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I think I would like being a psychoanalyst, but I’m not sure I’d be a very good yoga teacher. I say that after this morning’s practice with The Cop.

Oftentimes, when I am doing my thing as a manager at work, I go with Freud’s recommendation that analysts listen to their analysands with evenly hovering or suspended attention and depend on their unconscious to do the rest.

The technique… is a very simple one… It consists simply in not directing one’s notice to anything in particular and in maintaining the same ‘evenly-suspended attention’… in the face of all that one hears.

Works a charm, as people in Skelly’s part of England may or may not say. Anyhow, listening is a strong practice. Someone can be talking about a project or event, and if I am not getting emotionally entangled in the story (in other words, practicing the evenly suspended attention), all of a sudden an intuition will pop up — “He’s feeling insecure about his place on the team hierarchy,” “She has something else going on outside of work that’s upsetting her,” etc. Generally speaking, you’re running into the same feelings pretty frequently: fear, insecurity, frustration, anger. All the human stuff.

And with psychoanalysis, all of the feelings are mediated by words. I love words. One of my favorite materials.

It’s a whole ‘nother ballgame, though, to be in relationship with someone else’s raw feelings. Especially the deep subconscious of bodily experience. Man, how do you even begin to get into that stuff? And translated through words?? Laughable notion.

It’s one thing for me to mess around with my own intuitions about physical practice… but someone else’s?? In traditional psychoanalysis, the analyst is not ready to practice until they have undergone their own successful analysis. I guess this is analogous to a teacher’s years of practice, and it suggests some interesting questions about the teacher’s relationship to his or her teacher.

[Karen folding her hand of cards and saying, "I'm out."]

Anyhow, none of this is to say that this morning’s practice with The Cop wasn’t good. Just to say that there is more going on than I can possibly handle. Or articulate. The end.

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Last night The Cop and I went to the local comedy club and saw Kevin Pollack. Very good show. He does a hilarous Christopher Walken impression. They serve dinner at the club, and The Cop had wings. During practice (yes, right around Marichy C) he started to look a little green and mentioned that he regretted his dinner. Ah yes, now my weird dinner practices (The earlier, the better! Nothing spicy! Dear God, no margaritas!) start to make sense…

This morning is a baby shower for Crim Girl. I don’t like baby showers (Hey, this is a good thing to mention on Cody’s “5 Reasons to Hate Me” meme!), but I was delighted to find these little yoga tees. Also got a Ganesha, a peace sign, and a Buddha one. Great colors, too!

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Tim and Patrick commented on my Ashtangar torture chamber. Guilty as charged (Oh, another thing for the “Hate Me” meme: I am an Ashtangi who loves props!).

I did have a bit of a revelation this morning, regarding the chamber. I spent a bunch of time playing in it the other day, and today I felt crinky in urdhva dhanurasana. It may well be that my research is hindering progress. I’m gonna scale back and just play on Moon Days for a while. I particularly like the little Yoga Journal sequence Patrick mentioned in a comment.

Truth be told, though, plain old primary has been working quite well for me, UD-wise, lately, so why fight it? As a wise yogi told me: “Watch out for the mind’s ceaseless reach for novelty.”