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Long weekend. Yay! I didn’t remember it until speaking with a vendor on Tuesday.

He said, “Are you doing anything special for the weekend? My wife and I are going to Lake Powell.”

Me (internal monolog: “Wow, that’s random.”): “Uhhh…”

Him: “We go every Memorial Day.”

Me: “Oh, that sounds great.” (Internal monolog: “Long weekend! Woohoo! What month is this?!”)

Anyhow, to celebrate, I made pancakes for breakfast. This is the best and easiest pancake recipe ever. Cakey, vanilla-y, and like I said, super easy.

1 c all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 T sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 c soymilk
2 T vegetable oil

Mix dry ingredients. Mix wet ingredients. Add wet into dry and stir until lumps are pea-size.

Yum!

I have two favorite kitchen objects right now: a new cast iron skillet and a new cookbook. The skillet rocks — really, there’s nothing like cooking in cast iron. I’m eager to try out some naan on it.

The other new favorite is this book: Good to the Grain. Not only does it offer me an opportunity to treasure hunt local stores for more exotic flours like amaranth, spelt and teff, it also has the most astonishingly beautiful pictures and (yes, I worked in bookstores for a decade) a top-notch binding.

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Speaking of books. I just downloaded the Kindle version of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hinduism. I’ve been having such a good time listening to podcasts by Swami Jyotirmayananda every day, but it occurs to me that my understanding of Hinduism is kind of catch as catch can — bits and pieces picked up in yoga classes, online, through my own random reading list, etc.

Must take a moment to shout out to Volleyball Guy, who insists all of his students learn to recite the limbs of Ashtanga, recite the yamas and niyamas, and chant a good number of mantras. He always put the asana practice in perspective re: the larger picture of raja yoga.

So yeah, an “Idiot’s Guide” is pretty unsophisticated. But whatever, right? I need an overview. I’ve learned to go easy when I suggest that people should pick up an “Idiot’s Guide” or “For Dummies” book. It never occurred to me that someone might take it personally, until someone did. But I’m pretty shameless about starting from scratch when I’m learning something new.

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And now some pics of Waylon doing what he does best on this long holiday weekend.

Life is unfair, but that’s okay.

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Possible sister for Waylon?

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Why Way needs a bud. Everyone likes to play the bitey game.

May 18, 2010. Thank you, Guruji. 

Seeing form with the whole body and mind,
Hearing sound with the whole body and mind,
One understands It intimately.
~Eihei Dogen

Stayed up late (for a yogi — 10:30 PM!) at a social event. Had two vodka tonics (“please make them very light!” I begged the bartender). It’s hard being a good hostess. It’s our annual conference, this year located in Dallas.

Despite the late evening, I got up for practice at 4:30. And I’m happy I did — the humidity here makes practice really pleasant (not so pleasant in the humidity: hair and make up).

When I visited with Lisa in Tucson, she gave me instructions about what to do once I’d gotten comfortable with bakasana B. Decided today that it’s time to go ahead with that. I have a few new things to work on, then will schedule time to check in with her again.

In the meantime: my shoulders! Shoulders are a focal point these days. The collarbones get tender, as they have in the past, but these days there’s a LOT of sensation in the shoulderblades, particularly the inner, lower points of the blades. They almost feel like they’re burning.

Burning karma, I guess…

Bakasana B rolls around. Try the first one — plunk! Uh oh! I can’t do this anymore! Second one — kinda plunk. Hmmm. Third one — no thinking about how to do it, just jump. Catch it, then fall back. Think, “Lean forward just a smidge.”

Fourth, no thinking but a little forward-leaningness tucked in my tummy. Nail it. Hold for 5 breaths.

Cool.

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Listened a bit this morning to Taigen Dan Leighton of Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, a Soto zen school in Chicago. Taigen Dan Leighton translated one of my very favorite zen books, Cultivating the Empty Field, which are the writings of Zen Master Hongzhi.

Anyhow there was some discussion of “the thinking beyond thinking” and also how we “express the dream within the dream.” These are common zen concepts, but I’ve got to tell you, Ashtanga practice has helped me see into them more clearly than just doing zazen.

I know there’s always discussion among practitioners about doing more sitting meditation, and I think that’s just fine. But if you are thinking that sitting meditation is better than moving meditation, well, I’d say you’re setting up opposites. A little zazen or some more Ashtanga will probably help you see that.

Three of six on the bakasana B. The first couple were totally discombobulated, and accompanied by the inner monolog: “How’d I do this before?? How’d I…” as I plunked to the ground.

A slightly more frantic, “I’ve forgotten how to do it!” moment, accompanied by furious thinking about how I did it last time I did it, finally followed by three that I landed seemingly magically (i.e., without thinking).

So, just do it.

Right.

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The weather here is spectacular — so warm, in fact, that I didn’t turn on the space heater this morning. And The Cop and I agreed it was time to get back to our Sunday Starbucks visit. Waylon LOVES a chance to ride in the car, and he LOVES sitting outside at Starbucks, where people give him tons of attention (LOVES it!) and there are tiny birds (LOVES them!) looking for crumbs and he gets hunks of The Cop’s muffin and my scone (LOVES to scarf them down and drool muffiny-sconey saliva all over my feet).

So that was nice.

This afternoon, My Gift, Waylon and I will pick up Italian food at a great restaurant here in town and bring it to my parents’ house for Mother’s Day. All of us LOVE Italian food — well, not so much my Dad, but he will enjoy making me, My Gift and himself some bourbon and Cokes. And there’s a really good thing going on for me at work (must be kept secret until tomorrow), and my Dad loves to talk to me about career stuff. So it should be lovely. On the menu:

Antipasto

Chicken Marsala

Baked ziti

Gnocchi

Eggplant Parmesan

Cheesecake

Tiramisu

I will have lots of energy for practice tomorrow morning…

Q: “Aren’t those earbuds designed so the wires go behind your head instead of in front?”

A: “If they’re on the back of my neck, my calf gets caught on them.”

2.5 out of 5.

Intra-abdominal pressure seems to be key.

Landed bakasana B twice out of four tries this morning. I was gonna try a fifth, but decided to cut my loses when I had a 50% success rate.

No idea how I managed to land it, and it was only for a couple moments before I keeled over — but hey, it’s a beginning!

Ran out after practice for a quick cup of coffee with The Poetess. Great to see her and catch up a bit. Want to make a point of keeping in touch more often. Home practice needs a community supplement!

Wasn’t sure if I wanted to blog about the Tucson yoga vacation, but now that I’ve been back a week, I think it’s time to say a little something.

I had a great visit at Yoga Flow with Lisa Schrempp, her assistant, Scott, and one of the other teachers on the staff, Jason.

What I was hoping for, when I booked this trip, was to get some assessment of my current practice and some direction for my home practice.

First off: it was great to get some adjustments! Lisa is a very tall, very thin woman, so when she came over to adjust me in pasanasa, I was figuring it’d be pretty airy and light. Wrong! I have no idea how she did it, but she gave the most stable, strong adjustment I’ve ever had in that posture. Bhekasana adjustments were also delightful — from both Scott and Lisa.

Kapotasana, point of insecurity because so hard-won, made me realize that inside my head, I am like the fat girl who lost weight. I think outside observers can see how hard it was for me to work this pose out; I have the sensation that they can see all the flaws. But you know what? Not so. I did my kapos and grabbed my toes. They adjusted me to heels. No fuss, no cheering, no medals.

“This is where I usually stop,” I said to Lisa.

Her response: “Why?”

Alrighty then. So the current sitch is that I have to figure out how to land bakasana B pretty regularly. Then I have directions about how to proceed from there. I told her I’d be back in 3-6 months to work with her some more, so I got some homework for the meantime.

This is a pretty low key shala, which I love. Lisa teaches Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Scott teaches on Tuesday and Thursday. On Scott’s days, Lisa comes in, rolls out her mat, and practices with everyone else. I didn’t watch her (I was busy!) but I loved that her energy was there in the room. No flourishes, no bids for attention — everyone just did their practice together. What a great community!

I don’t really want to say a lot about this, but I do recognize that there is discussion about “tradition,” which often polarizes as people reject it as authoritarian and inflexible, or cling to it as a kind of holy grail. Here’s my experience (and it happened again with Lisa) — when I’ve worked with authorized/certified teachers, it has been very apparent that they see individuals before them. They have a clarity about the relation of the person in front of them to the practice as handed down by Guruji (and now Sharath). There is a structure to the system of Ashtanga, but there is not any kind of authoritarian blindness as a result. As I said, that’s been my experience in actual rooms with authorized/certified teachers.

I’m sure the same thing can be said for some un-authorized teachers, as well. But I’ve experienced both sides (blind adherence, total free-for-all, some combo of both) with “unofficial” teachers, so I guess the quality control is different in these cases.

My point, though, is that all of the stuff we debate online totally dissolves in the actual room with the actual authorized/certified teacher. Not unlike dokusan, you get into the room and realize all of your questions are beside the point: it’s time to just shut up and be there.