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Water! Humidity!

I put a vaporizer in the yoga room and have had the most delightful practices. Enjoyed it so much this morning, I even took a random UD pic. (Yes, I know my arms aren’t straight. Damn you, shoulders!)

Felt great.

And I even brought a little humidifier in to my office. Think of how dewy my skin will be.

***

Yesterday was 8 weeks since Waylon’s surgery. The Cop brought him for his final x-ray and everything looks perfect. Best part of being cleared by the surgeon? He’s able to climb up on the couch again!

“It’s not there, it’s not there, it’s not there, day after day. And then it is.”

Yeah, I saved the email that includes this bit of wisdom about dwi pada sirsasana (& all postures).

This morning I woke up really stiff and sore — psoas *and* QLs. No fair! Usually it’s one or the other. Ugh. As if Sunday practice isn’t usually rough enough, since it follows a rest day. Really, practice is easier on work days when there are things that need to get done and less time for inner chatter.

It’s autumn in the desert. No, not as cold as elsewhere in the country, but dry, dry, dry. And as of this week, I have the space heater turned on in the yoga room, so extra dryness. Gah!

I almost knocked off before LBH poses. Practices where my psoas muscles are sore are rough during back bending — but just ’cause it’s uncomfortable. When the QLs are complaining, LBHs feel kinda scary — like they might be dangerous. Sadly, I heard too many people (primarily non-Ashtangis) say bad things about leg behind the head poses before I got to them. Now I feel a little scared and superstitious about them.

Despite crappy conditions, I carried on.

I had noted, a couple of times last week, that as I was pushing my right (tight) leg back, I was using both hands. It was pretty funny the first time, because I almost fell forward when I noticed. And today, after such a crappy, thinky practice, I got both legs behind my head for first time. And balanced for five breaths.

Whee!

Okay, so a day late, but still. This morning, I made a little prop — very simple, but (I think) kind of ingenious. It totally gets at my psoas muscles, and I can use the wall to force gently open my chest and shoulders.

A bar stool, a bolster and a strap.

Put it close to a wall and add a stiff person.

So, anyone else see the parallels here with traditional Ashtanga practice?

Here we are in Tucson. Arrived Wednesday afternoon. The business trip that was threatening (to Budapest!) did not come to fruition, so I was set free to carry on with my much-needed vacation.

MUCH needed. I slept all day Thursday. Led on Friday. Nice to see S again; he was leading, as L has been out of town (she’ll be back tomorrow). After led, I pretty much slept all day again. Headachy and stiff. Ugh. I started to wonder if I’d pushed myself too far to recover in time for the yoga part of my vacation… Spent yesterday sitting by a drugged Waylon, reading “The Hours.” (Two thumbs up for “The Hours,” especially if you — like me! — are a fan of “Mrs. Dalloway.”)

Waylon is recovering from his surgery — it’s been about 2 1/2 weeks. He’s supposed to be restrained for 8 weeks. Seriously! Not an easy job. Especially with Daisy always ready to incite him to riot. I’m not going to write about the first couple of days after the surgery, because they were traumatic and kind of horrifying. Let’s just say he had 18 staples down his leg and was heavily drugged and suffered mightily.

Much better now, except for having to be kept in a small space, which he doesn’t love. We have a corner of the living room encircled with a baby gate and a bunch of chairs to keep him contained. Also some sedatives so he doesn’t pace like a zoo animal. Meanwhile, Daisy cavorts around the living room or stands at the back door barking at… well, anything at all. Any time he is taken out to eliminate (the only exercise he is allowed), she runs into his space and steals his toys.

Practice today was better than I could have wished. Home practice, though, as there is no Mysore on Sundays at the shala here. Good for discipline. I finally feel like I am awake, after a couple of days of exhaustion, and the stiffness is gone. Yay! I’m looking forward to a proper shala practice tomorrow morning. And on Tuesday I booked an Ayurvedic consultation with L. I need some help trying to balance and sustain work and a loooong practice. Definitely have been burnt out for the past couple of months, and I really don’t want to keep doing that to myself.

I’m growing attached to The Cop as my teacher. He’s got a great kapo assist and a great dwi pada assist. Sensitive and attentive. “Spread your fingers more,” he suggested for my kapo B this morning. Good call!

We’re supposed to go to Tucson for yoga vacation Oct 6-19. There is some talk about my needing to do some unexpected business travel, though, which might change our plans. Did I mention I’ve been exhausted and dying to schedule some vacation since August? It got pushed to September, at which point three business trips got scheduled. So vacay moved to October. Now there may be more travel. On the one hand, I’m tired and need a vacay! On the other, it’s international travel to a place I’ve never been. We’ll see what happens….

While i was in Chicago, Waylon tore his dog equivalent of an ACL. He’s scheduled for surgery tomorrow morning. A weird procedure called TPLO. Involves planing the bone and adding a metal plate. There’s a simpler surgery we could’ve opted for, but the surgeon recommended TPLO ’cause of his size and weight. The procedure essentially solves for the problem by making the ligament unnecessary.

One last practice note: my right knee has been a little hinky in eka and dwi pada sirsasana (’cause the hip is tight). The pain and fear of injury were causing me to get pretty anxious about these postures. This morning, as I grabbed my right foot to get into eka pada, I heard my inner monolog chanting, “it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” as I went. I kind of laughed at myself, but I also noted that getting into the pose was easy and pain-free.

It IS okay.

The Cop’s work schedule has changed, which is great, because I get to see him a lot more. I’m kinda silly giddy with how happy I am about this. Another nice aspect of the change is that I get more kapo and dwi pada assists!

The elbows-in-and-down adjustment in kapotasana is crazy powerful. And the dwi pada assist much appreciated. Kinda worth the charge of admission to a shala. Generally speaking, I feel like I can sort out the things I need to work on in practice, but I can’t seem to solve for those two adjustments. Luckily The Cop is here to help out.

This morning, The Cop gave me an excellent elbows-down-and-in assist in kapotasana, followed by a solid dwi pada sirsasana assist.

Me, I would be annoyed if someone asked me for assists when I was just sitting down with my first cup of coffee. Just sayin’.

***

Meanwhile, a woodpecker is making a hole in the side of our stucco house.

I haven’t grabbed any video in a while, so here’s one of my weirdly dark vids. It’s kapo time!

kapo 09-02-10

I laughed out loud when I looked at this and saw how crazy my shoulders are. Some day my elbows will reach the floor. But you know, for as insanely tight as my shoulders are now, they are a billion times more flexible than when I started. And it’s too dark to really see in the vid, but I am managing to touch my feet before my head touches the floor, which is bouncy and extremely entertaining. (If anyone wants to opine on ways to get my elbows to the floor, go for it!)

But that’s not the fun part. The fun part is that after three years of kapo pain and anxiety, this posture now feels delightful and I actually look forward to doing it! It actually makes me happy! But that kind of begs the question, when you look at it from the perspective of a normal person: why in the world would you do something that hurt and was scary every single day (except Fridays and Saturdays and moon days!) for three years?

Then I thought of Dogen:
To study the way is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.

And then I thought of what Sharath says in Guruji:
It is a way of worshipping God.

Oh, and this morning’s practice was topped off with a terrific dwi pada sirsasana adjustment by The Cop. He’s getting really good at it!

Marching along.

In a couple of weeks, I am due to travel to DC to do a presentation to the Board of Directors about learning innovation.

Did you know there’s a study somewhere that apparently indicates that there are a good number of people who fear public speaking more than they fear death?

This whole thing isn’t as bad as it could be — learning and educational technology is my field, so I can endlessly chatter on about it. The worst are presentations when I’m talking about topics I don’t know a lot about. You think presenters always know what they’re talking about? Think again.

Anyhow, here’s how this plays into Ashtanga practice: Every morning, I march through primary and intermediate to yoga nidrasana. There are two places where I feel some chitta chatter: kapotasana and at the leg behind the head poses.

This morning I recognized that the anxiety around kapo is not about the posture physically. It actually feels *great* these days. Not EASY, of course, but good. Finally, my back is opening, my psoas muscles are releasing, etc., etc. I walk halfway up my feet and feel fine about that. With more practice, it’ll just keep getting better.

So what’s the anxiety? I’m anxious that I’m going to regress, after all of these years of hard work. So every morning I wonder if I’ll not be able to do as well as the day before.

I just have to get over myself on that one. Because there will eventually be regression, and worrying about it won’t affect its eventual manifestation — but it will taint my experience NOW.

The other anxiety is around LBH. Here’s how my body/mind cut me some slack and had a little joke at the same time. When I started LBH, I heard a lot of horror stories about LBH injuries, specifically back injuries. So I was concerned. I didn’t stop working the poses, but I did (do) always feel a bit of a black cloud over my head when I’m sticking my leg behind my head. (There was a similar black cloud over kapo for a good while, where I worried about my spine snapping and a puff of dust rising up out of it — desert-inflected nightmare!) Anyhow, as I was going about my slightly anxious business with LBH, I managed to irritate my right knee. It has kindly stepped up to divert me from my spine anxiety. Surprise!

So back to the public speaking gig. All of the backbends are opening, opening, opening my back, which is great, but I am also conscious of the fact that after a stressful day at work, my back gets kinda crunched back up. Like a flower closing. I feel like I’m going to be having a push-pull with it as the presentation approaches and I try to avoid curling up into myself like the introvert I am.

And that’s when it hit me that the LBH poses are exactly the counterpoint, psychically, to the backbending work. They are strengthening me and insisting I be present. I felt pretty raw during the months when I was doing the intermediate backbends but none of the LBHs: it was all opening up and no strength/resistance to counteract it. I suspect I even seemed overly flexible at work — all openness and not enough steadfastness.

So now I’m building the internal resilience. I am curious to see how that plays out as the presentation approaches. Will it feel different than the usual run up to a Board presentation? Will I default to my usual introverted… um, introversion?