Comments on: Moon Day Madness & Obedience Class

By: Liz

Liz — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 02:11:52 +0000

This sentence is priceless:
“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.”
What a character! I love Waylon reports.

Moon day schmoon day. Maybe the pull of the moon affects some, but I’ve always thought it was just a way to have a built in break. Take it or leave it! I’d have gone to the shala too… no way would I give up a shala day for the new moon.

Kapo! balls of feet! Fantastic developments.

By: patrick

patrick — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:02:23 +0000

Karen, your comment midway down here, ought to be posted in shalas worldwide, about Kapotasana. Seriously.

That is EXACTLY how I lived the pose for a while (wait, a WHILE?? dude, try TWO FREAKIN YEARS) until, essentially, seventh series made me give less of a fuck about it.

By: (0v0)

(0v0) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:20:52 +0000

hahahahaha!!!

NICE.

By: karen

karen — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:17:00 +0000

Oh, and superstitions: MM adjusted me in bhekasana. Stood up and said, “Tight today.” I was HORRIFIED and ANGRY (the room was hot, so pitta burned bright). I wanted to scream, “Don’t SAY that to my MIND!” Made a little internal vow to have an exceptional kapotasana to prove him wrong.

All of this, all of these waves and particles, in a split second. And none of them conscious ’til I just applied the words.

We really do live in a dream.

By: karen

karen — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:14:27 +0000

I stressed on kapo for SUCH a long time. Totally made it my focus. Frustration! Fear! Longing! Hatred! EMOTION! EMOTION! EMOTION! LOL!

All of that seems to have dissolved. (Those ideas turned into waves and particles and went the way of all quantum elements.) Part of why they dissolved is because MM gave me much more to do past that pose, so it got sucked up into the gestalt, rather than being the end-all, be-all. I see where that can sound like Ashtanga heresy, but I wonder if SKPJ EVER intended for us to invest so much Type A energy into acquiring “the pose you’re stopped at.” I suspect not. (There’s some cultural excavation work to be done here, but I leave it to discursively gifted academics.)

Bakasana B was the other Ashtanga alternative: didn’t care about it one way or another. No emotion. And then one day (today!), the physics came through for me.

By: (0v0)

(0v0) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:00:27 +0000

Also, it’s funny. I’m in the exact same place with the ganda bherunda. Months of getting the feet nowhere near the floor, just kind of hanging in space. Then some months of touching the toes down on good days. Then regular toe-touching. And this week, some regularity in taking the balls of the feet to the floor. It’s sort of kapotasana all over again. In a good way.

By: (0v0)

(0v0) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:58:03 +0000

Bakasana B!

Speaking of superstitions… no practice on moon days!

Riiiiight.