. Weird, huh? I have no idea what I’m doing to stress my shins and forearms, but there you have it. I can not (and will not!) complain. I still remember the year of practicing with horribly inflamed hamstring inserts. I still marvel, too: what kept me going through all of that pain?