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Yup. Rick and Vanessa are both right (comments in previous post). Intermediate makes you crazy. Crazy happy, crazy sad, crazy scared, crazy whatever.

I tend to be quite even-keeled by nature, with no huge ups and downs. So Intermediate, infinitely adjustable, seems to be coming after my own personal weakness: blind discipline.

Yes, people always say, “How can you practice every day?” In the past it was how could I: sit zazen every day, go to the gym every day, practice tae kwon do every day, climb every day, lift weights every day, write every day, draw every day, study every day… You can see the pattern. There are lots of things that I do every day. Things other people call disciplines, but which I just… well, I just do.

And as per usual, I always do my practice. But there is something at the core of it, the something is that gets me all wondering what the HELL I’m supposed to be doing (primary only? first third of second? pasasana only?), that is all about unravelling my blind discipline.

Vanessa suggested that there is a level of discomfort that one needs to endure when working through Intermediate. And she went on to say that perhaps the difficulty for a home practitioner is to gauge the correct “speed” at which to progress through the sequence.

No doubt about that! I was given a big hunk of Intermediate all in one fell swoop, and I am having trouble digesting it. I don’t mind having a pose or two that need work at the end of practice, but quite honestly, I feel like the whole pack of Intermediate poses are quite lame. Like I’m trying to chew too big a bite.

So to anyone who thinks yoga is about blind discipline, I can unequivocally say: it’s not. Trust me, if anyone could make it so, I could. But I can’t. So there’s a piece of definitive research to add to the archives.