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This morning, I paid attention to what my butt was doing in ustrasana. I assumed it was clenching, and I discovered that, in fact, I was absolutely right about that.

So I unclenched. Which is rather difficult, because it’s a habit. Because I am all about controlling situations. Verily, it works marvelously — for the most part. Yes, I am organized and punctual and well-scheduled. But you know, sometimes you just have to relax. Which is not my strong suit.

This morning, I set up for ustrasana and relaxed my butt. Sank back. Hey, no sacrum pain. Is this real? I clenched to see. Yup, sacrum pain! Wow — who knew? The sacrum pain I assumed I was avoiding (by clenching my butt muscles) is actually CAUSED by the contraction.

What I also discovered, when I called to mind Patrick’s question about where I FEEL the pose, was a huge surprise: when I lay off the tight butt muscles, I feel pain (HUGE tension) in my traps.

The old shell game! Using lower body stress to cover for upper body tension. Once I recognized the game, I laid off the butt/sacrum and worked on relaxing my traps/neck. (Why, exactly, do I have these games and secrets I keep from myself? I feel like I know about them subconsciously, but they have a life of their own that I only find out about when I practice…)

Once the clenching and relaxing business was squared away a bit, the motion of moving into and out of the pose unfurled in a really lovely, spiney manner.

During urdhva dhanurasana, I pushed up and just held (as suggested by Owl). I found out that I believe that if I am not pushing, I am being a slacker. And to top it off, when I am pushing, I forget about breath. So basically, if I am not pushing and holding my breath, I feel like I am not working hard enough.

In the poorly edited Psoas Book (actually, let me restate: it is a SHOCKINGLY HORRIBLY edited book), anyhow, in the book the author talks about how children learn to hold their breaths to modulate their bodily experiences/emotions. Waaaah! Seriously, do I have to go back to my childhood to fix this, or can I just change things up in the present and move forward?

This morning’s UDs were all about holding the physical pose, and breeeeeeaaaaathing. Five breaths each for the first three, then ten each for the last two. It is laughable, I suppose, but the breathing part of this seems like new territory. Backbending has seemed so muscularly challenging that I now find I have to remember the other things: relaxing, breathing, unclenching.

***

During janu C, The Cop makes note that my butt is off the ground as I lean forward. I sit back and show him that my butt used to be on the floor when I first started and my heel was pointing more toward my trunk. Now that the foot is straight up and down, it lifts me up off the floor a bit. I push my heel away from my body with my hand, and it adjusts another notch further away from my trunk. “Once it gets all the way cranked backwards, my butt’ll be back on the floor.”

He gives me a “euw, yuck!” look.

Yeah, I’ve seen that before. He’ll be coveting mulabandhasana in no time…

The turnovers I made this morning rocked.

“Now THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!” said The Cop, as he tried his first one. He didn’t care for the crusty ones from last week. This recipe, though, is puffy and doughy at the same time.

And very easy to make:

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup butter
1/2 cup sour cream

Directions

1. Cut butter into flour until it resembles crumbs.
2. Stir in sour cream.
3. Turn onto a floured board and knead until it just holds together.
4. Form into a ball, flatten slightly and wrap airtight.
5. Refrigerate at least 2 hours or overnight.
6. Use in any recipe calling for puff pastry.

I made apple turnovers by just peeling a couple of Granny Smith apples, chopping them up, and throwing some sugar and cinnamon over them.

Rolled out the dough to a 11 x 16 rectangle. Trimmed the edges until left with a 10 x 15 rectangle. Then cut that into six 5 inch squares.

Put some of the cinnamony apple pieces onto each square, fold, crimp with a fork, and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

Easy. Yummy. Perfect for Sunday.

Psoai = burning soreness or ache. That is my definition today. Is it really possible that they’ve always been this tight and I just didn’t notice how much they ache until I paid attention to them? That’s freaky.

Nevertheless.

Where I usually pay attention to the shoulders/thoracic in up dogs, today I paid attention to the psoai. They were feeling both released and damn sore by the time I wrapped up practice.

Video Sunday Special

A little ustrasana video:

[video 9108 w=400]

Current state of the urdhva dhanurasana (seriously, some psoas opening is definitely in order):

[video 9110 w=400]

***

Usually I sit crosslegged on my chair at work (between that and the lift The Cop put on my Wrangler, there’s no sense buying skirts for work any more). If I’m not mistaken, though, sitting in a crosslegged position might actually be encouraging my psoai to shorten. Hmmmm.

In my Psoas Book, which is HORRIBLY edited (Lax, you’d be appalled at the typographical and grammatical errors), it is suggested that it’s best to keep hips higher than knees when sitting in chairs. This contradicts the usual office ergonomic convention that knees and hips should be at the same level. Nevertheless, I will set my chair with my knees lower than my hips tomorrow and see what that does. The facilities manager, who is already crazed by the fact that I use a “visitor chair” (i.e., a flat seated, flat backed, almost-devoid-of-padding chair that is meant for use by someone who comes and sits in your office for a few minutes), is sure to be horrified. I’ll have to track down a real office chair and turn in the “visitor chair” I’ve been using. This will pique his curiosity and ensure his discovery of my alternate ergonomic experimentation. Poor facilities manager. He’s already been scared by my propensity to stand on the conference room tables to turn on the overhead projectors (the remotes don’t always work). And when we did some testing for new office chairs, I was put on the tester team (due, of course, to my weird sitting habits). I turned down one chair with a mesh bottom because, as I wrote on my evaluation form: “the seat of the chair scratches the sides of my feet.” Is is any wonder he doesn’t want to talk to me anymore?

So anyhow, I have to try sitting in a chair with my hips higher than my knees to see if it releases my psoai a bit.

***

For now, though, I have to go roll out some puff pastry dough I made. The Cop is sleeping until noonish, having worked last night. I want to have a new attempt at turnovers ready when he wakes. If you’ll recall, last week’s efforts yielded sketchy results. The turnover was too “crusty,” rather than “doughy.” At least that’s how he explained it. So we’ll see if this new recipe works. If it does, I’ll post it, because it is beyond easy.

Other things from today: reading an article on Lucien Freud (speaking of “doughy”). I love Lucien Freud because I have never been able to figure out if I love or hate his work. Then there is his “anxiety of influence” in relation to Francis Bacon, whose work I have always known I adored. Overwrought Englishman affected by the dramatic flair of a badly-behaved Irishman. Subtract out all the psychological “I want to be the bigger genius” drama, and you get David Hockney and Howard Hodgkin. I love ‘em both — Hockney as someone I had to discover I loved (perhaps like Freud), and Hodgkin as someone I always adored (a la Bacon). Delightfully, neither of them seem overly concerned with their own genius.

Scotty returned to the one yesterday. Went to sleep. Is out there in the universe. There are so many euphemisms, but it all feels pretty awful, no matter how I try to think about it. Mostly I feel freaked out that he’s out in the bardo and might feel lonely or scared.

My Gift drove down from college Wednesday night, and he purred as soon as he saw her. He’d been hiding for a couple of days, but with her back in her room, he went and slept on her bed with her. But he went back to hiding once she got up.

Scotty and his brother Donut joined My Gift and me 15 years ago. My cat of 16 years, Jack, had just died. My Gift was 5 at the time. Her first word was “Jack,” and she learned to walk by chasing the poor cat around the house. So when he died, I knew she needed to have new cat friends. As did I. My brother was getting progressively worse with AIDs, and I was looking after him. My first marriage was falling apart.

So Scott and Donut helped me and My Gift get through some really rough times. Donut’s been gone for three years, and now Scotty. Sad. Those two did a lot more for us than we did for them, that’s for sure.

***

Practice has gone on through Scotty’s illness and death. It is very strange to practice with the huge hole of grief in your heart. But it puts you back on earth. Back in your body. Even though it is very weird to stay in your body when someone else is leaving theirs. I remember this being an enormous dilemma when my brother was dying. He was bowing out of the body thing, and the eating thing, and the time thing.

I remember having this huge pull when my brother died — time was going on without him, and it felt like time was dragging me further and further from him.

***

The Cop and I are still having our moments, though. He is a devoted underpants practitioner and very proud of it.

Last night, I mentioned that his practice is looking more fluid.

“I am ready for my teacher certificate now.”

I laughed.

“No, seriously. I am ready to pass on what I have learned.”

“I’ll make you a certificate with a Sharpie on notebook paper.”

“Make it on the computer so it looks nice. I will open my own studio and put it on the wall. Make sure it’s signed by Pattabhi Jois.”

“Okay.”

“Actually, make it ‘P. Tabhi.’ Like P. Diddy. That’s what I like to call him.”

***

Scotty playing with my shoelace in the sun.

I think the title says it all. Practice this morning was delightful.

Cody has recently warned yogis: do not tell [normal people] you dedicated a practice to them. Especially if they know you practice in the living room in your underwear. I don’t think The Cop does any dedicating of his practice — in fact, I can see his eyes rolling at the very thought — but seriously, honey, wouldn’t that be funny to tell some of your officer buddies?

***

The Psoas Book is due to arrive on Wednesday. Yay! Now that my traps are easing up a bit, the psoai are going berserk. I woke up last night, lying on my side with my knees pulled up a bit, and DAMN my psoai were like rocks.

And then I looked at Kino’s backbending video on YouTube and had a bit of a glimpse of the potential for flexibility there. I wonder how all those decades of daily abs curls sessions helped my psoas flexibility… I need an “aw, crap!” emoticon.

So, time to work ‘em out.

***

The Cop is off work today. So I envision him in the dirt yard, toiling away. Maybe in his underpants.

Okay, so I decided that my experiments with Sunday practice would move into actual spoken-word territory. Jazz, yes, it helps the trance — and in a very trippy way. How about some audio podcasts this week? I settled on some of the integral podcasts from Integral Naked. How about starting off with Ken Wilber just explaining his idea of integral-ity?

Ah, it was so promising. The idea that human consciousness is evolving. That each layer includes all the others, that we are all heading in the right direction. I even had the happy thought that this whole philosophy could be summed up as: “It’s all good!” Yup, individuals and groups, cultures and cliques — all heading toward deeper enlightenment while encompassing all of the “previous” consciousnesses.

Oh, wait. Did I just hear KW use the word “smart” to denote the “more conscious” among us? Oh crap, did he really just mention those who are “authentic” (as in, more authentic than other people)? Aw, crap! He really IS a prick.

Sigh.

At this point, I imagine him in a cumberbund and smoking jacket. And he has his own logo embroidered on the jacket in gold thread. Gack!

I know humans are hierarchical. I know KW would find my revulsion naive. But I’ve seen monks and lamas and yogis who manage to tread this line without going down the us/them path. Even if your heart isn’t in it, you can at least start adjusting your discourse — because the language you use = the consciousness you create.

***

I made cherry turnovers for The Cop this morning. He’d mentioned wanting some last week. The results: meh. It was a shortening crust for the dough, and too shortening-y and flakey for my taste. Anyone have a more doughy turnover crust recipe?

Other things on the list for today:

1. Make ARTISAN bread for tomorrow’s lunch
2. Measure yard for grass and gravel perimeter
3. Look at potential new motorcycle for The Cop

Okay, just took the bread out of the oven. Sigh (happy one). I love the ARTISAN bread. So easy and so yummy. It’s shocking to eat processed bread after having homemade bread. Yesterday, I had a soyburger just plain on a plate, with a slice of artisan bread on the side. There were whole wheat buns on the counter, but I didn’t want store-bought.

***

Practice was good. It is getting nice and warm again, which rocks. I know I am a baby. It’s 72 degrees right now, and I’m just starting to feel like spring is here.

Anyhow, practice was good. I have been acutely aware that the right trap tightness is somehow related to the left sacrum tweak. How, I have no idea. Perhaps if I were more evolved, I would understand these things…

I am including a urdhva dhanurasana picture and a little video of the wall thing. Pushing out through my arms is still mucho difficile and freaks out my breathing. Patience.

In the picture/video, you’ll notice I have on the same top as Cranky in her most current video posting. I love it, Tova! Super comfy. Also of note in the video: my laptop, which I used to listen to the pricks (sadly, Deepak Chopra was one of the pricks, whining about how Richard Dawkins dissed him). I turned the sound down during filming, so you could more clearly hear my grunts and ragged breathing. Not really. I was just protecting you from the prickery.

Also notable: the svadyaya tattoo on my inner elbow. Which just looks like a smudge from a distance. My boss is being very gracious about the svadyaya, despite the fact that I know it freaks her out. Still, despite her apparent high-class evolutionary status, she does not act like a prick. Nice.

[video 8743 w=400]

P.S. Anyone got any great psoas-openers for UD/kapo?

Still with the sore traps (the right side is killing me), but otherwise a nice quiet Saturday. Oh, except our backyard is leveled. Yes, over the past week, we had heavy equipment driving around back there. The pool was smashed and removed in its entirety.

Once again, The Cop and I looked at each other and said, “Gee, I didn’t think about what this’d actually be like.” Yes, we are both given to launching projects without bothering to think them all the way through. My most famous examples are my climbing career, when I just learned how to climb up — yeah, but um, what was gonna happen when we reached the end of the rope? (Answer: multi-pitch technology kicks in.) And how are we going to get down? (A: rappel.) And what about the fact that I don’t know how to rappel? (A: crash course in rappeling, at 150 feet up). The fact that I’m still alive kind of proves that not overthinking works, right?

Favorite yoga example: multiple attempts at getting my feet to clear the ground and come up behind me in bhujapidasana. That was the question, but not the FULL question. “How can I get my feet back and up?” is a good start, but if I’d thought it all the way through, there would have been a “and what happens once I get my feet back there?” follow-up question. Which might have led to thoughts about falling forward. Nah! Why waste time thinking about consequences? I only had to slam my head once before I understood what was going on. And the pain did not detract from my pleasure at figuring out the feet part of the equation.

Okay, so now we have a dirt back yard. Oh, hey, and a dog who loves to stroll around back there. And, now, a house with all kinds of dirt tracked into and through it.

No worries. This will be the impetus for thinking about what we’ll do back there. So far we know we need a strip of lawn for the dog to pee, poo, and lie on. She’s old and needs a soft surface. And the rest of the backyard? Xeriscape! Woohoo! A new project. I want a back yard that is totally sustainable — a back yard that lives and grows in the desert with only the natural precipitation (which is about 6 inches of rain per year, if I’m remembering correctly).

First order of business, though, is to get a strip of lawn and perhaps a gravel pathway to create a perimeter around the patio. That way, if the dog (or I!) am playing out in the dirt yard, the grass and/or gravel will get some of the dirt off our feet as we come back into the house.

As far as the rest of the backyard? I’ll have to do some research on ground cover and decorative grasses and shrubs. I’m already thinking I want some sagebrush and maybe even some tumbleweed. The natural desert plants are unbelievably beautiful — unfortunately most of the raw desert around here has been processed into housing developments. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have a desert in my back yard. And then I’ll just need a few coyotes and a rattlesnake or two.

Poor Cop. He’s sleeping after a night shift that included tracking a guy who fled a burglary, then broke into a resort and stabbed a couple of people. The Cop found him and chased the guy right into the arms of the SWAT team. Good work. But now, while he’s having a well-deserved rest, I am planning how to turn his yard into the desert. I wonder if he feels like I make his life easier or more difficult with my notions…

***

Dahlia the masseuse is out sick today, so instead of having a massage, I made maple syrup candy. I think this was kicked off by Laksmi’s post where she talked about wanting to eat a sugar cube when she woke up from a nap. I have the same sugar craving after naps. But I skipped the nap (may grab one in a little while, still, though!) and went right to the candy.

I used to get maple syrup candy when I was a kid and we would go on vacation in New Hampshire. It’s just crystallized maple syrup, and mmmmmmmmmmm, it’s yummy. Super easy to make, provided you have a candy thermometer.

Maple Syrup Candy

1 cup maple syrup

1. Pour syrup into a large heavy saucepan and set over high heat. The syrup is going to foam and expand a LOT when it boils. Figure it’ll expand at least to five times its original size.
2. Clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan and whatever you do, don’t stir. Stirring causes the sugar to crystallize prematurely (you want the sugar to crystallize only after it’s reached the correct temperature).
3. Cook to 238 degrees F and take off of the heat.
4. Use a wooden spoon to stir the mixture until it changes consistency–it will become grainy instead of glossy, and get lighter in color. This takes about five minutes.
5. Pour it onto pan lined with foil or foil cupcake liners and let cool.
6. Cut into small pieces and enjoy.

***

Okay, now that I have sugar cubes ready, it’s time for that nap.

Up at 3:30 after a short night of kind of sleeping. Usually the dog sleeps in the bedroom at night, and Scott gets the rest of the house to himself. Last night, though, what with a splinted leg and one of those crazy collars, I decided to keep him with me.

Actually, his leg isn’t splinted: he has a catheter in it, left from the day at the veterinarian. They used it to administer fluids. The idea was that he would come home with me last night, and I would keep an eye on him to see if he can keep down food (yes) and not have diarrhea (another yes). So this morning, since he had a good night and won’t need to spend another day over there hooked up to an IV, I will bring him by at 7:30 and they will remove the catheter and collar.

Okay, so the leg has the catheter, and they wrapped it in a bunch of tape to stabilize it. Scott does NOT like the tape, hence the collar. It is a little amusing, because he is not a graceful creature to begin with, and navigating the collar is beyond him. I just try to keep him still, because anytime he walks around he crashes into things and then just stops, because it makes him confused. So you find him stuck on the legs of furniture or corners of the wall, like one of those toys that goes until it hits something.

His thing last night, as we tried to sleep, was to lie ON me. Usually he curls up near people, but last night he was determined to lie on top of me. Which meant the plastic collar kept hitting me in the face, and then he’d get an itch in the splinted leg, which he’d shake, violently, and hit me upside the head. Oh, and did I mention that when he used the litter box he got some urine on the splint leg? Yeah, nice. I was awakened at least once an hour by a smack in the head from the urine leg.

It’s funny in retrospect.

Dreamt we were back in New York, and that we lived in an apartment building with lots of secret passageways. Scotty was a young kitten prone to wandering, and the whole dream was about me and the dog trying to find him as we crawled through inaccessible spaces in the huge apartment building. At the end, we found ourselves outside, lying on the ground. The cat crawled up to lie on the dog’s back. All of our neighbors in the apartment building were lying out on the ground, too. I looked up into the sky and there were wisps of what looked like smoke, in beautifully well-defined shapes, in every shade of gray. I asked the neighbors about these blossoms of gray and was told they were special fireworks — monochromatic and silent.

And we all lay on the earth and watched the show in silence.

***

I knew it was going to be a busy day, so the early start to practice will actually be quite handy.

Happy Friday!

Moon day.

Last night, I spent some time at the emergency vet. The cat has been kind of up and down, healthwise — inflammatory bowel disease that may be worsening. It’s usually relatively well-controlled by alternating courses of antibiotics, special foods, and prednisone. But he’s been off since his 300-pound-man barf, and last night he was very weak and weird.

He actually was kind of woozy and disoriented, and I found him standing over his water bowl, gazing longingly, and yet not drinking. Poor bunny.

He’s the dumbest cat I’ve ever met, but one of the sweetest creatures on earth. My Gift raised him from kittenhood, and he’s always been very patient with kids. He spent a lot of time wearing doll dresses and tucked into her toy stroller. Or captured in the Lego box. Or smooshed in with all her stuffed animals, when she decided she’d teach him how to read. We had his brother, too (Donut, of Donut’s Zen Mom fame), and the kids in the neighborhood quickly learned to distinguish between Donut, who was highly impatient with kids and not the teeniest bit shy about expressing his disdain, and Scott, who was too dumb and sweet to resist their attentions.

Donut died a couple of years ago, so it’s been just Scotty, and truth be told, he’s pretty much the same as ever. Sits in a corner and looks at the floor. Faces you while you’re watching TV, just gazing and purring so hard that he sways. Scott adores The Cop and spends a lot of time cuddling up to him. After a lifetime of putting up with kids, he’s old and wants an adult to look after him, I guess.

So Scott spent the night at the emergency vet — to the tune of $750 — and this morning I brought him to the regular vet, where he is spending the day so he can have more intravenous fluids and a dose of antibiotics.

The emergency vet said the next steps would be diagnostic tests to find out if he has cancer, everything else having previously been ruled out. Diagnostics would include ultrasound, which might not reveal anything, endoscopic biopsy, which might not reveal anything, and finally a surgical biopsy, which would, in theory, be definitive. Unless, of course, it wasn’t.

I had a chat with the regular vet this morning, and told her that I generally try to avoid medical intervention, but always like to ask for an opinion about whether I am being negligent. She was right on the same wavelength with me, and asked if, should we find he has cancer, I would want to do surgery or chemotherapy. I said no. I felt guilty saying it, too, even though it is really my answer. But damn, he’s an old cat and I wouldn’t be able to put him through something like that. Anyhow, she understood and said that if I wasn’t going to want to aggressively treat cancer (if that’s even what he has) then it doesn’t make sense to aggressively pursue a diagnosis.

The bottom line is that I want him to be comfortable and happy. I know he’s old and is going to die sooner or later, and I don’t feel that it would be sensible to take heroic measures.

So no abhinivesha for Scotty. He’s free of it, so why would I add my own?

I am not unaware that he picked a Moon Day eve to fall ill. It is actually quite consistent with his lifetime of generous behavior.

As we’re practicing, I hear a chuckle. I look over at The Cop.

“Just happy?” I ask.
“Laughing at my own folly,” he says.
We go on.
“I’m waking up at 4:30 to put my own foot in my own gooch.”

Yeah, I guess that’d be hard to explain to the other cops.

***

I look over during the second side of marichyasana B, to see how he’s faring.

“I’m fighting with it,” he says, having gotten the pose again this morning.
“What’s your fight-to-surrender ratio?” I ask, “100% fight?”
“90% fight,” he responds. “I know I have to surrender, but it’s conceptual knowledge.”

***

The cybershala.

Yesterday it was Owl talking about stress in the jaw, and Vanessa talking about her body as “soft.”

This morning, Tova has a video of herself putting her chin on her mat in bhujapidasana. I was thrilled to see it. I have been hovering, but not putting my chin down. Mostly because when I hover, I can feel that I am decreasing the angle between the forearms and upper arms to counterbalance the weight of leaning forward. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be able to put my chin down while keeping the 90 degree angle of the arms. Watching Tova’s video, I saw that she, too, decreases the angle of the arms. As does Arjuna, now that I look up the pose.

Okay, so I was busy thinking I shouldn’t do something until I could miraculously figure out how to do it the way that is probably actually physically impossible. Yeah, good idea.

Suffice it to say, watching Tova’s video made me understand how to just go for it. So this morning, in bhujapidasana, I put my chin on the floor. The fact that I smooshed most of the lower part of my face into my mat and my feet were dragging is immaterial. That’ll improve with time. I am curious, though, about why I thought I was going to suddenly be able to do this perfectly without going through the messed-up, just-learning-how-to-do-it stage?

My other inspiration this morning was Laksmi, who also posted videos. I was particularly taken with her supta vajrasana video. So strong and yet so delicate. And all I could think about was how GOOD it would feel to stretch my shoulders/traps out. So I did the entire practice as officially given to me by Volleyball Guy. To a delightful supta vajrasana, by way of a sketchy-at-best kapotasana.

And for my poetintellectual inspiration this morning, Patrick’s post. Kapotasana. The introverted pose. The Barnett Newman of asanas. I am going to think of my spine as one of Newman’s zips from now on. That’ll be more helpful than the Pollock-like energy chaos that usually happens in my kapotasana!

Thanks to all of you, cybershalamates. You really help my practice.