Only one left

Before jumping into yoga, I wanted to say what I know a lot of others already have:  I never thought I’d see the day this country would elect a person of color as Commander-In-Chief.  I honestly wondered if it would happen in my lifetime.  It’s an exciting & extraordinary day.  I am so proud of us.  We’ve made a dramatic leap forward, and from now on, our world has changed.  This isn’t about politics.  This is about how we all now live in a world where a ‘Black President’ is no longer a pipe dream.  Young folks today will consider this no big woo in a couple  of years.  Think of it, any elementary school child today will, in four years, not even give this a second thought.  By the time they’re voting, it won’t even be a consideration.  And I mean that in a good way.  :

I’m still on my Yoga Challenge.  One class left!  Today was #59, and I was taking note during practice just how much has shifted since I came back to yoga in July, and especially how much has changed in the past few weeks. 

It’s true what they say about a Challenge – the middle is the hardest.  You really feel that from about day 20 to day 45 (at least, I did).  From about day 35 to 45, I just felt like shit every day.  By day 50, I felt pain in every joint, and was beginning to think it was never going to stop and that maybe I’d done something wrong, and had injured myself.  And I struggled to finish every class – I was so tired.  But it got better.  My hips are still not completely pain-free, but pretty close.  And I had a flare-up of sciatica pain in my left hip (this was new to me) about a week ago, that now seems to have passed completely.  I was concerned about it, and was super-gentle with my hips (no pulling in forward bends!) for several days, then it just went away, and now I’m pulling with no problems.  Funny thing is, I can clearly see how the pain (the joint pain and sciatica both) were part of my body’s physical realignment process, because once the pain was gone, my practice had clearly improved.  Almost like the fog clearing, and suddenly sunlight is brighter than you remember it ever being before.  As for the tiredness, the exhaustion, the fatigue – it was with me every day, every class, and suddenly it wasn’t.  Not that I’m bouncing around afterwards, but what I experienced for weeks and months was that by the middle of back strengthening series, I was beat.  I was whupped.  I was out of gas.  Then one day, I was okay.  Yes, the class tires me, but it doesn’t DRAIN me or EXHAUST me the way it did.  I have a fairly steady flow of energy through to the end of class.  This change happened around day 46 or 47, right about when the joint pain started (ironically).  

My hips are still at issue.  It will take time & lots of practice before I’m no longer duck-footed, knock-kneed, and crooked in the legs.  My hips continue to realign, but I feel something dramatic has happened inside the joint, and I’m no longer experiencing that sharp pain in postures where I bend at the hips.  I think this is a sign that the tissues that needed to soften and loosen are doing so, while the tissues that needed to strengthen and tighten are doing their part.  I think one day I will suddenly notice that my knees are properly aligned to my feet, and my leg will be a straight line all the way up to the hips.  Someday, someday …

So, one more class to finish the 60 Day Challenge.  That will be tomorrow.  The day after that is my birthday (no yoga on my birthday).  I’ll take a day or two off, then come back full force to my usual 5 or 6 days a week.  Maybe I’ll keep tracking to 100 days, just to see what else feels different by then.

Here’s what’s what:

Pranayama Breathing:  my knees are nicely locked, provided my toes are separated.  (Again, this is a modification for how knock-kneed I am – my goal is to keep my knees straight to the mirror, rather than my toes & heels touching)  I begin the class with my toes further out, then I move them in as the Standing Series continues.  It’s an ongoing process of me testing my stability and testing where my hips go when I lock the knees.  I look forward to not having that distraction, eventually.  I’m constantly checking my feet.  After the first couple of breaths, my neck & shoulders are pretty warmed up; my neck goes way back with no problem, my shoulders get more comfortable with each breath. 

Half Moon w/ Forward Bending:  again, the knees are nicely locked, and I experiment with bringing the toes together more.  When my fingers meet over my head, my elbows almost lock now, and my shoulders are noticeably looser.  I can bring my arms just a little behind my ears now, and keep them there for the most part.  This one USED to be my nemesis, and now I really look forward to getting into it to see how my body feels.  My shoulders no longer scream at me through this entire posture.  My sidebends reach a fairly consistent crescent shape, but I have a tendency to backbend slightly rather than stay straight.  The dialogue tells us to move the upper body back slightly, but I already have a bit of an arch so I have a head start.  So what I need to do is pull upward rather than backward.  My back bend is getting very strong, and feeling good.  Where my legs used to burn and feel as though they wouldn’t support me, they now feel strong & locked.  I always see the floor in back bending.  I do need to keep working on my arms (locking the elbows, pulling them back).  Forward bending is more challenging for me – the first one is just a warmup, and when my hips were hurting I could barely get into position before the posture was over.  Now, I get into it early enough to get my lower back started stretching in the first one, and the second set I am closer & closer to (someday) locking my knees.  And for the most part, this whole series feels good (tough, straining, hard work – yes; but not painful, overwhelming, or impossible to complete)

Awkward:  First part is easy.  I sit way way down, then arch my back.  My legs feel quite strong here.  Second part’s challenge is the balancing on my toes.  Again, it has to do with hips and how the misalignment in my legs leads my feet to be in a slightly different position than someone with properly straight legs.  That’s not an excuse, just what I’m working with.  Some days are fine, other days not so.  I’m moving incrementally deeper into this posture and I feel good about my progress.  I consistently go to my edge with this.  Third part is still tough, but today I almost felt ‘light’.  The arms truly are important with this series.  The more locked the arms, the lighter the torso.  I still lose this one from time to time, but I can tell I am closer and closer to staying in it and staying in proper alignment coming out.  Hardest thing is maintaining a straight back coming out; second hardest thing is keeping the knees pressing together throughout.

Eagle:  this is my nemesis right now.  Ever since my hips started their movement several weeks ago, Eagle has been very very challenging for me.  Standing on the left leg, twisting the right over has been difficult to not-doable much of the time.  It seems the left hip tightened up in a strange way that prevents it from moving in towards the body just that little bit that I count on to be able to wrap the legs together.  Also, my left leg is the slightly weaker leg anyway, so staying balanced on that side is tougher.  It’s getting better and better every day, but it’s not what it was when I first started.  Right side’s usually fine, though.  If I’m having a ‘no balance day’, I fall out on both sides.  Alas. 

Balancing Series:  in this series, it’s the balance itself that continues to vex me.  It’s all about my crooked legs.  I am forced to reposition my feet before every posture, just to see where it is they need to be to keep me stable.  Standing Head to Knee is dramatically stronger than when I started.  In the past couple of weeks, I realized I could lock the lifted knee, and that’s made a huge positive dent in my yoga self esteem.    I’m still a mess going into it, though - I rock from side to side as I try to get my hands locked under my foot, one hand at a time grabbing the bottom then working them together.  Sometimes I fall out just from that, before I’m actually in the set up to the posture!  I don’t know what needs to release to move me past that awkwardness – my shoulders, my back, what?  Standing Bow, however, has gotten worse over time.  My standing split is getting better, but I can’t stay in the posture long enough to really focus on that!  I fall out every single time, several times.  Again, it’s the feet & legs – if my standing foot is straight, my body is crooked & I fall out sideways.  If my standing foot is turned out, my body is straighter, but I fall forward.  Can’t seem to win.  I think when Standing Bow comes together, I shall be perfectly aligned at last.  So it could be years!    Balancing Stick is legitimately better these days – I’m much stronger with the right standing leg than the left; with the sets on the right leg, I am straight & balanced, with the sets on the left I have great difficulty straightening up and not listing to one side.  I think it’s a simple fact that my right leg is stronger.  I noticed a couple of weeks ago, though, that when I step forward my foot is straight, automatically (both sides) – no turning outward!  This is another exciting sign of realignment. 

Enough for now.  I’ll continue with these reflections another time …

Emotional commotion in the body

Well, I took a little break from blogging.  I just don’t have the talent to make every daily blog about yoga … interesting.  Some people do, but I even bore myself. 

I’ve had a few other things going on in my life – including working on my relationships a little bit.  I’ve been looking at how and why I become emotionally attached to some people, and at what point that turns into an unhealthy attachment that does not serve my highest good.  Like I said, had a few other things going on.   

This caused me to take a couple of extra days off from yoga over the past few weeks, so I’m now further behind on my challenge than I expected I would be.  But that is life.  What I love about the Yoga, though, is how each day I get to assess where I *really* am emotionally, outside of what my conscious mind tells me. 

I’ve discovered there are certain postures which are more or less challenging, depending on where I am emotionally or psychologically, and which serve as indicators for me of just where I am that day.  For me, they are Eagle, the four one legged balancing postures (Standing Head to Knee, Standing Bow, Balancing Stick, Tree), and the two Locusts (half & full).  Eagle tells me about my relationships to certain people in my life, and how well I am managing them.  The balancing postures tell me how I feel about standing on my own feet – whether I feel competent to manage my own life that day, and whether I feel, well, ‘balanced’.  And if I’m simply feeling overwhelmed by whatever emotional commotion I’m experiencing, it’ll show by me feeling completely nauseous and weak in the Locusts.  So each class is a new discovery – am I strong today?  am I balanced today?  am I sad & sick & lonely today?

The thing with Eagle right now is more than a bit frustrating.  Eagle used to be super-easy for me.  I could wrap my raised leg around my standing leg with no problem, my foot easily hooked around my standing calf, on both sides; and it felt good to wrap my arms around each other to free the shoulders (my tight tight shoulders love Eagle).  But then my hips began to realign, and the LEFT hip tightened up – so first side of Eagle, standing on the left foot, I could no longer get my right foot around my calf, and sometimes I completely fall out; I’m only now, after months of this backsliding, beginning to occasionally wrap my right foot back around my left calf.  I still have pain in the left hip.  Right side’s still pretty easy to wrap, but I still lose it occasionally.  So funny, because it was one of the only postures I could manage when I first started, and on the surface it’s almost as though the yoga has stiffened my joints rather than freeing them.  I recognize that it all has to do with realignment, and that eventually it will improve to the point where I find myself stronger and more flexible than when I began, but the irony of feeling that I’m moving backward instead of forward is not lost on me.  Such is life – we think we’re moving backward when we’re really moving forward.  One day we wake up to discover we’ve processed out a lot of old feeling, and we have actually leapt forward.

In other yoga news, I really am feeling as though I’m finally moving out of the plateau stage I was in for so long.  Just in the past few days, I’ve experienced my hamstrings finally (finally!) stretching – I can actually straighten my lifted leg in Standing Head to Knee.  This is also indicative of a slight release in my shoulders, as well.  In Hands to Feet (last part of Half Moon), the pain and stiffness in my hips is lessening, and though it still takes pretty much the entire first set to get completely positioned to start the stretch, I am able to move right into it in the second & my legs are getting closer and closer to straight.  I discovered last night, just goofing off at home, that I can – for the first time in my adult life – bend forward with straight legs and place my palms on the floor.  This is quite extraordinary.  I’ve always said my legs were too long and my arms were too short.    The palms weren’t totally flat, but still.  So, what do loose(r) hamstrings mean?  I’m not sure yet.  I’ll figure it out eventually.

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?

Why oh why did I sign up for the challenge?

I’m sure everyone on a 60 Day Challenge (or more) eventually asks this question. 

This past several days it’s been nothing but frustration and disappointment.  I’m going backwards.  Less flexible, less strong, less balanced, more pain.  As with my last challenge, I’m discovering soreness in places than never hurt before; worse, though, is that pain I thought I’d moved past has returned for an extended visit.  I’m definitely taking Friday off, even though it means another double down the road.  I don’t care, I think my body wants a day off.  But there’s still tomorrow to work through.

What I want to believe is that it’s always darkest before the dawn:  that feeling like I’m going backwards is just a sign that my body is shifting into a new phase, that I’m going to walk into class one day soon to discover that something in my practice has just blossomed overnight, and that all this frustration was in preparation for something.

A girl can dream …

60 Day Challenge

I committed to a 60 Day Challenge at my home Bikram Yoga studio (Bikram Yoga Elk Grove). 

I waited until the last possible minute to sign up for this Challenge (the studio is sponsoring the challenge, which means there’s a semi-official start date, and many of the students are doing the Challenge at the same time, thus creating a supportive environment for a daily commitment to a life-changing yoga practice), ’cause I wasn’t sure I wanted to do another one so soon, but I guess I do - and I started earlier than most folks (September 1st).

Anyway, just finished class #8 (only 52 more to go!  but it’s better not to look at it that way.).  Just barely a week in, and I’m experiencing ‘first week soreness’.  Which is strange, because it’s not like I’m back for the first week in a long time, or in my very first week of classes.  I’ve been practicing nearly every day for months.  Is it the mental ‘challenge’ attached to the commitment to an official ‘Challenge’ creating this?

Chicago Trib interview with the man himself

Just discovered this fun interview with Bikram at a Chicago Tribune health blog.  The man is incorrigible!

Q: Why do you call yoga teachers “clowns?”

A: Because they are clowns. Circus clowns. They completely [expletive] up yoga. They crucified hatha yoga in America. There is no yoga called kundalini, power, vinyasa, dog yoga.

We follow 4,400 years of Patanjali’s The Yoga Sutra. There are eight kinds of yoga—karma, hatha, raja, vedanta, bhakti, mantra, jnana and laya. What the hell is vinyasa?

And Iyengar school [which uses props] looks like a Santa Monica sex shop. You don’t need those things to do yoga.

They make so many stupid things here [in America]. I am teaching the exact same postures as my guru [Bishnu Ghosh] taught me.

Hysterical.  Dog yoga.  If Iyengar read this interview, he laughed and laughed.  Bikram is a genius.  If you read the interview, check out the reader comments at the end – he SO gets people where they live.  You know what Bikram’s saying?  “Never let anyone steal your peace, not even me.”

Home & again with the yoga

Hawaii was good.  Understatement?  Maybe.  The weather is perfect:  85 degrees, 75% humidity.  Paradise.  But food was at issue.  I’ve been vegetarian for 20 years, most of what I eat is fresh produce.  That was a lot harder to come by than I expected.  I mean, I realize most food is imported, but I couldn’t get over how easy it was to get a Wendy’s burger and how damned hard it was to get a fresh mango – something that is actually grown right there!  All week, I was jonesing for mango, but no dice.  Anyway, loved the weather & the water.  I snorkeled!  You have to understand, I don’t really swim, so snorkeling is a big whoop. 

But, ironically (or not?), I’m back to blogging yoga today.  Been back to class for a week, after being out a week, and it took a few days to get back to the groove.  But today was wonderful – I took a private class with the studio director, Carrie, and got to spend a whole class just working out my alignment issues.  Heaven!  We got as far as Triangle (3 postures short of the full Standing Series).  To begin with, my stance needed adjustment, which will cascade through the whole series & hopefully relieve the knee and hip pain I’ve been experiencing.  The dialogue (and teaching) insists on ‘toes and heels together’ – in my case, I need to keep my toes slightly separated.  Because my feet turn outward, if my feet are perfectly straight, my knees turn inward, which is NOT what we want – what’s more important is to have the knees straight in the mirror.  Once we’d made that tiny adjustment, I immediately felt more stable, and the locked knees felt almost natural,  rather than something I was working very hard at doing.  What a revelation.  My hips and knees did not feel uncomfortable, for the first time in at least a month, and I was locking my knees without really thinking about it.  Very cool!

My nemesis is Half Moon (the first posture!), so we spent almost half an hour on just the four parts of that posture – I think it will be much stronger & less straining for me now.  We addressed the tightness in my shoulders, lower back, and hamstrings and how the dialogue is really really really for beginners – that once you’ve made a commitment to the practice, and are truly working hard and trying your best, the exhortations to “pull!” and “stretch!” need to be taken with a grain of salt.  It’s funny, because Duffy was making a similar point yesterday.  Carrie basically told me to stop trying so hard and just work with my body to do the fullest expression of each posture that I can do right now.  

Now, with all the focus I’ve had on strengthening my legs, it was gratifying to be told my Awkward pose was beautiful in the first two parts.  And the third part was pretty good, too.  Speechless, I was. 

I won’t go over every single posture.    That would be boring.  To someone other than me.  But, wow, a private class with an experienced teacher is really supportive of one’s practice.  I really feel much more comfortable now with basically ignoring the parts of the dialogue that do not apply to me, and modifying the postures when appropriate.

Aloha-away!

Well, not blogging yoga leaves me with little to share.  Well, I could share things, I’m not always sure *how* to write about the internal dialogue, y’know?

I’m still Bikraming almost daily.  I’ve decided Fridays are my day off.  And maybe the occasional Monday.  But that’s still 5 to 6 days a week which ain’t bad.  I think I’m somewhere around 51 classes in 53 days, not that I’m counting.

Heading off to Hawaii later this week (the Big Island).  Don’t know if I shared this before, but what happened was … I signed up for a seminar in Kona back in May, invited a friend along, set up flights, hotel, car, then the seminar was canceled.  Oops.  Well, I figured, Fuck it, I’ll go anyway, it’s already paid for.  Sure, I could’ve saved myself (some of) the money, canceled or taken a credit on hotel, flight, etc., but by then I really wanted to go to Hawaii!    I’ve never been before, and I may not have a good excuse to find myself on a beach again anytime soon.  But I do think this’ll be my last vacation for a while – no job, living on savings, really need to stay within a budget, not sure where I’ll land in terms of income (or anything else for that matter).

Anyhoo, I’m not QUITE as bikini-ready as I’d hoped to be, but I’m closer than I’ve been since high school, so that’s something to smile about.

Aloha!

45 Day Challenge

45 Days is not an ‘official’ challenge at all.  But 45 classes in 45 days is where I feel complete with the ‘challenge’ aspect of my yoga, at this time.  It’s a good figure.  If I wasn’t going away in a little over a week (creating a 5 day interruption in a potential 60 day challenge), I would have simply continued to 60 days, just to do it. But I seem to be at a point where I’m stronger if I take a day off once a week or so, anyway.  So, I’m happy with my 45 day challenge, and now I’m moving into a regular daily practice with maybe one day off a week.

Here’s the progress I’ve seen:  definitely stronger overall, and my legs LOOK better (not quite as good as I want them to look, but they’re leaner & better defined than when I started).  My focus was on strengthening my legs above all, and that meant I went back the basics, even though I might have seemed like more of a beginner than I really was. 

Basic of all basics:  lock the damned knee.  Any Bikram yogi knows that’s the REAL mantra.  It’s an ego burner – my Standing Bow *seemed* better a year ago, but my knee was never locked, my leg would never have maintained good support – it’s just that I could get a better split with a loose standing leg so it looked prettier.  Oh well, I’m locking the knee now, so it’s slower going, but I can see the result:  I’m building stronger leg muscles, and my splayed-out feet are correcting (my legs are slowly realigning properly).  Physically, I look better than I ever have in my life.  And I look forward to having even leaner legs and a tighter butt as I continue my practice.

I know this daily challenge has jumpstarted my progress.  I’m further along in my practice than I would have been if I’d come back to the yoga after such a long break and only attended 3 to 4 times a week this past 6 weeks.  I’m very happy I committed to a personal challenge. 

Luckily, I’m not a Type A personality.  I can reach an appropriate stopping point, recognize my progress, continue my practice with reasonable breaks, and not feel like a total loser if others do more.  This practice is for me.  I want to be strong, healthy, and flexible – my goals are for me, not anyone else.

Back on track with 42

OK, I’m good with the yoga again. 

Yesterday, I forced myself to do a double just to get past all this crap that’s been scaring me.  Just to gut my way through the anxiety.  I’m glad I did.  It wasn’t a killer double, just to be clear – the first class was close to killer because I was practicing at the studio with lousy air circulation and the teacher didn’t manage that very well so it was huuuummmiiiiddd and hot and the air wasn’t moving; second class was being taught by my fave teacher (and good friend) so I knew I was okay to just do the standing series then leave if that’s what I needed to do.  And that’s what I did, Standing then hit the showers.  I had just enough of a second wind to do the first half of the class, and I felt good about it, so no guilt.

So today, though I was still feeling that temptation to not go, I went to the 4:30 at my regular studio.  Let’s remember the yoga adage, once more:  if you don’t want to go, that’s when you need to go.  We had a teacher who was new to me (she’s been teaching several years, just elsewhere) and was really great with corrections (which I love!).  I had a nice, normal class.  Not spectacular, not horrific.  Just normal.  Whew.  What a relief.  I was back to not really noticing the heat, did all the postures, and focused my attention on making little adjustments based on the dialogue and the teacher’s suggestions.  No trouble with air, no feelings of overwhelm.  Thank Krishna.

If I’m doing any kind of challenge now, this is Class 42.   

Got word today that the Advanced Seminar is cancelled.  I’m disappointed, but if it wasn’t meant to be this time, it just wasn’t meant to be.  If I’m supposed to go to a Bikram seminar, it’ll happen.