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James, not Jane. “I,” not “e.”

I understood that James H. Austin writes about meditation, attention and the brain, but I didn’t realize how prolific he is. Here’s a terrific article that looks at the difference between allocentric and egocentric processing.

I read this paper last night before bed, tried to post the link here, but was somewhat stymied by the iPhone (well, too impatient to use the iPhone and too tired to get out of bed to use the laptop). When I was looking it up this morning, I also stumbled across this older book by Austin and discovered that Csikszentmihalyi has a book on creativity. I think I may have known about this book but set the info aside somewhere in my brain? Either way, I’m psyched to know about it this morning.

Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow is a classic. If you haven’t read it, check it out. It’ll change your life.

***

Okay, so I’m trying to drink coffee and write this entry, but there’s an intervening factor. Waylon. Who, in this cooler weather, has reverted to sitting on my lap in the morning after his breakfast. Did I mention that he weighs 80 pounds these days?

When I type: si!*d0qjcnksl@)jqwem, that’s me pinned to the couch and smothering under bulldog love.

Waylon spent about 20 minutes lying in the wet grass, catching drops of water in his mouth.

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.

***

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.

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.

***

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!

***

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.

When Muscle Man first suggested I do an intermediate practice, I was scared about what would happen to primary. Would it slip away, if I only practiced it once a week? I thought of the story about catching monkeys: if you put a treat at the bottom of a jar that a monkey can slip its hand into, but narrow enough that he can’t remove his hand once he makes a fist around the treat, then you’ve caught yourself a monkey.

Yeah, I was hanging on to my idea of primary…

No need to be concerned, though. Saturday is led primary, and about half way through, I realized my primary is actually improving.

This kinda begs the question about the efficacy of practicing the same thing every single day: sports science suggests you take a day in between workouts of specific muscle groups so you can recover and, in turn, optimize your progress.

The rationale for every day yoga practice (at least the one I use) is that yoga practice is about more than physical progress: the every day practice, far as I can tell, is about cultivating tapas more than about optimizing physical progress.

***

Gonna go over to My Gift’s to help hang up curtains today. Not just hang ‘em, though. Put up the hardware. With a drill. On a ladder. Sigh. Can you tell I’m not really looking forward to that?

***

So last night, I look over and there’s Waylon, sitting on the couch and watching TV. (No, we don’t have a blue and white print couch — that’s just a blanket for the dogs to sit on…)

Felt like crap last night, this morning, and now.

Sigh.

Okay, yesterday I went to visit my Dad for Father’s Day. I brought him his two favorite things: bourbon and homemade Snickerdoodle cookies. He was VERY pleased.

While I was there, my Mom made me eat a meal. Sigh. She is a VERY persistent Italian mother.

One of the things I ate was some fish. She was *thrilled*. Usually she can’t make me eat anything, and here was this bonus — I was going to eat some animal! Woohoo.

Oh, and I had a bourbon and coke with my Dad. I love having a drink with my Dad. As he handed it to me, I noticed he’d used Diet Coke. Whatever. Maybe he thinks I’m fat.

During all of the eating and drinking, my Dad was loving Waylon. We had a dog when I was growing up and when he died, my Dad was so sad he never got another dog. Oh, and my Mom doesn’t like dogs in the house. That may have played into the decision as well.

Still, Waylon gets to romp around their house, and he and my Dad played tug-of-war and catch and “here, let’s eat some cookies together, and maybe you’d like to try a jellybean.”

Nice.

On my way home, I reached to turn on the radio and realized my right arm was all pins and needles. Uh oh. This can be a precursor to a migraine. Yup, then the right foot was pins and needles, and then the right side of my face. Unpleasant but nothing new, so not a huge deal. I blamed the neurologically toxic effects of Diet Coke.

By the time Waylon and I got home, I felt headachey and gross. I tried to feed him and Maxine. Maxine was into it, but Waylon wouldn’t get near his bowl.

I lay on the couch, he lay on the floor. Bleh.

Early to bed.

***

Felt like crap this morning. Waylon ate last night’s dinner for breakfast. It’s a Moon Day, I shouldn’t go to the shala. But you only get to go Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You should take the opportunity. You can take a Moon Day on Tuesday if you still feel bad. Maybe practice will make you feel better.

I shouldn’t have listened to myself. I felt like crap at the beginning and I felt like crap at the end. Only now my stomach felt bad, too. Great. I blame the toxic effect of the fish. Or maybe mercury poisoning, as I had tuna last week, too. I can develop a pretty bad tuna problem pretty quickly. It gets out of hand.

***

Kapotasana: crap.
Eka pada sirsasana: crap.
Dwi pada: ditched it because I felt like crap.

Thought: I need to do some chest and hip openers in my yin practice. Oh right, I don’t have a yin practice.

Maybe Mom tried to poison me with the fish because she was bitter that I figured out such a cool present for Dad.

***

You know what makes me feel better? “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.” They had a marathon on yesterday. I saw two of them. For some reason, the show makes me feel very happy.

I was talking on the phone with My Gift and said, “I hate to tell you what I’m watching right now.”

She was appalled. “Don’t tell me you watch ‘The Girls Next Door’…”

“Of course not!” I scoffed.

“Right, because even though you watch ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians,’ the thought of watching ‘The Girls Next Door’ is preposterous!”

She shames me.

Class is a combo of puppies and older dogs. At the end of the session today, the teacher asked that puppies stay after to play/socialize. There were three pups, including Waylon. Waylon manhandled the male (German Shepherd) by mounting him repeatedly, then cornered and slobbered all over the female (Poodle).

“God, he’s like a drunk obnoxious guy,” I said. Everyone solemnly nodded.

The Cop is proud.

At least he’s adorable when he sleeps: