And who would think 21.5.800 would actually get me to do two things: write kinda personally, and finally upload images into posts.

It’s no secret that I’m moving from New York to San Francisco in a few weeks. What you may not know is I have no [...]]]>

photography by Susannah Conway; click photo to see more

And who would think 21.5.800 would actually get me to do two things: write kinda personally, and finally upload images into posts.

It’s no secret that I’m moving from New York to San Francisco in a few weeks. What you may not know is I have no idea quite how I am going to do it. I know where I’ll sleep the week after I fly in, but I don’t know where I am going to be living. I know when and where I start grad school, but I don’t know what I’ll be doing in the mean time. I don’t know where or if I’ll have the privilege to teach yoga.

So to see this beautiful bridge and how hazy it is- or how completely unknown the end is- is compelling to me. Sure, I’m not going to get credit for recognizing the most subtle of symbols, but it’s what hit me today.

I’ve been approaching my home practice (and it’s all home-saving money for the move and all) in the same fuzzy way. I kind of know where I want to end up (blissed out savasana) and have a general idea of how to get there (sequencing) and the goal is just to improvise my way there. I tend to stick to the same poses over and over (Warrior I, II, extended side angle, forward fold, I’m looking at you guys!) because they are particularly juicy for me, but this means I get kind of stagnant. So every day when I’m about to do yoga, I have this urge to find something- find some other nugget that will change up my practice and make it fit again. Like everything else, and everything I’ll be doing on the West Coast, it’s a balance, and sometimes it clicks, sometimes it doesn’t.

On Tuesday, I woke up with a tickle in my throat and of course ignored it. I did a pretty rigorous vinyasa practice in the morning, got a whole lot of work done, took a 2-mile walk after lunch, did more work. Later in [...]]]> So I’m still with this challenge- really! Through a killer flu, even!

On Tuesday, I woke up with a tickle in my throat and of course ignored it. I did a pretty rigorous vinyasa practice in the morning, got a whole lot of work done, took a 2-mile walk after lunch, did more work. Later in the afternoon, though, I started to feel my energy levels wane and knew I had to get myself to a bed, stat. But I had people making demands of me, so that bed session was prolonged for at least 20 minutes before I actually got there. By 4:30 or 5, I had a hundred degree fever.

At least I got both yoga and writing in on Tuesday! I didn’t sleep well that night and woke up Wednesday still pretty miserable. I got some writing in, but basically layed about the whole day like a proper sick day. Later that night, as Mr. Dude was on his way to make me dinner and take care of me, I remembered the CHALLENGE. Ok, ok, I was actually just poking around in Google Reader and found this interview, with a lovely paragraph on why savasana is so important. And I remembered that I made a commitment, one that I had already broken once and was determined not to break again, and one that JUST LYING IN SAVASANA would satisfy. So I rolled out my mat, plopped myself down in my tattered sicky nightgown, and got heavy. As soon as I hit the mat, of course, I heard the door open downstairs and Mr. Dude walking in. I told him to “just give me a few minutes” and he respected that, but I had already kind of broken my trance. I resolve to try again later that night.

I did, and was able to surrender to how freaking heavy my head was, and start to consciously relax myself. I don’t like to get into yoga-teacher-cheesy-talk very often, but I had this great experience of gratitude toward my body for all the work it was already doing to heal itself. I knew that most of the pain was in my lymph nodes, meaning everything was working as it should be to get me back in action.

This morning, I’m still achy. I get energy to do stuff in spurts. I did a short practice with a bit of gentle stretching, aiming to get out of my body’s way. And I’m kind of proud that I’m starting to think of my body this way: with respect and maybe even a little awe.

I have a little bit of an advantage: My work is (probably) over for the next month and a half or so as I prepare for [...]]]> I’ve joined the 21.5.800 challenge: for 21 days (now till the end of June) I will do yoga five times a week and write 800 words a day. (Join me!)

I have a little bit of an advantage: My work is (probably) over for the next month and a half or so as I prepare for the Big Move and Big Scary Grad School, so I do have plenty of time and motivation. But even if I pick up something temporary or am buried chest-deep in boxes, I gotta show up. The bigger challenge for me, though, is community. I am a solitary seeker, and occasionally poke my head out from my little corner of yogablogland, but I’m hoping I’ll find some other people out there who can keep me honest and keep me, err, extroverted.

I will NOT be posting on my blog every day for that 800 words. 800 is a LOT for a blog post! I am a big fan of not writing just to have posts, and I only like to write when I feel I have something useful to say, probably plucked out of my private journals. Today is one of those days.

Somatic Karma

Yes, I’ve read the Vedas, yes, I know that Karma is a pretty sticky topic for me to write about (though I’ve mentioned samskara here before), and that I might be trivializing it a little bit. But to use something so loaded, that’s intentional. When talking about bodies, it’s only fitting to use concepts that are heavy with cultural, moral, and visceral meaning- if I can get one reader to think about their body that way, or the conceptual body, I’ve done my job.

I woke up today pretty achy. Some of it from yoga (I admit it’s been a while since I’ve held Warrior poses for so long, and I experimented with a Kundalini kriya in the evening), some of it from the last-minute emergency babysitting I did for a friend (kids are light, but when you pick them up a lot, it hurts). And all that’s great- I’m growing and adapting. But I think a bit more of that achiness is just from tension. I have to admit, I don’t always practice what I preach in terms of relaxing into even the most difficult postures. I hold muscles I don’t need to. And then I wonder why yoga isn’t always working its magic for me.

So I want to consider the idea of the body being a palimpsest (to quote the lovely Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson)- a somewhat un-erasable record of everything that’s ever happened to you, and moreover, everything you’ve ever done. I’m currently reading Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter Levine. It’s the foundational text of the Somatic Experiencing therapy modality, and argues that when we experience trauma, our natural arousal/ fight-or-flight response is always partially frozen and we get stuck in nervous-system activation. In this way, traumatic experiences and our reactions to them become encoded in the way we live in our bodies.

You can also take this the smug fat-shaming way- that your body’s shape and size is the sum total of how many tubs of Ben and Jerry’s you’ve had, or how much Bikram you’ve done. Did I not just say that the body is rife with cultural and moral baggage? I’m challenging everyone to think about this in more subtle terms. When you get stressed and you tense up your muscles, you’re encoding just a little bit of that stress into your physical form. With repetition, the way you hold yourself unconsciously becomes the way your muscles and skeleton hold you.

I know I’m rambling, but we’re finally getting to why using the term Karma was so important here- because the goal in a lot of yoga/Buddhist philosophy is to free yourself of Karma. To me, this isn’t about freedom from the body (I lean much more towards nondualism). It’s about starting to become aware of how we’re stacked, how we’re tensed, how we’re stuck- and slowly, very patiently, beginning to work through that. On the mat, and off. Eventually learning to just be in your body, rather than being in all the muck of past experiences and decisions.

So that’s what I’ll be practicing on my first day of 21.5.800. Care to join me?

One major theme in my application essay was the idea of traveling from the external to the internal experience of [...]]]> As some of you may know, I’m relocating to San Francisco for grad school. I’ll be studying Somatic Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, which should make sense if you’re a regular reader here.

One major theme in my application essay was the idea of traveling from the external to the internal experience of my body. That means that, growing up, my body was an image that I viewed as if I was observing from the outside (externally). I was concerned with its shape and size, and when I exercised, it was to improve how it looked.

As I got deeper into yoga, I began to experience my body, practically for the first time, from the inside. This mostly started through discomfort- the burning, for example, of lactic acid in my thigh when I held a warrior pose for a long time, or the cramping in my feet from tensing them while trying to maintain balance.

The discomfort started to build (or re-build) a sort of communication network in my body. When parts of me made themselves a big part of my consciousness (that stretch in my outer hip during half pigeon, for example), I learned to check in. Then I learned to check in to more subtle sensations, neutral ones. I didn’t need discomfort anymore. I learned to check into the sensations as I expanded and deflated while breathing. Feeling my feet or sitz bones connected to the ground.

That’s where something pretty wonderful happened. Checking in with my body produces a sense of peace, one that I have been aiming to provide in yoga teaching for ages, and one that I feel can be really helpful for people suffering from any kind of mental illness.

I have a long way to go. I’ll keep heading deeper and deeper into the felt sense of my body, and I imagine I’ll be grappling with this concept- and how landing inside the body integrates the self- throughout grad school. Thanks for joining me for the ride.

On first glance, this one seems kind of dry and boring. So… just stop thinking? Why bother? We have to remember that this describes the process of yoga, not the state. We’ve all heard that (the state of) yoga is translated as union, or [...]]]>

1.2 Yoga is the control of the modifications of the mind field.

On first glance, this one seems kind of dry and boring. So… just stop thinking? Why bother? We have to remember that this describes the process of yoga, not the state. We’ve all heard that (the state of) yoga is translated as union, or to yoke. Not like eggs. Like farm animals. You, yoked with, united with, the universe. Your individual soul united with the collective spirit. Your body tied to your mind tied to your essence.
And it’s those messy mind fluctuations that cause suffering, distraction, basically anything that prevents you from getting here:

1.3 Then the Seer abides in Itself, resting in its own True Nature, which is called Self-realization.

This is tricky, and can also be translated as: “Then at the time of concentration, the conscious witness finds stability in its own form.”

We’re never quite sure who the Seer/witness is, but instinctually I feel that this is getting at something between the individual and the Western concept of externalized deity- remember that union we are talking about? Then there’s the resting/stability issue. Many of you know that “asana” translates to “seat,” meaning one of the goals of asana practice is to find some stability (”sthira”), like a seat, in every posture. Yes, headstand is a seat, as is firefly or side crow or whatever. New Agers will tell you to “just sit with” something difficult- it’s this same unflappable meditation that we’re looking for even when it gets messy. That’s why, if I’m teaching, I’ll tell you that even the most supposedly-impressive pose isn’t worth it if you’re pissed off and red-faced- you’re just not doing yoga.

1.4 At other times, when one is not in Self-realization, the Seer appears to take on the form of the modifications of the mind field, taking on the identity of those thought patterns.

Remember Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk? I offer this quote:

You’re not how much money you’ve got in the bank.  You’re not your job.  You’re not your family, and you’re not who you tell yourself…. You’re not your name. You’re not your problems. You’re not your age. You are not your hopes.

One of the commitments I made when I started writing and teaching was to maintain reverence to the yoga sutras and to consult them- in the decisions I make both on and off the mat. They’re non-dogmatic*, and provide what I consider a pretty beautiful basis for the [...]]]> …or, as Mario would say, “Here we go!”

One of the commitments I made when I started writing and teaching was to maintain reverence to the yoga sutras and to consult them- in the decisions I make both on and off the mat. They’re non-dogmatic*, and provide what I consider a pretty beautiful basis for the practice and observation of what we have encoded in other disciplines. If you read this blog regularly or know me, you know that those things are important to me- dogma-free, reliance on one’s own wisdom to interpret any instruction, working together with various disciplines (science, philosophy, even pop culture).
Lately, I’ve been wanting something more structured to frame my practice. Vinyasa is great, but sometimes its flexibility leaves me wanting something more solid (much like, if you are very physically flexible in the practice, the challenge is to learn to engage the appropriate muscles). I thought going through a sutra at a time would be a great way to examine, in a structured way, how the roots of yoga show up in my practice, my teaching, and my life right now. It’s not likely that I’ll get through all 198 of them, but I won’t get through any if I don’t ever start.
One other caveat- I don’t read Sanskrit and I am not an academic of yoga philosophy. Luckily, those aren’t bars to the practice or reading. You may not agree with me- welcome to blogland.

I’ll be using the Interpretive Yoga Sutras from Swamij.com.

1.1 Now, after having done prior preparation through life and other practices, the
study and practice of Yoga begins.
(atha yoga anushasanam)

The first translation I got for this was, “Here begins the inquiry of yoga.” Love I haven’t liked many others.
But if “shas” implies a teaching relationship, according to this translation, maybe “inquiry” is not quite accurate. It’s a question of agency- as students, do we inquire or do we remain receptive while someone or something else does the teaching? My guess- both.
So every time we walk into class or unroll a mat in our living rooms, are we starting? Is it auspicious (love that word!) or blessed? I’d vote YES- the only thing that matters is the current practice, not the day before. The day before might have been that “prior preparation.” The ten years you spent doing the ashtanga primary series six days a week is prior preparation. The thirteen years you’ve spent teaching, that old rotator cuff injury, your anxiety- yep, all prior preparation. If you’re not starting now, if you’re not working with what you’ve got, if you’re not showing up ready to accept teaching (even if the only teacher is you), you’re doing it wrong. This is a very Pema Chodron/Thich Nhat Hanh/American Buddhism concept.

Be BAREFOOT or at least in flat shoes. I put a towel under my feet so [...]]]> I posted this on The Mindfulist but I think it’s helpful, so I’m re-posting it here. It’s a modified-for-being-at-work sun salutation, with the forward fold and backbending action without having to put the hands or whole body on the floor.

Be BAREFOOT or at least in flat shoes. I put a towel under my feet so they don’t have to touch the nasty floor. This instantly grounds me as I spend all day in heels.

Feet hips width apart; inhale and arch into a backbend, raising arms to the ceiling and gazing up.
Exhale into a forward fold, interlacing fingers behind the back.
Inhale halfway up with a flat back, maintaining fingers interlaced.
Exhale and fold more deeply.
Repeat three times… This gives me (and hopefully you) a bit more energy and hopefully helps to fend off the sitting-itis!