Clearing vrttis, Invasion of the mesomorphs

Posted in ashtanga yoga on 07/05/2009 07:24 am by karen

On Wednesday, we (as in, 90% of this work fell to The Cop) moved My Gift back down to the next town over, where she will do her senior year. On moving day, I took a meeting from 10 AM until noon, then we drove up to her place up north (a 2 hour drive), picked up a U-Haul, packed it (Go, Cop!), drove back down here, unpacked (You’re a god, Cop!) and got her set up a bit. Wrapped up at 11 PM. Note to self: next time she moves, hire a mover. It wasn’t fun. (Thank goodness The Cop does Crossfit.)

Still, it’s great to have her close by again. Today I’ll bring her coffee and meet the new kitten she adopted on Friday & we’ll wait for the internet/cable guy.

I am taking a week and a half off from work. Badly needed down time. My goal? To not think about more than one thing at a time and to not hurry to do anything for the whole time I’m off. God, it’s sweet. My job is all about multi-tasking and moving as fast as possible at all times. Not healthy. Not by a long shot. And not optimally efficient, for that matter. The illusion is that the more I do and the faster I do it, the more gets done. But 1) at what cost? and 2) is it even true (that more’s getting done)?

I’m going to try to experiment with one-thing at a time when I get back to work. If nothing else, it makes life MUCH more pleasant. I was definitely work- and task-crazed. It’s an insidious addiction.

Practice. I’ve been suffering a bit with this business of having a practice I suck at. Feeling pretty discouraged for a couple of days there — probably in part because of overwork and burnt-outness. I didn’t have huge reserves of emotional resilience. I don’t care what anyone says — intermediate practice is tough for me, and it takes some oomph to go in and work through it day after day.

But I haven’t done jack since Wednesday except practice and read and sleep (woohoo!) and it seems like yesterday’s practice got me back in a more stable frame of mind. And the fact that it is led primary on
Saturday helps.

There was a small contingent of guys who appeared to be friends of Muscle Man at led primary. Young (in their 20s), muscle heavy, highly tattooed. Still working on their binds and lotuses, but pressing up into handstands & doing aerial transitions all over the place. Now that I think about it, they may be climbers. Definitely had the bohemian sub-culture thing going on. I am so accustomed to the noodly people (generally female) of yoga that I was happy to see some guys troop into the room. And not noodly yoga guys. Mesomorphs.

Class was primary and then a quick selection of intermediate favorites. MM asked me to demonstrate laghu vajrasana before we all tried it. No prob. I can laghu v ’til the cows come home and always have been able to. I don’t even think about it when I practice it every morning, ’cause I’m in the midst of trying to wring all the kapo prep out of ustrasana, then turning my thoughts toward the imminent attempt at kapotasana.

So when one of the tattooed contingent came over as I was leaving class and said, “That was awesome,” I didn’t understand what he was talking about. “That pose you demoed,” he said, “It was beautiful.”

Ha! Silly me. I’ve managed to totally devalue what I’m good at and hyperfocus on the stuff that needs work. (“If I can do laghu vajrasana, it must not be that hard!”) I have to admit, though, it really pleased me to have someone strong give me props about a strength pose. I need to savor my strength a bit more. And I also think we need more focus on strength in Ashtanga. The hell with this flexibility BS. ;-)

 

9 Comments

  1. How nice to have your Gift near you again! And what a good maman you are to wait for the cable guy with her.

    Yeah, down with the bendy! ha ha

  2. Hah! Attack of the mesomorphs! That was great.

    Indeed, down with all this flexibility, hah! Marvelous posting here Karen. Can you SERIOUSLY just Supta V all day long? Dude, you’ve got weird flexibility (as we all do).

  3. What is it with us humans that we tend to think that if something comes easy to us, then it must not be all that hard. I do that all the time. Instead of taking some joy and pride out of doing some asanas really well, I beat myself up about the ones that I struggle with.

  4. ‘ intermediate practice is tough for me, and it takes some oomph to go in and work through it day after day.’
    Yes , hard, bloody hard work. Something about it too, it’s like the hilly section of the tour de france. Some asana in it I love, really love, but the series taken as a whole, don’t think I’ll ever love it. I Love Primary and think I might love 3rd, but Intermediate, think it takes a lot of discipline to force yourself through it every day. That said I feel like I’ve achieved something afterwards even if it wasn’t pretty in places. Maybe Ice climbing is a better metaphor, that dogged step by step up the side of a mountain, digging your feet into the snow to make steps. We can do this! it’ll get easier right, right? anybody, RIGHT?

  5. Oh God, you guys. LAGHU vajrasana. I meant laghu vajrasana. Duh! Gonna go back and edit my post now….

  6. Laghu Vajrasana is HARD. So hard to touch the head without collapsing. Looking forward to seeing you in Mpls for Sweeney. Are you here for the weekend as well as the mysore?

  7. hi Karen
    :) funny stuff about the guys practicing. i don’t know, we have have different bodies, but i’ll take Intermediate any time over Primary, which give me backackes. A teacher once said to me that i took more naturally to forward bending in Primary than chest opening in Intermediate. hence, i need intermediate.
    hugs,
    Arturo

  8. Hahaha! Karen, that’s AWESOME. I’m glad I got in early for the mis-type.

    YES, you and Laghu-ing all day, now that makes sense with some of your prior descriptions of your practice and muscular history. And yes, also, the mesomorph’s envy, totally fits now.

    I was once doing a knees-under-weight-bench Supta V with my mat rolled up under my sacrum, in the Y of all places, and binding it, and this dude said, “Man, that just LOOKS painful.” In between ujjayi’s with my head back, I said, “It’s not…as…painful…as it looks…like it…should be,” and went on with it.

  9. Karen,
    It doesn’t surprise me that your super strong legs (I can just tell by looking) can do Laghu all day long! I fought with that pose for a long, long time. Now I can do it, but I don’t love it.

    What a fun post to read, I’ve missed your blog!

    Fatou nailed it- it’s so easy to forget what we’re good at doing and fixate on what’s missing. I have a special someone in my life who is like the guys you described- handstands? arm balances? no prob. Twisting hulky shoulders? That’s when the “you’re lucky you’re so flexible and have long arms” starts to come out of his mouth. I have to remind him how hard I work on the things that come easily to him. (he still thinks I have it better- ha ha!).

    Grim, I love 2nd! It’s hard, though. Challenging in a way that makes me love it.

Leave a Reply

« | »