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I’ve been missing my feet lately in kapotasana. It was a huge mystery: my backbends are much more comfortable and deep, and yet I’d be in kapo, crawling my hands forward and then out to the sides, but my feet were nowhere to be found. I didn’t freak out, since the kapo Bs were in a huge improvement cycle, but I was perplexed, ’cause I could feel my hair brushing my feet, but couldn’t find my toes!

This morning, I set up the video camera and aimed it at my left foot. What I discovered was that I was crawling my hands up past my toes on the outside. Duh! Then I’d vainly search around, moving my hands out toward the edges of my mat — further away from my feet!

The most amusing thing about this discovery is the camera set-up. Below is my rig: a foam block strapped at an angle to the yoga room lamp holds the video camera at the correct angle to keep an eye on my left foot and hand. (The image is taken on the iPhone, using the Hipstamatic app. Cool, huh?? I love that the pic is square.)

Select outfits for each day Done!
Procure hard copy currency Forget about it. I’ll just carry on using my ATM card.
Sort out how to travel with the iPhone.

This last one made me think about my relationship to the iPhone (aside from utter undying adoration).

I don’t want crazy surprise bills after my trip to London, which means I need to turn off the datastream on the iPhone. But turning off the data to avoid international roaming charges pretty much adds up to: “Why would I even bother bringing it?”

The last thing I need the iPhone for is actual phone calls (which may explain why I’m such a satisfied user).

Top 10 Ways I Use My iPhone

10. Blogging.
9. Recording audio reminders.
8. Listening to music.
7. Playing solitaire and mah jongg.
6. Taking photos.
5. Taking notes about random things in “real life.”
4. Reading. Kindle app. I haven’t read a non-Kindle book in months.
3. Taking notes in meetings at work.
2. Emailing and texting people.
1. Googling for general information.

Yup, the number one use, by far, is googling. How tall is Tony Clark? Should dogs eat avocado? What are food sources of magnesium? What’s the deal with CIT? Where is there some good pizza nearby? I seem to need to know lots of random things over the course of a day. Today I looked at the street the shala is on in Bethnal Green. I also located wool tights and read about peptides. When I travel, I google maps. And I need to have maps available at all times, because even if I map before I start my day in a new location, there’s a pretty good chance things are still going to go horribly wrong, finding-my-way-wise. I need to do update mapping and emergency mapping right on the street. Embarrassing, but true.

But I could do without a phone pretty much entirely. I don’t understand why people still use them. Well, except for 911 calls. Otherwise, it’s datastream and apps, baby. That’s what I really need.

Cop [2:54 PM]:
who sang “endless love” w/lionel ritchie?

Karen:
are you on a stakeout?

Cop:
yes

I rarely do two posts in a day, but I just saw this GREAT quote on autumn lotus yoga blog, and I had to pass it along. I assume it’s from Ana Forrest, since the blogger is a Forrest yoga teacher. Anyhow, sorry for the rip-off, E — but this is something good for the Ashtangis, too!

Ah, quote — why do I love thee? Well, mostly ’cause you’re pragmatic and straightforward. You remind me that all of the whining we do about poses is really about US. All of the fear we feel? The desire? The hatred? The shame? The pleasure? Yup — it’s all about us. Not about the pose. The pose is a tool. To dig into the stuff of us — whether we do it well, or badly, or fanatically, or slackerishly. All of it is just part of the excavation effort. Whether we want the pose, or don’t want the pose. Whether we idolize the teacher, or hate the teacher, or beseech the teacher, or reject the teacher.

None of that matters. ‘Cause the pose is just the pose. A tool. Like a hammer or a shovel. Do with it what you will. But if you make it into an emotional issue or a physical issue or a psychological issue, at least recognize that it is an issue of your own making. ‘Cause the pose is a tool, not an issue.

We finally had word back about the pathology report. There is no clear cause of death for Ty. Basically, he was just perfect, physically.

The Cop called me at work to tell me the vet had called and that I should touch base with her to ask any follow-up questions I might have. The Cop was shocked and dismayed about the lack of a clear cause of death. I wasn’t. It was kind of what I had imagined.

I’d been out on the internets doing my research over the past couple of weeks, of course. And I’d narrowed the possibilities down to two: fatal arrhythmia or epileptic seizure.

So I spoke with the vet and discussed what kinds of signs would be left if either of those two disorders were in fact the cause of death. She pretty much ruled out epilepsy (as much as she could, being objective about the fact that we just really won’t ever know). Still, she said that she’s known dogs who’ve had seizures that lasted 30 minutes and lived. If he’d suffered a vascular event so dramatic that it would cause death, there would be evidence of it for the pathologist.

On the other hand, a single fatal arrhythmia, while rare, could leave no trace. It would essentially be the body’s electrical system seizing up. Like when a computer freezes.

That seems consistent with what happened that afternoon.

After I talked to the vet, I came home and The Cop and I discussed. He was really hoping for some definitive answer that would offer closure. I hadn’t been expecting that, and just wanted to know if Ty’s death could have been prevented. I was terrified she was going to tell me he’d managed (finally, after many tries) to eat some dirty socks, or that he’d had a disease that needn’t have killed him if only we’d known about it.

So that is all the information we will get.

Honestly, I used to be undone by unanswered questions and painful experiences that I knew I would never be able to understand. There’s a whole class of koans designed to pry our grasping human fingers away from the delusion that we can know the answer to “Why? Why? Why?” — so thanks to the monks who’ve brutally and compassionately smacked me upside the head about this.

***

Last night in my dreams I had a chat with Richard Freeman. Ty was there, too, hanging out. A beautiful California day, with wildflowers and warm breezes. RF wanted me to know that Ty would be coming back as a fuzzy rescue dog.

***

Might as well wrap up with a little learning technology humor. I am a huge fan of Web 2.0 — blogs, wikis, discussion forums — but there is always hesitancy in corporate about these technologies: what if the information is inaccurate? Horrors!

Much to my satisfaction, the organization is carrying on with a project to build an online community for our customers (and non-customers — just plain old uncontrollable strangers!). Really, it makes me proud.

If today wasn’t a moon day, I’d repeat my experiment with the binaural track before I said anything about it. But moon day it is, so my report will be based on just one use.

What did I find? Well, I guess a little context is in order: I am on the waning side of a deep, easy yoga phase. I imagine this happens to everyone — phases where asana feels very clear and easily accessible? They come and go for me — generally practice is comfortable, so I can’t complain, but the deep phases are particularly marvelous.

For the past week or so, that easy accessiblity (where I just lock into tristhana automatically as soon as I raise my arms for the first surya) is diminishing. Not too sad — I know it’ll be back. But it makes for a good time to experiment with the binaural track.

So what did the track do? Well, it seemed to help me wipe my mind clear really easily. If something about an asana wasn’t what I wished, I just went on. When something went really well, it didn’t cause much internal celebration. I felt like I was experiencing everything, but not “sticking” to any of the particulars of the experience.

I know this idea makes non-Buddhists nervous. What, no highs or lows? No vividness to life? No desires? Whatever. I’ve had my fill of vata sensibility: flying off into fits of inspiration, getting jangly with too much energy, rebounding into judgment and loud inner monolog, etc., etc., etc. Sure, those things still happen, but to a much less intense degree. And I’m happy for the smoothing out, which I definitely attribute to practice, both zazen and Ashtanga. You know what feels really freaking good? Peace. Stillness. Presence. We are enculturated to desire thrills and joy and drama and all kinds of emotional acquisitions. Sheesh. Who made that decision?

So binaural practice was… meditative. Just as promised on the package (6 Hz for theta waves & meditation).

***

Well, Matthew Sweeney starts his half-year of continuous world travel (seriously, look at this schedule!) in March. And he will be in Minneapolis July 10-16. As will I! Woohoo! I’d been mulling over the idea of going for a while (would it be too repetitive? should I go somewhere else? would it be better to experience a different teacher?), but when I got a note from Gracious Yogini, who lives in MN, that 9 of the 15 Mysore spots were already spoken for, I decided to go for it.

***

I can’t read on planes, trains, or in cars. For my recent flights to and from DC, I entertained myself with TV shows on my iPhone. At My Gift’s suggestion, I watched the first few episodes of Heroes. And was instantly hooked.

The Cop laughed and noted that I am now an iPhone addict — I watch TV shows on it, and read books via ereader in bed at night.

Remember those big huge “entertainment centers” people fell in love with in the… was it the 80s? the 90s? Anyhow, the entertainment center is now handheld, which amuses me no end.

Okay, so I’m a problem-solver and tool afficionado. This week’s challenge was a three-day meeting (yes, all day, every day!) with a global consultant. I told The Cop at the end of the ordeal, I mean, meeting, that practice really reveals itself most clearly in challenging situations. In this case, I was able to sustain my focus quite effectively for three 10-hour days.

There was a bit of a lull during the couple of hours we discussed rules around VAT (value added tax) in Europe, but the lull felt more like a little bit of relaxing, rather than exhaustion or boredom. And there was a bit of hyper-focus when we talked about IP strategy, because that’s the kind of thing that really captures my imagination. But the point is, my attention was on and my mind was processing well for three very long stretches.

This is good news because I generally do so many things in the course of a day, that I wonder if I still possess the ability to train my attention on a single problem in any kind of sustained manner.

So after the three-day meeting, I felt kind of crispy around the edges. I’d spent so much time in the high end of the beta state that it was hard to kick back into alpha. Well, until I found BrainHack for my iPhone.

BrainHack is a little app that offers binaural beats that can be used to entrain the brain. (The concept is that if one receives a stimulus with a frequency in the range of brain waves, the predominant brain wave frequency moves toward the frequency of the stimulus — a process called entrainment.) This is one of those things that cause me to feel two things equally strongly at once: 1) crazy hippie stuff! and 2) there seems to be some good research backing this up.

When the perceived beat frequency corresponds to the delta, theta, alpha, beta, or gamma range of brainwave frequencies, the brainwaves entrain to or move towards the beat frequency. For example, if a 315 Hz sine wave is played into the right ear and a 325 Hz one into the left ear, the brain is entrained towards the beat frequency (10 Hz, in the alpha range). Since alpha range is associated with relaxation, this has a relaxing effect.

>40 Hz Gamma waves = Higher mental activity, including perception, problem solving, fear, and consciousness

13–40 Hz Beta waves = Active, busy or anxious thinking and active concentration, arousal, cognition

7–13 Hz Alpha waves = Relaxation (while awake), pre-sleep and pre-wake drowsiness

4–7 Hz Theta waves = Dreams, deep meditation, REM sleep

<4 Hz Delta waves = Deep dreamless sleep, loss of body awareness

(The precise boundaries between ranges vary among definitions, and there is no universally accepted standard.)

Okay, and the app costs .99. At the very least, it’s a fun experiment.

This morning I’m going to try a 6 Hz theta binaural beat. It sounds like a thunderstorm, which is appropriate, as it’s raining today in the desert.

Today feels like it’s all about abundance. Tyler in the backyard, lying in the sun, chewing a nylabone. The Cop sleeping in after a week of long shifts, thanks to the FBR and the bad behavior of its attendees.

And me? A nice practice at a leisurely pace, then a new GTD app for the iPhone. I am Pavlovian about my GTD practices at work — closely managed by Outlook mailbox and calendar promptings which are pushed to my iPhone & make a ding every time an email or appointment arrives (I can switch the sound off, and do, when I start getting insane). So I am accustomed to thinking of something, identifying the next step, and documenting it ASAP. Very efficient. Keeps my mind nice and clear. But then there are all those “real life” things. Buy Tyler a new chain collar (26″). Ask My Gift if she followed through with her eye doctor appointment. I don’t want to put stuff like that on the Outlook system. It’s a boundary I am loathe to cross. So I was happy to find Things for my iPhone. Now real life can be as efficient as work. Yes, I say that with irony.

And then eReader for the iPhone. I love accessing books immediately, right from the ether. And since it’s a trial run, I can read something trashy and amusing. Twilight. And have I ever admitted my perverse love of historical novels? I’m rather ashamed to admit it, but a lot of the things I know about the French Revolution, Tudor England and the Black Plague (God, I love a good plague novel!), I’ve learned through historical fiction. (Note to Patrick: I don’t believe there are any historical novels about the Dadaists. May be an interesting niche. Just sayin’)

And last, but not least, a diary app for the iPhone. For practice notes. You thought you got the practice notes on this blog, didn’t you? Well, not so much. I tend to write cryptic little notes-to-self in a notebook I keep in the yoga room. We’ll see if having it in the iPhone is useful.

Happy SuperBowl Sunday to all. I’m not particularly interested in the game, but I like the National Holiday aspect.

I’ve been lucky to have the most delightful string of practices lately. Instant theta state. Just enough focus to be conscious of how good asana feels. Thought, one morning as I drank my pre-practice coffee, “I am so lucky to be able to do this.” Meaning the practice. And not meaning “able to do it well” or anything like that. Just to be incarnate. Muscle, nerve, bone: really, what more could you ask for?

So it’s been pretty rosy. I’ve been particularly enjoying stretching out the hip flexors — which suddenly became especially possible after Thumbs of Steel Candice undid some ancient knots in my left quadratus lumborum. Suddenly the samakonasana/hanumanasana part of standing feels UNbelievably good. Luckily, I was taught by VBG to include the samakonasana/hanumanasana crim bit in my practice. Otherwise I’d feel guilty about it.

Over the years I’ve left it out for long periods of time, because it really irritated my hamstrings — to the point that it was entirely useless for my hip flexors. But apparently it’s now time to enjoy hanumansana. It’s the most good-hurt part of my practice, by far, and I look forward to it every morning.

Oh, right, this is about gratitude. Well, this morning I am particularly thankful to the practice and its powers of transformation. I wrapped up and sat there for a moment on my mat, and noticed something was missing. Something I was vaguely, intellectually aware of possessing, but which I never *really* knew about because it was so much a part of the fabric of my psyche. Today it was notable because it wasn’t there.

I didn’t wonder, “Did I do enough?”

Nope. The new question, apparently, is whether I can feel practice all the way through.

I am a head person, which explains my penchant for fundamentalism in Ashtanga. When I was just doing primary, that was easy — I was heading for setu bandhasana, and once that was done, it was urdhva dhanurasana and closing.

Now, though, I am on my own and swimming out past the raft. There are intermediate poses, and extra urdhva dhanurasanas, and hangbacks, and passive bending. So it’s easy for me to feel like I am not “doing enough,” and that I should make a set curriculum for every morning of so many repetitions of each element. That way, I can assess whether I did enough.

But this morning, I was simply grateful that I’d had another feelingful practice in theta state.

What would it mean if I were to one day just sit on my mat and just stay there, theta-state, for hours? Would the world screech to a halt? Would I be “bad”? Would I be “good”?

Good, bad, yes, no, enough, not enough.

It’s getting practiced away.

***

In case this entry’s sounding too ethereal, let’s also make note of a couple of mundane things.

1. Clothes shopping

I know, I always complain. But seriously, I am hating buying clothes because there is no standardization of sizes. I went to a shop in a chi-chi part of town and grabbed a 00, 0, 2P, 2, 4P, and 4 of a couple of skirts I wanted to try on. The woman who helped me was hovering, eager to ferry whatever I was selecting to the dressing room, and when I finally headed into the dressing room, both she and one of her colleagues (who were already in the dressing room area) looked up at me rather guiltily. I imagined they were talking about me before I came in, trying to figure out why I don’t know what size clothing I wear.

Some of this I blame on Ashtanga. Back in the old days, when I was into weightlifting, I wore a size 4 suit. Now I have size 6 shoulders, size 4 waist, and size 2 hips. Um, yeah. Like a tiny man.

2. My newest entertainment

The Vapor Clean II. Yes, I’m a dork. I know. My Gift calls me “Monica” (if you ever watched “Friends,” you’ll get the joke).

Do I feel goofy admitting that I am thrilled by a tool that shoots out steam and cleans things without chemicals? A little. But then I think of the ozoney smell of the rooms I’ve cleaned so far… LOL!

I still feel a little leery of the thing, considering it’s boiling and pressurizing water in a small metal container that I’m pulling around behind me. I finally got comfortable with my pressure cooker after a couple of years of it not exploding — hopefully I can learn to trust the Vapor Clean II a little more quickly.

As I knelt beside it this morning, and started to clean, I had a quick flashback to climbing. That moment when your feet leave the ground in the morning and you wonder how the day’s going to go, and if you’ll be touching back down safely at the end of the day. I guess using the Vapor Clean II could be considered an extreme sport for housewives.

Needless to say, Tyler is magically attracted to the hissing, moving red metal animal. The Cop, on the other hand, is totally disinterested. Even though I showed him it SHOOTS steam.

Blog slacking, but no time for any other kind of slacking. Work and real life have been super busy.

Just got back from the Learning 2008 conference in Orlando. I love these learning technology conferences, and always come back with a million new ideas. This year, I am dying to design a really solid needs assessment instrument (enthralling notion, yes?). LOL! I know, it’s geeky. I attended a session on current thinking in qualitative research design and it’s got me all hyped up.

One deeeeeelightful surprise in Orlando was practice. Yes, plain old hotel room practice. It was marvelous. It was incredibly physically pleasant (very unusual after air travel), and even more surprisingly, it was effortlessly mindful and cheery. Quite honestly, 99.8% of my hotel practices have been studies in just-doing-it. But this time, they were actually exceptionally pleasing.

No idea why. But I’ll take it.

***

Practicing meant getting up at 4:30 AM in Florida, which is (and I was careful not to think about it too much) 1:30 AM Phoenix time. Ouch.

On the day I flew home, I got up at 1:30 AM (AZ time) practiced, attended the last day of conference, made my way to the airport, and got myself home. The Cop picked me up at the airport, which was lovely. Particularly since he was in uniform (I love the uniform!). Not in his squad car, though, even though I requested it (also requested he have the lights and siren going, but he nixed that). Anyhow, by the time I walked into the house, it was 8:30 PM. In other words, I’d been awake for 19 hours. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not good at staying up past my bed time. I can stay awake for 17 hours, but push me a minute past that, and I am very unhappy.

All I wanted was to fall into bed.

But then I opened the door to the house, thinking about poor Tyler, who was being transitioned to a new food and suffering a bit, according to The Cop, in terms of… um, loose outputs.

Oh my God. The stink when I opened the door to the house!

I knew whatever had happened was bad. Thank goodness Ty was confined to his crate. I walked into the bedroom, to be greated by a poo-covered (and I mean covered), excitedly wiggling puppy.

There was no option but to open the door of the crate.

Of course, he jumped all over me.

Hmmmm, I wondered for a moment. Is there any way I can just ignore all of this ’til tomorrow and just go to sleep? Uh, no.

So it was poo dog bath time, followed by more projectile pooping (in the back yard, thank goodness), and a night of disturbed sleep as the little fellow rolled around in his crate and made occasional requests to go outside again.

***

Yesterday at work, I tried to keep up with what was going on, catch up on things that’d fallen behind while I was away, and refine some of my notes from conference. All while feeling like a zombie.

Today will be more work madness.

At least Tyler is feeling better. Poor guy.

Bring on the weekend!