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Yes, the clogs are here! Woohoo! I love them. I imagined them to be hugely dorky, but as it turns out, they are quite subtle when paired with pants. Has the design changed over the past thirty years (last time I had a pair)? They seem pared down, design-wise. Or maybe I am just older and have a higher tolerance for dorkiness. Along with the clogs, my buying frenzy included these pants, which I tried out yesterday at practice. They are now my official very-favorite practice pants. Is Prana as evil as, say, Nike? I hope not. I think I need one of their little logos tattooed on me, I like Prana stuff so much.

Yesterday was one of VBG’s famous Picture Days. He brought the still camera, and I brought along my little mini camcorder. Took a clip of each person doing their dropbacks. It’s quite instructive to see your dropbacks. Instructive as in devastating. LOL! Sanskrit Scholar said, “I didn’t realize how much space there was between my hands and my feet.” Uh, yeah — that’s kind of the downside of the visual evidence; the upside is a chance to really look at your form. I like to review the evidence, practice not being attached to any perceived lack, and then set it aside to be compared to a later piece of evidence. It’s been slow going for me, backbend-improvement-wise, but the photos and video clips I’ve gathered suggest I am moving in the right direction. Ah, reversing the karma. Just like backing a truck out of the mud.

I am immersed in the literature review we’ve been putting together for the board of directors. Predictions about the future of the world and the future of the profession. *Heavy sigh.* It is lovely to work on a project that requires actual thinking, but I will be happy to see the end of it, because thinking takes up time, and that really seems to interfere with what I have to get done at work. In that sentence resides the reason I could win the lottery and walk away from working life with no regrets.

There are three people on the lit review team: a market/economist guy, a subject matter expert, and me. I’m there to think and to write. We’ve been reading and documenting and discussing for months. Now I have to take that big pile of stuff and turn it into a coherent explanation of what we did, and squeeze out a compelling vision of the future. Yesterday was a writing day, so I worked from home. 8AM ’til 5PM, cranking away at the keyboard. Writing concentration is a fascinating thing: very deep and very focused. All-consuming. You really have to give yourself over to it, much like a tough asana practice or a day of zazen. You can’t start talking to yourself about where you are / how it’s going / what you’re doing — in other words, no meta-view of the process. Any internal monolog will bring the whole thing crashing down. Kind of cool. Honestly (and frighteningly), though, I am out of practice for this kind of intellectual concentration. I suspect that may be true of 99.9% of all so-called knowledge workers. Business moves too fast for people to do any kind of serious thinking. Time is money. There’s a good chance your career will progress more successfully if you just learn how to talk out of your ass and go with that. Thinking? Why bother? Yes, I know that sounds cynical. I am pretty sad, though, to see how contemplation’s been chucked out the window.

Thursday is home practice day. Time to get on with it…

Two people showed up today: The Other Dave and me. Volleyball Guy told us to practice Mysore style. Okay. At first I was all discombobulated and wondered if I should do a full practice of all of primary and my part of second. It seemed like the right thing to do, since I would do that if I were doing my practice at home. But the sudden change to what I had been expecting to do (improv) kind of threw me. I wasn’t planning on doing my own practice. Blah blah blah. Why is that even an issue, I wondered to myself. Then I just began.

Well, what happened was a good practice. I was distracted by a new top. The material is great — very soft and it feels really good, and basically the top is so comfy that I was afraid I was gonna flash someone without even knowing about it. Turns out it just required an occasional adjustment to keep everything in order.

Volleyball Guy decided to torment me once I got to the intermediate poses: handstands after ustrasana, laghu vajrasana, and kapotasana. But not just one laghu vajrasana. After the first one, he said, “Handstand.” Then, “Good — laghu vajrasana again.” Followed by, “Handstand.” Followed by, “Again, laghu vajrasana.” And, of course, “Handstand.”

As I was setting up for kapotasana, I said, “Can’t we just talk for a while?” He laughed and said, “This isn’t Anusara.” So kapotasana and then another handstand. I totally expected to face plant, but was okay in the end. Thank God there are usually other people to distract him during practice.

I asked about my fast breath, and again he told me I was fine. As long as the breath syncs with the movements and it feels smooth, I am okay.

***

The Cop is grabbing some sleep and then we’re going to go see “The Bourne Ultimatum.” Then we’ll pick up my folks and take them out to dinner at P.F. Chang’s. They just discovered P.F. Chang’s and think it’s great. I think they may be under the impression that it is a Mom and Pop restaurant. This is amusing, because it’s a chain restaurant and there are a bazillion of them, including in Boston and Florida, where they lived before Arizona. The Cop is not a fan, but he’s agreed to pretend he is so everyone can feel like this is very special. It’s not like it’ll matter much anyhow: he always eats too much popcorn at movies, so whatever he eats for dinner isn’t gonna be very important.

Last night, before The Cop went to work, we watched “Mississippi Burning.” A harrowing movie. He ordered it from Netflix and said he was amazed I hadn’t already ordered it, since my movie list is “all Willem Dafoe, all the time.” I defended the Dafoe viewing thusly: “No matter what role he’s playing, I think to myself, ‘He can do chakra bandhasana!’” It’s a game I never tire of. Particularly amusing while watching “Last Temptation of Christ.”

Damn. I can’t find a picture of chakra bandhasana on the web… Wanted to link one. Perhaps I am search-exhausted after my shoe shopping this morning (more on that in a moment).

Anyhow, I prefer Dafoe in later movies, because he is one of those people who looks better and better with age.

***

This morning I got up and aside from all the current first-thing-in-the-morning achy spots (abs, shoulders, sacrum), I had to admit, finally, that my freaking feet are killing me. This happens every summer. Many years ago, I screwed up my feet running (particularly the left one), and while they don’t bother me like they used to, they do act up. The reason for the current issues: flip flops. I LOVE flip flops. It is one of the advantages of living in Arizona. You can pretty much wear ‘em year round. I have a selection of formal, high heeled ones with different configurations of thin straps, and I have funky flat ones of various casual materials. All of them entirely unsupportive and guaranteed to wreck my feet even more.

So I got online and swore I’d find some shoes with support. One requirement is that my shoes not have a back, because I kick them off as soon as I get into my office. And in meetings, I need to be able to slip out of my shoes during the course of the meeting, then slip them back on upon exiting the conference room.

I looked at Birkenstocks. I looked for a long time. I looked at podiatry sites. I saw that Birkenstocks are celebrated by podiatrists. I looked at every possible style. Sigh. I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t buy them. Shades of hippies in Harvard Square.

In the end, I did something perhaps even weirder than buy Birkenstocks. I bought some Dansko clogs. I am really hoping that with black pants, they will mostly look like boots. I am accustomed to buying shoes according to visual cues. High heels, delicate cut, pretty materials, etc. This morning I listened to my aching feet. I used to have clogs. Uh, pretty much back when Sweden first exported them to the US. So a LONG time ago. I liked them quite a bit. They definitely look great with jeans. How they’ll look with regular black pants, I’m not sure. But a little better than Birkenstocks.

***

Meanwhile, as I tried to determine what criteria one uses to buy sensible shoes (since none of them even remotely overlap the criteria I usually use when purchasing shoes), The Cop was working late. Usually he’s home by 6:30 AM. Today, though, 8 AM rolled around. Finally he showed up, with tales of a crazy night. All the usual public drunkenness and fighting. With the added excitement of pulling over and arresting a guy with a felony warrant. And a gun in the car with him. Everyone in Arizona carries a gun, which makes The Cop’s job rather difficult. (Okay, not everyone carries a gun, but way more than in normal states that aren’t into the Wild West thing.)

Anyhow, the general public often takes offense at The Cop’s attitude, which is that all situations are potentially dangerous. People think he should be able to look at them and see that they are law-abiding citizens that he needn’t be vigilant about. Of course, he doesn’t ever know that about anyone, and it would be very foolish for him to make assumptions. 99% of the time, everyone is a-okay; but he has to be vigilant 100% of the time, in order not to be caught out by surprise. It’s nothing personal. Most of the time, he pulls people over and they are just speeding. Sometimes, though, they have warrants and guns.

When I started practicing yoga, I was rock climbing 4 days a week and going to the gym a lot. When I ditched everything else for yoga, one of the things I was willing to give up was nice abs. Well, not exactly willing, but I figured it was just part of the deal. If you don’t do leg lifts or crunches every day, or routinely hang on to handholds in order to haul your legs up a rock face, well, sculpted abs are a thing of the past.

I was past that, though, once the Ashtanga bug really took hold. The physical concerns were taking a back seat (where they probably always should have been, but oh well…) Anyhow, the past couple of years of practice have not taxed my abs. My hips have been realigned, my shoulders are still in process, my head is God only knows where (and no idea where it’s due to come out) but my abs, well, they’ve been left alone. Yes, there’s navasana, but that was never an issue.

So why are my abs killing me this week? I’m guessing it’s from deeper backbending, and from coming up from dropbacks. My upper abs, in particular, are really quite tender. From stretching? I guess that must be it. Now that I think of it, dropbacks involve a contracting of the lower abs, while the upper ones stretch like crazy. That’s kind of a new combo. Maybe that’s what’s doing it.

Or maybe some bandhas are being installed. That would be a nice surprise.

Showed up for practice at 5:30 AM and noticed the space was dark. Door was open, though, and as I went in I was greeted by Volleyball Guy and a few of the other Mysorians. Electricity was out in the building, so everyone put their mats down in the entryway, where we got some light by the front window.

(0v0) mentioned that it can be interesting to move away from your usual place in the practice room, and today we took it a step further. I practiced next to a small fake tree in the entryway. It was distracting, which was no surprise (not the tree, specifically, but the new space). More than the surroundings, though, was the fact of the proximity of the other Mysorians. Usually we are spaced apart enough that I can slide forward on my mat during the seated poses. Today, I was aware of the person in front of me. No worries, though.

Practice was zippy, because I had an early meeting at the office. I didn’t feel rushed, though, until supta vajrasana. The Sicilian, who gave me an assist, said, “I was trying to match my breathing to yours, but you breathe so fast!” I need to check in with VBG on this again. A while back, he told me not to worry one way or another about my breath. Sanskrit Scholar asked last week if I felt like Sharath’s CD was perfect timing (I do), and commented that it is very fast.

After The Sicilian’s remark, I got to thinking a bit about my breath. I have learned (via bodybuilding, cardio and climbing) to use my breath to optimize my strength and endurance. Certainly, there were plenty of times when I was climbing that I had to execute a move quickly, before my strength gave out. And once you are on a roll, you can keep going. Basically, the speed reduces the need for strength. And it seems to increase endurance, to keep a quicker breath. I’m not sure how all of this intersects with breathing and flexibility, but I’ll be curious to see if something comes of these thoughts.

During the backbending workshop with Lisa, she had us come out of ustrasana (and kapotasana) by pushing the tailbone back, which is a lot easier than coming up with the tailbone pushed forward (the way I had always done it). I laughed after I tried it, and said, “This is so much easier, it feels like cheating.” She thought that was very funny. But I am left with the same feeling, now that I am thinking about my quick breath.

Lots of timed paryankasana this morning. On a block, as pictured in this link, and over the rack. No, not Ashtanga, but let me say this: Holy crap! That is some serious pose for a tight shouldered/upper backed gal like me.

There has been progress, certainly, because I can now breathe in backbends, and I actually like the way they feel. And for a fleeting moment this morning, I thought, “Backbends are no more alien to me than any other poses I’ve learned.” This is a huge step, because apparently I did have the notion that backbends were foreign to me, that they were not “natural.” Funny how we construct and integrate these sorts of beliefs.

And a quick note on meditating more and less deeply during different parts of the practice. In terms of automaticity (which can engender flow states), I find that primary lends itself to that kind of consciousness. It’s like the famous Dogen quote in my last post: “To know the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.” Intermediate poses, on the other hand, are a place where I don’t know my self. So the practice, in that case, is to meditate on the self until I can lose the self. I don’t feel impatient, truth be told, but I do have occasional glimpses of what it might be like, one day, to lose my self in backbends. And I look forward to it very much.

Flexibility and strength limitations/idiosyncrasies are not random, but cultivated.

Premise: Karma comprises habits of the mind/consciousness that we bring with us (and that direct us) into new incarnations.

The physical things that we confront in practice are a kind of karma — habits of physicality, highly individualized — that we’ve constructed over this lifetime. And ongoingly. (And possibly previously, but no matter).

How we deal with these perceived limitations, these idiosyncrasies, may be left over karma from previous incarnations. Or just this lifetime, if that makes anyone feel better. Equanimity, frustration, anger, greed.

To persist, to be(come) conscious of the forces that created and sustained (and may still) the idiosyncrasies, to undo them, to free one’s self from the habits of mind and body. To free one’s self from karma.

To know the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.

– Dogen

More Lin-Chi:

The Master said: Whoever comes here, I never let him slip by me, but in all cases understand where he comes from. If you come in a certain way, you’ll just be losing track of yourself. And if you don’t come in that way, you’ll be tying yourself up without using a rope. Whatever hour of the day or night, don’t go around recklessly passing judgments! Whether you know what you’re doing or not, you’ll be wrong in every case.

I took my 2 minute stroll between the end of primary and beginning of second. During primary, I get into a very deep, relaxed kind of state. Then I feel compelled to wake up for second, because it’s new and I feel like I need to pay more conscious attention. There is a state where you can do both — where you can be deep and attentive, and it’s the state the monks are trying to help you get to when they yell “Wake up!” in the middle of a long afternoon of zazen. I used to think they meant for us to stop dozing, but it was that and a deeper kind of wake up call.

At this point, I definitely feel like I have two ways in practice. Not just because of the consciousness differences between the part I know well and the part I am exploring. The backbending seems to be doing this weird thing where I feel like internal space is expanding and the external… hmmmm, not sure how to characterize this: “my” “external” feels like it’s contracting. It’s more than the physical body. It’s kind of like whatever the external boundary is is contracting. The edges of internal and external are overlapping somehow. Way to explain this more clearly? Yeah, um, I don’t have any idea.

Note to self: Sure way to wake up in the morning? Two minutes on “the rack.” Woohoo!