Intermediate Scares Me

Tim's out of town, so I snuck into led Intermediate this morning. And, of course, got my ass handed to me.

Oof.

As I've seen it described elsewhere, Intermediate is energetically completely different from Primary. Primary pulls you down, folding into yourself, head down, eyes closed, limbs wrapped. The standing poses are just prep for your hamstrings and hips, then the inward withdrawal starts with various flavors of paschimottanasana, then the limbs draw in further and further, first the arms in the binds, then the legs in the half lotuses, culminating with the tight ball of Marichyasana D. Finally, Supta Kurmasana offers complete sensory deprivation, with your feet up over your head, hand bound tightly, forehead to the ground. The ultimate head-in-the-sand experience.

It's why I like adho mukha vrksasanan so much between navasanas - it offers a lightness, an expansiveness, that keeps the practice from pulling me too far down, psychologically. The finishing backbends are the energizing poses of the series, which pull me just far enough up to drive to work without falling asleep at the wheel.

Intermediate, on the other hand, seems to be about opening, at least at first glance. You start puffing your chest out with Pasasana, and it just never ends. Kapotasana is the most obvious untethered pose, but it feels like the rest of the practice doesn't quit. And obviously my legs don't go anywhere near behind my head.

It's also a harsh shock to go from knowing and understanding the poses, the sequence, the logic, to diving into an unfamiliar sequence, strange poses.

Makes Primary feel comforting.

Thanksgiving

Since I abandoned the idea of battling holiday traffic to make it to my parents' place this Thanksgiving seasons, and since the Girl is off to Europe for a week, I've got a nice four day weekend to myself this year. So, naturally, the schedule revolves around practice, the dog, and work. I figure I can bank a few hours in the office to make up for late mornings when practice runs late during the week.

Yesterday, Thanksgiving Day proper, I skipped Improv in favor of 9am Mysore. Part of me wishes I had gotten up early for pranayam/kirtan, but the sleep was wonderful. Improv doesn't do good things to me with the current state of my practice. I feel like I need the understanding of a set sequence to not push too far physically and aggravate my weak points. Plus, Primary targets my weaknesses so perfectly, it's essentially pointless to do anything else.

Practice was a little brutal. I hadn't gotten on the mat in a week due to a climbing trip, so Wednesday was my first day back. Repeating many poses made for a decent practice. Thursday I felt off - the late start time meant I was hungry and was fighting a bit of a headache, but the asanas were decent once my hamstrings loosened up from the previous day.

Today I got up at my 'normal' time of 4:30 am, rolled into the full pranayam session, which made me feel like I was going to die. Then I practiced. Sitting cross-legged for a hour before practice does great things for my hips! Still, practice wasn't effortless by any means. I have this amazing semi-permanent bruise on my right elbow from Garbha/Kukkutasana. I did bind Marichyasana D on both sides, and getting my arms through my lotus is becoming routine though not pleasant. I still fall over into a heap trying to roll around. Yesterday I had to call quite loudly for help, to the amusement of my neighbors.

In other news I've been subbing an Intro to Ashtanga class for my friend Jenny, who introduced me to the practice five years ago now. It's special to come full circle, from being the stiff awkward student glimpsing the beauty and potential of the practice, to try to be the instructor providing that glimpse at the same studio. It is such a challenge to transmit the flow of the practice, the quiet effort and mind-calming routine, to a student who had a basic-to-no understanding of the sequence. But there are many regulars who try hard and are quite keen. In addition to the regulars, it seems that every week I get a new student who comes up after class asking "This is an intro class, right?!?".

External motivation is necessary, the students will flag off during the seated poses without significant verbal encouragement.

Ashtanga is difficult. I'm so lucky to be in San Diego, with such a strong community of very dedicated and talented teachers.

Milestone

Marichyasana D went down unassisted today. It still hurts a lot, of course.

Garbha is the current roadblock - I can't figure out how to roll around without tipping over. Kukkutasana is completely hopeless without someone to hoist me into the air.

But the rest of Primary is happy and routine. My hamstrings are opening making kurmasana possible.

And finally, after nine months of gimp, my right shoulder is feeling healthy and strong. I can once again lolasana and hover before jumping back. I can jump through, though I'm not confident enough to perform every jump in the series. The exit from bakasana is happening without pain. Solving the shoulder issue was a matter of alignment. You could argue that teacher training fixed my shoulder.

Milestone?

I managed to bind Marichyasana D on the left side yesterday. Without help. Of course, that was only after multiple rounds of 'research' to open my hips. And the right side is holding out.

Of course, this morning I fell over and got stuck in garbha pindasana and has to be rescued.

Here's an artistic rendition, minus the grunting and sweating (1:27)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unZlXcNZA0w&

Somehow I thought Mari D would be more satisfying. Nope, still painful.

Frustration easing

Garbha Pindasana has come quickly - I can almost get both arms through up to my biceps. If you've ever seen my forearms you would appreciate that significance. Tim's comment was 'eat less spinach, Popeye'. Kukkutasana is ridiculous. Final comment from the guru: 'I can't tell if this epic was a drama or a tragedy'. Typical Tim.

Handstands are fun.

Practice Notes - Sep 2012

Just notes for my own personal amusement.

• Garbha Pindasana: Barely get two hands through legs. Hurts like hell. 
• Padmasana: here to stay.
• Dropbacks/Stand-ups: here to stay. Heels go flying wildly, obviously. 
• Mari D: holding out.
• Handstands in the middle of the room: sent. Purely psychological. 
• Lower back: still tender and doesn't like forward folds.

Frustration seems to be the name of the game this month.

Progress

1.) Padmasana has arrived after nearly four years. Uth Plutih is fun!

 2.) Marichyasana D is coming - the bind without any external help is progressing.

 3.) Urdhva Dhanurasana: not only can I very consistently stand up without staggering across the room, I managed to drop back (in a very controlled fashion, to my great surprise) on Friday. Three times. I repeated the performance yesterday in a led Primary class, so it's not completely a fluke. Tips, tricks? Can't think of one. I hung back for a long as possible before pushing against the wall to come back up several times. Then, reaching to the wall seemed further than reaching down to the floor.

 Supta Kurmasana: after losing a few pounds and teacher training, I can bind the hands and move the soles of my feet together every day. Exit happening, too.

 Overall, Primary is becoming more fun and less work.

Last week I also confirmed that drinking too much coffee before pranayama leads to utter failure. If your heart is beating like a drum retentions become completely untenable. Further reflections: curious how yoga is portrayed in Western culture as peaceful, graceful, love, happiness, and a frosted cupcake. But in practice it always feels sweaty, painful, and hard. Elements of grace and levity, but the practice seems to teach the real lessons when it pushes your nose up against the wall.

 Tim might be on to something: "If Anusara is the yoga of Yes, then Ashtanga is the yoga of No".

Adventures in Pranayama

During TT Tim offers and encourages pranayama every morning. People dropped out with time, but I managed to show up every morning; the immersion was worth it.

Interesting things happen during retention, particularly during exhale retentions. If I can convince myself to stay calm, avoiding muscular contraction (trembling/panicking) an interesting settling sensation results - like a handful of sand sinking to the sea floor. Of course, if I can't avoid muscular effort everything goes straight to hell. Violent inhalation results. Preliminary impressions revolved about the lack of mental wandering, too focused on slowing down the breathing cycle, matching the retentions, the sensations of switching nostrils, etc. 

When Tim came back from Europe I went to the pranayama session before Primary on Tuesday, and I realized why the sessions during TT seemed so approachable - Tim was giving us little baby retentions. I managed to get by breaking the count only twice. Whoa. It's tough to get three hours in the morning for both pranayama AND a full practice, though I'd love to do this daily.

Primary after pranayama was entertaining. Sitting on the floor cross-legged for an hour obviously did good things to my hips. My still-sore lower back, not so much. The Chalisa after practice was a nice treat, though the 70 minute commute to work afterwards wasn't.

I miss the immersion of TT. I also miss the army of personal adjusters. The training has been instrumental in my practice.

Finally, I weaseled my way into teaching an Intro class at the studio where I started my practice. First experience teaching. People said nice and flattering things afterwards. We will see where this goes.

Mysore Primary was fun this morning. Progress is happening: padmasana, binding hands without help in Supta Kurmasana, head on the floor for all the Prasaritas, exiting from Bujapidasana and Supta K, etc, etc blah blah blah. Shoulder still gets sore if I get too enthusiastic, lower back doesn't like sitting at work all day. Works in progress.

Old Skool

Killing it.

Check it out - Eddie has hair!

I need to get some of those shorts. Epic. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUgtMaAZzW0

Two Weeks of Tim

Group photo. Cheese!

Yesterday I completed two weeks of teacher training with Tim Miller and a gaggle of 31 other students. I had a few misgivings about the quality of my practice, and whether I was just going to be the weakest link in the room, but those turned out to be unfounded.

The first week was great, until all the muscles in my lower back and pelvis locked up from sitting on the floor for five hours a day. Four days of salt baths, ice packs, and lying rather than sitting down fixed it, and I was back to my practice.

Having the other trainees in the mysore room was fantastic - like having your own personal adjuster; sometimes like having your own personal Jesus. I was adjusted in nearly every other pose and had the best practice of my life. Giving and receiving adjustments, while getting and giving direct feedback (Marichyasana D: pull harder! Harder!) was invaluable; observing the different ways the practice challenges and engages individuals was fascinating.

Several of the students haven't spent a huge amount of time in the Ashtanga system, making it even more clear how powerful the sequential nature of Ashtanga is - when you run into a pose that you don't like, you practice it, no matter how much you hate it. Unlike other systems, in which people tend to avoid their weaknesses and engage their strengths. Setu Bandasana is a good example, many of the students said that at home, their teachers just don't include it in the Primary sequence (!?!).

The experience strongly reinforces my current understanding of the practice: that by confronting your limitations, personally, painfully, sometimes brutally, progress is made and you learn something about yourself that can be applied beyond the mat. The asana is an analogue to life: how often have you heard someone, or yourself, say "Oh, I could never do that"? How many times on the mat have you thought to yourself "If only my hips/hamstrings/back were as open as theirs"? How about off the mat? "If only I was as lucky/smart/dedicated as her"?

I met students who arrived in Encinitas convinced a pose was impossible for them; by the end of the training they were attaining the pose without help. They had been capable all along.

Own your present, your future, and your past.

Accomplishment is not dictated by genetics, but by effort and dedication.

Sarvangasana vs William Broad

William Broad (NYT 'senior science writer') claims that Sarvangasana will kill you.

 After three weeks of absolutely no practice, and marathon, coffee-fueled coding sessions hunched over a computer with deep focus on monitor pixels, my neck and shoulders have started feeling like I was rear-ended on the street. Practice makes it better. Sarvangasana in particular, while painful, relieves the bunched-up muscles immobilizing my neck.

 In other news, having trouble with Marichyasana D? Get food poisoning from your work salad bar, and spend a day puking and a week not eating. After you lose six pounds Mari D will be easier. Ask me how I know....

'The Yoga Bums'

Old-school ashtanga article: http://web.archive.org/web/20070401040518/http://www.rebeccamead.com/2000_08_14_art_yoga.htm

Which is hard to find online.

I'm on a hiatus from practice to let my shoulder heal. One week down.

Given all this free time I'm using it to do stuff. Like read. "Guruji" is great. Gregor Maele's practice manual / philosophy is also great.

Lifestyle tinkering

Less coffee?

Less food?

Skip dinner?

Eat more animals? Eat less animals?

Quit drinking beer?

Quit eating wheat?

Drink more beer? Eat lots of seitan?

I felt very thin yesterday, particularly in the twists, and I liked it. My hamstrings were open; I got my head down in kurmasana, which is unusual. Of course, I overdid the jump-throughs and now my shoulder is inflamed. So no practice today.

I also invested in a fancy-spiffy alarm clock which gradually turns a light on in the mornings. The light wakes me before the gentle alarm does. Anything to maximize the quality of my sleep.

Personal

I read a lot of peoples' thought on their practice.

I find it aggravating how many people throw around the word 'yogic'. Confessions of temper tantrums, followed by chiding themselves for not living up to their expectations of what they think their practice should deliver.

Even worse, ruminations on how people with a daily practice could possibly act like assholes. (I admit to personally finding this apparent conundrum absolutely hilarious).

Here's a thought: remove your preconceptions.

Identify your experiences. Learn to process, to experience, not to assume. Self honesty seems a reasonable strategy.

A Comment

That I left on someone's blog:

I attended the Confluence. It was a profound experience. I was in a haze for a week following.

The lobby and vendor booths made me uncomfortable and claustrophobic. But stuffing yourself sardine-style into the Mysore room was liberating on a different level - I felt like I was wholly anonymous. Perhaps 2% of the people in that room would recognize me, and only one of the teachers would. So in a sense, it was more pure than practicing alone, where I am focusing very much on my self. A huge crowd let me slip into something a little more detached from myself and that particular iteration of my practice.

Bhekasana

Sunday: first half of Intermediate.

I got hoisted into Bhekasana, and had an excellent Kapo.

This morning's practice - not so much.

I Hurt In New and Novel Ways

After yesterday's moon day and Wednesday's Marichyasana panic, I was suffering from great trepidation today. The top of my left foot felt sprained and hurt like hell on Wedneday, and the intensity of the experience stayed with me all day, feeling unsettled and unsteady.

I woke up a little earlier than usual this morning (4:25), giving me an additional five minutes to take an epsom bath before practice - anything to fend off the teeth of the practice. Then I walked the dog, took a bath, and drank too much coffee, and quickly found myself practicing an upset-coffee-stomach opening sequence.

I was forgetting the sequence, and put all I had into the seated postures, trying to loosen my hips and ankles. I repeated many, and was clearly looking very nervous (Holly commented). I bound to wrists in the Maris, intent on opening quads, hips, ankles, lats, shoulders, etc, etc. In D, Tim grabbed my wrist, braced his foot against my knee, and pulled. After five breaths my armpit made contact with my knee, he pinned my bicep, and pulled my arm around into the bind. I panicked less than Wednesday, and I didn't explode into a heap upon exit.

Keep in mind that I've got 5 inches and 15 pounds on Tim. His precision and efficiency are incredible.

After all that I managed a legitimate albeit ugly padmasana instead of my usual half-lotus bastardization of garbha pindasana.

Tim squished me in baddha konasana, which felt thoroughly pleasant compared to Mari D.

Backbends were a respite, and felt like a reprieve. Holly dropped me back a few times before I flopped into savasana.

I hurt in new and novel ways.

Progress

Tim got me into Marichyasana D both sides, despite panic and an explosive exit from the left side.

Then I enjoyed my first-ever padmasana.

The rest of the day was internal turmoil.

As Tim says, squeezing out the nonsense.

Confluence and Mari D

The big news: this morning I was wrenched into Mari D on my right side. That's new.

The little news: I spent three days having my mind blown at the Ashtanga Yoga Confluence.

The Confluence was, shall we say, expanding.

The warmth, openness, and genuine humanity of the Big Five was powerful. The convergence of 350 people, many of whom have dedicated a very large part of their existence to the practice, was potent. The physical practices were beautiful, but entirely secondary.

Quick personal note: shoulder still a little sore. Gotta be careful with all that jumping.

Practice, Practice. Whole Life Practice.

Tag teamed by Atsuro and Tim in baddha konasana. Half the room erupts in laughter; me included.

Focus in the work gym surrounded by stationary bicycles, boxjumpers, and various people stretching.

Green juice, fruit, espresso, and Ibuprofen for post-practice breakfast.

Zyflamend for lunch.

"It showed me that discipline [is] a muscle and a skill that could improve with practice."
-Jason Stein

Some History

All the legions of practitioners who claim some variation on yoga being 'thousands of years old'.

No.

The asanas as we know them are about 100 years old (read Krishnamacharya's book). Ashtanga has been fluid over the last 40.

Question dogma. Exercise that fatty tissue between your temples. Knowledge and meaning come from within.

Snippets

- one of the regulars carrying two mats up to the shala. His wife is running late. He unrolls her mat in the normal place.

- the lights click off halfway through the standing sequence. The glowing neon exit sign provides the only ambient light on a dark, rainy morning.

- the little girl patiently watches a movie on her mom's iPad at the foot of mom's mat, as she has done so many times before in her short life.

- neighbors pop out of their focus to assist in supta vajrasana; post-backbend relief lights up the assistee's face.

The mornings are beautiful.

Cause the Kool Kids Are Doing It

Everybody's got their undies in a bunch over a certain gloom-and-doom NYT yoga article. I found it yawn-inducing, but a lot of pretty reasonable folks find it disturbing. I originally left this content as a comment, but will crosspost it here.

I just can’t take the article seriously – I giggle a little every time that I read about someone getting bent out of shape over it. It’s sensationalist dreck, which the Times likes to publish frequently to entertain their readers and drum up advertising revenue.

They profiled one or two guys who ended up with serious complications, and I’d bet money that they misquoted him or took segments out of context. That’s nothing, compared to the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people who have practiced for years and years and have reaped the quality of life benefits of the practice.

Of my skier friends, about a third have undergone knee surgery for blown ACLs and the like. One broke a leg in a fall and got choppered off a serious mountain. Another survived an unplanned night out due to the pure luck of a finding a fumarole-melted ice cave.

Of my climbing friends, about 80% of all who take it seriously have been taken out for months from tendon/ligament issues at one point or another. Personally I’ve strained ligaments, sprained ankles in nasty falls, pulled countless muscles.

Of my surfing friends, I know people who have blown ACLs, gotten speared by fins, and destroyed their rotator cuffs. I bashed my forehead open on a rail, have sprained wrists and ankles, been sliced open by fins, and pulled a muscle near my kidney that bothered me exiting trikonasana for about four months.

Swimmer friends suffer rotator cuffs injuries, torn labrums, and the like.
Cyclist friends get knee injuries; runners get shin splints, knee problems, achilles tendonitis.

There’s a trend here – you push hard in any deeply physical activity and you get hurt if you’re not intelligent and careful. I just took a week off from practice because my shoulder was getting overused between ashtanga and climbing. It’s the nature of life. Thinking you can avoid any and all injuries is like thinking that you can get through life without experiencing grief.

When I sit on the couch and don’t do anything I’m safe from injury. Too bad my mind and body suffer in other ways.

The Times article is crap. If you go through their archives you can find articles denouncing running, swimming, now yoga, as well as countless articles discussing how a negative lifestyle will kill you. Not to mention the millions of fad diet articles they’ve published over the years. They make money getting people to read their articles, and historically nothing draws a crowd like prophesies of doom.

Believing what supposed experts claim gets you nowhere. Historical knowledge combined with a keen experimental attitude tempered by caution and personal experience is the only way to progress.

Listen to your experience and the people you trust, not some self-proclaimed expert whose authority is based on having written a book. That holds for all subjects.
To quote The Matrix, they are, after all, “Only human.”

Back

A full week off, a special weekend, and a still-tender-but-kicking shoulder led to my first morning at Tim's in ten days.

What's the Mark Jenkins quote on injury? "They say the healing is caused by circulating blood, but I think it's the circulating love."

No jumping through and no kurmasana or bhujipindasana. I feel whole again.

Rest Is Not The Enemy

Way to ring in the new year - I'm on the reserved list for a few days while I let my shoulder de-inflame.

Waking up at 6:30am is nice.

Going to bed at 9:30 is nice.

Not practicing is really hard.

Strategy: get other things accomplished (things that I've put off for months) so I'm at least productive. The practice will be there in a few days.

Vacation

PDX was great - Saturday and Christmas off to spend with family, practice Monday, climb Tuesday (so lucky with the weather, we climbed all day despite threatening clouds), practice Wednesday, fly back home on Thursday.

I'm nursing an overworked shoulder. Too deep in Supta Kurmasana, and indelicate jump-throughs have put me on the sidelines for a few days. Surfing aggravated the entire shebang, so I've taken a few days off from the practice. This allows me to 1.) heal, and 2.) take care of mundane life-related things. (Furniture! (soon I will be the proud owner of a real bed) Car maintenance! The deep satisfaction of knowing my car will (might) stop in the rain now! Amazing.)

2012 will be a spectacular year, I know it. Last year's New Year's resolution was to practice at Tim's. That worked out well. This year's resolution is identical - maintain daily practice. Don't get hurt. Right on track for continued awesomeness.

In other news, dogmatic and overtly negative yoga blogs are played out. Standing on your head won't make you enlightened. Reading compilations of philosophy won't necessarily make you a better person. Accumulation is worthless without action. Talk less, do more.