Yummmmmm

(ed note: i wrote this maybe four weeks ago in shanghai in preparation for a trip to the land of internet freedom where it could be published. i am now in that land. )

I’m not going to lie to you, dear Reader of the Yogery. It’s five o’clock in the evening, and my boyfriend has a cocktail business function and won’t be home until late. I'm on my own. What I want to do is go down to the Family Mart on the corner, buy a big Suntory beer, watch the rest of Happy-Go-Lucky and troll around the interwebs for pictures of celebrities in bad outfits. (ed note: www.gofugyourself.com. yes! i did it! i went there! it was awesome!)

But NO. NO! I must practice yoga. MUST DO IT. I’ve been so lazy lately, and by lazy I mean sick, and by sick I mean, lazy.

Full disclosure: I just baked banana nut muffins. Not even from scratch. Betty Crocker, reader, BETTY CROCKER! Fuller disclosure: I’ve been craving banana nut bread/muffin/pancakes. The cost of the ingredients for said baked goods in China greatly outweighs the cost of one packet of “just add water” B. Crocker mix. So, not entirely lazy. But I sure do want to eat them RIGHT NOW. With butter.

I’m unemployed here in Shanghai. No private classes, no studio classes. There’ve been a few false alarms and false starts, but nothing substantial. And I guess it’s a good thing, because my yoga practice has been…struggly. Ben and I have a little joke where he says, Why don’t you do some yoga? And I respond, pouting my lips and wrinkling my brow, I hate yoga!

Funny, right? Sometimes a little true. Lately I’ve been going out with the few friends we’ve made in Shanghai, watching movies and basically flat out refusing to practice. I didn’t even know where my mat was for a few days. And I’m looking for a job as a yoga teacher? Yeah, right.

But like most things, it’s all a phase. I guess. I’m trying to look at my emotions as simply pieces of information, and not law. Like, I feel a little sad today. Maybe I’ll stay in and bake muffins and watch episodes of the new 90210 on the internet. I think because I feel sad, I must be sad and therefore must do things that I do when I feel sad: eat, watch tv, lounge, eat, eat, eat. You get it. But if my emotions are just little clues of information, there’s no real reason I have to make them fact.

Well, this just in: it’s six fifteen, and give or take a few minutes where I just kind of sat on my mat, I practiced for nearly an hour! I even had savasana with my handy dandy Cookie Monster Eye Mask. Not only a savasana, but a sit and a closing meditation and offerng! I NEVER do that! Usually at the end of a home practice, I roll of my mat, check my emails and get back to either coffee drinking or beer drinking (depending on time of day, of course).

I didn’t do anything special, yoga wise. Lunge salutes, focused on back bending as per usual. I will never have Zen Muffin’s back bending prowess.

But I do have muffins. Yummm.

All You Can Eat

Dear Readers. I'm in Hong Kong, existing on the delightful warm air, ocean breeze, and of course the delicious taste of sweet internet freedom. Oh, and maybe some all you can eat dessert buffets.

Yes, my manfriend did me good and bad by taking me to this little place in the Pacific Place mall called the Cuvo Cafe, where on Sat, Sun and public holidays from 3-5pm, they do an All You Can Eat Tea and Cake Buffet. It's kind of a fancy place, this cafe, the kind of place you go with grandparents or partners from your law firm and sit for hours, muching on tiramisu and tiny crossiant sandwhiches--white table clothes, starched napkins, wait staff in tuxedos, the whole shebang. Well, we arrived at 3pm, shoveled three plates of various desserts in our faces, inhaled a coffee, and hightailed it out of there at 3:45, giggling and clutching our bellies. It also cost about as much as the yoga workshop I was supposed to attend that day.

Whoops.

Benjamin justified the cost and the calories by pointing out eating desserts is simply market research for me. I immediately agreed, and it was on. We didn't think of taking any before pictures, unfortunately, but the after photos illustrate the chaos of tiramisu/oatmealcheesecake/marmeladeshortbread/doublechocolatemousscake/raspberrybeignets/whippedcreamwithfruitinside/fruittartswithchocolatelinedpastryshells. And more.

Basically, we made a mess.

And, in fact, dear Reader, was a mess.

I swore to Benjamin that we would erase Cuvo Cafe from our memories, ensuring I could never again return on a wayward Saturday and stuff my piehole with treats. Except for that, oh man, I didn't even get to try the truffles!

And, yes, you heard me right: I was supposed to attend a yoga workshop this afternoon at a studio here in HK. I've not been a good yogini lately, foregoing my practice for long nights out and big cups of coffee in the mornings. In Shanghai I was cultivating a fairly regular personal practice, and documenting in a journal what I worked on, but there is something very different about playing around in my apartment alone and going to a big ole workshop at a studio. Maybe I chickened out. I don't really know. I don't feel particularly guilty, but maybe I should. In any case, the studio also offers two free weeks of yoga to new students, so I'll take advantage of that to get my yoga on while I'm here. Right now, my coffee is hot and the kitties want to play!

The Two SF's

above: doing cactus-inspired mudras in santa fe

We didn't post anything for all of September. Oh, the laziness.

In September, I moved to Santa Fe, had both a wonderful and a difficult time, and moved out of Santa Fe to San Francisco. There wasn't a lot of time for yoga. Yet I was always doing yoga-on the train, at the bar, while making breakfast. I breathed and stayed aware. I forgot to be aware, and, noticing that, brought myself back to the moment. What else is that if not yoga?

So far I'm 4 days into living here and I'm inspired. I step out the door and I become giddy looking at the hills, the cable cars, the flower shops.

In this mood I sat down for coffee on my first day here, and a man asked me what I did. For a split second I panicked, not wanting to explain that I was unemployed and even angry that he would bring up that painful topic and ruin my buoyancy. Emotions move so quickly. But I decided to try out an identity on this stranger, so the words I chose were, "I teach yoga." I repeated it, tasting them and letting them expand and become truer on their own, "I'm here to become a yoga teacher."

Who knows if it will become true? Who cares? I'm in San Francisco.

French Toast, live from the French Concession

Well I've snuck onto Blogger despite the Chinese government's best efforts and now I realize I have nothing much to say. But, hi, anyway.
My attempts at teaching yoga in Shanghai have thus far been thwarted by some pretty serious sickness that kept me in bed or on the couch for at least two weeks with a high fever and gnarly cough. Gross. As is the way of the universe, the day that I reached the highest fever was the day I had scheduled to teach a trial class at a studio in Pudong. Alas, alas.

Much more of a 'scene' here in than in Beijing. More foreigners, more yoga studios, more Starbucks. Shanghai is a more economically developed city, and is way more Western. I am lucky here to have options with yoga studios, but even on the days when I've felt well enough to practice, I don't. Why is that?

The Crib Is Coming

I've been doing a few of Kira's online classes, in the comfort of my own home.  The dog lays his big head on the mat while I catapult over him from lunge into warrior 3 and back again.  

I'm so excited because now you can watch a lot of fantastic clips from the Ojai Yoga Crib online.  Now we can all enjoy inspiration from the Crib year-round.  The Crib has a way of making me want to live on the yoga mat 24/7.

Check it out!

Yogini as Muse

How can you not love this lovely song if you are a girl who does yoga?  "Dogs" by Damien Rice.

The lyrics:

She lives with an orange tree
The girl that does yoga
She picks the dead ones from the ground
When we come over

And she gives
I get
Without giving anything to me

Like a morning sun
Like a morning
Like a morning sun
Good good morning sun

The girl that does yoga

He lives in a little house
On the side of a little hill
Picks the litter from the ground
Litter little brother spills

He gives
I get
Without giving anything to me

And the dogs they run
And the dogs they
And the dogs they run
In the good good morning sun

Side of a little hill
The litter little brother spills
The side of a little hill

Oh and she's always dressed in white
She's like an angel and she burns my eyes
Oh and she turns she pulls a smile
We drive her round and she drives us wild
Oh and she moves like a little girl
I become a child and she moves my world
And she gets splashed in pain and turns away and leaves me standing

She lives with an orange tree
The girl that does yoga
Got a wolf to keep her warm
When he comes over

She gives
He gets
Without giving anything to see

And the day ends
And the day it
And the day ends
And there's no need for me

The girls that does yoga
When we come over
The girls that does yoga

Music After Meditation

You end up looking at your feet a lot when you do yoga so they might as well be as gorgeous as possible (which is difficult for my summer-weary, chaco-sportin' toes).  Oh, and that's my hand and foot in half-moon (ardha chandrasana) with their new "dress to empress" coat of paint.

I sat for a long time.  I think sitting is what was missing from my practice yesterday.  I get so addicted to listening to my music that I can't turn it off.  Yesterday I was listening to Radiohead's concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl from last fall and it wasn't very easy to really focus on my practice.  Today I was more disciplined about shutting off the music, and as soon as it got quiet, I got quiet (relatively).  From now on, no music until after meditation!  Just like no dessert until after dinner (not that I follow that rule either).  

I like a very simple sitting practice.  I was taught to meditate at a zen center, and the instructions were simple.  Count your breath.  When you get to 10, start over.  I can never forget that, and I never get stressed trying to do it 'right.'