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Woohoo! Friday! I love Fridays. Remember that idea I had about how I wanted to bring my “don’t hurry” mind to the office with me? Yeah. That’s really hard to do. There is always more work than time, so I end up shaping my behavior to fit that reality.

I tend to be very organized, so I tend to do things like pack my lunch and my tea bags so I can go into work after practice and not leave the office until the end of the day. Work through lunch (which is always simple so I don’t have to waste time doing any prep work, etc.). I set myself up to work work work non-stop from 8:30-6.

Not healthy, right? So on Fridays, I have a healthier schedule. I don’t hurry to get into the office after practice — I take a more leisurely route to work, which includes a stop at Starbucks for a soy latte. And I don’t pack lunch — which means I have to go outside at noon to head over to Whole Foods for some soup. Yeah, it’s mid-summer in the desert and I have an obsession with soup these days. What’s good for lunch when it’s 110 degrees? Soup! And hot tea! I don’t know, that’s just the way it is.

After work, The Cop and I are going to see “Funny People.” Then we’ll have pizza. Yay, Friday! (Did I mention we watched “Zach and Miri Make a Porno” on DVD recently? I think the first hour of that movie is probably the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. If “Dick in a Box” made you love Justin Timberlake, then “Zach and Miri” will make you love Justin Long.)

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*sniff* This really choked me up first thing this morning.

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Mayurasana report: aloft for several seconds. It feels like a flower opening up. A flower made of muscle and determination.

Only 5 people at practice this morning. At first I felt deflated (Hey, where’s the energy?) but then I got over myself and got absorbed in the practice, and all was well. It’s taking me an hour and 45 minutes to work my way through all of second, mostly ’cause I feel like I need to pace myself.

MM stood by as I did the headstands and timbers. He grinned when I looked up. “This is fun!” I exclaimed. And it really is. I do have a bit of a mental block on muka hasta C, though, since the crash. I mentioned that, and he spotted me on that one. MHC is rather like UHP: if my head isn’t in the game, it gets wobbly. Unfortunately, it can be hard for me to get very still inside when I’m around other people. A good skill to practice, I guess…

I videorecorded mayurasana this morning. The beauty part is that I can capture stills from when I was actually airborne. Less beautiful is my framing — you’ll note I cut off my head. Still, if you add it all up, I spent about 4 or 5 discontinuous seconds aloft. Which means that if I don’t have to do my five breaths aloft sequentially, and if it’s okay to be holding on to the pose by the skin of my teeth, dangerously close to bumping my head on the floor, well then, I think I have this nailed.

Kidding, obviously. Need to get my head up; need to get my feet up. I haven’t been so amused by a pose for a long time. I’ve been scared by some poses lately, sure — but this one is just pure fun.

All that business about sleep disturbances with intermediate practice? Not so much. I’m sleeping like a log these days. The kind of sleep where you wake up and wonder where you are. Dead to the world sleep. Very nice.

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Waylon at obedience class last night. He loves the lady dogs. LL Cool Way. We had to work in pairs and he kept trying to have sexy time (said with a Borat accent) with the girl dogs. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to apologize to the other owners after my dog molests their dog.

We stood in a circle as the teacher explained something. We were inside a meeting room in the local animal hospital, which has a slick polished concrete floor. All the puppies sit or kind of move about a little on their leashes. Waylon, though, lies down on his belly. And after a couple of minutes, he stretches his front legs out, and then he frogs his back legs out, and then, when he thinks I’m not gonna notice, he tries to army crawl toward the other dogs. Had the other owners laughing uproariously.

And then he topped his own silly antics. He was lying on his side with tongue flopped on floor. Got restless so started pushing with his back feet. Since his back was arched, he ended up lying on his side, turning in a circle, leaving a long spit trail with his tongue.

***

Mayurasana is cracking me up and getting all of my challenge energy going. I look forward to it like it’s a new climbing route I’m trying to get. The thing is, I only get a couple of tries — then I burn out and all effort is for naught. Nakrasana is coming along, I guess. It’s absurd. And I have to go watch RF’s supta urdhva pada vajrasana. I SO don’t get that whole thing.

No headstand crashes, though I felt mighty shaky on muka hasta sirsasana C (the one I crashed out of). I actually love the little bringing-the-hands-back-to-tripod-then-timbering-down thing. It is a nice combination of control and falling.

MM was in a cheery mood this morning, so we all had some laughs at the very end of practice. Yup, I was there from beginning to end (6-8 AM), slowly slogging through all of second. It was lovely.

This morning in kapotasana, I had a moment of stillness. I was astonished. I am talking about a stillness that I’ve experienced only rarely, and usually when sitting zazen. It feels like total peace, where everything stops — all mind chatter and sense input — and there is complete and utter silence and stillness. It happens in between breaths and is usually broken by my realization that I am not breathing. Not a panicked realization, but just a coming conscious of how complete the stillness is. It’s quite beautiful. I’ve never really tried to pursue it, but just take it as it comes. I imagine it is the heart of pranayama?

So yeah, in the midst of a grueling adjustment (my lats and hip flexors are creaking open in a way that is rather intense — though the sense of it being “grueling” is more emotional than physical, truth be told) — anyhow, in the midst of that, there was the ascent? descent? in-scent? into stillness.

Whoa. I never saw that coming.

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Every other Monday I have an early meeting, so I had 90 minutes. I wanted to press on past my usual stopping point, since MM has encouraged me to give the whole sequence a go. I was eager to take a shot at mayurasana and nakrasana, and then I figured I might as well carry on.

Mayurasana: great thrill as I get head and feet off the ground (not far, though — be realistic!) and balanced for a few seconds. Nakrasana: three hilariously lame hops forward. The vinyasa into it somehow makes it a little easier to get hoppin’ than just trying it cold. MM helped me eek out a more elegant 5 forward and back. Talk about a pose that makes you feel ridiculous. I guess that’s in case you’re feeling all full of yourself for having come so far.

Vatayanasana. I love. Love, love, love. No idea why. The soothing feeling of the toe grab at the beginning. The intricate little one-legged vinyasa. The kneeling down and rising up. Oooh, there is something intensely devotional in this pose, I’ve just realized. For a moment there, I felt all Catholic again.

Parighasana, gomukhasana. Check. The fascinating thing about intermediate is that many (most?) of the poses are not terribly difficult in and of themselves, but it’s a HUGE challenge to keep the breath and feel the nerves vibrating and still pull it all off.

Supta urdhva pada vajrasana. Huh? I have to do some more homework on this one. Also must practice in home practice, where I am less self-conscious about rolling around like an idiot.

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Speaking of rolling around: Dramatic flying dismount out of muka hasta sirsasana C. I’ve never fallen out of a headstand before. But as I was just saying, the nerves thing was intense — I was jangly – and it was a challenge to focus and be still in my head. On my head. Thought I was gonna be okay, but then suddenly felt myself wobbling and grabbed for the wrong tool: my eyes. Focused my vision, but realized in that split second that I wasn’t gonna have time to solve via vision (Where the hell am I?!) so closed my eyes and told myself to roll (and forget about which direction was forward or backward or up or down).

As I hit the deck, I flashed on Volleyball Guy saying, “You’re gonna scare the new people!” when someone fell. I laughed then, and laughed again today. Indeed, the new people in the room looked a little shocked. Sorry, you guys.

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Quick run to the shower, where I rifled through my bag in horror. Did I forget to pack panties?? Geez. This morning I read one of those Yahoo blurbs, “Fashion Mistakes in the Office,” or something like that. First one was “don’t show cleavage.” I am SO down with that rule and NEVER wear anything that might tempt someone to look down my shirt (God, that’s the last thing I’d want to have happen in a meeting). Anyhow, here I am hurrying for a meeting, wondering if I really need panties. YES! YES, I DO! Oh thank God, there they are, fallen into a side pocket.

Phew.

Okay. Let the week begin.

Today’s practice was greatly influenced by the fact that I developed a sudden craving for a salty dog yesterday. A salty dog is a vodka and grapefruit juice in a glass with a salted rim. YUM!

This morning I found out that a salty dog stays in your system in much the same way a margarita does. Basically, it feels fine until you get to a really hard or stressful pose, and then suddenly your stomach feels like you drank a cup of straight lime juice before practice.

I am a little worried because my hankerings for salty dogs does not seem to have been satisfied by the one I had last night. If you asked me if I wanted one now, I’d say no. (‘Cause I just finished practice and am vividly conscious of the effects. Well, also ’cause it’s 9 AM on a work day.) But if you ask me later, I’m afraid I’m gonna fall for it.

We’ll see. But it’s looking like one of the hard lessons I’m going to have to learn by experience.

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Mayurasana. Okay, I have to pull out the Freeman intermediate DVD and watch the transition from karandavasana to mayurasana, then out of mayurasana. And maybe into and out of nakrasana for good measure.

Anyhow, this morning it felt like an enormous victory to get my head up and my toes hovering a few centimeters off the mat. I was laughing inside to be so excited about SUCH a teeny triumph. But then I figured I shouldn’t look ANY small triumph in the mouth. Yay, me!

No jump into bakasana today, though. Sniffle. Oh well. Maybe another day.

***

The Cop and I watched “Gran Torino” last night. What a strange movie. I think it was really popular? I love Clint Eastwood, in part because he was kind of a marginalized actor who came up through spaghetti westerns and vigilante dramas, and here he is — closing in on 80 and now this highly respected director and actor.

He’s pretty much just done his own thing for decades and he didn’t whine or pander, and now he’s enjoying a ton of success, but still pretty much sticking to his own perspective.

Gran Torino interested me and interested The Cop in different ways, I’m sure. I LOVE stories about immigrants and how they interact — even though Walt (Eastwood’s character) is the last “American” left on his block, which has been taken over by Hmong immigrants, he still identifies as a “polack” and his interactions with his Italian barber and his Irish construction boss buddy are full of ethnic consciousness.

Watching his relationship with his traditional Hmong neighbors develop was delightful.

I think The Cop probably loved how the movie looked at manhood and responsibility. A critic called the film, “a muscle car of a movie,” and I imagine that also appealed.

And that look at manhood was complicated by the fact of Eastwood’s age. I see my dad dealing with aging and how it can feel like one’s power is being robbed. This movie is really a revenge tale of man against aging. Fascinating.

Lots going on in the movie, so much, in fact, that some of it gets kind of caricaturized, and some of it feels a little like a fairy tale. Truth be told, you could probably tear it apart from any number of angles. But if you suspend your disbelief a bit and give it the benefit of the doubt, it makes for a pretty complex new bit of American mythology.

Home practice Thursday! That exclamation point is a cheerful addition because I’m in a good mood right now. Wouldn’t have been there if I’d written this earlier.

Home practice of intermediate is hard. Jesus. Everything I write about references difficulty these days. Have you noticed that?

Okay, so I like Thursday because: it’s almost Friday, and: it’s the day Matthew Sweeney says is okay for entertainment experimentation. Today I did intermediate, going for a sketch of the practice more than a deep digging in. That’s always nice and relaxing. And it kinda took the comparison thing off the table. I mean, when I am in the shala, where it’s HOT, and where I can undistractedly work work work the poses, I get much further into backbends and LBH stuff. I mean, duh. So it doesn’t really make sense for me to feel bad about NOT being able to get so deep at home, but I still tend to go there in my mind.

Anyhow, yes. A nice sketch of intermediate. And I decided to use the video recorder. Because sometimes I feel like my poses are great, and sometimes I feel like they suck. I have no perspective. After practice I took some time and watched the recording. Know what? It’s just like MM said in a class one day. “Your poses aren’t as good as you think. And they’re not as bad as you think.”

They were fine. Not at all like how I imagine myself when I feel like a melting blob of jello or a stiff, unyielding fireplug. And they were not fine. Not at all like I imagine when I feel like I am utterly stellar.

So there you go.

All in all, I’ve been feeling more sucky than stellar, so this visual report was pretty positive.

***

MS suggests going past your regular poses in Thursday practice. I tried mayurasana and nakrasana. Gah! Okay, the mayurasana thing was pretty ridiculous. Mostly it just hurt my wrists. How can I get my elbows lower into my gut and rest all of my body weight on the points of them? Really? It doesn’t sound like a good idea when you say it that way, does it?

I struggled with my head on the floor and my legs all amok behind me. The Cop stopped in the doorway and watched for a while and I wanted to scream at him. Because I don’t like being watched when I’m struggling like an idiot. He didn’t know that, though. He couldn’t see that I was insane with rage on the inside. I watched the recording and you can’t tell at all.

Oh, that’s the fun about watching these recordings — there is a universe of experience happening inside, and pretty much none of it shows on the outside. I love that.

And then I tried nakrasana, and like a dope, I kept my hands under my shoulders. Uh, yeah. That didn’t work. In the recording, I heave myself with all my might and go nowhere at all. Again. Nothing. Again. Nope. Then I scramble off my mat and go to the bookshelf, where I leaf through Yoga Mala. Then I come back and put my hands closer to my waist. And achieve one feeble hop. Okay, that’s enough for today!

***

Um, what’s the deal with vrischikasana? Does it or does it not come after karandavasana? Why did I imagine it did? In the recording, I flip through Yoga Mala in vain, looking for the scorpion.

Sadness.

Yes, today is a moon day. I was conflicted about practice. My last moon day practice sucked! I specifically said that I wouldn’t make the mistake of practicing on a moon day again. Uh, yeah. Well. Mysore practice is only offered on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. My greed won.

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How did I know it is a moon day? Well, I kept seeing this little white tag on the outside seam of my left leg, right around the calf. What is that? Why have I never noticed it before? I wondered in bharadvajasana. Whatever.

As I walked out of the shala, it caught my eye again, and being freed from the haze of asana practice, I knew right away. I had my pants on inside out!

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Did anything else happen that was lame or otherwise punitive-in-response-to-my-criminality? No. Very much no.

How about this:

I got the balls of my feet fully in my hands in kapotasana. Furthest I’ve ever been, by far. Woohoo! The Poetess was practicing beside me, and she got up and pressed down on my elbows when I had my toes. That gave me space to move my hands up a LOT (isn’t it funny how a LOT in kapotasana can be measured in inches and fractions thereof?). Anyhow, I was psyched.

Second thing: I landed the jump into bakasana for the very first time. Totally surprised me. It wasn’t from a fully stretched out down dog, but still. My usual MO is to try it once from a full down dog, then another from a full down dog, then one where the length of the DD is halved, then half again, and then I just do a plain old bakasana for 5 breaths. Today, though, I just took the short stance and landed it. I fell off pretty quickly due to surprise, but if I can do it once…

The Poetess and I did a synchronized practice from kapotasana through karandavasana. Great fun.

***

Waylon’s first obedience class with the trainer I used with Ty was last night. He did marvelously well, in part because we had the class outside and it was about 105 degrees. Which isn’t as bad as it sounds, non-desert-dwellers. It is tough on Waylon, though, since his short muzzle means his cooling system is compromised. The heat, though, makes him a better student; basically, he’s too hot to fight against the commands.

We got there a few minutes early. A couple of other dogs were there, at the other end of the park. Waylon and I walked down into the grassy area where class is held, and he immediately found and waded up to his ankles in a thick mud puddle. Then he ran into the long, lush grass on the side of the hill. As all of the other dogs and owners assembled and the teacher showed up, Waylon was rolling luxuriously on his back in the long grass, snorting and chewing clumps of the green stuff and waving his mud-caked feet in the air.

Really, his name is perfect. He is such a good old boy.

Main sensation in practice today was burny pain on my kneepoints. Kneepoints? You know when you do ustrasana or kapotasana, there’s that perfect point where you balance on your kneecaps? Yeah, well, that’s the same place where you blister and tear off your skin when you decide to wash all the tile floors in your house by hand on Saturday. Meaning: on your hands and knees with a bucket and a cloth.

Duh, right? I didn’t even think about it. But at the end of my chore I had gleaming floors and torn up knees.

So that was fun. Ustrasana and kapotasana. Ow. Bakasana. Surprise! Now JUMP into bakasana! LOL. The left knee blister broke and the skin came off yesterday. This morning, the right knee skin came loose after kapotasana. I tore the flap off and looked at it. Thought about setting it next to my mat, so as not to disturb the flow of my meditation (I’m laughing as I write this, BTW) but decided it was worth a trip out of the room and to the trash bucket.

Oh, and did I mention that I used the hedge clippers, too, on Saturday? And that the result is crazy tight forearms and claw hands? Great for all the extra handstand work MM wants me to do lately.

Okay, so myths. The myth for today is that handstands adversely impact backbending. As you know, from all my whining, I am not a natural backbender. I’ve worked for every millimeter of bend that I get. I’ve avoided handstands like the plague for years. Still, MM put me on a handstand and dropback regimen, and Ana Forrest sessions go right there, too.

Of course I figured kapotasana would suck suck suck this morning, due to faulty knees and overworked shoulders. But no! There is actual real progress. (Imagine!!) MM can now reliably guide my hands past my toes and onto the soles (just a little bit of the soles, but still!) and I can pretty much keep them there when he shifts his hands to press down on my elbows. Previously, he’s gotten me to my toes and let go, at which point my hands flew away from my feet and my elbows sprang into the air.

“Progress!” he said today, after kapo. Indeed. I really appreciate his patience. And I wonder if he’s secretly thinking, “God, about time!”