And very quickly at that:
Friday saw three dropbacks and standups. That was cool.
Monday night (after a Monday morning Primary) saw Kapo barely to toes (but on my own) and full Eka Pada Sirsasana (notably tighter than I'm used to, but still, ABC).
Today saw full Intermediate over at the Y. Kapo firmly to toes. And at that point, I decided, "No, man, this is NOT a 'modification' just because it's not heels. I freaking DO Kapotasana, I just don't do the full expression without help."
The major impinged poses with the still-lingering shoulder soreness are Bhekasana (can press foot down to ribs but not nearly to floor) and Supta Vajrasana (can barely backbend in that position). Virtually everything else is good (the repeated timbers in the Seven Deadlies are not ideal, but can be done).
Dwi Pada, I have temporarily lost; the Eka Padas are tight, and Dwi Pada I simply cannot get to stick even in the behind/above combination head position that I'm used to. I hold it with my upper arms, now. No fear; it'll be back.
Pasasana bind, check; Dhanurasana with ankle grab, check; Tittibhasana B, check; Pincha exit, check; Mayurasana, check; Nakrasana, check; arm position in Vatayanasana, check; arm position in Gomukhasana, check. Shoulder is well near healed :D
I bent the lotus over, in Karanda (maybe 90 degrees worth, couldn't see it) and picked it up, but then lost the position of the hips and had to exit messily. So be it. Learning it in stages, per Maehle.
Three backbends, one flubbed stand up and then three good ones, and a Kino-style final backbend. I THINK I could have stood from it, heels flat. But I chickened out, walked my hands back and rocked-popped up.
Thank you Kino Macgregor, thank you thank you, for the "final backbend." Every time I do it, I push into territory I'd considered impossible. It's freakin' thrilling, EVERY time.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Urdhva Dhanurasana.
Ten of these today, inspired in large part by the multiples that Kai is doing. Two singles, a pair, and then two sets of three. Some walking in in the first trio, much walking in, in the second trio.
I couldn't do UD when I began an ashtanga practice; after a while I grabbed a teacher's ankles and got up into a fullish UD.
Years of struggle ensued to work the arms toward straight. By 2007 I was doing pretty big wheels, but had never experimented with dropping back and standing up (not really anyway) and so that became the new mission, particularly when an authorized teacher told me, "No second until."
I used to think, around the time that I really began pursuing Kapo (summer 2008), that one's Urdhva Dhanurasana is shortened (that is, distance from feet to hands is shortened) by dropping back. This was because I was able to land closer to my feet in a dropback (once I could actually do one) than I was from the floor pressups.
That also came with, eventually, openings and developments in my Kapo, and the ability to walk my Kapo in (which didn't properly come until late, LATE 2009). So my formula was, "UD, then dropping back, then trying to stand up, all of which builds Kapo flexibility, and then we Kapo."
I'd also experimented with fewer (3-5) UD's and longer holds (8-10 breaths) which I really liked for a while; that seemed to open the front body for dropbacks.
(a quick detour on dropbacks: I'm VERY strong in the core and abs, and so I can hang back for EVER, setting up for a dropback. This isn't a super power; I experience it as a reluctance of my front body musculature and fascia to stretch. But in doing this in front of flexy backbenders, I've found that they think it's a super power to be able to hang, whereas I think it's a super power to be able to just fold back and go hands-to-floor the way they do. Diff'rent strokes...)
When I was doing UD's directly after Primary-and-up-to-Kapo, they were easy and big, and those were (eventually when the MASSIVE endurance that that sequence takes, was built) some of my favorite backbends ever. I'd go for three from the floor, three from standing, and then drop back for a Kino-style "final backbend" trying to walk in toward Chakra Bandhasana territory, and it was GREAT.
With this shoulder injury, I haven't been able to do the Intermediate backbends pre-Kapo, and also, even though I'm now shooting for full Primary again, I'm often too smoked in the shoulders to make it (in endurance terms) into Intermediate, so I haven't really Kapo'ed in quite a while, so I'm back to post-Primary (or partial Primary) Urdhva Dhanurasanas. They're not quite as juicy, although they can be. They just need encouragement:
The first one often feels like monkey ass. The low back aches, the front body fascia of the low abs resists, I make it all about breathing, and come down.
Often I take a second one like that. Doing a few Setu Bandhasana (bridge, not the Ashtanga forehead roll) preps beforehand makes it easier.
Then I pop for three in a row, five breaths per. Only down to head and hands between (this, as far as I understand, is how they're classically done). Maybe I walk in on the third one.
Today I did that same setup: first one was fair but tense, second one was a bit more relaxed but still tense in the front body, the pair after that started to get some juiciness out of the core/abs, and then I went up for three and walked in and it felt good, felt like opening and growth, so I came down fully, and decided to go up for three more. I walked in after each of the final threesome, which made the bending more intense, but also, it kept feeling like growth, so I kept moving my hands in. By the tenth one (the third of the second trio) my hands were partly on the gym mat over which I lay my Jade, and fingertips on the floor (I used to use that as a marker for landing my hands in a Kapo dropback; it's not NEAR my feet but it's totally within my usual two-foot distance). I did have to pop my heels to get up there, but I put them back down flat and held it.
And I felt a nice burn in the outer, lateral shoulder, particularly the left one, which is familiar from Kapo walk-ins and press-ups. I didn't know that I could walk in that far in UD, and get the "Kapo effect." And this is purely pressups from the floor, no dropbacks, no "final backbend." It's quite a discovery. The front body really gave it up, and this is not something I've had before in UD practice.
Good stuff. I'll be looking for it now, in FEWER than ten backbends :)
And, when I get it, I'll also be adding dropbacks, to intensify it.
Summer 2010 will mark a two-year pursuit of Kapo-to-heels and a THREE year pursuit of a clean dropback-standup.
I couldn't do UD when I began an ashtanga practice; after a while I grabbed a teacher's ankles and got up into a fullish UD.
Years of struggle ensued to work the arms toward straight. By 2007 I was doing pretty big wheels, but had never experimented with dropping back and standing up (not really anyway) and so that became the new mission, particularly when an authorized teacher told me, "No second until."
I used to think, around the time that I really began pursuing Kapo (summer 2008), that one's Urdhva Dhanurasana is shortened (that is, distance from feet to hands is shortened) by dropping back. This was because I was able to land closer to my feet in a dropback (once I could actually do one) than I was from the floor pressups.
That also came with, eventually, openings and developments in my Kapo, and the ability to walk my Kapo in (which didn't properly come until late, LATE 2009). So my formula was, "UD, then dropping back, then trying to stand up, all of which builds Kapo flexibility, and then we Kapo."
I'd also experimented with fewer (3-5) UD's and longer holds (8-10 breaths) which I really liked for a while; that seemed to open the front body for dropbacks.
(a quick detour on dropbacks: I'm VERY strong in the core and abs, and so I can hang back for EVER, setting up for a dropback. This isn't a super power; I experience it as a reluctance of my front body musculature and fascia to stretch. But in doing this in front of flexy backbenders, I've found that they think it's a super power to be able to hang, whereas I think it's a super power to be able to just fold back and go hands-to-floor the way they do. Diff'rent strokes...)
When I was doing UD's directly after Primary-and-up-to-Kapo, they were easy and big, and those were (eventually when the MASSIVE endurance that that sequence takes, was built) some of my favorite backbends ever. I'd go for three from the floor, three from standing, and then drop back for a Kino-style "final backbend" trying to walk in toward Chakra Bandhasana territory, and it was GREAT.
With this shoulder injury, I haven't been able to do the Intermediate backbends pre-Kapo, and also, even though I'm now shooting for full Primary again, I'm often too smoked in the shoulders to make it (in endurance terms) into Intermediate, so I haven't really Kapo'ed in quite a while, so I'm back to post-Primary (or partial Primary) Urdhva Dhanurasanas. They're not quite as juicy, although they can be. They just need encouragement:
The first one often feels like monkey ass. The low back aches, the front body fascia of the low abs resists, I make it all about breathing, and come down.
Often I take a second one like that. Doing a few Setu Bandhasana (bridge, not the Ashtanga forehead roll) preps beforehand makes it easier.
Then I pop for three in a row, five breaths per. Only down to head and hands between (this, as far as I understand, is how they're classically done). Maybe I walk in on the third one.
Today I did that same setup: first one was fair but tense, second one was a bit more relaxed but still tense in the front body, the pair after that started to get some juiciness out of the core/abs, and then I went up for three and walked in and it felt good, felt like opening and growth, so I came down fully, and decided to go up for three more. I walked in after each of the final threesome, which made the bending more intense, but also, it kept feeling like growth, so I kept moving my hands in. By the tenth one (the third of the second trio) my hands were partly on the gym mat over which I lay my Jade, and fingertips on the floor (I used to use that as a marker for landing my hands in a Kapo dropback; it's not NEAR my feet but it's totally within my usual two-foot distance). I did have to pop my heels to get up there, but I put them back down flat and held it.
And I felt a nice burn in the outer, lateral shoulder, particularly the left one, which is familiar from Kapo walk-ins and press-ups. I didn't know that I could walk in that far in UD, and get the "Kapo effect." And this is purely pressups from the floor, no dropbacks, no "final backbend." It's quite a discovery. The front body really gave it up, and this is not something I've had before in UD practice.
Good stuff. I'll be looking for it now, in FEWER than ten backbends :)
And, when I get it, I'll also be adding dropbacks, to intensify it.
Summer 2010 will mark a two-year pursuit of Kapo-to-heels and a THREE year pursuit of a clean dropback-standup.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Healing: Improving Primary
All poses done; Marichyasana D going left, now needing the most modification. No clean jumpbacks, but close to one after Baddha Konasana. Many poses familiar, up to prior-to-injury levels. Ankles/hands bound in Supta Kurmasana, but no feet behind the head.
No Padmasana jumpbacks today (well, not to toes; was able to throw back to knees).
Much improved since last week. Shoulder injury well on the way to over and done.
No Padmasana jumpbacks today (well, not to toes; was able to throw back to knees).
Much improved since last week. Shoulder injury well on the way to over and done.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Obtuse is best when short.
Terms like "acceptance" and "non-attachment" are often used (I'm not thinking of anyone specifically now, just generally) in toothless ways by wisdom people: "Just accept it. Just let go. Just detach." Pffft. It's like Nietzsche talking about imperatives such as, "Be Good!" WTF does THAT mean?
Acceptance: earlier I said that a process had ended with my ACCEPTANCE of the long past hated relationship, seven years of evil and error. What do I mean by that? I meant that the tolerance of the long-term sexual frustration had given me the strength to handle this shorter-term like frustration, and in fact, as soon as I said that to myself, I FELT the frustration SINK UNDER that strength, and in that movement, something died or broke, and something else eased up and exhaled.
In me, in this incarnation, acceptance always seems to happen in the mode of breakage, of death, disappearance, ending, of something. It is not a matter of acquiring or overcoming or rising above. It is not acquisitive.
It is as if I was alive in pushing back against that relationship, not permitting my own past actions (commitment to fear, ignorance) to become "part of me." Trying to push off that to which I was averse. Typical, and quite ordinary, really. But when I accepted the strength, realized that I was stronger than my current suffering, I sort of short-circuited my own aversion and ended its aliveness. I felt the death, AND the simultaneous (and equal) relaxation.
One cause, two effects. Or is it?
I haven't had a revisitation of that sort of sex-frustration-Hertz (Hz; as if it's something you can dial in on radio) since then.
*********************
"I" is a crazy idea. It's a placeholder, like money. The wisdom sentence that gets overused for this is something like, "We become aware that we are not the ego," and you and I can both find three thousand, seven hundred and six different points at which wisdom people talk about "oh my ego this, my ego that." SIGH; BORING.
Once upon a time, I was lying on a floor at about 4:30 am, near a knit Oriental rug, and watching a two wave-shaped patterns TOSS a "ball" between them. A hallucination, the real thing. Of course the rug was not in fluid movement, of course it was not animate. But I lay out there next to the rug, KNOWING this wasn't real and STILL seeing it, UNABLE to challenge it visually/cognitively/on any level. It's, well, WEIRD, to see the unreal, to see something you KNOW no one else sees, because you know that what you're seeing isn't there, but you can't deny it out of existence.
Saying "I" feels like that, has for over a month, probably closer to three months. I say "I" and I almost want to laugh, every time. Not that it's not true, not that there's no "I" there, but it's a hallucination, just like the rug ball toss.
Seventh series didn't change who I am, but it showed me that "who I am" is a sort of effect thrown off by what I believe about "myself" (in suspicion quotes because it's really ungrounding the truth value of that whole idea, which is the actual revelation). In short, it showed me that "I" am a hallucination. I'm both real, and I'm not. See how when "I" is the word used for all of those different levels, nothing but confusion results? All of Bad Vedanta is right there.
Here, an I-less version: yesterday, this body went for a walk in the backyard in pre-stormy weather, thinking about Prakriti. There was wind; if Prakriti really IS all of that which is made of the gunas, then the body, the wind, the various blooming greenery, and even the garage, were ONE THING. That realization emerged nearly two decades ago, thanks to psychedelics. The question of observation arose, but in Western terms, wanted to become the mind-body problem. In yoga terms, it becomes something else.
And there is the big philosophical rub.
All of my seventh series crisis (all of it, pregnancy era included) lives under what I now want to call the "western existential tradition." In that tradition, there is Self, and there's basically Everything Else, to which Self is more or less opposed. Like short story thematic summaries from junior high: Man Against Nature/Self/Society/blah blah blah!
And Sartre's famous formula where one is what others see, leads to paranoia, or to control freakish management of self-image, or to hermitage, or to secrecy, so one can (as a link on Facebook put it) "have an identity." And we get a chorus of I AM, I AM, I AM, and also very much I'M NOT, I'M NOT, I'M NOT! But those are all (in philosophical terms) Self-centered, because the Western Existential Tradition is Self-centered, that's what it's about.
This doesn't mean it's about egotism, necessarily, although all those gothy high school heroes you see in teen movies have a big dose of this tradition.
So much for short, huh? Hah, you knew this would happen.
So seventh series pointed out to me that I had identified myself with a stack of verbs, participles, from which identities are derived and against which other identities are set (example: I'm a climber, not a bureaucrat). It didn't burn my ego, didn't kill "me" in any appreciable sense, but it killed the ability to seamlessly BELIEVE in those identities. Now, they are activities, returned to being innocent participles.
This is why "I" is a hallucination now. Am "I" a parent? Am "I" a yoga practitioner? Ask any question you want: the answer is "Um, well...SORT OF." In direct contrast to the existential tradition, I know that "I" now am precisely NOT what I do. What "I" do, is simply what I do. One could drop "I" out of it. Things are done. Bodies move. Et cetera.
Make no mistake: this body is real. This ego is real. But the identities this ego would claim, are not. No more than a climber is one who climbs, a meditator is one who meditates. There is action, but no "I" that commits it. This is what (I think) sacred texts mean when they say that only the Divine acts.
Right now this isn't a realization, it isn't quite freeing, isn't liberatory. I'm not sure what I need to press into or meditate on to turn it, or if it'll turn on its own. Right now it's like, exactly, seeing a hallucination.
Acceptance: earlier I said that a process had ended with my ACCEPTANCE of the long past hated relationship, seven years of evil and error. What do I mean by that? I meant that the tolerance of the long-term sexual frustration had given me the strength to handle this shorter-term like frustration, and in fact, as soon as I said that to myself, I FELT the frustration SINK UNDER that strength, and in that movement, something died or broke, and something else eased up and exhaled.
In me, in this incarnation, acceptance always seems to happen in the mode of breakage, of death, disappearance, ending, of something. It is not a matter of acquiring or overcoming or rising above. It is not acquisitive.
It is as if I was alive in pushing back against that relationship, not permitting my own past actions (commitment to fear, ignorance) to become "part of me." Trying to push off that to which I was averse. Typical, and quite ordinary, really. But when I accepted the strength, realized that I was stronger than my current suffering, I sort of short-circuited my own aversion and ended its aliveness. I felt the death, AND the simultaneous (and equal) relaxation.
One cause, two effects. Or is it?
I haven't had a revisitation of that sort of sex-frustration-Hertz (Hz; as if it's something you can dial in on radio) since then.
*********************
"I" is a crazy idea. It's a placeholder, like money. The wisdom sentence that gets overused for this is something like, "We become aware that we are not the ego," and you and I can both find three thousand, seven hundred and six different points at which wisdom people talk about "oh my ego this, my ego that." SIGH; BORING.
Once upon a time, I was lying on a floor at about 4:30 am, near a knit Oriental rug, and watching a two wave-shaped patterns TOSS a "ball" between them. A hallucination, the real thing. Of course the rug was not in fluid movement, of course it was not animate. But I lay out there next to the rug, KNOWING this wasn't real and STILL seeing it, UNABLE to challenge it visually/cognitively/on any level. It's, well, WEIRD, to see the unreal, to see something you KNOW no one else sees, because you know that what you're seeing isn't there, but you can't deny it out of existence.
Saying "I" feels like that, has for over a month, probably closer to three months. I say "I" and I almost want to laugh, every time. Not that it's not true, not that there's no "I" there, but it's a hallucination, just like the rug ball toss.
Seventh series didn't change who I am, but it showed me that "who I am" is a sort of effect thrown off by what I believe about "myself" (in suspicion quotes because it's really ungrounding the truth value of that whole idea, which is the actual revelation). In short, it showed me that "I" am a hallucination. I'm both real, and I'm not. See how when "I" is the word used for all of those different levels, nothing but confusion results? All of Bad Vedanta is right there.
Here, an I-less version: yesterday, this body went for a walk in the backyard in pre-stormy weather, thinking about Prakriti. There was wind; if Prakriti really IS all of that which is made of the gunas, then the body, the wind, the various blooming greenery, and even the garage, were ONE THING. That realization emerged nearly two decades ago, thanks to psychedelics. The question of observation arose, but in Western terms, wanted to become the mind-body problem. In yoga terms, it becomes something else.
And there is the big philosophical rub.
All of my seventh series crisis (all of it, pregnancy era included) lives under what I now want to call the "western existential tradition." In that tradition, there is Self, and there's basically Everything Else, to which Self is more or less opposed. Like short story thematic summaries from junior high: Man Against Nature/Self/Society/blah blah blah!
And Sartre's famous formula where one is what others see, leads to paranoia, or to control freakish management of self-image, or to hermitage, or to secrecy, so one can (as a link on Facebook put it) "have an identity." And we get a chorus of I AM, I AM, I AM, and also very much I'M NOT, I'M NOT, I'M NOT! But those are all (in philosophical terms) Self-centered, because the Western Existential Tradition is Self-centered, that's what it's about.
This doesn't mean it's about egotism, necessarily, although all those gothy high school heroes you see in teen movies have a big dose of this tradition.
So much for short, huh? Hah, you knew this would happen.
So seventh series pointed out to me that I had identified myself with a stack of verbs, participles, from which identities are derived and against which other identities are set (example: I'm a climber, not a bureaucrat). It didn't burn my ego, didn't kill "me" in any appreciable sense, but it killed the ability to seamlessly BELIEVE in those identities. Now, they are activities, returned to being innocent participles.
This is why "I" is a hallucination now. Am "I" a parent? Am "I" a yoga practitioner? Ask any question you want: the answer is "Um, well...SORT OF." In direct contrast to the existential tradition, I know that "I" now am precisely NOT what I do. What "I" do, is simply what I do. One could drop "I" out of it. Things are done. Bodies move. Et cetera.
Make no mistake: this body is real. This ego is real. But the identities this ego would claim, are not. No more than a climber is one who climbs, a meditator is one who meditates. There is action, but no "I" that commits it. This is what (I think) sacred texts mean when they say that only the Divine acts.
Right now this isn't a realization, it isn't quite freeing, isn't liberatory. I'm not sure what I need to press into or meditate on to turn it, or if it'll turn on its own. Right now it's like, exactly, seeing a hallucination.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Practice!
I've done a Primary and a fraction of Intermediate and have a good idea of what I can still do and what needs modification (and that says a lot about my current range of motion in the shoulder, too).
I cannot fully jump back, but I can jump my feet just behind my hands and then "pop back," so it works, I can stay on breath pace (approximately).
I cannot tightly bind anything, particularly when the right shoulder is propped against the knee/thigh. Half-lotus (seated or standing) is best; the Marichyasana twists are hardest. Oddly, Ardha Matsyendrasana and Bharadvajasana are fine.
I still cannot hold an Ustrasana for five breaths (two is about it) and I still cannot press down hard on a Bhekasana'd right foot.
I cannot tightly bind a Supta Kurmasana (toes crossed and fingers meeting, is all).
HOWEVER
I can bring hands to low back in the Sarvangasana series in closing.
I can do any backbend that requires my hands OVER my head. Urdhva Dhanurasana, for example, is totally pain-free. I did six of them today.
I can jump through. Generally, dynamic shoulder rotations aren't good, but my jump throughs (which look like cross-legged Bakasanas, not half-handstands) are starting to "stick" in mid-air and so the movement is getting static, which is really cool as far as reducing pain in the shoulder goes.
I can do a shallow, but otherwise classical, Prasarita Padottanasana C.
I can touch the floor with the right hand, in Parivrtta Parsvakonasana. It's not delightfully comfortable, but I can do it without pain.
I can bind a Padmasana, either for closing (where I can fold forward) or for Supta Vajrasana (but I can NOT bend backward without pain).
I can invert in any way called for in any part of the first two series. Head off floor in Sirsasana? No problem. I have NOT tried a classical timber exit from Pincha, but I have demo'ed a timber from tripod for a class I teach, and that was OK.
***************************
With these modifications, one can still call my practice Ashtanga. I never got interested in making a hybrid practice. Heh. For the record, all of the "can nots" and "cans" are things I was accustomed to prior to this injury.
I don't expect to be able to pull Dwi Pada (where I have to lift right foot with right hand) or Tittibhasana B (because of the shoulder rotation) or probably Nakrasana (because of how dynamic it is) but if I can get pain-free out of the backbends of Second, I think I can pull the rest of it (should I be interested in doing the full series, as I periodically have been, this year).
That's where it's at.
I cannot fully jump back, but I can jump my feet just behind my hands and then "pop back," so it works, I can stay on breath pace (approximately).
I cannot tightly bind anything, particularly when the right shoulder is propped against the knee/thigh. Half-lotus (seated or standing) is best; the Marichyasana twists are hardest. Oddly, Ardha Matsyendrasana and Bharadvajasana are fine.
I still cannot hold an Ustrasana for five breaths (two is about it) and I still cannot press down hard on a Bhekasana'd right foot.
I cannot tightly bind a Supta Kurmasana (toes crossed and fingers meeting, is all).
HOWEVER
I can bring hands to low back in the Sarvangasana series in closing.
I can do any backbend that requires my hands OVER my head. Urdhva Dhanurasana, for example, is totally pain-free. I did six of them today.
I can jump through. Generally, dynamic shoulder rotations aren't good, but my jump throughs (which look like cross-legged Bakasanas, not half-handstands) are starting to "stick" in mid-air and so the movement is getting static, which is really cool as far as reducing pain in the shoulder goes.
I can do a shallow, but otherwise classical, Prasarita Padottanasana C.
I can touch the floor with the right hand, in Parivrtta Parsvakonasana. It's not delightfully comfortable, but I can do it without pain.
I can bind a Padmasana, either for closing (where I can fold forward) or for Supta Vajrasana (but I can NOT bend backward without pain).
I can invert in any way called for in any part of the first two series. Head off floor in Sirsasana? No problem. I have NOT tried a classical timber exit from Pincha, but I have demo'ed a timber from tripod for a class I teach, and that was OK.
***************************
With these modifications, one can still call my practice Ashtanga. I never got interested in making a hybrid practice. Heh. For the record, all of the "can nots" and "cans" are things I was accustomed to prior to this injury.
I don't expect to be able to pull Dwi Pada (where I have to lift right foot with right hand) or Tittibhasana B (because of the shoulder rotation) or probably Nakrasana (because of how dynamic it is) but if I can get pain-free out of the backbends of Second, I think I can pull the rest of it (should I be interested in doing the full series, as I periodically have been, this year).
That's where it's at.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
May, Shoulder, it's Turning Around.
It's May, usually my power month. The start of it sure got dark, hah! These things are turning around now, slowly, as they do. There is often sunshine (although this morning, as I prep my first meeting of summer school, there is thunder and rain) and invitation to outdoor practice. I haven't taken any yet, in large part because of the now four-week-old shoulder injury.
It still hurts to drive, and sometimes at night, and often in any kind of yoga asana practice, but many poses are fine--odd ones like arm balances, inversions. It almost seems that if I am careful, the shoulder hurts more, whereas if I just hop into a pose, it doesn't. Mostly I haven't practiced at all in the past two weeks, although I have subbed a lot of classes and demo'ed a lot of poses, which does maintain some light contact with asana practice proper.
I got anxious about the upcoming Chicago Tim thing (what if I can't go, due to sore shoulder, lack of practice?) and decided that I don't care. As a bigger question, what if I lose/lack thing A, thing B, thing C? What if it all goes away? You see where this line of questioning goes.
What if I'm not able to do my full practice in July, even? Again, who cares? No Mysore-style for me, no "advance" past that backbend? Who gives a damn?
Basically, I've moved to Indy for time indeterminate. I have job, I have relationship, I have family, I have what for all practical purposes are roots here, although this is just about the last place I would ever have imagined myself doing so. I don't want to live here, but life wants me to live here. How much fight am I REALLY going to dedicate to that?
Loss and anxiety are most painful as they move from the long-term future into the just-barely-future-present. Like jumping back. The hardest part of that movement is when your feet are JUST underneath you. Far away, they spooked my present, for over a decade. Played a part in a number of dumb choices I made. Closer up, they spooked my present in a way that I couldn't refuse, although I sure as hell tried. I survived massive loss of things that, it turns out, weren't really things.
I suppose that if I were to sum this all up in a sentence, it would be that the LOSS is true, the LOSS happens, but the THINGS are illusions, and so noTHING is lost, although there is loss of those noTHINGS.
There's a Godard adaptation of King Lear, made in 1987, which in a way, takes up all of this, but because it's a dense Godard art film, it won't make those any more comprehensible.
So maybe my Mysore-style adventures will be two Kino weekends a year in Chicago, that's fine. Maybe my coastal adventures will be periodic Seattle vacays because that's where J has people and she loves it there, that's fine too. Maybe I'll be fully drafted as a householder, and all of my mysticism will be saying departing wisdom to yoga classes I teach out there in the middle of the Midwest. That's cool. Life is completely and totally absurd, and that's fine too.
Slowly, the shoulder pain turns muscular, which means it can be healed, moved, put back in motion.
Slowly, the debt decreases, which is at least a type of liberation, especially from the days and the psychologies of having that debt be a future terror.
Slowly, the kid sleeps more (not consistently, but generally, more) and summer approaches, which means J does less work. Let us see if the hormone levels equalize and work stress vanishes, finally retreating like long-term high tide, to reveal some kind of life underneath.
It still hurts to drive, and sometimes at night, and often in any kind of yoga asana practice, but many poses are fine--odd ones like arm balances, inversions. It almost seems that if I am careful, the shoulder hurts more, whereas if I just hop into a pose, it doesn't. Mostly I haven't practiced at all in the past two weeks, although I have subbed a lot of classes and demo'ed a lot of poses, which does maintain some light contact with asana practice proper.
I got anxious about the upcoming Chicago Tim thing (what if I can't go, due to sore shoulder, lack of practice?) and decided that I don't care. As a bigger question, what if I lose/lack thing A, thing B, thing C? What if it all goes away? You see where this line of questioning goes.
What if I'm not able to do my full practice in July, even? Again, who cares? No Mysore-style for me, no "advance" past that backbend? Who gives a damn?
Basically, I've moved to Indy for time indeterminate. I have job, I have relationship, I have family, I have what for all practical purposes are roots here, although this is just about the last place I would ever have imagined myself doing so. I don't want to live here, but life wants me to live here. How much fight am I REALLY going to dedicate to that?
Loss and anxiety are most painful as they move from the long-term future into the just-barely-future-present. Like jumping back. The hardest part of that movement is when your feet are JUST underneath you. Far away, they spooked my present, for over a decade. Played a part in a number of dumb choices I made. Closer up, they spooked my present in a way that I couldn't refuse, although I sure as hell tried. I survived massive loss of things that, it turns out, weren't really things.
I suppose that if I were to sum this all up in a sentence, it would be that the LOSS is true, the LOSS happens, but the THINGS are illusions, and so noTHING is lost, although there is loss of those noTHINGS.
There's a Godard adaptation of King Lear, made in 1987, which in a way, takes up all of this, but because it's a dense Godard art film, it won't make those any more comprehensible.
So maybe my Mysore-style adventures will be two Kino weekends a year in Chicago, that's fine. Maybe my coastal adventures will be periodic Seattle vacays because that's where J has people and she loves it there, that's fine too. Maybe I'll be fully drafted as a householder, and all of my mysticism will be saying departing wisdom to yoga classes I teach out there in the middle of the Midwest. That's cool. Life is completely and totally absurd, and that's fine too.
Slowly, the shoulder pain turns muscular, which means it can be healed, moved, put back in motion.
Slowly, the debt decreases, which is at least a type of liberation, especially from the days and the psychologies of having that debt be a future terror.
Slowly, the kid sleeps more (not consistently, but generally, more) and summer approaches, which means J does less work. Let us see if the hormone levels equalize and work stress vanishes, finally retreating like long-term high tide, to reveal some kind of life underneath.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Quick affirmation (no really)
Yesterday I said aloud (because saying it is not the same as simply thinking it), "Wait, I have high tolerance for exactly this type of pain, and also, good endurance for it. And I KNOW this, from experience." It's true. And I wrote those details down here, sometime a few weeks ago, remember? Six years, once upon a time.
Briefly, this gave my former marriage an existential POINT for existing. And that point made it acceptable, and that acceptance made the stress of constantly REFUSING it, end. I had no idea that would happen.
Turn that into aversion and quote whatever Sutras aphorism it is that's about future pain can be avoided, and suddenly you get wisdom.
Nietzsche's famous bit about becoming stronger should, more completely, have said, "That which does not kill me strengthens me FOR FUTURE RECURRENCE OF THOSE EVENTS" and in fact, he DID say that, it just took him all of Zarathustra to do it.
And then, bliss is temporary (who denies that? no one!) and then "it doesn't last, doesn't satisfy and ain't you" makes shockingly deep sense, and then pain cannot hurt me because, in a profound way, I AM NOT LOCATED THERE.
Briefly, this gave my former marriage an existential POINT for existing. And that point made it acceptable, and that acceptance made the stress of constantly REFUSING it, end. I had no idea that would happen.
Turn that into aversion and quote whatever Sutras aphorism it is that's about future pain can be avoided, and suddenly you get wisdom.
Nietzsche's famous bit about becoming stronger should, more completely, have said, "That which does not kill me strengthens me FOR FUTURE RECURRENCE OF THOSE EVENTS" and in fact, he DID say that, it just took him all of Zarathustra to do it.
And then, bliss is temporary (who denies that? no one!) and then "it doesn't last, doesn't satisfy and ain't you" makes shockingly deep sense, and then pain cannot hurt me because, in a profound way, I AM NOT LOCATED THERE.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Umm, When Exactly Is the Blog Going to Stop Being the Black Death, Hm?
Hah! An excellent question. The short answer is, when all of the current situations change, preferably back to what they once were. Seeing as how that's impossible, though (even if one instituted a downright postmodern simulacrum), that probably won't happen.
So then!
Yes, when is the blog going to stop being KALI CENTRAL? When is it going to finally turn its face from fairly non-stop blackness and death and grim fatality?
It's really important to keep in mind that, since I write in a first-person format and with a very high degree of interior dialogue, I use this blog as a RELEASE VALVE. It is EXCEEDINGLY rare that I actually talk about my real life on here in the terms in which I experience it. Much more likely is that I save up some evil shit that I've been mulling over and obsessing about, and then blast it all out here in language that seeks to CHANNEL it from me ONTO this page.
This blog is a CLEARING mechanism, NOT a recording device. It's got a lot more in common with a bailer (yes, a hay bailer, in the fields) than it does with a tape recorder.
This blog is a compost pile or a piece of agricultural machinery. The language you read is grapefruit peels, melon seeds and viscera, coffee grounds, cut wheat, the pointy ends of snap beans, aged romaine, Parmesano peel. All already eaten or used or with the viable bits removed, not leftovers exactly (or not only leftovers); bits of life, but nothing whole, nothing that hasn't been either aged, prepared, let go to rot, or physically processed and/or then abandoned.
Reading this for life is like looking at art made of fingernail clippings and trying to derive the artist from it. Is the pain or darkness mine? Obviously, but it might be chewed over, intensified, turned down, transformed into something else, mutated, developed, embryonized, or a thousand other things. NOTHING here is pure; EVERYTHING is adulterated by experience, memory and additional thought and processing. It's still all "organic" in that it's mine, but you never get the clear item from me, exactly the way that Richter blurs his photorealist paintings.
Facts, Not the Truth. And actually, not even facts. But not entirely pointless and groundless subjectivity, either. Heavily subjective facts. Highly emotionally charged writing. Nothing objective that hasn't been soaked, heated, weathered, worn, chewed.
De Kooning's women, rather than Rothko's color fields. Not universality, but too abstracted, too WORKED, to be precise individuality.
So then!
Yes, when is the blog going to stop being KALI CENTRAL? When is it going to finally turn its face from fairly non-stop blackness and death and grim fatality?
It's really important to keep in mind that, since I write in a first-person format and with a very high degree of interior dialogue, I use this blog as a RELEASE VALVE. It is EXCEEDINGLY rare that I actually talk about my real life on here in the terms in which I experience it. Much more likely is that I save up some evil shit that I've been mulling over and obsessing about, and then blast it all out here in language that seeks to CHANNEL it from me ONTO this page.
This blog is a CLEARING mechanism, NOT a recording device. It's got a lot more in common with a bailer (yes, a hay bailer, in the fields) than it does with a tape recorder.
This blog is a compost pile or a piece of agricultural machinery. The language you read is grapefruit peels, melon seeds and viscera, coffee grounds, cut wheat, the pointy ends of snap beans, aged romaine, Parmesano peel. All already eaten or used or with the viable bits removed, not leftovers exactly (or not only leftovers); bits of life, but nothing whole, nothing that hasn't been either aged, prepared, let go to rot, or physically processed and/or then abandoned.
Reading this for life is like looking at art made of fingernail clippings and trying to derive the artist from it. Is the pain or darkness mine? Obviously, but it might be chewed over, intensified, turned down, transformed into something else, mutated, developed, embryonized, or a thousand other things. NOTHING here is pure; EVERYTHING is adulterated by experience, memory and additional thought and processing. It's still all "organic" in that it's mine, but you never get the clear item from me, exactly the way that Richter blurs his photorealist paintings.
Facts, Not the Truth. And actually, not even facts. But not entirely pointless and groundless subjectivity, either. Heavily subjective facts. Highly emotionally charged writing. Nothing objective that hasn't been soaked, heated, weathered, worn, chewed.
De Kooning's women, rather than Rothko's color fields. Not universality, but too abstracted, too WORKED, to be precise individuality.
40, Primary, Seventh
I've officially revolved around the sun forty times. As expected, it's got facticity but no meaning. I do feel a bit old and powerless and slightly depressed, but that's totally due to seventh series, it's got nothing to do with my age.
Primary outside, heavily modified: beautiful blue skies and sun, but quite mediocre practice. No jumps back/through, no chaturanga. Many of the actual poses were still well-behaved, but nothing dynamic worked (chakrasana was ok, because I can roll over my head with head still firmly planted on floor, no problem). Shoulder was very sore nonetheless, and backbends were half-assed from not being able to do vinyasa and melt down the abs. I'll either go back to my Simha/Intermediate blend or I'll just put together a bunch of stuff that doesn't hurt.
There's a job candidate in town for a gig at the art school, and tonight I will be part of her dinner accompaniment before she goes back west tomorrow (thus no Intro to Intermediate for me). J was part of her dinner company last night, and found that said candidate's got experience with Marriage and Family Counseling, and that upon hearing that J was at the end of the first year of seventh series, was talking about how very hard that is, and how it's "hard on a relationship."
J offered what she calls "efficient sex" yesterday and I turned her down. Efficient sex is emotionless stress relief. I feel compelled to take it when it's on offer, just to sort of check it off the list, but the emotionlessness of it, the sort of weird paradoxical "anti-intimacy" that it is, is DEEPLY unappealing.
We had an actual conversation yesterday about, in part, how our sex life currently works. She said that I'm very confusing to read, as to what I want, because I seem interested sometimes and uninterested other times. I said, that's because that's exactly right. What I really want is more of what I'm used to, I want more of how it used to be. She said nothing to that. I added a metaphor: it's like you have this favorite Italian place, that you love to pieces, right? And suddenly one day out of the blue it starts serving Chinese, but you don't want Chinese, you want your regular Italian goodies, but only Chinese is on offer.
Put more simply, I want what you are CAPABLE of; I do NOT want what you are CURRENTLY OFFERING.
Then I was in this crazy DEEP (and I mean fucking DEEP) depression all day about whether or not I should have just gone for it, in the hopes of somehow "flicking a switch" in her total incomprehensibility, that would set things right again, or start the engines, or whatever the fuck it is that needs to be done.
Apparently (and this comes from that dinner convo, not our home convo), the first year of seventh series DOES "wear off," and this isn't permanent. What I'd love to have is a fucking ROAD MAP of how it wears off, how you KNOW it wears off, and what the SYMPTOMS of its wearing off ARE. J said that friends of ours (who have a kid six months older than ours) said that "it's getting easier now" and I said, "Ok, so it takes about a year and a half, then?" and she said, "Well, of course it depends on each individual child." I said, "Yeah of course, I wouldn't want to be able to predict anything with any fucking certainty or anything like that."
For those of you who are about to mouth the words, "Be Patient," you can go fuck yourselves sideways to hot, flaming death.
It's been twenty fucking months. The websites on "how soon can we have sex after birth" say that men can "get impatient waiting for the six weeks after birth to pass." SIX weeks. This is FORTY EIGHT of those fuckers in seventh series proper not to mention the FORTY MORE of the pregnancy which preceded it.
In the evening, we were talking about this "wearing off" of seventh series, and she said, "He's worth the cost, no matter what it is." I REALLY should have left that alone, but couldn't. "He's very cool, and I don't take him back, but if I had known in advance what the cost of seventh series was going to be, I would never have consented to it in a BILLION LIFETIMES." She said, "That's why I didn't tell you about it." That did NOT make things better.
She said, "Well you decided for the first seven months that you weren't going to accept its terms." I said, "That's because I thought its terms were my total and complete annihilation." She said, "Well now you see they weren't." I said, "That does not change the actuality of what I felt." She said, "You decided to just commit to your yoga habit instead of accepting what this demanded." I said, "That wasn't a refusal of accepting child care; that was a refusal to BE KILLED, which is in all seriousness what it looked like was going to happen, and no one in their right minds LETS themselves be killed when they don't want to be." She said, "Well now you see that this doesn't negotiate." I said, "That just made the being killed bit more dire and my reaction more desperate, not the other way around." She said, "If we were to do this again, you'd know better." (we both know, and have decided without exception, that we are NOT doing this again, just for the record)
We will never agree, not even when the first year of seventh series wears off, as to "what" seventh series was. Sure, I overestimated and overreacted, but I did so in complete sincerity (even if it was sincere ignorance and fear) and my terror was absolutely genuine. She, if her words are to be trusted, saw a perhaps two-year cessation of our intimate life (on all counts) coming, and decided that the sacrifice was worth it. I did NOT see such a sacrifice coming, saw its arrival as a non-consensual betrayal of our intimate life wholesale, and saw the long-term cessation of intimacies as, pretty much, an execution.
Both of us are sincere in what we believe, and both of us are right, insofar as our accuracies talk about our inner experiences. All of the friction that exists between us now comes from the fact that we share ONE outer experience and TOTALLY IRRECONCILABLE inner experiences regarding it.
One hopes that when this "wears off," the sacrifice/execution will let up, and permit both parties to walk away from the altar/guillotine, and thus partner up again and knit various friendlinesses and intimacies.
And when that happens, we can agree never to talk about this ever again.
Primary outside, heavily modified: beautiful blue skies and sun, but quite mediocre practice. No jumps back/through, no chaturanga. Many of the actual poses were still well-behaved, but nothing dynamic worked (chakrasana was ok, because I can roll over my head with head still firmly planted on floor, no problem). Shoulder was very sore nonetheless, and backbends were half-assed from not being able to do vinyasa and melt down the abs. I'll either go back to my Simha/Intermediate blend or I'll just put together a bunch of stuff that doesn't hurt.
There's a job candidate in town for a gig at the art school, and tonight I will be part of her dinner accompaniment before she goes back west tomorrow (thus no Intro to Intermediate for me). J was part of her dinner company last night, and found that said candidate's got experience with Marriage and Family Counseling, and that upon hearing that J was at the end of the first year of seventh series, was talking about how very hard that is, and how it's "hard on a relationship."
J offered what she calls "efficient sex" yesterday and I turned her down. Efficient sex is emotionless stress relief. I feel compelled to take it when it's on offer, just to sort of check it off the list, but the emotionlessness of it, the sort of weird paradoxical "anti-intimacy" that it is, is DEEPLY unappealing.
We had an actual conversation yesterday about, in part, how our sex life currently works. She said that I'm very confusing to read, as to what I want, because I seem interested sometimes and uninterested other times. I said, that's because that's exactly right. What I really want is more of what I'm used to, I want more of how it used to be. She said nothing to that. I added a metaphor: it's like you have this favorite Italian place, that you love to pieces, right? And suddenly one day out of the blue it starts serving Chinese, but you don't want Chinese, you want your regular Italian goodies, but only Chinese is on offer.
Put more simply, I want what you are CAPABLE of; I do NOT want what you are CURRENTLY OFFERING.
Then I was in this crazy DEEP (and I mean fucking DEEP) depression all day about whether or not I should have just gone for it, in the hopes of somehow "flicking a switch" in her total incomprehensibility, that would set things right again, or start the engines, or whatever the fuck it is that needs to be done.
Apparently (and this comes from that dinner convo, not our home convo), the first year of seventh series DOES "wear off," and this isn't permanent. What I'd love to have is a fucking ROAD MAP of how it wears off, how you KNOW it wears off, and what the SYMPTOMS of its wearing off ARE. J said that friends of ours (who have a kid six months older than ours) said that "it's getting easier now" and I said, "Ok, so it takes about a year and a half, then?" and she said, "Well, of course it depends on each individual child." I said, "Yeah of course, I wouldn't want to be able to predict anything with any fucking certainty or anything like that."
For those of you who are about to mouth the words, "Be Patient," you can go fuck yourselves sideways to hot, flaming death.
It's been twenty fucking months. The websites on "how soon can we have sex after birth" say that men can "get impatient waiting for the six weeks after birth to pass." SIX weeks. This is FORTY EIGHT of those fuckers in seventh series proper not to mention the FORTY MORE of the pregnancy which preceded it.
In the evening, we were talking about this "wearing off" of seventh series, and she said, "He's worth the cost, no matter what it is." I REALLY should have left that alone, but couldn't. "He's very cool, and I don't take him back, but if I had known in advance what the cost of seventh series was going to be, I would never have consented to it in a BILLION LIFETIMES." She said, "That's why I didn't tell you about it." That did NOT make things better.
She said, "Well you decided for the first seven months that you weren't going to accept its terms." I said, "That's because I thought its terms were my total and complete annihilation." She said, "Well now you see they weren't." I said, "That does not change the actuality of what I felt." She said, "You decided to just commit to your yoga habit instead of accepting what this demanded." I said, "That wasn't a refusal of accepting child care; that was a refusal to BE KILLED, which is in all seriousness what it looked like was going to happen, and no one in their right minds LETS themselves be killed when they don't want to be." She said, "Well now you see that this doesn't negotiate." I said, "That just made the being killed bit more dire and my reaction more desperate, not the other way around." She said, "If we were to do this again, you'd know better." (we both know, and have decided without exception, that we are NOT doing this again, just for the record)
We will never agree, not even when the first year of seventh series wears off, as to "what" seventh series was. Sure, I overestimated and overreacted, but I did so in complete sincerity (even if it was sincere ignorance and fear) and my terror was absolutely genuine. She, if her words are to be trusted, saw a perhaps two-year cessation of our intimate life (on all counts) coming, and decided that the sacrifice was worth it. I did NOT see such a sacrifice coming, saw its arrival as a non-consensual betrayal of our intimate life wholesale, and saw the long-term cessation of intimacies as, pretty much, an execution.
Both of us are sincere in what we believe, and both of us are right, insofar as our accuracies talk about our inner experiences. All of the friction that exists between us now comes from the fact that we share ONE outer experience and TOTALLY IRRECONCILABLE inner experiences regarding it.
One hopes that when this "wears off," the sacrifice/execution will let up, and permit both parties to walk away from the altar/guillotine, and thus partner up again and knit various friendlinesses and intimacies.
And when that happens, we can agree never to talk about this ever again.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
All the various practices that I do.
Weekends of seventh series are busier than weekdays, because they are dedicated to full-time seventh series, no daycare breaks in the middle for work, practice, the "rest of life." Speaking of which: child care tires me out, totally exhausts me, every single day. I used to wonder if I was just "not rising to the occasion" or not dedicating "enough" energy to it, but now I think that child care will absorb ALL of however much energy (a lot or a little) you throw at it. And based on that, I think there are many people in the world who find this "all-consuming drive" to be totally engaging, because it prevents them from being bored, ever again, as long as they live. Got something you wanna get out? Great, put it into your kid! They are ALWAYS willing and able to consume it.
As usual, I have problems with that becoming normal, unthought behavior, set as a sort of goal, or expected as part of the process, without option. I'm suspicious of anything that works like that, in large part because I cannot accept anything in any form from anyone, ever, that has the word "normal" or "usual" or "way it is" attached to it. I MUST take those apart and see what power commitments they have.
So there it is: did J not say, in mid-2008, that she needed "a project bigger than her job," that she needed something TO DO, to DEDICATE her energy to, something CREATIVE rather than draining? You got it! BAM!!
I, of course, was busy finding out what my new universe (born again, not in the christian sense, in 2003) was all about. It was NOT selfishness. To think that a guy at the age of 38 is still doing "his stuff" would LOOK like selfishness, but if you see how powerfully ignorant most of my time on the planet was, and then how shockingly (still deceptively, but..) awake it got in 2003, you'd see that it wasn't selfishness to still want to explore that brave new world. Seventh series wasn't something I needed to do at that point (although at some point I did want to do it).
Differences in energy, differences in goals, differences in energetic structures, energy management. Creativity and engagement for one, immolation and disintegration for the other. It's even-ing out now. The kid, who is 11 months old today, is pretty fabulous; at about 8 months he moved from clear, helpless babydom to sudden toddlerish superpowers: teeth, movement, semi-speech, a real sea change in interactivity, communication. It's been great since then, even including increasing sleep (which we thought would never happen again).
I'm most comfortable thinking about the idea of a "return to ordinary life" by imagining that I don't know a thing about it. When I look at our daily life, which is pretty much work-seventh-sleep-repeat, I get unhappy about how impossible it seems that we will ever do anything else but that cycle. When I look at our lives second-to-second, I see us sort of "under the surface," about to break through. Which is it? It's like a particle or a wave, that physics question. From where you look, changes what you see. One brings depression and the other brings hope and they both hang on the future, and so whatever, the hell with that. In the present, I don't know, and so be it. I don't know. Great, that's cool. Allows for anything.
*************************
I recently looked around at Kino's page, driven largely by the fabulous-sounding retreat that Susan and Kevin were on, and saw a summertime "Old Shala Style" workshop (12 students, 2 teachers, 6 days, Mysore-style and afternoon chanting, pranayama, meditation, other goodies). $375 for the week. Wow! Cannot BEAT that for a price, with teachers of that quality, and afternoon goodies, and the small gang which guarantees adjustments and good attention. Freakin' SWEET. But those suckers were also sold out until SUMMER 2011. Well, I figured I'd just maybe reserve a spot, you know?
Hah! That would mean doing this: it's summer 2010. I'm teaching a course, but I have almost $3000 of accumulated and remaining loan/credit debt, which I want GONE this summer. No way does that haunt me any longer. At the start of the school year in September 2009, that debt was something like $8000. I can MAKE IT DISAPPEAR.
BUT NOT IF I PUT FOUR HUNDRED BUCKS ON TOP OF IT.
It was agony--AGONY--to make myself not put out for the Miami yoga gig. By the time September comes and I get a full career-style paycheck, this workshop will be full, and I can only do them in January or in the summer, and they sell out in record time. I'm probably looking at summer 2012.
And I worry about this stupid aging process that keeps happening. The question goes like this: HOW LONG do I have before I have to "give poses back to the bank"? How long can I chase the ashtanga pose dragon to see "how far I can get"? Yeah, I hear you saying, "That doesn't matter, you just practice non-attachment" but let's be serious, you wonder too, don't you? How far ARE you going to go? Third? Fourth? Beyond that?
You and I want to KNOW how much we are CUT OUT for. We want to see the dealer's hand. Tell me! Show me the Tarot! Show me the pose cards! Does my life deck have a Rajakapotasana in it? Does it, does it?
It's a mortality question, fear of death question. Passes itself off as curiosity. "How powerful am I?" or somesuch. But what it more likely means is, "How far am I going to get to go before I start dying and have to REALLY CONFRONT my fear?" How many beautiful shapes and powerful vinyasa CAN I ACCUMULATE? How high can I BUILD THOSE WALLS before the night thief comes....
***********************
I discovered all of this depressive desperation when I refused to buy the Miami week. More loss, hah, how shocking! I don't crave a teacher in order to get my poses well-aligned, I crave a teacher because I want to CROSS SOME LINE before I die. But we all know that no line is ever enough, there IS NO SATISFACTION. Not there, not anywhere.
I still crave an ashtanga practice. On Friday I did sun salutations, with utter relief that I didn't have to think. Breathe, move; it was like riding that metaphorical bike. The shoulder hurts in EVERY lowerdown to chaturanga, EVERY SINGLE ONE. Less than it did, but consistently, still, nearly three weeks later.
Today in a vinyasa class I Kapo'd barely to my toes. It was fine. Urdhva Dhanurasana is still fine. It's warming up that's killer. Last time I had a long-term injury--wrist overuse--I made up my own sequences out of stuff that I COULD do without pain. Might be time to try that again.
I mean, it's ridiculous. Dropping back and standing up doesn't hurt, but sun salutations do. That's freakin' silly.
Heat and getting in the zone help. Keeping the breathing regular, not skipping around, not pausing, letting it get lazy. Last week in said vinyasa class, with breath focused and lunges subbed for all Vira 1's, I pulled an Eka Pada Bakasana B and a good but incomplete effort at full Matsyendrasana (these were not led; room was left open and I explored). The only attempts at third series poses I EVER make are either in that vinyasa class or demo'ing stuff for my Rocket students. Once in a blue moon, if it feels good, I'll pop a third series FBH pose during the Monday night Intermediate class, but only if the leg is NOT pressing, AT ALL, on the back of my neck.
I've never tried a Durvasana, a Skandasana (or whatever the forward fold is called), I've tried but never achieved a Viparita Shalabhasana or Viranchyasana A, and I've never tried a tic-toc. I've at some point attempted or achieved everything else in third, but never as a series and never together, never in any kind of sequence. I figure the last thing I need is to mess around with third when I still can't figure out how much of second I "should" be doing.
For example:
I've done the whole thing, in fact, I did it every day for a five-day week in, I think, February, at the Y. The incomplete poses were Kapo (no heels), Dwi Pada A (can bind feet but cannot sit without hands on floor), and Karanda (I could lower but could not come up). Aside from teacher-specific tweaks, I did what I understand to be everything else (although I'd expect someone to adjust/advise on my Nakrasana and my Supta Urdhva Pada Vajrasana).
And yet:
I got my best Kapo progress in March and into April, pre-shoulder-injury, doing Primary and up to Kapo. I got the damn pads of my feet, almost the arch. A teacher could easily have taken me to my heels. Hell, in 2008, K was teasing me with "the next pose" simply because I stayed down in her Kapo adjustment as long as she wanted; that was the criterion. And didn't Kino say in Toronto, "do the series you want me to help you with" and did she not further say to Susan that one should "not revert to Primary when the hurting begins"? But if I'm teaching myself (and I am), are those words that I'd claim as a teacher? Is Kapo to toes ENOUGH for me as a teacher when teaching me as a student? No, most days.
This is what makes Seattle interesting/anxious/to be looked forward to. IF I can get my damn shoulder to stop hurting, EVER.
So:
Where is my practice? Who cares, on a certain level (I do!). It's all about breathing and past that, it's all about not breathing. Quite literally.
As usual, I have problems with that becoming normal, unthought behavior, set as a sort of goal, or expected as part of the process, without option. I'm suspicious of anything that works like that, in large part because I cannot accept anything in any form from anyone, ever, that has the word "normal" or "usual" or "way it is" attached to it. I MUST take those apart and see what power commitments they have.
So there it is: did J not say, in mid-2008, that she needed "a project bigger than her job," that she needed something TO DO, to DEDICATE her energy to, something CREATIVE rather than draining? You got it! BAM!!
I, of course, was busy finding out what my new universe (born again, not in the christian sense, in 2003) was all about. It was NOT selfishness. To think that a guy at the age of 38 is still doing "his stuff" would LOOK like selfishness, but if you see how powerfully ignorant most of my time on the planet was, and then how shockingly (still deceptively, but..) awake it got in 2003, you'd see that it wasn't selfishness to still want to explore that brave new world. Seventh series wasn't something I needed to do at that point (although at some point I did want to do it).
Differences in energy, differences in goals, differences in energetic structures, energy management. Creativity and engagement for one, immolation and disintegration for the other. It's even-ing out now. The kid, who is 11 months old today, is pretty fabulous; at about 8 months he moved from clear, helpless babydom to sudden toddlerish superpowers: teeth, movement, semi-speech, a real sea change in interactivity, communication. It's been great since then, even including increasing sleep (which we thought would never happen again).
I'm most comfortable thinking about the idea of a "return to ordinary life" by imagining that I don't know a thing about it. When I look at our daily life, which is pretty much work-seventh-sleep-repeat, I get unhappy about how impossible it seems that we will ever do anything else but that cycle. When I look at our lives second-to-second, I see us sort of "under the surface," about to break through. Which is it? It's like a particle or a wave, that physics question. From where you look, changes what you see. One brings depression and the other brings hope and they both hang on the future, and so whatever, the hell with that. In the present, I don't know, and so be it. I don't know. Great, that's cool. Allows for anything.
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I recently looked around at Kino's page, driven largely by the fabulous-sounding retreat that Susan and Kevin were on, and saw a summertime "Old Shala Style" workshop (12 students, 2 teachers, 6 days, Mysore-style and afternoon chanting, pranayama, meditation, other goodies). $375 for the week. Wow! Cannot BEAT that for a price, with teachers of that quality, and afternoon goodies, and the small gang which guarantees adjustments and good attention. Freakin' SWEET. But those suckers were also sold out until SUMMER 2011. Well, I figured I'd just maybe reserve a spot, you know?
Hah! That would mean doing this: it's summer 2010. I'm teaching a course, but I have almost $3000 of accumulated and remaining loan/credit debt, which I want GONE this summer. No way does that haunt me any longer. At the start of the school year in September 2009, that debt was something like $8000. I can MAKE IT DISAPPEAR.
BUT NOT IF I PUT FOUR HUNDRED BUCKS ON TOP OF IT.
It was agony--AGONY--to make myself not put out for the Miami yoga gig. By the time September comes and I get a full career-style paycheck, this workshop will be full, and I can only do them in January or in the summer, and they sell out in record time. I'm probably looking at summer 2012.
And I worry about this stupid aging process that keeps happening. The question goes like this: HOW LONG do I have before I have to "give poses back to the bank"? How long can I chase the ashtanga pose dragon to see "how far I can get"? Yeah, I hear you saying, "That doesn't matter, you just practice non-attachment" but let's be serious, you wonder too, don't you? How far ARE you going to go? Third? Fourth? Beyond that?
You and I want to KNOW how much we are CUT OUT for. We want to see the dealer's hand. Tell me! Show me the Tarot! Show me the pose cards! Does my life deck have a Rajakapotasana in it? Does it, does it?
It's a mortality question, fear of death question. Passes itself off as curiosity. "How powerful am I?" or somesuch. But what it more likely means is, "How far am I going to get to go before I start dying and have to REALLY CONFRONT my fear?" How many beautiful shapes and powerful vinyasa CAN I ACCUMULATE? How high can I BUILD THOSE WALLS before the night thief comes....
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I discovered all of this depressive desperation when I refused to buy the Miami week. More loss, hah, how shocking! I don't crave a teacher in order to get my poses well-aligned, I crave a teacher because I want to CROSS SOME LINE before I die. But we all know that no line is ever enough, there IS NO SATISFACTION. Not there, not anywhere.
I still crave an ashtanga practice. On Friday I did sun salutations, with utter relief that I didn't have to think. Breathe, move; it was like riding that metaphorical bike. The shoulder hurts in EVERY lowerdown to chaturanga, EVERY SINGLE ONE. Less than it did, but consistently, still, nearly three weeks later.
Today in a vinyasa class I Kapo'd barely to my toes. It was fine. Urdhva Dhanurasana is still fine. It's warming up that's killer. Last time I had a long-term injury--wrist overuse--I made up my own sequences out of stuff that I COULD do without pain. Might be time to try that again.
I mean, it's ridiculous. Dropping back and standing up doesn't hurt, but sun salutations do. That's freakin' silly.
Heat and getting in the zone help. Keeping the breathing regular, not skipping around, not pausing, letting it get lazy. Last week in said vinyasa class, with breath focused and lunges subbed for all Vira 1's, I pulled an Eka Pada Bakasana B and a good but incomplete effort at full Matsyendrasana (these were not led; room was left open and I explored). The only attempts at third series poses I EVER make are either in that vinyasa class or demo'ing stuff for my Rocket students. Once in a blue moon, if it feels good, I'll pop a third series FBH pose during the Monday night Intermediate class, but only if the leg is NOT pressing, AT ALL, on the back of my neck.
I've never tried a Durvasana, a Skandasana (or whatever the forward fold is called), I've tried but never achieved a Viparita Shalabhasana or Viranchyasana A, and I've never tried a tic-toc. I've at some point attempted or achieved everything else in third, but never as a series and never together, never in any kind of sequence. I figure the last thing I need is to mess around with third when I still can't figure out how much of second I "should" be doing.
For example:
I've done the whole thing, in fact, I did it every day for a five-day week in, I think, February, at the Y. The incomplete poses were Kapo (no heels), Dwi Pada A (can bind feet but cannot sit without hands on floor), and Karanda (I could lower but could not come up). Aside from teacher-specific tweaks, I did what I understand to be everything else (although I'd expect someone to adjust/advise on my Nakrasana and my Supta Urdhva Pada Vajrasana).
And yet:
I got my best Kapo progress in March and into April, pre-shoulder-injury, doing Primary and up to Kapo. I got the damn pads of my feet, almost the arch. A teacher could easily have taken me to my heels. Hell, in 2008, K was teasing me with "the next pose" simply because I stayed down in her Kapo adjustment as long as she wanted; that was the criterion. And didn't Kino say in Toronto, "do the series you want me to help you with" and did she not further say to Susan that one should "not revert to Primary when the hurting begins"? But if I'm teaching myself (and I am), are those words that I'd claim as a teacher? Is Kapo to toes ENOUGH for me as a teacher when teaching me as a student? No, most days.
This is what makes Seattle interesting/anxious/to be looked forward to. IF I can get my damn shoulder to stop hurting, EVER.
So:
Where is my practice? Who cares, on a certain level (I do!). It's all about breathing and past that, it's all about not breathing. Quite literally.
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