This could, with that title, easily be one of those posts that shortly ends with a euphemism about "making it through with the regular pattern of the practice" or somesuch. But in part because I'm writing it, it's not going to do that.
I haven't done the same practice twice yet, in David and Shelley's room. I've tried to, but I haven't managed it. Much the same as my current home practice. It's not that I make up sequences or do different series each day, or that I'm counting every little tic and modification. What I mean, specifically, is that I was trying to build a Primary-to-Intermediate practice back, and then when that didn't work, I tried just hopping right into Intermediate, but that too is subject to grief and energy in the hips, which makes (and always has, really) me cut practice short wherever I can't maintain the energy of it.
So this isn't really about "which sequence" or "how many poses" or anything like that, no consideration of "the method" or "classical practice" is intended or should be inferred.
Here's what I can recall about my practices in the Swenson Mysore room so far:
Sun: Primary and to Ustrasana, which hurt. Hangs but no drops.
Mon: Grief practice. Slow agonizing Primary to Supta Padangusthasana.
Tue: Even griefier practice. Primary to Janu C in almost 2 hours.
Wed: Primary to Navasana and Intermediate to Eka Pada Sirsasana.
Thur: Intermediate through Karandavasana. Dropbacks with standups.
Fri: Primary series, with one dropback which DS then turned right into assisted.
Sun: Intermediate to Ardha Matsyendrasana. Griefy practice. No drops.
There are many axes on which to cut up these practices, and we should be careful wielding that scalpel so that we don't kill the patient. Don't overanalyze.
1. The "best" days, strictly in POSES DONE terms, are Wed/Thurs of Week One.
2. The least griefy day was Thursday.
3. My best focus on breath and attention was Thursday.
4. Intensity of grief does not correspond to series done.
5. Practice does not get more difficult (griefwise) as the week goes on.
6. Practice also does not get less griefy as the week goes on.
So we cannot associate grief with a given pose or a given series. I walk into the room with it, either a little or a lot, and it's completely unrelated to day of the week or poses committed. If I'm having a griefy day, I have a griefy practice.
*********************************
Grief strikes in the psoas and the gluteus maximus on the right side. That's where it all always happened: the half-lotus struggles, the backbends, any pose struggle that I have had that's not as simple as "hamstrings longer," it's all been in that hip. Samskaric business lives in there.
Particularly here, and also at home since my dad passed, I've noticed tightness in the psoas where it attaches to the lumbar spine. It impinges my forward folds in sun salutations, and so I feel the grief physically, right from the first "dve fold" and then often I REALLY get it in "trini look up." Most days in the Mysore room, it takes at least two Surya B's, and more like three, to get it juicy, and I still feel it big time in poses like Parivrtta Parsvakonasana (more across the glutes) and in all of the Prasaritas.
The regular poses are a bit restricted: Padmasana, any twist, and backbends unless I can get some juicing of the psoas beforehand (that's why I'm currently loving the Intermediate and also taking a bridge pose regularly before my Urdhva Dhanurasana pressups).
It's also weirdly hard to breathe in the Mysore room, maybe because it's stupid hot, but I have to ask for it. For example in Prasaritas, I have to fill my head with the command, BREATHE, and then I feel my head touch. In Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana, same thing. BREATHE, ok now balancing. Once a series is underway, if it's not a slow, painful griefy practice with laughter/crying breaks, I can usually get the breathing pretty well in gear.
There are more unhappy practices than joyous ones here; feeling the grief exit my muscles is PAINFUL, but after that, it feels good, a sort of warm, enervating good, like the musculature will not contract. After Supta Vajrasana today got all over my psoas to a degree that I'd never felt before, I couldn't get my core muscles coordinated for Bakasana, I just couldn't get it together to come up. That's strange because I can Bakasana ANY time I want to, I barely even have to think about it.
So one question is, I lose the breath when the body expresses grief. How does or should that fit with "keep the breath"? Is it "ok"? See the questions? And no, let's NOT go into the whole "tradition versus individual" line. What I do in the Mysore room is breathe and feel until I can proceed. I'm not being overzealous in taking a given posture, I'm being overrun by the physical expression of an intense emotion.
Another question is, shouldn't I just take nicer, easier Primary? No, I've tried that for years since I became a parent. I can grieve in Primary as easily as Intermediate, and practice has to be cut short. Grief makes NO DIFFERENTIATION between say Kapotasana and Janu Sirsasana A. When it strikes, it's like a lightning storm outside while you're bending inside. The poses don't cause it, it's like a natural expression that coincidentally occurs while you're bending. Let's be clear: I do believe that the yoga makes it easier for the grief to find expression, but NO PARTICULAR POSE sets it off.
For what it's worth, I haven't had a grief attack in Kapotasana here, but I have had one in Janu Sirsasana A, and thus the comparison.
**************************************
On Kapotasana (and slightly off-topic): I got my first David adjustment in that on Wednesday, and I put my fingertips on the arches of my feet. On Thursday, I grabbed the sides of the feet well above the toes. This morning, I grabbed the pad of the foot over the toes. A bit less each day, and that's OK. My ego wants the heels, but I know that when I go back to cooler less-adjusted practice in Indiana I'll lose the heels even if I get them here, and so that doesn't matter. The ego is just a voice that likes to shout out its dissatisfaction with whatever you've got. Inner critic.
The first adjustment made me feel "valid" in the posture. It gave me the pose, to put it in classical terms. David didn't interrogate me, didn't give any comment or any vibe that I "shouldn't have been there." The pose was mine, I wasn't overreaching. I was afraid, and he said simply, "Relax," and we did the posture. He used to haul me up from B after 3 breaths. This morning he left me there for all five and let me come up myself.
So while I've yet to get the full expression, I feel very much that I "have" the posture, and what this does is back off a long-term questioning shame and anxiety about whether I should be doing Intermediate: not whether I CAN or not, but whether I SHOULD or not. I've known for YEARS that I "can" do Intermediate as long as I modify the core postures. But can doesn't matter when you feel like a spy sneaking the poses, doing some perhaps criminal home practice and you're never sure, you have to stay in the dark and throw down the Pincha exit.
David gave me security, almost like a license, and did it with that single nearly commentless adjustment. The ease is ocean-big.
I wish now that Good Will Hunting hadn't replicated the scene where Williams simply repeats "it's OK" until Damon's hardman character breaks. Now it's camp, we cite it and ruin the sincerity of it. But in accepting my grief (which ISN'T easy) and in accepting this sequence, there's a lot of "it's OK" and it's never far from tears that bring relief.
On Thursday I took three "Strikes" at Karandavasana and couldn't grok both the lotus and the balance; that's my hip-out-of-wack thing acting up. I used to be able to knit that bad thing and I even lowered it a few times without touching the knees to the floor. So I took my three strikes and asked David for an adjustment, which was quick, effective and marvelous, and then I went to backbends.
I feel like I know what to do; I feel like I know where I am in the ashtanga sequences, know "what my practice is." You know, if you read here a lot, how much I've worried about that, how I want a Mysore room to give me an answer and how it never has. This one adjustment locked it down.
David adjusts my core postures (currently including Pasasana which with feet flat I can barely bind going right but bind with relative ease going left) and I think that if I wanted to sample past Karandavasana that'd be ok too. But I feel like my official practice, one I can feel perfectly fine doing, is Intermediate to Karanda. This suspends for the moment the question of whether I can do those poses without needing a grief-out beforehand, but as I started here saying, that's not part of my practice as it stands; that's a part of my practice AS IT IS PRACTICED. The grief does not mean that I "should do Primary," it means that I'm going to have extra challenges with whatever sequence I'm doing, Primary Friday or not.
Something makes me cry or laugh here everyday, and I only mean that species of laughter which is actually crying. I told J on the phone that the yoga wasn't about advances or breakthroughs but about griefing it out, because I don't have to put my emotions "through my mind" when I'm bending, they can just come right out unannounced. That's what my practice here is about, that's what this vacation is about.
Soon I'll include some of my Facebook notes, one in particular seems to be getting quoted and handed around quite a bit on the 'book, where David talked about keeping the yoga alive and messy and not making it like a preserved nature sample on a wall (that last comparison is mine).
But thank you David Swenson, for that adjustment and for acknowledging that I'm dealing with a lot of stuff and it's going to come out most loudly in your Mysore room. Thank you.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
359 pageviews today? Is that even *possible*? I'm going to assume you all want more info on Swenson, right?
Hi (apparently) Everyone,
If the pageviews here are right, that's a RAAAAADICAL increase from my normal (although there are always more viewers here than I expect or am aware of, which keeps making me want to chill the content I post here, and of course I never do).
Ok, so two cents on Swenson. In part because it's easier and keeps my posting shorter, I've been putting a ton of this on Facebook.
The Mysore classes are hot and marvelous. Sweat pools on the floor by the time two and a half hours are over. A LOT of people do Intermediate in the room; I've seen ticktocks, easily six adjustments of Kapo and Karanda each, each day (and by now, three days in, too many to count), a handful of Advanced A poses, and today, about three feet from me, I saw David demo Karandavasana for a guy who somehow had the strength to try the pose like five times, after doing an Intermediate with full vinyasa (that's coming to standing after EVERY POSE). Amazing. David went up, came down, instructed all the way through, picked up the lotus, re-set his hands, and timbered. Just like that. Like it wasn't even a thing. His teaching for Karanda is "suck the knees into the chest, touch the chest with the knees," I've heard that numerous times around me in the morning.
My own psychological status totally colors my practice: the first day (Sunday) I was electric sore in backbends from the right hip, so I went to Ustrasana and quit and dropped back heels up. The second day I did a grieving Primary, cutting out at Supta Padangusthasana, letting the poses and transitions squeeze sadness right out of my body there on the floor. That was freaking intense. The third day I was having a lot of muscle soreness all through right glutes and psoas (the expression of sadness through that area leaves it hella sore the next day; I've noticed this for years, now that I know what to feel for) and couldn't fold forward in a sun salutation even to get my hands to the floor. I modified heavily and cut out after Janu Sirsasana C, a practice which still took me over 90 minutes to complete. I mean that was a Really Painful Practice, but it kicked up my caution, awareness and breath to pretty much unheard of levels, which was excellent. David gave me extra assisted backbending (I don't know if that's because the room wasn't being demanding at that time or not) and we did "fingertips down" dropbacks and come-ups. That's the most assisted backbending I've received here yet. Usually it's three arm-crossed hangbacks and one down for five and then up.
This morning I felt better, after going to a climbing gym yesterday afternoon where I basically prayed at my temple (because rock climbing got me alive from my divorce, helped me shed all my dead bits and bathed me in the flames of pure love), and I could jump in Surya's, but Primary again was heavy and grief-ful by late standing poses (example: do NOT underestimate the power of the Warrior sequence, which properly includes Utkatasana, in getting into your glutes and psoas; those three poses are freaking POWERFUL) and in Janu A, Shelley had to guide me breath by breath from hands-8-inches-from-my-foot to wrist-bind. Eventually the hips mellowed out, and as David and I had discussed about going to Intermediate, I went through Navasana and then hopped up for Pasasana.
Four rounds got me a six-finger bind. I simply turned to the side and put both hands down for five, and then twisted and snuck the bottom hand under, but did not bind, for five, then bound but could barely touch fingertips, for five, then I rolled up some rug under my heels and bound six fingers, both sides. Yes, I could have and should have just rung for an adjustment, but I somehow knew I could get the pose in that hot room, and Mari C and D had been difficult, and it was important for me to BELIEVE in the rock climbing magic, there was a certainty and faith that I could do that so-glute-intensive twist and do it on my own. Not Western "gonna git you sucka" ism but literal faith. I knew I could do it.
I had energy after that, all through Dhanurasana, which quickly sapped it. Parsva Dhanurasana was difficult and psoas-opening as it always is (don't underestimate that posture, either) and then in Ustrasana I just could NOT get the low back long enough to avoid some scrunching. Ew. This set me up for fear in Kapotasana.
I'm always a bit afraid of Kapo, even though really, it feels good more often than it doesn't. So I had to psych myself out of fear first. I said, "Do the posture to fingertips and don't die, and then you'll be more confident." So I arched, dropped (I like to walk in versus to hang, hanging doesn't get me open in the pose based on how I'm currently made) and walked in with suprising ease. I was able to pick up a hand and move it, without putting my head on the floor, then I finger-crept up to bump my toes, but couldn't grab them. I turned the elbows in and took five and then took five in a bent-arm B and came up. It felt good.
Swenson asked, "Are you waiting for help in something?" from behind me, as I continued kneeling there post-vinyasa, and I looked back and put my prayerhands on my forehead. In a minute he was there, no faffing: I arched back and he gave me the EXACT SAME Kapo adjustment that K in Boston gives (if you know her, you know who I mean): thighs press against the bender's thighs to keep the legs alive, hands come to wrists, and your hands go up "over" the top of your head and sort of "lead" the bend. Hands to arch of feet. "Relax," he said. Arms much straighter in Kapo B, which I held for three breaths. "That's enough" he said and took me up and was gone to his next adjustment. No fanfare, no celebration, just a pose. Another day in the yoga room.
We are doing three sets of retentions in the daily pranayama, and that session has also developed into a sort of combination storytelling and "conference" session where David (and sometimes Shelley is also there, but sometimes she takes off, to practice, she says, so I'm thinking they practice post-Mysore, not pre-) takes questions like "What's the difference between a yogi and a Guru?"
Ok, I have to go get my laundry out of the washroom so it can dry outside in the quite bright and very regular Austin sunshine.
I will, of course, have more to say. In two hours I'll be at a night class, "Breath and Bandhas" or words to that effect, and the night sessions are really good for info that I will teach my students.
Cheers!
If the pageviews here are right, that's a RAAAAADICAL increase from my normal (although there are always more viewers here than I expect or am aware of, which keeps making me want to chill the content I post here, and of course I never do).
Ok, so two cents on Swenson. In part because it's easier and keeps my posting shorter, I've been putting a ton of this on Facebook.
The Mysore classes are hot and marvelous. Sweat pools on the floor by the time two and a half hours are over. A LOT of people do Intermediate in the room; I've seen ticktocks, easily six adjustments of Kapo and Karanda each, each day (and by now, three days in, too many to count), a handful of Advanced A poses, and today, about three feet from me, I saw David demo Karandavasana for a guy who somehow had the strength to try the pose like five times, after doing an Intermediate with full vinyasa (that's coming to standing after EVERY POSE). Amazing. David went up, came down, instructed all the way through, picked up the lotus, re-set his hands, and timbered. Just like that. Like it wasn't even a thing. His teaching for Karanda is "suck the knees into the chest, touch the chest with the knees," I've heard that numerous times around me in the morning.
My own psychological status totally colors my practice: the first day (Sunday) I was electric sore in backbends from the right hip, so I went to Ustrasana and quit and dropped back heels up. The second day I did a grieving Primary, cutting out at Supta Padangusthasana, letting the poses and transitions squeeze sadness right out of my body there on the floor. That was freaking intense. The third day I was having a lot of muscle soreness all through right glutes and psoas (the expression of sadness through that area leaves it hella sore the next day; I've noticed this for years, now that I know what to feel for) and couldn't fold forward in a sun salutation even to get my hands to the floor. I modified heavily and cut out after Janu Sirsasana C, a practice which still took me over 90 minutes to complete. I mean that was a Really Painful Practice, but it kicked up my caution, awareness and breath to pretty much unheard of levels, which was excellent. David gave me extra assisted backbending (I don't know if that's because the room wasn't being demanding at that time or not) and we did "fingertips down" dropbacks and come-ups. That's the most assisted backbending I've received here yet. Usually it's three arm-crossed hangbacks and one down for five and then up.
This morning I felt better, after going to a climbing gym yesterday afternoon where I basically prayed at my temple (because rock climbing got me alive from my divorce, helped me shed all my dead bits and bathed me in the flames of pure love), and I could jump in Surya's, but Primary again was heavy and grief-ful by late standing poses (example: do NOT underestimate the power of the Warrior sequence, which properly includes Utkatasana, in getting into your glutes and psoas; those three poses are freaking POWERFUL) and in Janu A, Shelley had to guide me breath by breath from hands-8-inches-from-my-foot to wrist-bind. Eventually the hips mellowed out, and as David and I had discussed about going to Intermediate, I went through Navasana and then hopped up for Pasasana.
Four rounds got me a six-finger bind. I simply turned to the side and put both hands down for five, and then twisted and snuck the bottom hand under, but did not bind, for five, then bound but could barely touch fingertips, for five, then I rolled up some rug under my heels and bound six fingers, both sides. Yes, I could have and should have just rung for an adjustment, but I somehow knew I could get the pose in that hot room, and Mari C and D had been difficult, and it was important for me to BELIEVE in the rock climbing magic, there was a certainty and faith that I could do that so-glute-intensive twist and do it on my own. Not Western "gonna git you sucka" ism but literal faith. I knew I could do it.
I had energy after that, all through Dhanurasana, which quickly sapped it. Parsva Dhanurasana was difficult and psoas-opening as it always is (don't underestimate that posture, either) and then in Ustrasana I just could NOT get the low back long enough to avoid some scrunching. Ew. This set me up for fear in Kapotasana.
I'm always a bit afraid of Kapo, even though really, it feels good more often than it doesn't. So I had to psych myself out of fear first. I said, "Do the posture to fingertips and don't die, and then you'll be more confident." So I arched, dropped (I like to walk in versus to hang, hanging doesn't get me open in the pose based on how I'm currently made) and walked in with suprising ease. I was able to pick up a hand and move it, without putting my head on the floor, then I finger-crept up to bump my toes, but couldn't grab them. I turned the elbows in and took five and then took five in a bent-arm B and came up. It felt good.
Swenson asked, "Are you waiting for help in something?" from behind me, as I continued kneeling there post-vinyasa, and I looked back and put my prayerhands on my forehead. In a minute he was there, no faffing: I arched back and he gave me the EXACT SAME Kapo adjustment that K in Boston gives (if you know her, you know who I mean): thighs press against the bender's thighs to keep the legs alive, hands come to wrists, and your hands go up "over" the top of your head and sort of "lead" the bend. Hands to arch of feet. "Relax," he said. Arms much straighter in Kapo B, which I held for three breaths. "That's enough" he said and took me up and was gone to his next adjustment. No fanfare, no celebration, just a pose. Another day in the yoga room.
We are doing three sets of retentions in the daily pranayama, and that session has also developed into a sort of combination storytelling and "conference" session where David (and sometimes Shelley is also there, but sometimes she takes off, to practice, she says, so I'm thinking they practice post-Mysore, not pre-) takes questions like "What's the difference between a yogi and a Guru?"
Ok, I have to go get my laundry out of the washroom so it can dry outside in the quite bright and very regular Austin sunshine.
I will, of course, have more to say. In two hours I'll be at a night class, "Breath and Bandhas" or words to that effect, and the night sessions are really good for info that I will teach my students.
Cheers!
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
I Have Returned.
I got back to Indy on Friday, after spending a week with family after the wake-and-funeral (family is Catholic, well, loosely Catholic, so open casket and burial, no cremation) the last weekend of May--Memorial Day. My father was a Marine for a few years in the early 60s, just pre-Vietnam, and so there were Marines and "Taps" for his burial, which everyone thought was fitting.
I was wondering if I should/wanted to write a chronology of the week and a half, and I think I don't. It would talk about family frictions and postmodern novel kind of stuff and we should leave all that to Rick Moody and Don DeLillo and company.
The main effect that I can tell comes from now being the father in my family, a sort of assuming that mantle, is that I feel the role arrive in me for my own kid. What had formerly been all language and signification.
For this to happen while I was still fairly deep in adjusting to my own fatherhood is a weird blessing of sorts; it fits right in. Had this happened in 2002 it would have been totally and completely different, disorienting, incitement to even more chaos than happened. But now it's like a weird passing of the role, almost in a ritual way. It's strangely perfect.
I'm certain that I'm the only one in my family that feels this way, and I like that; that is how it's always been. Time is frozen there if you're me (by which I mean my personality in time), and people don't know me any more closely than they did in the mid-1990s and that goes, itself, back to the late 1980s; I tried to burn those bridges and failed, and the major side effect is that while I can talk to anyone and everyone's happy to see me like a strange midwestern Prodigal Gone Back, no one knows a thing about my inner life at all (and it took me a long time to realize that I'd done that and that it wasn't some failing on their collective part). But I knew that if I had not left to find something more satisfying than suburbia and lay Catholicism, I would have exploded with psychotic violence, and so that had to go.
That's how it's not a postmodern novel: in those situations, the rebels never get outside of power (which in itself is so, so postmodern), and so they live out their craziness within the system that constrains it, and you get pathos and suffering and then you sell a million copies and you get to bang the cheerleader or whatever it is, and we have American Beauty to tell us how that all goes deliciously wrong. No. I saw that fate coming and ran for the hills and now I teach Art History and yoga out here in Indianapolis and have family and kid.
In the teacher training for It's Yoga (and also, goodbye Larry, this same year: don't you think that's enough, 2011?), we made "dream boxes," little decorated cardboard boxes where you put dreams and wishes. Inside the top lid of mine is a little newspaper-print-looking sentence reading, "One day I escaped."
That sounds like it denies my beloved Kafka (ever engaged with the intricacies of power), but it doesn't. I grew into what suited me (well, as near as I can figure) and still retain contact with what doesn't/didn't. The two worlds don't communicate, not because they speak different languages, but because almost no one crosses the two. I do not retain contacts from high school or college, and all of my graduate school associates abandoned me when I got divorced in 2002. There is nothing but a black chasm between my "then" and my "now," and that's also why it's not a postmodern novel. Those books rely on a crisscross, constant friction between what one is and what one is thought to be. I have, in a way, freedom.
Yet I keep in touch with family, and they can tell that I have a degree of contentment now, after being billed through action and rhetoric as the firebrand for so many years that now that tag never leaves; some family still treat me like nitroglycerin that you shouldn't shake too hard. That's fine; if they cared more, they could learn how it really is, but they choose safe distance (noting of course that I basically forced them to do so) and I try to make my presence safer for them but they see their/my label before they see my reality, and I can only get so close to them without freaking them out. That's fine, I know I made it that way.
I continue to teach the yoga, and to practice. Aiming now--with kid in daycare and J at work--for five weekdays per week. Primary is again a struggle, but that's typical with ten days off and lots of complicated emotions snugging up the outer hips and psoas, I don't resent anything. I practice until I lose the breath, often in those handful of poses after Navasana, and then I backbend. Dropping and standing is still there, although it might need a lot of rehearsal before it gets smooth. It's all still there; I was rebinding Pasasana before I went to the Northeast.
Austin and Swenson in ten days. I'll be down close to a big lake and not far from a gigantic park. There should be early am buses to downtown, otherwise it's a couple miles and I don't mind that walk (although I'll probably have to get up at 4:30 to make 6 am practice). Six days a week, Su-F, with evening workshops each M and W, with a weekend workshop the first F night and into Sa morning, so it'll be non-stop morning asana and pranayama from Su straight to F and then an Intermediate workshop on Sa morning, then again straight through, Su to F and I fly out on F afternoon, the first of July. I'm going to intend to avoid both caffeine and booze while I'm there, and yes, I know what a boozy town Austin is. We'll see.
I have returned. Now, out to the park to practice.
I was wondering if I should/wanted to write a chronology of the week and a half, and I think I don't. It would talk about family frictions and postmodern novel kind of stuff and we should leave all that to Rick Moody and Don DeLillo and company.
The main effect that I can tell comes from now being the father in my family, a sort of assuming that mantle, is that I feel the role arrive in me for my own kid. What had formerly been all language and signification.
For this to happen while I was still fairly deep in adjusting to my own fatherhood is a weird blessing of sorts; it fits right in. Had this happened in 2002 it would have been totally and completely different, disorienting, incitement to even more chaos than happened. But now it's like a weird passing of the role, almost in a ritual way. It's strangely perfect.
I'm certain that I'm the only one in my family that feels this way, and I like that; that is how it's always been. Time is frozen there if you're me (by which I mean my personality in time), and people don't know me any more closely than they did in the mid-1990s and that goes, itself, back to the late 1980s; I tried to burn those bridges and failed, and the major side effect is that while I can talk to anyone and everyone's happy to see me like a strange midwestern Prodigal Gone Back, no one knows a thing about my inner life at all (and it took me a long time to realize that I'd done that and that it wasn't some failing on their collective part). But I knew that if I had not left to find something more satisfying than suburbia and lay Catholicism, I would have exploded with psychotic violence, and so that had to go.
That's how it's not a postmodern novel: in those situations, the rebels never get outside of power (which in itself is so, so postmodern), and so they live out their craziness within the system that constrains it, and you get pathos and suffering and then you sell a million copies and you get to bang the cheerleader or whatever it is, and we have American Beauty to tell us how that all goes deliciously wrong. No. I saw that fate coming and ran for the hills and now I teach Art History and yoga out here in Indianapolis and have family and kid.
In the teacher training for It's Yoga (and also, goodbye Larry, this same year: don't you think that's enough, 2011?), we made "dream boxes," little decorated cardboard boxes where you put dreams and wishes. Inside the top lid of mine is a little newspaper-print-looking sentence reading, "One day I escaped."
That sounds like it denies my beloved Kafka (ever engaged with the intricacies of power), but it doesn't. I grew into what suited me (well, as near as I can figure) and still retain contact with what doesn't/didn't. The two worlds don't communicate, not because they speak different languages, but because almost no one crosses the two. I do not retain contacts from high school or college, and all of my graduate school associates abandoned me when I got divorced in 2002. There is nothing but a black chasm between my "then" and my "now," and that's also why it's not a postmodern novel. Those books rely on a crisscross, constant friction between what one is and what one is thought to be. I have, in a way, freedom.
Yet I keep in touch with family, and they can tell that I have a degree of contentment now, after being billed through action and rhetoric as the firebrand for so many years that now that tag never leaves; some family still treat me like nitroglycerin that you shouldn't shake too hard. That's fine; if they cared more, they could learn how it really is, but they choose safe distance (noting of course that I basically forced them to do so) and I try to make my presence safer for them but they see their/my label before they see my reality, and I can only get so close to them without freaking them out. That's fine, I know I made it that way.
I continue to teach the yoga, and to practice. Aiming now--with kid in daycare and J at work--for five weekdays per week. Primary is again a struggle, but that's typical with ten days off and lots of complicated emotions snugging up the outer hips and psoas, I don't resent anything. I practice until I lose the breath, often in those handful of poses after Navasana, and then I backbend. Dropping and standing is still there, although it might need a lot of rehearsal before it gets smooth. It's all still there; I was rebinding Pasasana before I went to the Northeast.
Austin and Swenson in ten days. I'll be down close to a big lake and not far from a gigantic park. There should be early am buses to downtown, otherwise it's a couple miles and I don't mind that walk (although I'll probably have to get up at 4:30 to make 6 am practice). Six days a week, Su-F, with evening workshops each M and W, with a weekend workshop the first F night and into Sa morning, so it'll be non-stop morning asana and pranayama from Su straight to F and then an Intermediate workshop on Sa morning, then again straight through, Su to F and I fly out on F afternoon, the first of July. I'm going to intend to avoid both caffeine and booze while I'm there, and yes, I know what a boozy town Austin is. We'll see.
I have returned. Now, out to the park to practice.
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