Thanks, giving

I’m alone on Thanksgiving. I’ve been officially divorced since April, I live alone, I clearly don’t have a lot of close friends nearby. And even my parents prefer a long weekend in Tahoe over a holiday with their 2 daughters and 2 grandkids. If you’re thinking we’re not a close family, you’re right.

I lingered a long time in bed before getting up, listening to NPR just as confirmation that others exist out there in the wider world, but now that I am up, I’m having a fruit smoothie – I might stick to smoothies today, sort of a fast in response to what is usually a cultural orgy of food. I’ll read a little, taking a ‘bite’ of each of the 6 books I’m actively reading right now. Then sit at my altar and chant for as long as feels right. I’ll sit and ponder the state of my life right now. Then give proper thanks for it.

I thank you, God, for this opportunity to explore loneliness. I thank you, God, for this opportunity to be with myself, undistracted by my desperate efforts to be someone else that I convince myself would be more loveable. I thank you, God, for putting me in the perfect time and place to explore my Self.

Tears and then Yoga

I’m still on my 60 Day Challenge, but I had a little time off.  I took a total of 3 days off (two in a row, back on for one, then one more off) over this past week.  I did a double today to start trying to catch back up.  I’m not terribly worried about it, as I’ve got plenty of time to complete.  I’ve done 21 classes now in 23 days. 

I just wasn’t quite up for the effort of taking my yoga seriously this past week.  I was crying a lot, and chanting a lot, crying a bit more, then meditating a bit more.  I came to some interesting (to me) realizations about myself, as is usually the case when these episodes happen.  Every spiritual crisis leads to further understanding about one’s self, as well as one’s Self.  But I just couldn’t quite bring myself to commit myself fully to the physical practice of yoga. 

And, not at all ironically, once I’d reached a realization or two, miraculously my yoga practice was back on track today.  Last week, I felt like I was working backwards, losing strength & flexibility that had taken months to gain, and experiencing pain in nearly every part of my body.  By yesterday, most of my physical aches were gone (except for the hips, which are sore sore sore, not unexpectedly, from their slow but steady realignment, and as uncomfortable as it is, I know it’s a Good Thing – and the shoulders, which are the very TIGHT bane of my yogic existence, and which hopefully one day will actually release).  But all the other pain, head to toe, in nearly every joint, had cleared. 

Yes, we do store emotions in our bodies, don’t we?

You are a Soul.

“You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” – C. S. Lewis

No Yoga, No Peace. Know Yoga, Know Peace.

No Yoga today for me.  Whether or not that means No Peace remains to be seen.

I gave myself permission to take the day off.  I really looked at the past few classes, and yesterday’s travesty, and decided a day off was not a cop-out. 

I’ve been doing a lot of yoga, and Bikram really wrings stuff out of your deepest core.  Time to let it process a little without wringing more out.  Kind of like fasting when you’re sick.  Let the ick work its way through the system before throwing more on the pile.

I’m pondering some of the feelings & beliefs that have bubbled up:  incompetence, stupidity, lack of direction, weakness.  No conclusions to be drawn as of yet, just looking at them and letting them be there.

Ironically (or not), I faxed over my registration form for the Advanced Seminar in September.  And yes, I feel very anxious about it.  That’s where the feeling of stupidity comes from – if I can’t manage a regular class, WTF am I thinking signing up for the Advanced Seminar??  Talk about jumpstarting the Anxiety Bus. 

Oh, yeah, that’s right, I had that new mantra, didn’t I?  “Be Brave, Be Bold.”

Gah.

32 of ??

Well, I’m still Bikram-ing.  Haven’t stopped.  I took Sunday off, ’cause I needed to spend some time on the road that day, so missed classes.  Since I completed my 30 a day ahead, I figured No Harm No Foul.  I’m still planning on a daily practice until I leave for Hawaii on the 14th of August, but I’m still not seriously committing to a full 60 Day Challenge as that would require 8 doubles, even if I don’t miss a single day.  That said, I’ll push it as far as I can, and see how close I can get while still taking good care of myself. 

I’m in a new phase in my yoga:  the OW phase.  I took one day off and when I came back on Monday it felt like I’d been out for a month.  I’m sore in joints I’ve never even FELT before.  I’m looking at this as Bikram Challenge Phase 2 (BCP2, for short).  The first 30 days were about attitude, strengthening, beginning to release stiff joints and muscles – learning to be disciplined, and learning to keep going despite setbacks.  This next phase is about actually changing my body.  And this is not just one of Dev’s flights of fancy – I’ve been talking to veterans of the yoga and the challenge, and they confirm.  My hips are killing me – I actually come close to tears in what is possibly the easiest Floor Posture:  Wind Removing Pose.  And my knees, which have NEVER bothered me in my life, are feeling just a mite hurty.  And of course, my thighs have that dull ache. 

But I am seeing this all as GOOD.  My priority in committing to daily practice was to strengthen my legs – and that’s what’s happening.  I gained 4 lbs in the past couple of weeks (once I changed my diet), and that’s been muscle.  So I’ve finally gained a bit of muscle in my legs, and burned away some flab, and begun to develop strength in the inner thighs.  I came to yoga with duck feet – my feet turn out.  What that means, internally, is that the outer hip flexors were stronger than the inner flexors.  My hips are hurting, deep inside, because the inner flexors are beginning to pull on the thigh.  This is a Good Thing.  My legs are realigning.  I can tell.  Standing with my feet straight (rather than flaring out) is more automatic for me now.  My knees are hurting a little because of this realignment process – currently, because the feet are straight, the knees point inward a bit.  Again, because the feet were splayed, the rest of the legs adjusted accordingly.  So, everything’s tightening, straightening, moving.  Muscles that have been virtually unused are now coming to life.  I set the groundwork in the first thirty days of daily practice (and of course during the months of less consistent practice), and now the phase of body rebuilding and realignment can begin.  i don’t like hurting, believe me, but I’m looking forward to learning how my body feels and moves (and looks!) after this phase is well underway.

Progress:  well, the Floor Series is not exactly easy now (not that it was a walk in the park before, but there were poses that were painless before that aren’t now), and I’m really feeling the changes in Wind Relieving, Half Tortoise, Spinal Twist, well pretty much any posture where my hips will be contracted close to my body.  Also, although I’m sure my shoulders are ultimately working on releasing, they are currently sore as can be, and seem to me to be as tight as ever – though I can see incremental releasing during Half Moon, when my arms are over my head.  I can see my arms are a little further back and a little closer to my ears than they used to be, but it’s such slow progress on that … I get a bit frustrated. 

On the up side, my Triangle is stronger and stronger (!!!) and I’m solid (no falling) going in and out of Standing Separate Head to Knee.  Again, signs of leg strength!  My Toe Stand comes and goes (I get in and out no problem, but I can’t always count on actually being able to stay balanced on the toes).

OK, other benefits (to counteract the complaints in this post):  my skin is so much happier now that I get humidity, heat, and a good daily Bikram sweat.  My pores get cleaned out, and the blood & nutrients rushing to the surface heal any little blemishes that my be threatening to start.  My skin tends toward dryness & sensitivity, and the daily sweat & humidity has been a godsend.  Even my hands are soft – I’m a semi-compulsive hand washer and they’ve been dry and cracking for years.

My digestion is better.  I know I’ve alluded in previous posts to digestive issues, and they are not miraculously gone, but what I have noticed is that if I’m feeling a little ‘off’ before class, I’m fine by the time it’s over.  In the past, I would talk myself out of practicing if my stomach was a little upset – I just didn’t want to go into that room if I wasn’t totally on my game – by committing to a daily practice, I’ve had to go in there whether I felt off, on, sideways, whatever, and almost invariably I felt better physically after.  There are exceptions, but most of the time, a little indigestion or upset stomach doesn’t throw me off my practice – it’s no longer a good excuse to miss class. 

Which brings me to:  neurotic girl.  Yes, I am neurotic.  Yes, I have a lot of chatter going on in my head.  Yes, I worry about things that non-neurotics don’t worry about.  Yes, I have been known to allow others to steal my peace.  The yoga has helped.  In the past, I would watch others and compare myself to them unfavorably, then my internal chatter would keep up the noise and I’d feel inferior to the others around me.  Or, just as bad, I would compare myself FAVORABLY, and build myself up that way.  Either way, it’s Ego.  The yoga has helped.  I used to allow my focus to be lost if someone else in the room fell out of a posture, or if the teacher walked by me while I was in a balancing posture.  My mantra now is ‘Just do your yoga’, because those distractions just pull me away from what I’m there to do.  So my concentration has improved.  I used to worry that I couldn’t be at the front of the room (right in front of the mirror) because I wasn’t ‘good enough’, that I couldn’t risk letting anyone else see what I was doing until I was ‘perfect’.  I threw that thought away a while ago.  The mirrors are for everyone.  The mirrors are to help us see ourselves as we are, and they are tools to help us improve our practice.  I love being in front now.  I like to be able to see my own eyes, focus, correct my alignment, notice my improvements.  Sometimes I suspect I inspire newer students who otherwise wouldn’t come anywhere near to the front of the room otherwise, by being willing to ’suck’ right there in the front of the room.  I love to occasionally look at others during practice, see who has a beautiful Standing Bow, who has wonderful alignment in Half Moon (so that I can emulate it), see who is fairly new & struggling but still willing to give everything to the practice.  I’m inspired by those who struggle but keep coming back, and I’m inspired by those who come in with a beautiful practice that drives me to work harder.  I rarely compare myself to anyone else anymore.  My practice is my practice - good, bad, mediocre, it’s my own. 

I’m learning that one very meaningful possibility with the heat is this:  it might just burn away Ego.

Bikram, Redux

Back in March of last year I started going to Bikram Yoga.  During the ensuing stressful months (couch-surfing, nervous breakdown, identity deconstruction, freefalling onto rocks below), I continued.  I continued until drama at the studio became unbearable.  The studio owner is, to put it kindly, an insane m*****f***er – major psych issues, unethical behavior, personal morality a notch above child molester.  Not kidding. 

Ironically, this is yoga – recognizing that people will do what they will do, that their behavior will be unacceptable and that it must be accepted because it cannot be changed.  That to keep them in one’s space is a choice, that to be in their space is a choice.  I chose to step out of her space.  Also, it would have been a choice to betray a friend and give financial support to an alcoholic, narcissistic, statutory-raping, sex addict if I had continued to pay this woman for yoga classes.  Other students chose differently and stayed.  Her school is still open and continuing to (slowly) grow.  Some might have fantasies of bankruptcy, but I don’t think it’s in the cards – and I also don’t think there’s any point in fantasizing an outcome for her, as her future is HER decision, no one else’s.

So, anyway, I decided I could no longer go to this conveniently-located-within-1-mile-of-me Bikram school.  So, by August of last year (after 5 months of regular practice), I stopped practicing my yoga.  I missed it.  At the same time, the serious divorce action began to take place.  Final decisions were made, papers were (finally) filed, I moved into an apartment, moved again, etc. etc.  Weeks turned into months.  In the end, it was 6 months before I came back – at a different studio, in another town, 30 minutes away (if there’s no traffic).  Not as convenient as  minutes down the street, but we do what we must. 

My practice was irregular.  I think I was averaging 3 times a week for a couple of months.  Then the health weirdness and stress of the past year (most of which had resolved by then) hit me.  My body was weak, needed recovery, and the yoga was NOT helping.  I was still tweaking my food choices, coming to an understanding of how to best help my body get strong again.  And I was regularly experiencing dizziness – both out of class and in it, but the worst of it was during class.

Then I decided to release my job.  That’s the last part of my old life to go.  I made an agreement with myself.  I will complete the release, focus my attention on transitioning my replacement, THEN return to yoga.  And commit to a regular practice.

So, I have now returned to Bikram Yoga.  At yet another new studio.  This one is slightly closer, but still about a half hour drive.  But it doesn’t matter.  The distance doesn’t matter (I know students who drive an hour or even more to get to class, I’ve got it pretty easy by comparison).  The reduced convenience doesn’t matter – I was angry with kookookrazy local studio owner for so long, and an embarrassingly high proportion of my anger was simply about MY selfishness to have MY yoga at MY convenience (‘that bitch took my yoga away!’  I would think when driving past her studio.  Hey – I’m just being brutally honest here.  I acknowledge the self-absorbed narcissistic bitch in myself.  How can I purge her if I don’t acknowledge her?), and I’ve come to recognize that if it’s important to me to practice, a slightly inconvenient drive doesn’t matter.   

And not surprisingly, I’m not experiencing the dizziness I was before.  There are one or two points during the standing series where I still have a little bit of it, but that clearly points to my low blood pressure being tickled (coming from an inversion to standing up straight).  And even that has gotten better in this one week. 

As happens after every break from regular practice, I am a beginner again on the first day.  Today was Day 8, and my body is remembering.  The wonderful thing is, the body comes back.  It’s like each day is a week.  Rather than being a true Day 8 Beginner, I’m more like a Week 8 Beginner.  My experiment this time was to attend every day for the first week, just to see how quickly I would improve.  It worked out well.  I didn’t lose momentum.  My short term goal was to rebuild my body’s overall strength via daily practice over the first two weeks.  My next goal is to build the strength in my legs, and have toned legs in time for my trip to Hawaii (in August) – I want to be bikini-ready.  My next longer term goal is to maintain a committed, regular yoga practice - 4 to 6 times per week for the next 6 months.  I have plenty of time for yoga right now – no job, no schedule.  I can go pretty much whenever I want.  No excuses!  No breaks!

Anyway, about the Yoga.  Bikram has his critics.  Inevitably.  And I have agreed with some of the criticism around the money money money (copyrighting yoga?  franchising studios?).  But I’m coming to appreciate what’s under the surface of his approach. 

First, the series itself – the same postures, same sequence, same dialogue, hot room, students at varying levels all working to do their best.  The brilliance of this:  you are always doing your OWN yoga.  The sameness of it – you are ALWAYS doing your own yoga.  You can feel when you’ve strengthened the muscles in your legs, or increased your back flexibility.  Look at yourself in the mirror, focus on your legs, your flexibility, your strength.  Listen to the dialogue (the same dialogue) day after day, and you will suddenly get something new out of it after weeks of hearing nothing but drone.  Miraculously, your yoga changes, after days, weeks, months of (seeming) plateau, it changes.  The heat – I love the heat.  Yes, I hated it at first.  Then I changed, my body changed.  It was uncomfortable then, and it’s uncomfortable now – but I love the sweat.  Where I used to focus on the discomfort, I now think about how wonderful it is to have the blood rushing to the surface of my skin, bringing nutrients and oxygen, and the sweat clearing my pores. 

Bikram said something in an interview on 60 Minutes about suffering – how in this country, we don’t really know about suffering.  That suffering for 90 minutes is nothing when you get so much out of it.  So I think about that during class:  I’m suffering for 90 minutes, for a lifetime of better health and well-being.  That’s not such a terrible thing – that’s not really suffering at all.  It’s 90 minutes of discomfort in exchange for a stronger, healthier body.  So I don’t get caught up in stories about how uncomfortable I am, anymore.

As for copyright, legal action, and whether or not Bikram himself is full of crap … at the Bikram website, a read a short bio on a longtime teacher who was quoted defending Bikram’s decision to copyright the sequence, saying, “If you take the formula for penicillin and leave out one of the ingredients, you no longer have penicillin.”  The argument being, the sequence is as important as the individual asanas contained in it.  I liked the way she looked at it, because it pulled me out of my outraged ‘what a jackass, he can’t copyright yoga!’ mentality and allowed me to see that there might be something more loving underneath the surface.  A guru teaches with everything he or she does.  Bikram is an outrageous teacher – a showman.  He’s incorrigible.  That doesn’t automatically make his lessons inconsequential.  We may have to work a bit to see that … yes, the sequencing might be important, yes, the heat might be important, yes, teaching it the same way to everyone might be important, yes, keeping to the dialogue might be important.  There may be lessons in the perceptions that Bikram seemingly wants to ‘control’ anything related to ‘his’ yoga and that he supposedly cares about making himself rich through its franchising.  There may be something for us to learn about perception versus reality.  The reality may be somewhat more or less complicated than mere control.  There may be lessons in the fact that some Bikram teachers can’t do the series as well or as strongly as some of their students.  It occurred to me yesterday that the teachers I appreciate most are the ones that I see struggling in class during their own practice.  And there is probably a lesson in there for me.  It’s not easy for them.  They keep doing their yoga anyway.

I notice that even the dialogue (the same dialogue over and over, yes, yes) exhorts us to push to the edge, keep trying harder, focus.  I suddenly got it today, that Bikram doesn’t leave it at ‘good job, now stay there’ – it’s always , ‘you can do better, keep going.’  There is something very loving in not accepting someone’s belief that they have limitations – recognizing we can do better is wonderful.  I’ve never considered myself particularly disciplined.  Now, suddenly I am.  I set little goals for myself in class, or to attend X number of classes in X number of days – then I reach it, and stubbornly want to surpass it.  Because I know I can.  And I am exhausted, but ecstatic.

Namaste

OK.  It’s been a long time.  A long, long, long, long time.

Much has occurred.  I have passed the one-year anniversary of ‘having left’.  I am divorced.  I have moved twice.  I am in the process of leaving my job.  I am, in many ways, a completely different person now than a year ago.

Blogging has been not-terribly-important to me.  But periodically the urge strikes.  I’ve fought back that urge because I wasn’t sure I wanted to bother with it, or have people actually (occasionally) share my innermost thoughts.  For a while, I wanted to hide away.  I also didn’t want to share what was an experience that affected someone else I cared deeply about (and still do) and did not want to harm.  Tonight, I suddenly feel like opening back up a bit.  I haven’t the slightest idea if anyone is still out there listening.  But that’s alright.

Divorce is an ugly word for something that isn’t nearly as ugly as an unhappy marriage.  I was married, buried, for almost ten years – ‘with someone’ for nearly 13.  When I physically walked out the door, it was nine years and twelve, to be precise, but by the time the dissolution was finalized, it was 10 & 13.  The beautiful and hellacious irony:  my divorce was final the day before my wedding anniversary.  God laughs.  And heartily. 

I’ve come to understand some things in this past year.  There are no accidents or coincidences on a spiritual path.  If you seek lessons in the events that occur, you will begin to recognize when ’something just happened’ is actually an answer to a prayer … but in a form unexpected. 

The day my divorce became final and the day after (the 10th Anniversary), I had made arrangements.  I had put effort into control the time spent alone.  I had taken two days off work (they were a Thursday & Friday, so I had a long weekend ahead of me), and had arranged for friends to be available so I wouldn’t feel deserted.  Well, of course, with this great concern at the front of my mind, with this great FEAR at the front of my mind, with this horrific BELIEF at the front of my mind (“I’m alone, nobody loves me, nobody cares, no one will ever care about me again … “), naturally the friends flaked (unusual behavior, too) and I was alone for three days.  All alone.  This belief of mine, this fear of mine, that being alone is the worst thing in the world … was what I faced that entire time.  I got a houseful of alone.  Ask, and receive it, my friends.  That was the turning point, ultimately.  10 months of nervous breakdown meets 38 years of programming.  First, I realized I’d gotten exactly what I asked for (alone, no one cares, no one loves) – the universe gives us what we need to see.  Then, I realized my friends did exactly what they were supposed to do, in order to help me.  They didn’t choose to drop me, they were compelled to drop me so I could be alone.  The universe conspired to hand me exactly, exactly what I most feared – so I could see it wasn’t quite so bad.  Yes, I cried, I hurt, I felt alone and lonely – but I didn’t die, I didn’t collapse, I didn’t implode.  Yes, I felt like shit, but no I didn’t beg for death.  So, I saw it, I felt it, I had it, and then it was done.  When I realized there was nothing to forgive (hey, my friends weren’t consciously blowing me off, stuff just ‘happened’, and they weren’t available as promised – yeah, that’s the universe setting things in motion), then I was free to recognize just how much they’d done to help me.  And I loved them for it.  The final thing I ‘got’, was that as soon as I released control of what was ’supposed’ to happen, my heart lifted.  I have no control.  None of us has.