"home" practice

Ok so first this computer doesn't have commas. Second my name is technically not a baked good but a spice. an awesome spice. Third and perhaps most important I don't feel exactly like I belong here with the whole blog heading and everything. But with all those things aside, hello. Frenchtoast good to see you last night. Zen Mufin your presence has been sorely missed at corepower the last couple of years.

I am involved with a pile of transitions and have been trying to maintain a yoga practice these past couple of weeks in the midst of swirling chaos. So it was a few days ago I found myself practicing yoga at work doing my "home" practice if you will. Lucky lucky am I being able to do yoga while getting paid to be an EMT. The problems with this scenario: The quarters are deeply dirty from residual ambulance germs of countless sick people. No matter how much they're cleaned the carpets are dirty. I lay a blanket on the carpet upon which I lay my mat. The air-it seems better not to breathe too deep. But I do anyway. Also there is the high probability that at any moment in a given series from the first child's pose all the way up to the last savasana there could be a call and at that point I have to get dressed lightning fast pants shirt jacket hat big black steel tipped bootlaces and rush to who knows where. That frequently happens during this "home" practice. But I've definitely practiced yoga four hours in a day while at work. Almost always using David Swenson's phenomenal resource of a book that I've owned five years and bought four or five times for other people-I forget the name right now. But it truly is a phenomenal resource.

That's what I was using on Sunday in Kremmling Colorado "sportsman's paradise" is what the town sign says. The least busy of all the stations I made it through the entire series. I practice ashtanga not because of a particular affinity for the series even though it's a great series of postures but because it's a ton of yoga postures. The primary series is probably 70 or 80 postures with beginning and ending sequences. The very best part of practicing yoga alone is pace. I'm learning to go slow and think of each posture as a full body mudra. An expression of energy through a physical manifestation. When I think of yoga postures this way I don't get tired but instead I look forward to the next "mudra" allowing myself as much time to break in between. In a class the primary series takes 90 minutes. It usually takes me two and a half hours. I used to push myself through and feel fatigued but I'm learning that's not what the yoga gods and goddesses want me to do.

Anyway in the next five months I won't have much access to yoga studios so I'll be doing a lot of solo practice...Frenchtoast and I were talking about taking Jeanie Manchester's tigress class but decided against it because 1. I'm not man enough to be a tigress and 2. it's a yoga free for all.