This Time Tomorrow...

yoga summer camp came to an end. i find myself stranded in the los angeles airport for ten hours. i pace the terminal over and over: starbucks and burger king aren't going anywhere, either. i'm hungry. am i unenlightened if i order a cheeseburger? hunger is the price we pay for ..what? responsibility? good taste? in LAX it gets me no where. two flight attendants eyeball my yoga mat, my straw hat. headed for boulder, indeed. where is a rose quartz when i need one? and i'm still hungry.

but now that i'm here and back ordering black coffee at the shop on the corner where everyone i've ever known in boulder orders their coffee, it feels as though i've never left. i see a lot of my friends today, by accident. boulder feels as small as ojai. can i turn a corner without seeing someone i know? but today it is welcomed; i am shocked to write it is a pleasure to be home. they ask what i learned. no, that's not right, they ask did you learn a lot. yes or no. some don't know what questions to ask and i don't know how to say over coffee i've changed and we end up talking about pollution, or LA traffic. i run into a newer friend; we don't know each other well, and our conversations are friendly, toothy, transparent. he is interested in yoga, we talk about a time for him to come take a class with me. yoga is the next natural step for him, he quit drinking a year ago and now he wants to quit smoking. we decide on next wednesday. it's a new moon, he says, grinning. is he coming to yoga so he can quit smoking or kiss me? i don't know, but i decided a few weeks ago both motives are respectable so when i see him scribble in his planner i can't help but grin back at him, merry as christmas. i mean, it's yoga. what can go wrong?

i'm avoiding. yoga summer camp came to an end. i'm back in boulder after two and a half weeks in southern california practicing yoga. learning to teach yoga. i designed two classes this afternoon, in an effort to put off returning to work and real life a little longer. but i grew tired just putting the pen to paper. should i be doing this? do i know my elbow from my ass? completing the training articulated many unnamed fears, wants, needs. the sentence i want to teach yoga sounds much different when you're actually enabled to teach yoga. it's like the beginning of a relationship, when everything is still a bet. doubt, desire. he calls, i call him back, he leaves a message on my answering machine.

Love The World You Find

Day six or seven of yoga summer camp. I don't even know. Today things began making sense for me, in my own body and in the studio. The slowness started to seal in ideas, postures, poems. I think I'm getting it.

Not having the freedom of my time is getting to me, though. My eating routine is off. I'm not really rolling with that as well as I wish I could. Knowing my job will be changing at my studio in Boulder upon my return is bothering me. I find myself at that studio just as much as I'm at Lulu's, with the way it pops into my mind. And boys, I'm thinking about boys.

Just staying present is my big task. Remembering to do little things in the moment I'm in, like looking forward with my head while trying to jump into handstand. Who cares what happens after I'm up? What I'm trying to do is get up.

At one point during our practice today I thought I felt a psychic 'phone call' from a friend. I think that statement sums up a lot of my mental state during this training. This friend and I once sat lotus style in front of one another at a hot springs in New Mexico, trying to communicate silently. It was one of the most pleasant afternoons I've had in a long time, and while a lot of the telepathy business was rooted in shyness and wanting to just look at him, I'm still hoping one day I'll be able blog psychically. Oh, yes.

What does this have to do with yoga? That is the eternal question in my posts. Yoga has to do with everything. I could write an entry about buying beans and it would be about yoga. The deeper I get into my practice the more things become connected.

Kira talked a lot about resistance today. Saying no to say yes. Some of that resistance is in our physical bodies--the way you can trick a muscle into stretching by contracting it first, and some of it in our emotional bodies. We did handstands today--a big anxiety pose for me. I said no a million times in my head, and gave my usual lame attempt at the wall, mostly for posterity. Look, I tried. Happy now? And lo, I was tricked into it.

No, not tricked. Kira pushed her feet into my shoulder blades which gave me the stability to push my legs out to a right angle. But somewhere in there was a moment where I said ok. I stopped sending psychic messages to my legs and arms like DON'T LET ME DIE and I stopped, for a second, thinking about the second that was coming after that one.

And it was great. Of course. I'm getting to be more and more honest with my body, trusting it more, loving the places it lets me get to. Trying to settle into the sensations of whatever world I'm in. Maybe I'm not as ready as I'd like to be to teach, but I'm understanding I could be. Like sending and receiving psychic messages with John--it's probably not going to happen, but thinking it could is pretty sweet.

Here I am, two days into yoga summer camp. Feeling alternately inspired and uninspired. This morning I admit boredom. Kira's teaching at 9 am and although I'm up and dressed for it, a vinyasa class does not sound appealing. I miss my hot yoga practice, but I'm not sure I want to do that, either. If the essense of yoga is focus and attention, as Joel Kramer writes, then I'm screwed. I find my mind wandering during meditation, my breath escaping me without acknowledgement and my body physically resisiting the poses I ask of it. All of it is physical: my back is suddenly a liability again. Sensation comes and goes in my right leg and my upper back and shoulders spasm as if in shock when asked to compensate for the lower back. Tomorrow I visit a chiropracter--my future as a yogi lies in her hands.

It's hard not to feel inspired in Kira's studio. It's a small, light space with open windows and pale blue walls. Almost nothing reminds me of my studio at home; in fact,the windows here open up to big, green trees. No gas station or apartment complexes in sight. The pace of things is different here, which suprises me. Students don't start showing up for class until a minute before it is scheduled to begin. Do I feel somehow threatened by this? A chance exists that I rely on arriving thirty minutes before the class to spread my mat out, roll my neck around, focus. I don't know how to just arrive. This morning (Sunday) Ashley and I woke up only ten minutes before 8, actually driving the three blocks to the studio so we could make Uschi's strong vinyasa class. I tried not to panic, but I did a little anyway. How do they do it, these people who just stroll into class, thunk their mats down and forward fold?

I need to start my yoga homework. Something about sequencing. In the interest of not letting these posts of mine drag on and on for days, I'm pressing "publish post" and just letting what I've said be what I've said. The end.

omg so nervous

i can't believe the teacher training starts tonight. in forty-five minutes to be precise. i'm so nervous! i love that it starts so late in the evening, it makes it feel sort of mysterious and exciting. i feel so unprepared in some ways and also completely ready and excited.

the only thing keeping me halfway calm is reading erich schiffmann's book. he's working really hard to convince me that yes at my core i am actually goodness, love, peace, calmness. like everyone. i'm trusting that i can stay with that during this training and that whatever shows up for me it will be ok!

i'm working on finding my own voice and that's what i hope to get out of this endeavor--a little more knowledge and peacefulness about who i am, whether i end up being a yoga teacher or not.

i just threw an entire bag of spinach on the stove. warm, calming, sugar free FOOD. that's what i need right now to fortify me for the journey ahead!

How Not Doing a Handstand Still Counts as Practicing Yoga

Handstand is a really important teacher for me. Sometimes I can do it; most of the time I can’t. In a yoga class recently the teacher indicated that we were going to do handstand and I noticed that a primal response of fear took over my whole body. I didn’t do handstand that day. Instead I just paid attention to that feeling. I played with it while everyone did their variation of the pose. I just felt my fear. I felt happy because I had finally noticed what was really holding me back from doing the pose. And because I could finally label that feeling as 'fear' rather than 'inadequacy.'

Sarah’s here from Boulder, the teacher training is only four days away, I finally cracked open the Bhagavad Gita and I actually like it, and my energy and excitement is starting to flow back into my life like a stream of fairy dust.

How are we supposed to relate to our own emotions? I’m noticing that I tend to get completely taken over by them and then I can’t enjoy them, good or bad. That non-handstand was so revolutionary for me because I enjoyed that fear. So my next question is, is it possible to notice the fear and do the pose anyway?

Last night I did manage to kick up and do a handstand against the wall of my apartment, twice. The first time my arms buckled slowly and I landed on my head. Sarah was there and we laughed at the horror and humor of it. The second time I kicked up and stayed up for a couple shocked seconds in which I looked at the upside down room around me and waited for the pose to enlighten me. So I know I can do it, in a carefree environment completely free of things that trigger my self-consciousness and overthinking.

Listening to Fleetwood Mac, “I’ve been afraid of changes…time makes you bolder, even children get older and I'm gettin' older too.”

Up To Me

Suddenly summer came, without warning or preparation. I slept with the doors and windows open, legs and arms flung to the four corners of the bed. The season hangs above the foothills with deliberation; in the evening the sunset spills across the sky like paint. Every thing and every one seems to be moving closer to the ground with the heat, slower and quieter. There have been a few mountain lions wandering down towards town, one in the alley at 1 in the afternoon across the street from where I'm living. I can't help but feel as though I'm trespassing when I'm hiking, or biking home late at night, thinking of what might be watching me. There is a secret excitement about knowing we are still challenged on the food chain.

I've moved into the apartment above Alice and Bill's house and am feeling out a new routine of early mornings with the boys, late afternoons with the girls and in between practicing yoga and working at the studio. Reading a few books in the transitions, some good and others great (E.B. White essays and Joan Halifax's The Fruitful Darkness), and trying to find my writing voice again. Having the space to live in and call my own for the next few weeks is wonderful. I feel so welcome in their home, and knowing I am needed and wanted there is wonderful, too.

(i've been listening to tons of bob dylan lately, and certain songs i've never really liked have suddenly endeared themselves to me, "up to me" being one, which is where i got the subject for this post.)

I've been taking few yoga classes this week, and when I do take them they feel juicy and delicious. I took HPF with Trista a few days ago, and it was almost perfect. Sweet, strong, moving. She reminded us throughout the class to come back to our breath. She said a few times if we didn't have that deep, cleansing breath in our postures we were missing the point.

I confessed to Richii Jai Jai this morning my fear of going upside down in class. I felt teary just saying it to him. I think of you when I don't want to come to yoga, I said, I think of all the things you'd say to me. I meant this to be a little funny, to poke fun at his exaggerated eye rolls and sugary energy, but instead he stopped what he was doing on the computer, made me stop what I was doing on mine and flipped me over upside down on the couch. We talked like that for a few minutes, the tops of our heads on the floor and legs crisscrossed on the back of the couch. Forget what the studio wants you to do, he told me. Just do what you want.

It seems so stupid when I try to write about it now, like I don't know who I am or what I'm doing. Mostly I don't, mostly I do. Working at the studio seems to have added this extra pressure to my yoga practice that sometimes I like (when I push myself to find new postures like peacock)and sometimes I don't like (the gym-like mentality of needing to 'work-out'). There is a strong possibility I'm just as sensitive and soft as I was as a little girl, that my constitution is something slower and subtler than the yoga I'm practicing. I love the yoga I am doing now--I just don't know how to make it my own.

The thing about the work-out stuff at CP is that I like myself the way I am. I don't come to yoga to re-shape my body or whip into something lean and mean. I feel a little inadequate at the studio sometimes, I worry someone will catch on my resistance. Of course my body responds to what I ask of it during class with increasing strength and I can't help but admire the results. On a superficial level I love it, I love it. My confidence feels bought, though; insured somehow. Like, as long as you're in this studio, you're okay. Like we whisper to one another with enthusiasm on the way to class Let's Get Our Yoga On! And when I miss class for a few days I feel it i my body, and my brain responds in an ugly, demanding way. I'm missing yoga, I'm losing muscle, I need my work-out everyday, so on and so on. And then the same question shows up: Do I practice yoga because I love myself, or because I hope one day I will?

Tout Doucement

Back from Santa Fe tonight with a tan on my face and a horse shoe in my bag. Tonight marks the first night of my summer adventures away from the blue house. Only a few more weeks before California and the yoga team reunion at Lulubandha's.

In Santa Fe I took a Bikram class at the College of India. Lots of egos balancing atop a stinky brown carpet in a poorly lit room. I was practicing between two teachers at the studio, and their practices were distracting and disheartening. I don't know that much about it, but it seemed as though the class was more concerned with looks/ego than things like, I don't know, safety and reason.

Here's something: I don't really understand the "lock your knee" thing. The woman teaching kept yelling that, "lock your knee, lock your knee, last chance to LOCK your KNEE!". How does feeling as though your leg is about to snap in half a good thing? I ignored her and worked on shifting my calf muscles the way Laura K. showed me. I don't know how important the knee locking thing is--I don't know that much about it, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Maybe Bikram yoga isn't really for me. I kind of knew this already, but I guess it's good to confirm. I like being free to wiggle my fingers around, or stick my tongue out in the mirror, or hang out in downward dog or child's pose if I want. Maybe this makes me undisciplined. Richii Jai and Cara would say this is 'owning your yoga'.

I have not been owning my yoga. I haven't even been to yoga since I got back from Santa Fe Friday night. Moving out of my house has a lot do with it, but also I just don't want to. I don't know why. I don't feel good, and I'm eating sugary food that makes me feel bad. That same feeling I get when I wake up at 7:50 for an 8:00 class and think well, I've already blown it and roll over to sleep again. I know I should just go. I'll feel better, I always do. Is this normal, this resistance? Part of me hopes the TT will cure this somehow so I'll come back to be like Richii, who just looks at me like so what when I'm tired and who has enough energy at 6am to last 48 hours. Everyone says 90% of something is showing up to it, and if everyone says it, it must be true. How do I get beyond my own stubbornness? I feel like sometimes I'm just waiting to wake up as SuperShinyStarYoginiSarah, even though I'm still afraid of going to intermediate classes, I'm still afraid of going upside down, and I haven't been to a class in four days. Is it laziness, fear, lameness?

It rained and snowed this morning. Things are late this season, not metaphorically but actually. I slept in the apartment above Alice and Bill's house last night, curled into a ball of legs and arms beneath a quilt. I didn't leave the studio until after 10 last night and blamed my exhaustion/laziness on the weather. Listening to the rain made me wish for a moment for my old room and my record player, to dance alone around the apartment listening to Motown records like summers past. It feels uncomfortable at times to be without a home, and in the past few days I've had to remind myself over and over that I can't just go home. It's forcing me to 'show up' to things when I really don't want to, to be with people when I really want to be alone. And sometimes I want to be alone for pretty lame reasons, like I don't like my hair, or I want to watch eighteen episodes of "Heroes" in a row while eating beans from a can. There's nothing that wrong with those things, I suppose, but I've come to rely on them as escapes. A friend and I were talking about relationships the other night, regarding the testiness of others. I said quite breezily Oh I don't think I get testy and two seconds later realized I'm able to say that because there is no one testing me. What is all this crap I'm writing about not wanting to go to yoga? Being as testy and tempermental as a little baby. As Audrey would say, u u u u g g g g g h h h h !