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“I have puppy exhaustion,” I announced to The Cop this morning. Indeed, Daisy is an utter joy — she is the happiest, bounciest, most irrepressible creature I’ve ever met. But man, is she a handful. For one thing, she rolls around in her crate all night. Every hour on the hour, she snorts and flips herself over in her crate — it sounds like someone repeatedly throwing a huge pot roast onto a counter top. At 4:15, she snuffles and scratches and flips some more, then whines to get out. Bleery, I open the crate, and she falls out, rolling over herself to get to me and Waylon, wiggling and snorting and biting at us as best she can.

Adorable.

Holy crap, though, I’m tired.

***

New book. Essentials of Hinduism. Another great read. I am always thrilled when I find a new interest — every book about it is a joy, a whole new world opens up. (Go ahead, ask me a question about old school alpine climbing or about whaling in the American Northeast. Or shipwrecks! God, I love reading about shipwrecks.)

It’s always curious to me how we have/develop affinities. If you’d given me this book 10 years ago, I would have glanced through, said, “Yeah, that seems interesting,” and put it down. Now I can’t wait to get home and have at it. Curious.

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This morning was the first morning Daisy got into her crate in the yoga room by herself. I love the routine of dogs; I love that they like sleeping or watching as humans do yoga. During supta vajrasana, my head was right up against the crate. There I was, upside down, and I looked up and straight into Daisy’s green eyes as she calmly watched me do the posture.

Maybe it’s crazy, but I feel like dogs who watch yoga are preparing for a next lifetime, or remembering past ones. Creating (or sustaining) an important affinity.

So in Buddhism, there is reincarnation, but not of an individual soul. Basically, you “return to the one.” Hinduism posits an individual soul. I guess my intuitions about dogs and yoga are more aligned with the Hindu belief system, which is as it should be.

Okay, enough from this exhausted mind. I chatted with Owl this morning, and now I have a little tune playing in my head (always appropriate, as the Beatles tend to be): And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Don’t forget, you guys. We’re here to make energy to share with the others. (Yogi Manifesto)

Obviously this has to be a great podcast for me to bother typing a blog entry one-handed as Daisy chews on my other hand or jumps up trying to bite my hair.

Right at the very beginning Swami Jyotirmayananda talks about the relationship of Buddhism to Hinduism. After years of practicing zazen, and now years of practicing Ashtanga, I just knew the relationship was strong, but this is the first time I’ve heard someone say that Buddhism is a “blossom” of Hinduism. Maybe that’s a really obvious thing to say?

He is pretty dramatic, in terms of blurring the lines: says Buddha was an incarnation of Vishnu, and that instead of “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna,” one might say, “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Buddha.”

Anyhow, check it out.

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Wake-up time is moving back rather steadily. Daisy was up and ready to roll at 3:30 this morning. I don’t mind too much because next week I’ll be in DC for work. We’ll be offering an educational session at a conference, and the days will start early (on site at 7 AM). So I might as well roll back the body clock — in order to be at the venue at 7, I’ll be getting up at 4. I try not to think too miuch about the fact that that’s 1 AM, Arizona time…

***

List of Yesterday: Practice was leisurely since The Cop didn’t leave for work ’til 10. Waylon, running wildly through the yard with Daisy, crashed into one of the porch’s support beams and gave himself a black eye. My Gift and her girlfriend came over to meet Daisy — and loved her, of course! I made a huge pot of aloo gobi and some yummy naan. Karma yoga = service to dogs.

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.

***

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.

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.

Why is it difficult to practice? We face a lot of pressure in this world to go fast, and we’ve become very complicated. We have to make our minds simple, present, attentive. If we don’t make our minds simple, it’s very difficult to pay attention to what we’re doing.

I read about an experiment that was done on dogs. I hesitate to talk about it because we want to protect animals from research, but it leads to an interesting point you may have discovered in your own practice. They kept young dogs in cages until they were very, very hungry, then put some food on one end of a special cage. Between the dogs and the food was a metal grid. When the dogs tried to reach the food they received a fairly strong electrical shock. After a couple of times the dogs would not cross the grid even when there was no electricity. Even if the dogs were starving they wouldn’t try it, and they would jump off if the researchers put them on the grid.

Then the researchers went a step further and found the only way to get rid of that conditioning was to hold the dogs on the grid when there was no shock. The dogs didn’t learn very quickly. Each dog went through everything it went through when it was shocked – trembling, screeching, urinating, completely losing control. But after it had gone through this whole reaction the dog would realize there was no more shock, and then it could cross the grid.

This has relevance to us because our karmic conditioning is the same. We’ve conditioned ourselves to react to certain situations. To get free of that conditioning we have to put ourselves into the situation and stay there while we go through all the trembling and sweating and urination in our pants, until we realize there is no shock in the grid. Nothing is really going on there. In my experience the tendrils of karma are very deep. Dharma Master Ji Kwang Dae Poep Sa Nim says, “Your karma seems really heavy. But when you finally take it off, it’s just like a thin piece of paper.” You have to be willing to practice with your whole body and mind to digest it, to de-condition it, and to see very clearly what is there and what isn’t there. Then even a shock won’t affect you.

– Zen Master Dae Bong

[My Gift grew up answering the question "What would Dae Bong do?" Hilarious when applied to schoolyard dramas and high school hijinks. Still, it's never steered us wrong.]

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.

Interesting podcast with a neurologist & long time zen practitioner. Love the way this guy speaks — talk about geeky! His delivery reminds me of my advisor in grad school.

Very interesting discussion about how the brain pays attention — what structures are involved, and what they bring to the party. I was particularly interested in egocentric processing as distinct from allocentric processing. He makes the case that this is consistent with the difference between concentration states (egocentric) and choiceless awareness (allocentric) in meditation. I couldn’t help thinking of Freud’s “hovering attention” — the centerpiece of psychoanalysis: maybe this is a good example of turning on the allocentric processing?

Regardless, I’m going to think about egocentric vs. allocentric processing at work tomorrow. I have a HUGE preference for allocentric processing, and will be at an all day meeting that involves lots of social stuff. Instead of being cowed by the social requirements, I think I’ll bring experimental mind to bear and look at it all through the allocentric lens. Choiceless awareness, baby!

Mysore practice with The Poetess was good. She has a very sweet, gentle energy, and she is earnest and… well, dear. When you enter the room, she hugs you, and when she adjusts you, she breaths with you as if she hopes her breath can help you. So she’s not just listening to your breath, or aligning with your breath, she’s actually trying to *share* her breath. As I said, very dear.

She also keeps the room a little brighter than MM, which I find super-helpful in utthita hasta padangusthasana.

Gratitude was the name of the game this morning. After a creaky practice yesterday, where I kept feeling a little nervous about my back, I had one of those delightful easy practices where everything feels really sweet. As I’ve mentioned before, if hanumanasana feels great during the standing poses (Yes! Contradiction! Hanumanasana is not a standing pose! This really does bother me, in an OCD way…) anyhow, if it feels really good, then I know it’s gonna be a great practice.

Primary through marichyasana D, intermediate through kapotasana. I’ve been feeling a whimsical desire to get back to LBH poses, but c’mon, it woulda been greedy to go there, first good day after a sore back day. So I let it go.

For now. There is something humorous and sustaining in the LBH work. Something enlivening. I miss it.

***

Before practice, I did a little reading about the “Tail Koan.” I’ve always loved this one. Occasionally I glimpse my tail, and it’s always kinda thrilling. And no, I don’t mean glimpse my tail in the literal I-can-bend-back-and-look-at-my-ass way. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

You know that whole thing of kind of pulling up and out of the lower back, so you’re not sinking into it? Yeah, maybe I got too far out.

My quadratus lumborum‘s a little irritated with me. I’ve been focusing on “up and out,” particularly during twists, and I can feel it. So this morning, I went easy. Primary through marichy D, then intermediate through ardha matsyendrasana.

The whole practice was about listening as I went along — I felt like there was healing to be had in practicing, but I also know I need to temper my zeal. And then I also know that I can deceive myself, especially if it’ll further my tendency to be zealous.

I went nice and easy through the backbends of intermediate, culminating in telling MM that I was feeling tweaky when he came over to help me with kapotasana.

“Don’t break me,” I said.

I went into the pose and he just supported my lower back. Asked how I was doing. All was well. He took my hands to my feet, asked how that was. Fine.

When I came out of the pose he spotted me on the “up” vinyasa, then had me lie on my belly. Then he pulled up on the skin that covers my spine — sort of pulling the skin up off the spinal column. It felt REALLY weird, and really cool. I am curious about stuff like that, because I wonder if there’s really an effect from the movement of the skin, or if it’s just a movement of my mind. Either way, it made my back feel better.