Friday, May 12, 2006
Love?
Bikram delivered a lecture this evening that included a bizarre, hilarious, and surprising lecture on "love", it's nature, it's existence (or nonexistence?) and other elaborations. I want to write about this part of the lecture in detail, but I'm so exhausted and need some time to process what I heard. So... that will have to wait a day or two. Sleep, delicious sleep.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Past halfway.... WHOO HOO!!!!!
Wow. More behind us than in front of us. Aches, pains, weird acne, fatigue, emotional roller coasters, intense feelings of attachment, annoyance, intimacy, disgust, peace, panic. All kinds of weird shit, but we're all still here. Actually, all but one - we lost one of our yogis about a week ago, he gave up, went home. Still - people have their scars, but we're all holding together as a group fantastically. I'm so proud of the spirit and support that everyone show for each other.
An example... one of the visiting teachers is a former Army ranger (I am always skeptical of anyone who makes this claim, as it is often claimed falsely) and he is pretty tough in posture clinic. One of his rules is that we are not allowed to do our group cheers before people go up to deliver their dialog. Normally, each of the six groups (I am in Group 3) has a specific cheer for their group, which is yelled enthusiastically and chaotically just before one of the group members goes up to perform the dialog. It's an incredible confidence booster - I really love it each time before my dialog deliveries. Group 3's cheer (this isn't dorky in the slightest) is, "Group Three! Lock the Knee!". Anyway, our military teacher does not allow us to do cheers, and so one of the people in our group who is relentlessly upbeat started lifting his leg up in the air before each of the Group 3's dialog performances, locking his knee and pointing to it. Others started following along so that, before each delivery, a dozen or so legs were lifting up in the air, silently, with their knees locked. I was so proud of people for having each other's back so loyally.
Today I had my first truly rock star delivery, for me at least. I shouldn't be too proud of myself, but still it felt SO GREAT. It's silly, but I've felt all day like my wee pat on the head from Bikram last night has given me an oasis of calm and confidence, so when it was time to do Standing Separate Leg Stretching today, I had SO MUCH FUN! A few voice characterizations lightly infused my voice, I made corrections and kept flowing, I had so much energy and excitement, and even began to scratch the surface of my yoga-teacher-dream-situation: Delivering an entire class in a perfect, seamless Samuel L. Jackson impersonation. I know it will never happen (and probably shouldn't), but man it would be fun.
Another thing that's fun to watch is the coupling - it seems like the rampant sexual tension has annealed somewhat, so that people's flirtations in general seem to be settling on the same targets. There is a lot of "pairing" going on - even if it's subconscious, and it's really cute to watch. It's also really relaxing to feel a bit separate from it - certainly there are people I feel closer to or more open with, but I don't feel a pull from anyone or towards anyone, which is so relaxing! Being in a relationship means i'm not looking for any attachments, but the reality is that in situations like this, particularly intimate, challenging ones, attachments sometimes form involuntarily. I was accepting of the possibility that those things could happen and might even be difficult - that's okay - but I'm really relieved that it hasn't been something I've had to think about! All my drama is with my own rebellious and uncooperative body! Hoot!!!
The best thing to see is how some people are really coming out of their shells - the people for whom dialog has been a struggle are really starting to make really visible gains, and it's amazingly encouraging. I feel like I get a charge of strength every time somebody who really has to work gets up and kicks some ass, and I'm trying really hard to give that energy to people who are about to get up there and do their thing.
Lock the knee, y'all.
An example... one of the visiting teachers is a former Army ranger (I am always skeptical of anyone who makes this claim, as it is often claimed falsely) and he is pretty tough in posture clinic. One of his rules is that we are not allowed to do our group cheers before people go up to deliver their dialog. Normally, each of the six groups (I am in Group 3) has a specific cheer for their group, which is yelled enthusiastically and chaotically just before one of the group members goes up to perform the dialog. It's an incredible confidence booster - I really love it each time before my dialog deliveries. Group 3's cheer (this isn't dorky in the slightest) is, "Group Three! Lock the Knee!". Anyway, our military teacher does not allow us to do cheers, and so one of the people in our group who is relentlessly upbeat started lifting his leg up in the air before each of the Group 3's dialog performances, locking his knee and pointing to it. Others started following along so that, before each delivery, a dozen or so legs were lifting up in the air, silently, with their knees locked. I was so proud of people for having each other's back so loyally.
Today I had my first truly rock star delivery, for me at least. I shouldn't be too proud of myself, but still it felt SO GREAT. It's silly, but I've felt all day like my wee pat on the head from Bikram last night has given me an oasis of calm and confidence, so when it was time to do Standing Separate Leg Stretching today, I had SO MUCH FUN! A few voice characterizations lightly infused my voice, I made corrections and kept flowing, I had so much energy and excitement, and even began to scratch the surface of my yoga-teacher-dream-situation: Delivering an entire class in a perfect, seamless Samuel L. Jackson impersonation. I know it will never happen (and probably shouldn't), but man it would be fun.
Another thing that's fun to watch is the coupling - it seems like the rampant sexual tension has annealed somewhat, so that people's flirtations in general seem to be settling on the same targets. There is a lot of "pairing" going on - even if it's subconscious, and it's really cute to watch. It's also really relaxing to feel a bit separate from it - certainly there are people I feel closer to or more open with, but I don't feel a pull from anyone or towards anyone, which is so relaxing! Being in a relationship means i'm not looking for any attachments, but the reality is that in situations like this, particularly intimate, challenging ones, attachments sometimes form involuntarily. I was accepting of the possibility that those things could happen and might even be difficult - that's okay - but I'm really relieved that it hasn't been something I've had to think about! All my drama is with my own rebellious and uncooperative body! Hoot!!!
The best thing to see is how some people are really coming out of their shells - the people for whom dialog has been a struggle are really starting to make really visible gains, and it's amazingly encouraging. I feel like I get a charge of strength every time somebody who really has to work gets up and kicks some ass, and I'm trying really hard to give that energy to people who are about to get up there and do their thing.
Lock the knee, y'all.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
A Pat on the Head
Bikram walked over to me after his lecture this evening, right to where I was sitting, and patted me on the head. I'm so glowing and proud, and I feel like such a fourth grader because I'm just so beaming. He just walked right over to me, looked at me in the eyes, and put his hand on my head. I said "Thank you, Boss". I sit in the front for Bikram's lectures. Partially because I'm tricking myself into not falling asleep, and partially because I really want to just absorb as much of this experience as I can. I really try to pay attention, and I'm trying really hard not to editorialize the information - just to let it all in, without comment from me, and see where it ends up. I don't want to make up my mind about parts of things before I experience all of it.
I feel totally different now. It felt, when Bikram looked at me, like he was saying, "good job". Maybe not. It doesn't really matter what he was thinking, I just feel so calmed, and not scared. Prior to this happening, I was planning on writing today about how yesterday's collapse has infected me with a kernel of fear, and my mind was really scared and jumping around like crazy in class today. Humidity has been higher the last few days than it has been the whole time so far, and that's made classes more challenging. I didn't do well today, though I feel like I'm starting to rebound - 80%. However, after this evening's lecture and Bikram's kind gesture, I feel like I don't have to be afraid tomorrow, which is great.
Tomorrow is halfway. I can't believe it. Halfway. And everybody insists that the second half is easier, and goes faster, than the first. My memorization capabilities are definitely highly accelerated - I feel like I can memorize things with less work - plus I have a NEW TECHNIQUE. It goes something like this... I noticed that when people are playing the memorization game, they are trying to remember the right sentences, and often saying the wrong words when they make mistakes, and starting over from the beginning. It seems like people end up executing the wrong movements with their voice and speaking muscles more often than the right movements, and on top of that, they're executing the beginning of the pose way way more than the end of the pose. So - instead, I've just started reading the dialog, off of the page, out loud, in "performance voice", over and over and over, start to finish - NEVER halfway. Sometimes bodies in front of me, but most often not - and I'm trying to read each pose 50 times. I find that after 10 repetitions, I don't need to look at the page the whole time. After 20, I look down less. After 30, I barely look down at all, and at 40 I don't need the page anymore. Plus, the muscle memory of saying it correctly is totally ingrained and I don't have to think about it. It seems to be really working fantastically. Plus, I think all of this physical, mental and spiritual purification is just causing us all to become smarter - or at least quicker. People have also noticed, as have I, that their fingernails, toenails and hair are growing much, much faster - sometimes twice as fast. My hair is definitely growing hella fast.
AND I STOPPED BITING MY NAILS!!! The neurolinguistic programming isn't totally complete yet - my fingers still sneak up to my mouth from time to time, but I haven't bitten in a few days. HELL YES!!! I haven't been able to stop that since forever.
Tomorrow - no fear, calm, celebration, and beaming from my pat on the head.
I feel totally different now. It felt, when Bikram looked at me, like he was saying, "good job". Maybe not. It doesn't really matter what he was thinking, I just feel so calmed, and not scared. Prior to this happening, I was planning on writing today about how yesterday's collapse has infected me with a kernel of fear, and my mind was really scared and jumping around like crazy in class today. Humidity has been higher the last few days than it has been the whole time so far, and that's made classes more challenging. I didn't do well today, though I feel like I'm starting to rebound - 80%. However, after this evening's lecture and Bikram's kind gesture, I feel like I don't have to be afraid tomorrow, which is great.
Tomorrow is halfway. I can't believe it. Halfway. And everybody insists that the second half is easier, and goes faster, than the first. My memorization capabilities are definitely highly accelerated - I feel like I can memorize things with less work - plus I have a NEW TECHNIQUE. It goes something like this... I noticed that when people are playing the memorization game, they are trying to remember the right sentences, and often saying the wrong words when they make mistakes, and starting over from the beginning. It seems like people end up executing the wrong movements with their voice and speaking muscles more often than the right movements, and on top of that, they're executing the beginning of the pose way way more than the end of the pose. So - instead, I've just started reading the dialog, off of the page, out loud, in "performance voice", over and over and over, start to finish - NEVER halfway. Sometimes bodies in front of me, but most often not - and I'm trying to read each pose 50 times. I find that after 10 repetitions, I don't need to look at the page the whole time. After 20, I look down less. After 30, I barely look down at all, and at 40 I don't need the page anymore. Plus, the muscle memory of saying it correctly is totally ingrained and I don't have to think about it. It seems to be really working fantastically. Plus, I think all of this physical, mental and spiritual purification is just causing us all to become smarter - or at least quicker. People have also noticed, as have I, that their fingernails, toenails and hair are growing much, much faster - sometimes twice as fast. My hair is definitely growing hella fast.
AND I STOPPED BITING MY NAILS!!! The neurolinguistic programming isn't totally complete yet - my fingers still sneak up to my mouth from time to time, but I haven't bitten in a few days. HELL YES!!! I haven't been able to stop that since forever.
Tomorrow - no fear, calm, celebration, and beaming from my pat on the head.
Shame, Ego, Defeat, Despair, Acceptance, Release
Today killed me. I left the room. I didn't even really choose to, when it finally happened. There was no choir of angry voices in my head demanding that I leave. I don't really remember making the decision. I got up and walked to the open door to take a breath, because I couldn't breathe and my heart rate just kept going up, and up, and up. When I got to the door, Antonia, one of the staff members, was outside, took a look at me, and said I should come outside, sit down, and drink some Pedialyte. I was shaking so bad, and so, so, so ashamed and disappointed. Craig said first week that we should imagine being able to look back on our training and be able to say we never left the room unless it was an emergency, that we never took the easy way out. I don't know if this was an emergency. I didn't know what else to do.
When I was in the lobby, I started to cry, but no tears came out - my body just did the crying motion in my shoulders and chest, the shaking and the wracking. I was, and still am, so disappointed in myself. The disappointment was quickly replaced by anger at seeing one of the fellow teacher trainers, whom I have mentioned before, the guy who doesn't seem to think he has to do any actual work, sitting in the lobby with his legs crossed, having a conversation with somebody, "cooling off", perfectly calm. I drank my pedialyte, shot unnecessary eye lasers into him, failing to cause his death, realized I was just projecting my own shame, and got back into the room. I couldn't really do the rest of the postures very well. I tried Camel, had to take it super easy, and did finish all of Rabbit and the end postures, but with only the bare shreds of energy. Bikram finished class (he was teaching) by saying "You guys did pretty good, physically, but mentally you are shit." He then got down of the podium and left class without a final savasana, which has not happened before.
I worked really hard this weekend studying anatomy. I really, really wanted a perfect score - for no really good reason other than to feel like I was doing all I could do. I got two questions wrong on the test, and it just completely took the wind out of my sails. More disappointment. The question I got wrong was not in the study guide, is not in our anatomy book, and was mentioned in passing in the lecture. AND, according to the internet, is WRONG. The question was, "What is another name for Adrenaline", and the answer they're looking for is "Norepinephrine". This is incorrect, even if that's what Dr. T said in our lecture: Wikipedia Adrenaline . I'm really pissed about that. And I got another question wrong, because I let my logic (faulty) override what we were told in the lecture. The thing about all of this is that I really, truly know that it doesn't matter whether or not I got 98 out of 100 correct or 100 out of 100, yet I still have this disappointment about the whole dismal day.
In the end, it was Clodagh who helped me get over this. I could barely hear her on the phone, as I was using my precious break minutes to wolf down a burrito in the fast food place, but she reminded me that I didn't come here to win an anatomy award or to have some superficial boy scout badge of "never left the room". I came here to find out who I am, to find out what I can do, and to learn to teach so I can help other people start in the direction of finding themselves. (Hey! I can answer that question now!!! And mean it!!!) What matters is that I know the anatomy, which I do, and that I can use it to help myself and help people, which I can. What matters is that I'm honest and disciplined with my practice, not that I'm perfect at it, and that I did the best I could, correctly - which I did. These are the things that will make me a better teacher and a better student - not little boy scout badges. Thank you, Clodagh - I love you.
The day ended with a 4 hour Bikram lecture on yoga philosophy. Again, somewhat meandering and abstract, but good. He does manage to say some things that I find deplorable, though - today's gem was that "Man likes another Man, they do coochie coochie, they go against the nature and the god, they get AIDS and they DIE." Bikram seemed to lose a few supporters on that one. During a break, a boisterous Australian girl burst out with (quite loudly), "Somebody should ask Bikram, 'HAVE YOU EVER SUCKED COCK? NO? MAYBE YOU SHOULD, YOU MIGHT LIKE IT...'". Quite an evening indeed.
One of my teachers, Stef, is here - she made me a bag of super secret super power seeds to eat, and gave me some support, despite my rough day. It's wonderful to feel like people got yo back. Thanks everybody. (Two more days until HALFWAY MARK!!!)
When I was in the lobby, I started to cry, but no tears came out - my body just did the crying motion in my shoulders and chest, the shaking and the wracking. I was, and still am, so disappointed in myself. The disappointment was quickly replaced by anger at seeing one of the fellow teacher trainers, whom I have mentioned before, the guy who doesn't seem to think he has to do any actual work, sitting in the lobby with his legs crossed, having a conversation with somebody, "cooling off", perfectly calm. I drank my pedialyte, shot unnecessary eye lasers into him, failing to cause his death, realized I was just projecting my own shame, and got back into the room. I couldn't really do the rest of the postures very well. I tried Camel, had to take it super easy, and did finish all of Rabbit and the end postures, but with only the bare shreds of energy. Bikram finished class (he was teaching) by saying "You guys did pretty good, physically, but mentally you are shit." He then got down of the podium and left class without a final savasana, which has not happened before.
I worked really hard this weekend studying anatomy. I really, really wanted a perfect score - for no really good reason other than to feel like I was doing all I could do. I got two questions wrong on the test, and it just completely took the wind out of my sails. More disappointment. The question I got wrong was not in the study guide, is not in our anatomy book, and was mentioned in passing in the lecture. AND, according to the internet, is WRONG. The question was, "What is another name for Adrenaline", and the answer they're looking for is "Norepinephrine". This is incorrect, even if that's what Dr. T said in our lecture: Wikipedia Adrenaline . I'm really pissed about that. And I got another question wrong, because I let my logic (faulty) override what we were told in the lecture. The thing about all of this is that I really, truly know that it doesn't matter whether or not I got 98 out of 100 correct or 100 out of 100, yet I still have this disappointment about the whole dismal day.
In the end, it was Clodagh who helped me get over this. I could barely hear her on the phone, as I was using my precious break minutes to wolf down a burrito in the fast food place, but she reminded me that I didn't come here to win an anatomy award or to have some superficial boy scout badge of "never left the room". I came here to find out who I am, to find out what I can do, and to learn to teach so I can help other people start in the direction of finding themselves. (Hey! I can answer that question now!!! And mean it!!!) What matters is that I know the anatomy, which I do, and that I can use it to help myself and help people, which I can. What matters is that I'm honest and disciplined with my practice, not that I'm perfect at it, and that I did the best I could, correctly - which I did. These are the things that will make me a better teacher and a better student - not little boy scout badges. Thank you, Clodagh - I love you.
The day ended with a 4 hour Bikram lecture on yoga philosophy. Again, somewhat meandering and abstract, but good. He does manage to say some things that I find deplorable, though - today's gem was that "Man likes another Man, they do coochie coochie, they go against the nature and the god, they get AIDS and they DIE." Bikram seemed to lose a few supporters on that one. During a break, a boisterous Australian girl burst out with (quite loudly), "Somebody should ask Bikram, 'HAVE YOU EVER SUCKED COCK? NO? MAYBE YOU SHOULD, YOU MIGHT LIKE IT...'". Quite an evening indeed.
One of my teachers, Stef, is here - she made me a bag of super secret super power seeds to eat, and gave me some support, despite my rough day. It's wonderful to feel like people got yo back. Thanks everybody. (Two more days until HALFWAY MARK!!!)
Sunday, May 07, 2006
That shit's got you SIDEWAYS, man!
Last night was a bit of an adventure - an interesting tutorial on having a new body and what (not) to do with it.
Our Friday evening class was very intense. It was taught by Jason Winn, who is a bit of a "Yoga Superstar", to the extent that there are such things. Here's a bit about him: Jason Winn . Jason is a drill sergeant. He began the class by lining everyone up to exactly their toes behind the blue lines on the floor, and then toured every line of the floor aligning every person who was out of line by even half an inch. He then informed us that nobody leaves the room, period. His demeanor was extremely serious, almost humorless, though not entirely, and his central focus was discipline. He held the poses for exactly 60, or 30, or 20, or 10 seconds, on the clock, depending on the pose. He insisted that we not fall out of the poses, and, for the most part, we didn't. I held my foot out in Standing Head To Knee for the entire pose, not one fall. (My standing leg wobbled a bit at the end, though... I can't lie). This seemed epic to me. Something about Jason's unrelenting precision dragged more out of me than I could have consciously delivered on my own, I really like that. But the result of all of this is that I pretty much extracted exactly the maximum amount I could have given. This is important for what follows.
Normally, we have an hour dinner break after the evening yoga class, before returning for posture clinic from 8pm to 11pm. However, as we finished class Jason informed us that we were done for the evening and could go home. I'm certain this was in no way related to it being Cinco de Mayo and the instructors wanting to go out for the night. Definitely not. The cheer that arose from the yogis was deafening. Really astounding. So, of course, we drove home... without getting dinner. I really wanted to go get Mexican food to celebrate the holiday that I know nothing about, but nobody wanted to join me. I can't drive, so I decided to walk to Universal Studios City Walk, which is about a 40 minute walk. By the time I had arrived at the City Walk, it was 9:30 pm. I had not eaten anything since lunch at 11:30am, and had gone through a pretty intense yoga class and a bunch of posture clinic and other draining stuff. I put my name on the list, was told there was a 1hr wait, and I took my seat outside to do some quaiity "attempting to meditate while people watching". I'm such a dork. At about 10pm I noticed myself feeling distinctly unusual - colors and sounds intensifying, dizzyness, a feeling of separateness from my body.
I finally got seated at about 10:30, and was immediately brought out a basket of chips with a little bowl of salsa. Clearly delirious by this time, I requested a "spicy" salsa. When it arrived, it was a little bowl of blood red viscous sauce, almost paste, just FILLED with seeds. I proceeded to wolf the entire basket of chips and the bowl of extra spicy salsa down in about 10, 15 minutes. Again, not firing on all cylinders here. No less than five minutes after beginning this feat of stupidity, my entire body was flushed with chills and I began vibrating, a LOT, in every muscle. And I couldn't stop it! My whole body was shaking like crazy, I broke the chips as I picked them up, spilled water, and was shaking so hard that the table of people next to me were, with the most charming display of tact and subtlety, pointing at me and remarking to themselves. I didn't quite hallucinate, but the room got hazy and weird and sounds became a little distorted. Sadly, my spirit guide (voiced by Johnny Cash) did not appear. Still, I feel I have gained a greater understanding of the mysterious Guatemalan Instanity Peppers. When my food arrived (enough food to feed a family, no wonder Americans are gaining weight), I was so freaked out that I figured I'd eat as much as I could to diminish the reaction. This worked slightly, but I was still really shaky when I left.
This morning's subsequent yoga class was an adventure unto itself. Good GOD. Can you imagine rolling all your weight onto your belly and maintaining nearly full lungs while your stomach and intestines are stuffed with too much food, lined with liquid fire? It was not one of my more impressive classes. I'm stunned that I survived it without vomiting or shooting flames out of my clenched buttocks.
I'm gradually becoming aware that my body is different, and needs different foods. I ate a burger today and it just didn't feel right. The first few bites were somewhat satisfying, but then it just became a heavy, greasy chore. It's weird. The old cravings are coming apart, but the only new cravings I have are for watermelon and chai. I'm finally starting to change shape - now that just a little is happening, I feel like I can stop worrying about it, since it was really not important. Still, I can't avoid vanity entirely, and maybe don't even want to; today while shopping on Melrose I tried on a pair of pants that fit without me sucking my stomach in - a tiny bit snug, but still wearable. They were a size 34, which I haven't worn since I was 17. I was stunned. Of course, I bought the 36 in the end, but STILL!!!! Whoo HOO!!!!
As my anxieties about whether or not I'll survive yoga camp subside, they're gradually being replaced (or revealing) a new set of concerns that I don't need. How am I going to maintain this commitment to health when I return to my life, without completely throwing my job and possessions away? I'm certain it's possible, but how can I approach my old job and tell them that I only have 40 hours a week, maximum, to give, and that I'm not willing to sacrifice my health any longer, under any circumstances? This will be the biggest challenge of them all, I think.
Our Friday evening class was very intense. It was taught by Jason Winn, who is a bit of a "Yoga Superstar", to the extent that there are such things. Here's a bit about him: Jason Winn . Jason is a drill sergeant. He began the class by lining everyone up to exactly their toes behind the blue lines on the floor, and then toured every line of the floor aligning every person who was out of line by even half an inch. He then informed us that nobody leaves the room, period. His demeanor was extremely serious, almost humorless, though not entirely, and his central focus was discipline. He held the poses for exactly 60, or 30, or 20, or 10 seconds, on the clock, depending on the pose. He insisted that we not fall out of the poses, and, for the most part, we didn't. I held my foot out in Standing Head To Knee for the entire pose, not one fall. (My standing leg wobbled a bit at the end, though... I can't lie). This seemed epic to me. Something about Jason's unrelenting precision dragged more out of me than I could have consciously delivered on my own, I really like that. But the result of all of this is that I pretty much extracted exactly the maximum amount I could have given. This is important for what follows.
Normally, we have an hour dinner break after the evening yoga class, before returning for posture clinic from 8pm to 11pm. However, as we finished class Jason informed us that we were done for the evening and could go home. I'm certain this was in no way related to it being Cinco de Mayo and the instructors wanting to go out for the night. Definitely not. The cheer that arose from the yogis was deafening. Really astounding. So, of course, we drove home... without getting dinner. I really wanted to go get Mexican food to celebrate the holiday that I know nothing about, but nobody wanted to join me. I can't drive, so I decided to walk to Universal Studios City Walk, which is about a 40 minute walk. By the time I had arrived at the City Walk, it was 9:30 pm. I had not eaten anything since lunch at 11:30am, and had gone through a pretty intense yoga class and a bunch of posture clinic and other draining stuff. I put my name on the list, was told there was a 1hr wait, and I took my seat outside to do some quaiity "attempting to meditate while people watching". I'm such a dork. At about 10pm I noticed myself feeling distinctly unusual - colors and sounds intensifying, dizzyness, a feeling of separateness from my body.
I finally got seated at about 10:30, and was immediately brought out a basket of chips with a little bowl of salsa. Clearly delirious by this time, I requested a "spicy" salsa. When it arrived, it was a little bowl of blood red viscous sauce, almost paste, just FILLED with seeds. I proceeded to wolf the entire basket of chips and the bowl of extra spicy salsa down in about 10, 15 minutes. Again, not firing on all cylinders here. No less than five minutes after beginning this feat of stupidity, my entire body was flushed with chills and I began vibrating, a LOT, in every muscle. And I couldn't stop it! My whole body was shaking like crazy, I broke the chips as I picked them up, spilled water, and was shaking so hard that the table of people next to me were, with the most charming display of tact and subtlety, pointing at me and remarking to themselves. I didn't quite hallucinate, but the room got hazy and weird and sounds became a little distorted. Sadly, my spirit guide (voiced by Johnny Cash) did not appear. Still, I feel I have gained a greater understanding of the mysterious Guatemalan Instanity Peppers. When my food arrived (enough food to feed a family, no wonder Americans are gaining weight), I was so freaked out that I figured I'd eat as much as I could to diminish the reaction. This worked slightly, but I was still really shaky when I left.
This morning's subsequent yoga class was an adventure unto itself. Good GOD. Can you imagine rolling all your weight onto your belly and maintaining nearly full lungs while your stomach and intestines are stuffed with too much food, lined with liquid fire? It was not one of my more impressive classes. I'm stunned that I survived it without vomiting or shooting flames out of my clenched buttocks.
I'm gradually becoming aware that my body is different, and needs different foods. I ate a burger today and it just didn't feel right. The first few bites were somewhat satisfying, but then it just became a heavy, greasy chore. It's weird. The old cravings are coming apart, but the only new cravings I have are for watermelon and chai. I'm finally starting to change shape - now that just a little is happening, I feel like I can stop worrying about it, since it was really not important. Still, I can't avoid vanity entirely, and maybe don't even want to; today while shopping on Melrose I tried on a pair of pants that fit without me sucking my stomach in - a tiny bit snug, but still wearable. They were a size 34, which I haven't worn since I was 17. I was stunned. Of course, I bought the 36 in the end, but STILL!!!! Whoo HOO!!!!
As my anxieties about whether or not I'll survive yoga camp subside, they're gradually being replaced (or revealing) a new set of concerns that I don't need. How am I going to maintain this commitment to health when I return to my life, without completely throwing my job and possessions away? I'm certain it's possible, but how can I approach my old job and tell them that I only have 40 hours a week, maximum, to give, and that I'm not willing to sacrifice my health any longer, under any circumstances? This will be the biggest challenge of them all, I think.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Keep on keepin' on.
So.. I'm feeling a little bit cautious. Because... yesterday's ephiphany (epiphanies?) seems to be sticking. I had two magnificent, powerful yoga classes today, and I feel like I'm glowing. The classes weren't easy, by any stretch, but it seems like if you make the primary "thing that you're doing" in the posture breathing, you almost forget about all the other stuff, particularly if it hurts. Plus, we got to yell "YEE HAW" and "FUCK YOU" during our situps as loud as possible. If that's not cathartic, I don't know what is. Yoga teachers from texas are a TRIP. Craig was talking more about the "yoga truck" today and how we should be wary of it, that it might sneak up on us, and to be honest, I feel almost a bit nervous, like it must be sneaking up on me. I don't want to feel overconfident, but right now... things seem to be going fantastically.
I have a visualization about breathing that I want to describe. It seems to be working magnificently for me. I imagine a plastic piece of PVC tubing, about 1.5 inches in height and 2.5 inches in diameter. It has little wheels inset inside it, all along the middle circumference, little wheels which spin when air blows through the tube fast enough. I imagine this little device right in the center of my windpipe, just behind the sternum (a little lower) right near where the windpipe bifurcates out to the lungs. In each pose, as my body bends forward and backward and side to side, I can imagine where in my body the non-deformable little tube thing has been moved to - if I bend backwards, my spine pushes it up into my chest. If I bend forwards, the tube thingy moves into my back, feeling almost near my spine. In each pose, I spend almost 75% of my mental energy trying to spin the little wheels with my breath, imagining pulling the air through from below the device, hard. This has kept my heart rate down dramatically, and seems to have made the entire class not so panicky. Anyway, there it is.
Dr T's poop lecture was disappointing. In a nutshell: Don't grunt or push too hard, just... you know... poop. There's a much longer and more verbose version of it involving the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, blah blah blah... yeah. Just poop. I guess we'll have to wait on the revelations.
I have a visualization about breathing that I want to describe. It seems to be working magnificently for me. I imagine a plastic piece of PVC tubing, about 1.5 inches in height and 2.5 inches in diameter. It has little wheels inset inside it, all along the middle circumference, little wheels which spin when air blows through the tube fast enough. I imagine this little device right in the center of my windpipe, just behind the sternum (a little lower) right near where the windpipe bifurcates out to the lungs. In each pose, as my body bends forward and backward and side to side, I can imagine where in my body the non-deformable little tube thing has been moved to - if I bend backwards, my spine pushes it up into my chest. If I bend forwards, the tube thingy moves into my back, feeling almost near my spine. In each pose, I spend almost 75% of my mental energy trying to spin the little wheels with my breath, imagining pulling the air through from below the device, hard. This has kept my heart rate down dramatically, and seems to have made the entire class not so panicky. Anyway, there it is.
Dr T's poop lecture was disappointing. In a nutshell: Don't grunt or push too hard, just... you know... poop. There's a much longer and more verbose version of it involving the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, blah blah blah... yeah. Just poop. I guess we'll have to wait on the revelations.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Click and Lock
Great Glorious Expanses of the Infinte and Beyond!!!! WHOO HOO!!!!
It works. It's there. It's true. It's not bullshit, it isn't marketing.
I woke up this morning in the foulest mood I've been in for AGES. Pissed off at EVERYONE, my roommates, my vanmates, the yoga school, everyone in LA, annoying kids from my 3rd grade class - my annoyance and irritation knew no temporalspatial bounds!!! Class began horribly and annoyingly. Fuck this lady, who the hell is she? Why the hell doesn't she go back to Kansas? These pranayama breathing cycles SUCK! They're too fast! They're inconsistent! I hate her voice! RARRRR!!!!!.
And then... somewhere around, well (big surprise), ahem... (cough)... camel pose... it just evaporated. It was gone. In a moment, like a splash of water that drenched me for a moment and then slid away. It would be great if I could say these moments of breaking - well, this wasn't the biggest one of the day, but it'd be great if they suddenly made the class easier, but no... class is still hard. But the day was suddenly light, joyful, hilarious, stupid, magnificent, funny, absurd. I belong here! I'm doing this! I love it! May every day from now on be filled with challenges, may I be pushed to where I think I'll break every day, so that when I do rest, I'll SLEEP THE SLEEP OF THE JUST! (as Joe would say...). Yoga Teacher from Kansas whose name I cannot remember, I SALUTE YOU! I was a fool to ever doubt your pranayama pacing!!!
That wasn't really even the big break. I fucked up my dialog today - I was not as practiced as I could have been, I was a bit low on energy, and the dialog dragged out of me, reluctantly and without excitement. Those poor folks in Standing Bow Pulling Pose - they had nobody there to make them give it their all. But I think I needed that to happen - because it was a failure, but not in the way that I'll beat myself up for it - it was really clarifying. Why did I fail at it? Not because I'm stupid or not cut out for this or lethargic and dull - because I didn't practice it mindfully enough, precisely enough, often enough. Cut and Dry. Simple. And I don't have to feel bad or anxious about the next one, because the next one (Balancing Stick), is going to be incredible. Fun. Hilarious. Exciting. Because, when I go up there, I won't have a sliver of a doubt in my mind that it's going to rock - in fact, I won't even consider it. It will be ingrained. And really - it doesn't take that much to make that happen. Mindfullness, precision - and I'm going to DO THE DIALOG.
And THAT wasn't even the big break. The second class of the day. Was so rushed getting dressed and ready and so on that I didn't have time for the ritual pre-class, "Ugh... not more yoga" exasperation. Got into class - we've transitioned to being in rotation around the room, so it's somewhat forced where in the room you are. I was not quite under a heater, but close enough for sizzletoes. Tight quarters... clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right... and CRAIG IS TEACHING. The remnants of "oh fuck", but not quite as much as usual, and a new feeling - excitement. Just at the end of breathing, which was dizzying - Craig said, "Okay, we're almost halfway through training, you guys are getting a lot stronger now, let's let the horse run a little bit." My heart jumped a bit at it, but again, a new feeling - okay, let's do this. I held awkward part 2, first set, for over one minute, solid as a rock, no sinking, no rocking, face calm, breathing slowly. My thighs were on fire, they were screaming, but I was so focused on trying to keep the breath big and slow and the stomach in and the arms electrified that it was like a voice outside the door. A fucking LOUD voice, of a dude with giant arms and a shotgun. Second time around, a stumble, but only one. It's actually easier to just stay in and live with the pain than it is to get BACK in, I learned tonight.
Craig's class felt like sixth gear. I know we've got more to climb, I know this is not the fastest or most intense or strongest class we'll have, and I know I'll find more in me, but I really WENT for it. I stayed in the loathsome standing head to knee, even though I can barely express it. I held bow on two sides without falling, without having bad form. And camel... it was like one of those shows where they have to crack open the sternum to get to the heart, it just folded open, I seriously felt like my sternum was a v-shape pointing out of my chest. Surrender, release - I drank almost nothing for the whole class.
And this evening has been like wearing a new pair of clothes. I feel like something just snapped. I'm SO ENERGIZED. I can feel my skin sizzling. I feel like I can reach out with my feelings and actually FEEL my friends in New Zealand, just the hint of them, but they're there, especially Clodagh, who I can almost reach out and touch. I'm bouncing of the walls, and feel like I have a giggle inside my chest that I can barely contain - it's just shy of uncomfortable, but solidly in the territory of AWESOME. I don't know how many times I'll get to feel this way, but the hairs on my legs are literally standing on end. And I want MORE.
Actually, I'm avoiding the real truth here... Dr. Trapani, or "Dr T.", our esteemed Anatomy/Physiology teacher has promised us, on his honor, with great seriousness... to teach us tomorrow how to properly poop. I'm completely serious. And he even wagered that, after his "How to properly have a Bowel Movement" class is complete, that not a single one of us will be able to say we've ever previously contemplated what he will provide us to ponder. Pinky... are you pondering what I'm pondering? Yeah, Brain, but where we gonna find twelve rubber duckies and a bucket of yogurt at this time of night? So, tomorrow.... I shall report on how to poop. CORRECTLY. Be prepared. (We speculate here that it will involve 3 feet of rubber hose, a plastic bag with NO HOLES, a rubber band, and a meat thermometer. The jury is out on the WD40).
It works. It's there. It's true. It's not bullshit, it isn't marketing.
I woke up this morning in the foulest mood I've been in for AGES. Pissed off at EVERYONE, my roommates, my vanmates, the yoga school, everyone in LA, annoying kids from my 3rd grade class - my annoyance and irritation knew no temporalspatial bounds!!! Class began horribly and annoyingly. Fuck this lady, who the hell is she? Why the hell doesn't she go back to Kansas? These pranayama breathing cycles SUCK! They're too fast! They're inconsistent! I hate her voice! RARRRR!!!!!.
And then... somewhere around, well (big surprise), ahem... (cough)... camel pose... it just evaporated. It was gone. In a moment, like a splash of water that drenched me for a moment and then slid away. It would be great if I could say these moments of breaking - well, this wasn't the biggest one of the day, but it'd be great if they suddenly made the class easier, but no... class is still hard. But the day was suddenly light, joyful, hilarious, stupid, magnificent, funny, absurd. I belong here! I'm doing this! I love it! May every day from now on be filled with challenges, may I be pushed to where I think I'll break every day, so that when I do rest, I'll SLEEP THE SLEEP OF THE JUST! (as Joe would say...). Yoga Teacher from Kansas whose name I cannot remember, I SALUTE YOU! I was a fool to ever doubt your pranayama pacing!!!
That wasn't really even the big break. I fucked up my dialog today - I was not as practiced as I could have been, I was a bit low on energy, and the dialog dragged out of me, reluctantly and without excitement. Those poor folks in Standing Bow Pulling Pose - they had nobody there to make them give it their all. But I think I needed that to happen - because it was a failure, but not in the way that I'll beat myself up for it - it was really clarifying. Why did I fail at it? Not because I'm stupid or not cut out for this or lethargic and dull - because I didn't practice it mindfully enough, precisely enough, often enough. Cut and Dry. Simple. And I don't have to feel bad or anxious about the next one, because the next one (Balancing Stick), is going to be incredible. Fun. Hilarious. Exciting. Because, when I go up there, I won't have a sliver of a doubt in my mind that it's going to rock - in fact, I won't even consider it. It will be ingrained. And really - it doesn't take that much to make that happen. Mindfullness, precision - and I'm going to DO THE DIALOG.
And THAT wasn't even the big break. The second class of the day. Was so rushed getting dressed and ready and so on that I didn't have time for the ritual pre-class, "Ugh... not more yoga" exasperation. Got into class - we've transitioned to being in rotation around the room, so it's somewhat forced where in the room you are. I was not quite under a heater, but close enough for sizzletoes. Tight quarters... clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right... and CRAIG IS TEACHING. The remnants of "oh fuck", but not quite as much as usual, and a new feeling - excitement. Just at the end of breathing, which was dizzying - Craig said, "Okay, we're almost halfway through training, you guys are getting a lot stronger now, let's let the horse run a little bit." My heart jumped a bit at it, but again, a new feeling - okay, let's do this. I held awkward part 2, first set, for over one minute, solid as a rock, no sinking, no rocking, face calm, breathing slowly. My thighs were on fire, they were screaming, but I was so focused on trying to keep the breath big and slow and the stomach in and the arms electrified that it was like a voice outside the door. A fucking LOUD voice, of a dude with giant arms and a shotgun. Second time around, a stumble, but only one. It's actually easier to just stay in and live with the pain than it is to get BACK in, I learned tonight.
Craig's class felt like sixth gear. I know we've got more to climb, I know this is not the fastest or most intense or strongest class we'll have, and I know I'll find more in me, but I really WENT for it. I stayed in the loathsome standing head to knee, even though I can barely express it. I held bow on two sides without falling, without having bad form. And camel... it was like one of those shows where they have to crack open the sternum to get to the heart, it just folded open, I seriously felt like my sternum was a v-shape pointing out of my chest. Surrender, release - I drank almost nothing for the whole class.
And this evening has been like wearing a new pair of clothes. I feel like something just snapped. I'm SO ENERGIZED. I can feel my skin sizzling. I feel like I can reach out with my feelings and actually FEEL my friends in New Zealand, just the hint of them, but they're there, especially Clodagh, who I can almost reach out and touch. I'm bouncing of the walls, and feel like I have a giggle inside my chest that I can barely contain - it's just shy of uncomfortable, but solidly in the territory of AWESOME. I don't know how many times I'll get to feel this way, but the hairs on my legs are literally standing on end. And I want MORE.
Actually, I'm avoiding the real truth here... Dr. Trapani, or "Dr T.", our esteemed Anatomy/Physiology teacher has promised us, on his honor, with great seriousness... to teach us tomorrow how to properly poop. I'm completely serious. And he even wagered that, after his "How to properly have a Bowel Movement" class is complete, that not a single one of us will be able to say we've ever previously contemplated what he will provide us to ponder. Pinky... are you pondering what I'm pondering? Yeah, Brain, but where we gonna find twelve rubber duckies and a bucket of yogurt at this time of night? So, tomorrow.... I shall report on how to poop. CORRECTLY. Be prepared. (We speculate here that it will involve 3 feet of rubber hose, a plastic bag with NO HOLES, a rubber band, and a meat thermometer. The jury is out on the WD40).
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
The slumps are BORING.
It's so boring to be melancholy! I know I'm worn down, but I'm not worn down so much that I'm approaching a breaking point, and I'm almost disappointed - it seems like, for many people, the breaking down is a sacrament of some kind, a doorway to something else. I suppose I could intentionally drive myself into the ground, but that doesn't seem like the right thing to do.
I wonder if the training of the movie industry and my "previous life" has given me tools for managing chaos. I'm good at ignoring madness and doing as much as I can, even pushing myself for excellence, without beating myself up for not dotting all the i's and lower case j's... but then again, perhaps I am beating myself up for it.
Two noteworthy things happened today. First of all, I instinctively used my friend Kris's mocking theory of reassurance on a friend who was struggling, and it totally worked. I was so thrilled. One of my new yoga friends was sitting on the floor outside in the lobby, looking a bit vacant and shattered, crying very lightly. I watched a bunch of people go over to tell her she'd be okay, and she responded and nodded, but still looked a bit distant. As I was leaving, I walked past her and gave her a hug and said, something along the lines of, "Yeah, you're a total broke-dick. You're so broken. You should probably give up, clearly you're not made for this... soooo retarded". My tone was caring, but with that loving mockery that Kris has taught me. And she laughed and shook it off and hugged me back. I think Kris should have mockery teacher training. And make a reality show out of it.
The second thing that was interesting was a dialog delivery by one of our dialog superstars. We have a girl in our group who's a television personality in the UK, sorta a VJ on a music show on the BBC, as it was explained to me (I'm probably getting that wrong). Anyway, she got up and delivered Standing Head to Knee pretty much flawlessly, as usual. Because it seemed to be effortless for her, the advice she got from the instructors was that she needed to get out of her comfort zone, to fuck up a little bit. So, when we transitioned to the next dialog, Standing Bow Pulling Pose, she got right up in the front of the line, announced that she did not have the pose memorized, but was going to "fuck up", as instructed. She proceeded to deliver the best dialog I've heard so far. Amazingly, she managed to get about 75% of the dialog correct, but more importantly, she taught. She gave individual corrections, she spoke quickly, she was enthusiastic and excited and pulled them into the depths of the pose. I was so inspired! I feel like this is a lesson I want to learn. I don't feel like I'm teaching. I'm somewhere in between performing and trying to remember. I don't feel like I'm doing badly, but I'm still very conscious. I want to feel like the instruction is just flowing out of me.
I almost cried in savasana today. Almost - still working on it - the teacher had mentioned that she was humbled and giving respect for the fact that we had given up money and time and our loved ones so that we can make this commitment to learning to help people. She said that in a few weeks (my first class is in like 6 weeks! Holy shit!) we'll be in front of a room of people who are looking to us to HELP them. Not just teach, or explain, but HELP. This got me for some reason. I felt shocked by it. I know that my reasons for coming here were not really principally about helping others. They were about helping me, really pretty selfishly, to superficially look better, discover some new tricks, and hopefully find a way to like myself more (that theme is getting so boring!). Still, I'm here, and the prospect of not only helping people, but voluntarily choosing to make a life change so I can help people, and myself... that's really a big deal! I've never thought about doing something like that before, and have been in a small amount of awe of people like Clodagh who specifically chose their life path so they could help people.
I'm going to see if I can get a bit extra sleep tonight, as an attempt to find some passion for doing this, instead of this meandering dread about having to struggle. I also must note - I feel a little bit of pressure now to be interesting in my blog entries, knowing that people are reading them! It's so weird!!!
I wonder if the training of the movie industry and my "previous life" has given me tools for managing chaos. I'm good at ignoring madness and doing as much as I can, even pushing myself for excellence, without beating myself up for not dotting all the i's and lower case j's... but then again, perhaps I am beating myself up for it.
Two noteworthy things happened today. First of all, I instinctively used my friend Kris's mocking theory of reassurance on a friend who was struggling, and it totally worked. I was so thrilled. One of my new yoga friends was sitting on the floor outside in the lobby, looking a bit vacant and shattered, crying very lightly. I watched a bunch of people go over to tell her she'd be okay, and she responded and nodded, but still looked a bit distant. As I was leaving, I walked past her and gave her a hug and said, something along the lines of, "Yeah, you're a total broke-dick. You're so broken. You should probably give up, clearly you're not made for this... soooo retarded". My tone was caring, but with that loving mockery that Kris has taught me. And she laughed and shook it off and hugged me back. I think Kris should have mockery teacher training. And make a reality show out of it.
The second thing that was interesting was a dialog delivery by one of our dialog superstars. We have a girl in our group who's a television personality in the UK, sorta a VJ on a music show on the BBC, as it was explained to me (I'm probably getting that wrong). Anyway, she got up and delivered Standing Head to Knee pretty much flawlessly, as usual. Because it seemed to be effortless for her, the advice she got from the instructors was that she needed to get out of her comfort zone, to fuck up a little bit. So, when we transitioned to the next dialog, Standing Bow Pulling Pose, she got right up in the front of the line, announced that she did not have the pose memorized, but was going to "fuck up", as instructed. She proceeded to deliver the best dialog I've heard so far. Amazingly, she managed to get about 75% of the dialog correct, but more importantly, she taught. She gave individual corrections, she spoke quickly, she was enthusiastic and excited and pulled them into the depths of the pose. I was so inspired! I feel like this is a lesson I want to learn. I don't feel like I'm teaching. I'm somewhere in between performing and trying to remember. I don't feel like I'm doing badly, but I'm still very conscious. I want to feel like the instruction is just flowing out of me.
I almost cried in savasana today. Almost - still working on it - the teacher had mentioned that she was humbled and giving respect for the fact that we had given up money and time and our loved ones so that we can make this commitment to learning to help people. She said that in a few weeks (my first class is in like 6 weeks! Holy shit!) we'll be in front of a room of people who are looking to us to HELP them. Not just teach, or explain, but HELP. This got me for some reason. I felt shocked by it. I know that my reasons for coming here were not really principally about helping others. They were about helping me, really pretty selfishly, to superficially look better, discover some new tricks, and hopefully find a way to like myself more (that theme is getting so boring!). Still, I'm here, and the prospect of not only helping people, but voluntarily choosing to make a life change so I can help people, and myself... that's really a big deal! I've never thought about doing something like that before, and have been in a small amount of awe of people like Clodagh who specifically chose their life path so they could help people.
I'm going to see if I can get a bit extra sleep tonight, as an attempt to find some passion for doing this, instead of this meandering dread about having to struggle. I also must note - I feel a little bit of pressure now to be interesting in my blog entries, knowing that people are reading them! It's so weird!!!
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Under, under, under my skin
When do we learn the MOTHAFUCKIN' ATTACK YOGA? They keep talking about shooting figurative lasers out of our outstretched hands and feet - when do we get the literal lasers? Because I have a bunch of people I need to incinerate!!!
Well, maybe not quite so drastically. It seems that I'm about a week behind everybody else, because the irritation and annoyance that everybody seemed to have been hit by last week hit me like a mack truck today. The specific irritants aren't worth describing, that'd just exacerbate the problem. To quote Ruben & Ed, "It's not the problem that's the problem, it's how you handle the problem that's the problem". I'm really frustrated with myself in the physical aspects of the practice - of course, in areas that I shouldn't waste time being frustrated about. I'm frustrated with myself because I can't empty and still my mind while under a heat blower in a 106F room. And these frustrations are just bleeding out into irritation with things I'm surrounded by, things that probably wouldn't normally trouble me enough to get worked up about it.
Last night I stayed up until 2am writing a computer program to randomly quiz me in anatomy/physiology to help study for the midterm, which was today. I got 100% correct (even without the giveaways!), but I seriously doubt it was worth the sleep deprivation and general shreddedness in class today. Still - I can use the same program for the next midterm next week, so that'll be something.
I feel like I'm in a stalling place. Usually that feeling is shortly followed by something drastic, so I'm a little expectant. Bring it... on?
Well, maybe not quite so drastically. It seems that I'm about a week behind everybody else, because the irritation and annoyance that everybody seemed to have been hit by last week hit me like a mack truck today. The specific irritants aren't worth describing, that'd just exacerbate the problem. To quote Ruben & Ed, "It's not the problem that's the problem, it's how you handle the problem that's the problem". I'm really frustrated with myself in the physical aspects of the practice - of course, in areas that I shouldn't waste time being frustrated about. I'm frustrated with myself because I can't empty and still my mind while under a heat blower in a 106F room. And these frustrations are just bleeding out into irritation with things I'm surrounded by, things that probably wouldn't normally trouble me enough to get worked up about it.
Last night I stayed up until 2am writing a computer program to randomly quiz me in anatomy/physiology to help study for the midterm, which was today. I got 100% correct (even without the giveaways!), but I seriously doubt it was worth the sleep deprivation and general shreddedness in class today. Still - I can use the same program for the next midterm next week, so that'll be something.
I feel like I'm in a stalling place. Usually that feeling is shortly followed by something drastic, so I'm a little expectant. Bring it... on?
Friday, April 28, 2006
Amrit Desai
Today we were blessed by a teaching from the Guru Amrit Desai. The yoga studio was all buzzing today because Amrit Desai is a very honored guest, one who has never come to teacher training before - or at least not for the last 6 years, I'm uncertain of the exact details.
I'm still feeling buzzy and floaty from the encounter with him. I sat in the first row, near him, because my vision is fairly blurry. When he entered the room, there was a distinct sense of an almost electrical charge in the air. After being introduced, he led us in a guided meditation with mantras and the chanting of "om". At first I was a little self conscious, and felt like I was out of my element, but I relaxed into the experience quickly and tried to open my heart. I've never been in a room with a few hundred people all resonating the sound "om" at exactly the same frequency - but when it happened, when my own sound merged with the room's sound - my whole body vibrated and I felt like a fountain of light emerged behind my closed eyes. My cheeks and face felt suddenly cool.
After the mantras, Yogi Desai led us in a teaching about his Kriya Yoga. The contrast between Yogi Desai and Bikram was almost comical. Bikram is very chaotic - his philosophical teachings are presented in machine gun firing fashion - one of them bullets has got to hit. Amrit was like a surgeon. He explained each idea in slow, simple terms, and then cemented each idea firmly before taking a small step forward. I never for a moment felt like I needed to take notes or catch up. It was hypnotizing. Several times during the lecture, his eyes met mine and for that moment I felt rooted, almost cemented to the spot. At one point, Amrit performed a prana breathing exercise - just himself - and about 3/4 of the way through I felt like the room began to warp and vibrate in my vision while Yogi Desai stayed perfectly still. Other people later in the class described feeling and even seeing the hairs on their arms stand up.
I summoned my courage and asked the burning question that plagues me - "What is Energy?". I asked Yogi Desai to explain energy as he might explain it to a child. His initial response was "Energy is the fuel that fuels the thoughts of the mind and the actions of the body." He then elaborated, describing how an elderly person (grandparents) who no longer has lust for life or zeal to do things has very little energy, while a young child who is bouncing off the walls has very much energy. A definition through inference, sorta. I then asked how this "interpersonal energy", which I can accept the existence of through inference without too much trouble, relates to the concept of energy between people and things. There's so much talk in yoga of "the energy in the room" and "keep your energy aligned with the class, stick together, and you'll be able to surf that energy like a wave". I've actually experienced that feeling in a yoga class of getting swept up by the momentum of the whole class. Yogi Desai answered that the energy in a person is the same as the energy that connects us, and that furthermore, by gaining consciousness of the energy in our selves, we connect to that larger energy outside ourselves and become larger than ourselves. I've got a lot to chew on... (ruminate!)
Doug taught class after the teaching, and it was trippy. It was like a whole different yoga. The hum from a billion bees in the room during the whole class. I found myself moving without deciding to or even thinking about it. And my breathing is becoming automatic. It was a day of revelations. During some of the savasanas, particularly after camel and in the end, people were sobbing quite loudly and uncontrollably. Even though I did not (cannot?) cry, I felt like it was a release for all of us through those few people who let go.
Third week, almost in the bag.
For those of you who would like to know more: Amrit Yoga
I'm still feeling buzzy and floaty from the encounter with him. I sat in the first row, near him, because my vision is fairly blurry. When he entered the room, there was a distinct sense of an almost electrical charge in the air. After being introduced, he led us in a guided meditation with mantras and the chanting of "om". At first I was a little self conscious, and felt like I was out of my element, but I relaxed into the experience quickly and tried to open my heart. I've never been in a room with a few hundred people all resonating the sound "om" at exactly the same frequency - but when it happened, when my own sound merged with the room's sound - my whole body vibrated and I felt like a fountain of light emerged behind my closed eyes. My cheeks and face felt suddenly cool.
After the mantras, Yogi Desai led us in a teaching about his Kriya Yoga. The contrast between Yogi Desai and Bikram was almost comical. Bikram is very chaotic - his philosophical teachings are presented in machine gun firing fashion - one of them bullets has got to hit. Amrit was like a surgeon. He explained each idea in slow, simple terms, and then cemented each idea firmly before taking a small step forward. I never for a moment felt like I needed to take notes or catch up. It was hypnotizing. Several times during the lecture, his eyes met mine and for that moment I felt rooted, almost cemented to the spot. At one point, Amrit performed a prana breathing exercise - just himself - and about 3/4 of the way through I felt like the room began to warp and vibrate in my vision while Yogi Desai stayed perfectly still. Other people later in the class described feeling and even seeing the hairs on their arms stand up.
I summoned my courage and asked the burning question that plagues me - "What is Energy?". I asked Yogi Desai to explain energy as he might explain it to a child. His initial response was "Energy is the fuel that fuels the thoughts of the mind and the actions of the body." He then elaborated, describing how an elderly person (grandparents) who no longer has lust for life or zeal to do things has very little energy, while a young child who is bouncing off the walls has very much energy. A definition through inference, sorta. I then asked how this "interpersonal energy", which I can accept the existence of through inference without too much trouble, relates to the concept of energy between people and things. There's so much talk in yoga of "the energy in the room" and "keep your energy aligned with the class, stick together, and you'll be able to surf that energy like a wave". I've actually experienced that feeling in a yoga class of getting swept up by the momentum of the whole class. Yogi Desai answered that the energy in a person is the same as the energy that connects us, and that furthermore, by gaining consciousness of the energy in our selves, we connect to that larger energy outside ourselves and become larger than ourselves. I've got a lot to chew on... (ruminate!)
Doug taught class after the teaching, and it was trippy. It was like a whole different yoga. The hum from a billion bees in the room during the whole class. I found myself moving without deciding to or even thinking about it. And my breathing is becoming automatic. It was a day of revelations. During some of the savasanas, particularly after camel and in the end, people were sobbing quite loudly and uncontrollably. Even though I did not (cannot?) cry, I felt like it was a release for all of us through those few people who let go.
Third week, almost in the bag.
For those of you who would like to know more: Amrit Yoga
Waves
With every up, there is a down. With every down, there is an up.
I was pretty crushed the other night. The feeling of separation from my New Zealand friends and especially Clodagh is wearing on me. The lack of sleep, the relentlessness of this process, the feeling of falling behind and falling behind. Eventually it just reaches a breaking point.
I felt like today was a bit of a breaking point for me, but not in any huge dramatic way - I just had so little energy I couldn't do anything. In class, I managed to attempt the poses, but the entire time I was just trying to find energy just to stay present. I kept falling asleep for 20 seconds in the floor series savasanas, and waking up abruptly everytime Emmy said, "Second Set" or "Sit-Up". This would be the perfect alarm clock for me - a recording of Emmy saying, "Sit Up".
There was a weird upside to all of this, though. Almost every day, I beat myself up constantly during yoga practice - I hate that I'm so weak in the poses, I hate that my hips are so tight, I'm so fixated on the place where my pose "sticks" on its way to the perfect expression. I know that the "secret" is that, no matter if I do this my whole life (or several lifetimes, if I start buying into THAT whole thing...), I'll still be hitting a sticking point in my yoga - it'll just move further and further in, but still be every bit as difficult, physically. But... just maybe, my mind will get calmer. I feel like that started to happen today, for a weird reason: I was too tired to think. My mind would start the usual, "Oh shit, Standing Head To Knee is coming soon, I fucking hate that posture, it kicks my ass" and just run out of gas as I stared blankly at somebody's water bottle. And class was calmer, less of a panic. I feel like this is my battle right now - or one of them - not the physical part, but letting the mental chatter pass me by.
Of course, reading over that, it all feels almost scripted - but, it's happening, so there you have it.
Dr. Lillian Glass, "Speech Pathologist to the Stars!" came and gave us a lecture yesterday, after our Anatomy/Physiology lecture with the very unusual Dr. T. Anyway, it was a very strange experience... it felt very distinctly like a "motivational speaker seminar" that business people pay lots of money for based on ads in the back of magazines that they give you on airplanes. She was very succinct and effective and did manage to unblock a few of the most challenged public speakers amongst us, and she had a few cool pieces of advice (my favorite was, "Be Interested, Not Interesting"), but...
My mother gave me a piece of advice when I was in high school that has stuck with me ever since then and feels like one of my most useful social tools - it goes, "Don't Take Advice From People Who Don't Have What You're Looking For". And applying that to this situation - while I enjoyed Dr. Glass's instruction on interpersonal communication - it seemed heartless and superficial on some level, and at the end of the day - I don't want to end up communicating the way Dr. Glass did to our class. She seemed uncompassionate and superficial - not entirely, she did smile very geniuinely at us, but it was bizarre to have what we're doing framed in terms of "selling" and "being a winner, not a loser". I am aware that these tools and mindsets help us achieve our larger goals of helping others and ourselves, but I didn't feel that conviction underneath it all. With Bikram, despite his grandstanding, I do genuinely sense a basic, fundamental desire to help people. And I just didn't feel the same compssion from the lovely speech pathologist. Still, I got up and made a stab at public speaking - expecting to be given a shopping list of things to fix, and instead being told, "Perfect. A+. No changes". Heh...
I was expecting this experience to be all about adding new abilities and new features to myself, and so far, it seems to have a LOT more to do with coming to accept and celebrate the abilities I already have. To stop being so critical of myself. In shorthand, I guess, to stop feeling revulsion when I see myself in the mirror. (Which, little by little, is starting to happen). I find it interesting that my entire assessment of my appearance, and subsequently self, is defined almost exclusively by the things I can pick out on myself that are undesireable. Instead of noticing that my shoulders are getting really rounded and defined, or that I'm smiling more often and easily, or that I'm not furrowed with frustration or anger really ever at all... I see my flabby stomach, or my chubby skin, or my messy hair, or whatever... Thank GOD this shit is changing, if only little by litte.
Dialogue delivery becomes more and more fun. The thought of returning to Wellington and forcing all of my friends and a few helpless strangers to kill themselves in a stupidly hot room tickles me. And - I love that if I screw up, or forget my dialog, it just means that they all have to hold the poses longer and have their muscles and minds scream at them while they shoot eye daggers at me. BWA HA HA HAHA HA!!!!!
Almost a third week down the drain. I feel weirdly torn - I'm anxious about the coming weeks and the challenges they'll contain, and I'm counting the seconds until I'm reunited with my friends, and yet.... this experience is so magical, so wonderful, so BIG - I never want it to end, in a way. I love that my life consists almost exclusively of getting my mind back in touch with my body and taking care of my health. Why did it take so long to get here?
I was pretty crushed the other night. The feeling of separation from my New Zealand friends and especially Clodagh is wearing on me. The lack of sleep, the relentlessness of this process, the feeling of falling behind and falling behind. Eventually it just reaches a breaking point.
I felt like today was a bit of a breaking point for me, but not in any huge dramatic way - I just had so little energy I couldn't do anything. In class, I managed to attempt the poses, but the entire time I was just trying to find energy just to stay present. I kept falling asleep for 20 seconds in the floor series savasanas, and waking up abruptly everytime Emmy said, "Second Set" or "Sit-Up". This would be the perfect alarm clock for me - a recording of Emmy saying, "Sit Up".
There was a weird upside to all of this, though. Almost every day, I beat myself up constantly during yoga practice - I hate that I'm so weak in the poses, I hate that my hips are so tight, I'm so fixated on the place where my pose "sticks" on its way to the perfect expression. I know that the "secret" is that, no matter if I do this my whole life (or several lifetimes, if I start buying into THAT whole thing...), I'll still be hitting a sticking point in my yoga - it'll just move further and further in, but still be every bit as difficult, physically. But... just maybe, my mind will get calmer. I feel like that started to happen today, for a weird reason: I was too tired to think. My mind would start the usual, "Oh shit, Standing Head To Knee is coming soon, I fucking hate that posture, it kicks my ass" and just run out of gas as I stared blankly at somebody's water bottle. And class was calmer, less of a panic. I feel like this is my battle right now - or one of them - not the physical part, but letting the mental chatter pass me by.
Of course, reading over that, it all feels almost scripted - but, it's happening, so there you have it.
Dr. Lillian Glass, "Speech Pathologist to the Stars!" came and gave us a lecture yesterday, after our Anatomy/Physiology lecture with the very unusual Dr. T. Anyway, it was a very strange experience... it felt very distinctly like a "motivational speaker seminar" that business people pay lots of money for based on ads in the back of magazines that they give you on airplanes. She was very succinct and effective and did manage to unblock a few of the most challenged public speakers amongst us, and she had a few cool pieces of advice (my favorite was, "Be Interested, Not Interesting"), but...
My mother gave me a piece of advice when I was in high school that has stuck with me ever since then and feels like one of my most useful social tools - it goes, "Don't Take Advice From People Who Don't Have What You're Looking For". And applying that to this situation - while I enjoyed Dr. Glass's instruction on interpersonal communication - it seemed heartless and superficial on some level, and at the end of the day - I don't want to end up communicating the way Dr. Glass did to our class. She seemed uncompassionate and superficial - not entirely, she did smile very geniuinely at us, but it was bizarre to have what we're doing framed in terms of "selling" and "being a winner, not a loser". I am aware that these tools and mindsets help us achieve our larger goals of helping others and ourselves, but I didn't feel that conviction underneath it all. With Bikram, despite his grandstanding, I do genuinely sense a basic, fundamental desire to help people. And I just didn't feel the same compssion from the lovely speech pathologist. Still, I got up and made a stab at public speaking - expecting to be given a shopping list of things to fix, and instead being told, "Perfect. A+. No changes". Heh...
I was expecting this experience to be all about adding new abilities and new features to myself, and so far, it seems to have a LOT more to do with coming to accept and celebrate the abilities I already have. To stop being so critical of myself. In shorthand, I guess, to stop feeling revulsion when I see myself in the mirror. (Which, little by little, is starting to happen). I find it interesting that my entire assessment of my appearance, and subsequently self, is defined almost exclusively by the things I can pick out on myself that are undesireable. Instead of noticing that my shoulders are getting really rounded and defined, or that I'm smiling more often and easily, or that I'm not furrowed with frustration or anger really ever at all... I see my flabby stomach, or my chubby skin, or my messy hair, or whatever... Thank GOD this shit is changing, if only little by litte.
Dialogue delivery becomes more and more fun. The thought of returning to Wellington and forcing all of my friends and a few helpless strangers to kill themselves in a stupidly hot room tickles me. And - I love that if I screw up, or forget my dialog, it just means that they all have to hold the poses longer and have their muscles and minds scream at them while they shoot eye daggers at me. BWA HA HA HAHA HA!!!!!
Almost a third week down the drain. I feel weirdly torn - I'm anxious about the coming weeks and the challenges they'll contain, and I'm counting the seconds until I'm reunited with my friends, and yet.... this experience is so magical, so wonderful, so BIG - I never want it to end, in a way. I love that my life consists almost exclusively of getting my mind back in touch with my body and taking care of my health. Why did it take so long to get here?
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Screw you guys, I'm going home...
No. More. Yoga. Camp.
So... tired. Behind on memorizing my dialogue. Have tons of raw food ingredients to cook, but too tired to do it. Need to eat more, too tired to find food to eat. Can't imagine making it through 7 more classes this week. Have no idea how to integrate the comments I've been given into my dialogue. Miss Clodagh terribly, miss my friends, miss stupid video games. I'm not even losing weight.
Blah. Meh. Hrmph.
So... tired. Behind on memorizing my dialogue. Have tons of raw food ingredients to cook, but too tired to do it. Need to eat more, too tired to find food to eat. Can't imagine making it through 7 more classes this week. Have no idea how to integrate the comments I've been given into my dialogue. Miss Clodagh terribly, miss my friends, miss stupid video games. I'm not even losing weight.
Blah. Meh. Hrmph.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Big Crazy Monday.
Today was an interesting and chaotic day. Woke up with the wonderful sciatica pain, which dominated my morning until yoga class. We had a super senior teacher, Cindy, who was WONDERFUL. She's been teaching for 27 years - started along with Emmy as two of Bikram's first students in the United States, and has been doing it ever since. She taught us the literal meaning of various sanskrit words while we lay in savasana. I had to run out of the room right before the first breathing pose to pee, as my bladder suddenly approached bursting point, out of nowhere. But when I came back, she complimented me in Half Moon Pose, saying that she was glad I went to pee because I had a beautiful Half Moon now that my bladder was empty.
We started Anatomy today, meeting Dr. Tripani, yet another of the absurdly overqualified top-of-their-field experts who are here to teach us. Anatomy & Physiology was WAY more interesting than I expected, and the pace of the class was really surprisingly fast. He's a chiropractor, among other things, so when I went to speak to him after his class about sciatica, he felt around on my back and informed me that I have scoliosis of the lumbar spine! Hoot! Like I said, bring on the numbness and nervous twitching. He gave me a series of tips for how to modify and focus my Bikram Yoga practice to address this and fix it - so, THAT's exciting.
I did the first part of Awkward pose today. I got up, delivered the dialogue, and I really thought I rocked it. I thought I had tons of energy, was fast and direct. But when I was done, they said I didn't seem sincere, like I meant it, and that it seemed a bit casual. So I had to do it again - I tried to add "oomph", but they gave me the same criticism - I was starting to feel really embarrassed, and then they demanded that I do the pose as over the top as possible - which I did - it was just LUDICROUS. I felt like Richard Simmons on crystal meth. And when I finished, all this applause and then they responded, "Exactly! Perfect! If you do your class like that, you can charge $100 per class!" Yadda, yadda. To be honest, I am surprised that I had had that kind of energy in me, but also - I'm surprised that this is the kind of class they want me to teach. It felt so crazily overdone. But everyone I asked about it afterwards was so thrilled with it - do I maybe hear my own voice as more intense than it actually is? I had so much energy after doing the pose that way that I was twitching for a half an hour.
So beware, Anika - I may come back and teach class like Richard Simmons on crack.
As an aside, this evening's class was my hardest class to date - I started to actually pass out - seeing darkness on the edge of my vision and little stars. It was scary. I turned out to have extremely low electrolytes, and could barely stand up after class. Scary. Electrolytes! My friend!!!!
Do your worst, week 3.
We started Anatomy today, meeting Dr. Tripani, yet another of the absurdly overqualified top-of-their-field experts who are here to teach us. Anatomy & Physiology was WAY more interesting than I expected, and the pace of the class was really surprisingly fast. He's a chiropractor, among other things, so when I went to speak to him after his class about sciatica, he felt around on my back and informed me that I have scoliosis of the lumbar spine! Hoot! Like I said, bring on the numbness and nervous twitching. He gave me a series of tips for how to modify and focus my Bikram Yoga practice to address this and fix it - so, THAT's exciting.
I did the first part of Awkward pose today. I got up, delivered the dialogue, and I really thought I rocked it. I thought I had tons of energy, was fast and direct. But when I was done, they said I didn't seem sincere, like I meant it, and that it seemed a bit casual. So I had to do it again - I tried to add "oomph", but they gave me the same criticism - I was starting to feel really embarrassed, and then they demanded that I do the pose as over the top as possible - which I did - it was just LUDICROUS. I felt like Richard Simmons on crystal meth. And when I finished, all this applause and then they responded, "Exactly! Perfect! If you do your class like that, you can charge $100 per class!" Yadda, yadda. To be honest, I am surprised that I had had that kind of energy in me, but also - I'm surprised that this is the kind of class they want me to teach. It felt so crazily overdone. But everyone I asked about it afterwards was so thrilled with it - do I maybe hear my own voice as more intense than it actually is? I had so much energy after doing the pose that way that I was twitching for a half an hour.
So beware, Anika - I may come back and teach class like Richard Simmons on crack.
As an aside, this evening's class was my hardest class to date - I started to actually pass out - seeing darkness on the edge of my vision and little stars. It was scary. I turned out to have extremely low electrolytes, and could barely stand up after class. Scary. Electrolytes! My friend!!!!
Do your worst, week 3.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Sciatica sucks
Ow! OW! OWWW!!!!
My entire right hand side is a throbbing chunk of PAIN! About a week before I came to yoga camp, I got a bit of mild sciatica. Sometime between yesterday morning and right now it turned into the most unbelievable pain I've ever felt. Last night I could barely lie down in bed, and today I'm walking all funny!
To add insult to injury, an internet search on how to treat sciatica suggested that the best cure is YOGA! Particularly BIKRAM YOGA! GAHHH!!!!
I'm actually not that upset about it. It's kinda funny that this is happening. Let's have some numbness!!! Maybe a nervous twitch! HOOT! Seriously, BRING IT ON.
My entire right hand side is a throbbing chunk of PAIN! About a week before I came to yoga camp, I got a bit of mild sciatica. Sometime between yesterday morning and right now it turned into the most unbelievable pain I've ever felt. Last night I could barely lie down in bed, and today I'm walking all funny!
To add insult to injury, an internet search on how to treat sciatica suggested that the best cure is YOGA! Particularly BIKRAM YOGA! GAHHH!!!!
I'm actually not that upset about it. It's kinda funny that this is happening. Let's have some numbness!!! Maybe a nervous twitch! HOOT! Seriously, BRING IT ON.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Excerpts
Actual conversation snippets floating up around me.
"I'm pretty sure there's a war brewing between yogis and robots. But the yogis are totally gonna win, because, um - you know, we can like, regenerate and shit, and the robots will have to get repaired or they'll like break."
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's a post-apocalyptic nightmare world coming soon, so the faster we can get on top of our robot skills, the sooner."
"Dude, as long as there's asymmetrical haircuts and dune-buggies, I'll be happy with it. Bring on the oversized sunglasses."
"So wait, did you say you're going to SRF or to SRL tomorrow? What's SRF? Oh dude - that's the Self Realization Fellowship. Oh. I thought you said SRL. The Survival Research Labs... you know, giant robots killing each other. They're really not the same. No, not really..."
Wow.
"I'm pretty sure there's a war brewing between yogis and robots. But the yogis are totally gonna win, because, um - you know, we can like, regenerate and shit, and the robots will have to get repaired or they'll like break."
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's a post-apocalyptic nightmare world coming soon, so the faster we can get on top of our robot skills, the sooner."
"Dude, as long as there's asymmetrical haircuts and dune-buggies, I'll be happy with it. Bring on the oversized sunglasses."
"So wait, did you say you're going to SRF or to SRL tomorrow? What's SRF? Oh dude - that's the Self Realization Fellowship. Oh. I thought you said SRL. The Survival Research Labs... you know, giant robots killing each other. They're really not the same. No, not really..."
Wow.
Pride and Rest and Cold, Cool Water
6 days. 11 yoga classes, more than half of which were harder than any I've taken before. I feel so proud of myself and of everyone for making it through this whole week. Certain that subsequent weeks will be okay, though painful. And for the next day and a half, a bit of (sorta) rest! Hoot!!!
Friday, April 21, 2006
War weary.
People in the yoga studio seem a bit haunted today - lots of dark eyes, pale skin, skinny, skinny bodies. I feel strangely unaffected. I feel a lot of changes in my mind and my calm, and I feel my positivity growing by the day, but my body seems totally unchanging. But people around me seem to be shrinking a lot - and not always in a good way.
Rajashree taught class this morning, and I had to place my mat directly in front of her because I asked her yesterday about my misaligned hips. I have been increasingly worried that I'm not even getting to first base with a lot of poses because my hips are so tight and lopsided. Alas, my delusions of being a misfit were shattered when Rajashree said that I had "excellent form" and that "nothing was wrong with me". I just have tight hips. But in her pre-class mini lecture (just 10 minutes or so), she mentioned that this week was the end of the "ease in" and now they can really start to challenge us. I get a little pang of panic every time I hear that. But she also said that in the next two weeks there are going to be a lot of frustrations and emotions coming up, and people are going to get irritated and angry with each other, so we should be easy on each other.
After she said that, today it was like a BOMB went off. People are pissed off at Bikram, pissed off at Craig, pissed off at Doug, pissed off at each other. Lunch was medium snarky. Dinner was medium-well snarky. Our van ride home was a bit aggressive as well... I'm trying to say positive, but even I am irritated at a number of small things. May as well get these things out...
There's a guy in training who just doesn't seem to think that he has to actually do any work to reap any rewards for this. It's as though he thinks that he paid money for a certificate, and this whole "training thing" is just a formality that he can take or leave. He parks his car blocking other people in, shows up late for class, talks during class, sleeps during class... today he practiced diagonally from me in yoga and just drove me nuts. He breathed through his mouth, made grunting noises constantly - talked during the savasanas.. Bikram called him an "idiot". Emmy called him out during class the other day, Craig spoke to him the other day. Apparently today he got a bit shredded by the visiting teacher Dave. And for some reason, he's totally under my skin! Why do I care about this dude? I'm having a really positive experience, making tons of friends, getting really healthy... why am I attaching to this irritant for no reason? Gotta practice letting go of it... there's always going to be an irritant for me to be annoyed by. Let it go. YOU FUCKING MORON! Okay. There. Whew....
Tomorrow morning we have class at 7:30 am, which means we have to leave here at 6:30 am, which means we have to wake up at 6:00-ish.... SO I AM GOING TO SLEEP!
Rajashree taught class this morning, and I had to place my mat directly in front of her because I asked her yesterday about my misaligned hips. I have been increasingly worried that I'm not even getting to first base with a lot of poses because my hips are so tight and lopsided. Alas, my delusions of being a misfit were shattered when Rajashree said that I had "excellent form" and that "nothing was wrong with me". I just have tight hips. But in her pre-class mini lecture (just 10 minutes or so), she mentioned that this week was the end of the "ease in" and now they can really start to challenge us. I get a little pang of panic every time I hear that. But she also said that in the next two weeks there are going to be a lot of frustrations and emotions coming up, and people are going to get irritated and angry with each other, so we should be easy on each other.
After she said that, today it was like a BOMB went off. People are pissed off at Bikram, pissed off at Craig, pissed off at Doug, pissed off at each other. Lunch was medium snarky. Dinner was medium-well snarky. Our van ride home was a bit aggressive as well... I'm trying to say positive, but even I am irritated at a number of small things. May as well get these things out...
There's a guy in training who just doesn't seem to think that he has to actually do any work to reap any rewards for this. It's as though he thinks that he paid money for a certificate, and this whole "training thing" is just a formality that he can take or leave. He parks his car blocking other people in, shows up late for class, talks during class, sleeps during class... today he practiced diagonally from me in yoga and just drove me nuts. He breathed through his mouth, made grunting noises constantly - talked during the savasanas.. Bikram called him an "idiot". Emmy called him out during class the other day, Craig spoke to him the other day. Apparently today he got a bit shredded by the visiting teacher Dave. And for some reason, he's totally under my skin! Why do I care about this dude? I'm having a really positive experience, making tons of friends, getting really healthy... why am I attaching to this irritant for no reason? Gotta practice letting go of it... there's always going to be an irritant for me to be annoyed by. Let it go. YOU FUCKING MORON! Okay. There. Whew....
Tomorrow morning we have class at 7:30 am, which means we have to leave here at 6:30 am, which means we have to wake up at 6:00-ish.... SO I AM GOING TO SLEEP!
A day in the life.
7:00 am: Alarm goes off. "Canned Heat". Snooze. Again and again.
7:30 am: Get out of bed, panic because I've over slept. Run into kitchen, make Quaker instant oatmeal, put fresh fruit in it. Drink glass of orange juice. Try to do this fast, because yoga starts at 9:30am, don't want to be nauseous. Put food into tupperware containers for the whole day, as fast as I can. Run out of the apartment at 8:15am (when the van leaves). Run back to get the two or three things I forgot, get to the van by 8:20am.
8:20 am: Apologize to van mates for being late, AGAIN, and then either try to sleep or practice the yoga dialogue in the 45 minute car ride through hollywood to the bikram studio. Note to self. Good GOD we're all becoming yoga geeks.
9:00 am: Pull yoga mat off of drying lines outside studio, run into building as fast as possible to try to "reserve" a good spot in the room - close to the doors, far from the heaters. Yo soy pussweed. Sign in to the attendance sheets, lie on mat in the big yoga room while the room heats up, reading my little dialog book, trying to memorize. Maybe find a friend and ask them if they'll let me practice my dialog on them (they stand up in front of you, you lead them through the pose). Note, as I do every morning, that yoga people are SO RIDICULOUSLY HOT.
9:30 am: Morning yoga class. Remember to breathe. Remember to breathe. Why am I here? Why on earth have chosen THIS as a life path? Breathe, breathe.. GOD it's hot... Aw dude, get your foot off my head... oh, sorry miss! I didn't mean to put my foot on your head! I just want ONE GOOD POSTURE. My triangle's okay. Not great, but okay.
11:15 am: Lie in savasana, trying to reroute the energy systems to find strength to sit up. Welcome the cool air, gradually rediscover joy in being here. Get off floor at 11:30.
11:30 am: Lunch. Wait in microwave line for 20 minutes, reheat my AWESOME FOOD! (Thank you, Kris), sit down with fellow students - I try to sit with different people every day and meet at least two or three new people every day, so I don't end up falling into the comfort of a "club". Practice dialog. "Arms back, Look back, Fall back, Way back, Go back, MORE BACK!!! Come up and stop in the middle."
12:30 pm: Back to the big room - sit on the funny little floor chairs in the yoga room. Try to avoid giant sweat pools hiding in the floor. Posture Clinic!!!! Everybody gets in a queue (or a LINE, for you americans..) to go up and recite a pose of dialog. We're still in the beginning - basically, you get up with a microphone in front of the whole class and you've got four students lined up that you're going to direct through a posture (or part of a posture). The dialogue has to be memorized and delivered verbatim, with no improvisation. Furthermore, the primary focus is not on the exactness of the memorization, which we were supposed to have done before we got here, but rather on the delivery, in a very theatrical sense, of the lines. I chuckle to myself multiple times a day - I feel like I've become one of those drama kids in high school... I'm all streching all the time, wearing loose clothes, barefoot, hanging out in a mirrored room with a ballet bar, getting and giving advice on how to emphasize the words in a delivery. I am truly dissolving my concept of "me", because... I LIKE THIS. It's so much fun! I get to make big muscley bodies bend by saying WORDS!!! Tee hee. Little pee breaks here and there.
4:30 pm: Break to get ready for evening class. Run into the yoga room to reserve a decent spot. Run into men's bathroom, try not to laugh at the "naked guys standing around having a conversation while completely naked" thing.
5:00 pm: Evening class. Second verse, same as the first. Hot, hot hot.
7:00 pm: Dinner. Virtually identical to lunch, only colder outside.
8:30 pm: Either MORE posture clinics or Bikram lecturing. There's no way to describe a Bikram lecture. It's this chaotic, rambling, repetetive thing, and right when you feel like tuning out, he says something that seems poignant. In true yoga geek fashion, I've begun sitting right at the front, close to Bikram, so I don't have the opportunity to tune out. He notices it immediately. Also, work on sitting in indian style with a straight back.
11:00 pm or 12:00 pm or whatever: Back to the van! Drive home! Or, more precisely, be driven home. Lots of singing along in the van to the radio, or talking about the lecture or some such. Jibber jabber! So much post yoga energy!!!
1:30 am: Write blog entry, talk to Clodagh, wonder why I'm not tired.
Actually. Now I'm tired....
7:30 am: Get out of bed, panic because I've over slept. Run into kitchen, make Quaker instant oatmeal, put fresh fruit in it. Drink glass of orange juice. Try to do this fast, because yoga starts at 9:30am, don't want to be nauseous. Put food into tupperware containers for the whole day, as fast as I can. Run out of the apartment at 8:15am (when the van leaves). Run back to get the two or three things I forgot, get to the van by 8:20am.
8:20 am: Apologize to van mates for being late, AGAIN, and then either try to sleep or practice the yoga dialogue in the 45 minute car ride through hollywood to the bikram studio. Note to self. Good GOD we're all becoming yoga geeks.
9:00 am: Pull yoga mat off of drying lines outside studio, run into building as fast as possible to try to "reserve" a good spot in the room - close to the doors, far from the heaters. Yo soy pussweed. Sign in to the attendance sheets, lie on mat in the big yoga room while the room heats up, reading my little dialog book, trying to memorize. Maybe find a friend and ask them if they'll let me practice my dialog on them (they stand up in front of you, you lead them through the pose). Note, as I do every morning, that yoga people are SO RIDICULOUSLY HOT.
9:30 am: Morning yoga class. Remember to breathe. Remember to breathe. Why am I here? Why on earth have chosen THIS as a life path? Breathe, breathe.. GOD it's hot... Aw dude, get your foot off my head... oh, sorry miss! I didn't mean to put my foot on your head! I just want ONE GOOD POSTURE. My triangle's okay. Not great, but okay.
11:15 am: Lie in savasana, trying to reroute the energy systems to find strength to sit up. Welcome the cool air, gradually rediscover joy in being here. Get off floor at 11:30.
11:30 am: Lunch. Wait in microwave line for 20 minutes, reheat my AWESOME FOOD! (Thank you, Kris), sit down with fellow students - I try to sit with different people every day and meet at least two or three new people every day, so I don't end up falling into the comfort of a "club". Practice dialog. "Arms back, Look back, Fall back, Way back, Go back, MORE BACK!!! Come up and stop in the middle."
12:30 pm: Back to the big room - sit on the funny little floor chairs in the yoga room. Try to avoid giant sweat pools hiding in the floor. Posture Clinic!!!! Everybody gets in a queue (or a LINE, for you americans..) to go up and recite a pose of dialog. We're still in the beginning - basically, you get up with a microphone in front of the whole class and you've got four students lined up that you're going to direct through a posture (or part of a posture). The dialogue has to be memorized and delivered verbatim, with no improvisation. Furthermore, the primary focus is not on the exactness of the memorization, which we were supposed to have done before we got here, but rather on the delivery, in a very theatrical sense, of the lines. I chuckle to myself multiple times a day - I feel like I've become one of those drama kids in high school... I'm all streching all the time, wearing loose clothes, barefoot, hanging out in a mirrored room with a ballet bar, getting and giving advice on how to emphasize the words in a delivery. I am truly dissolving my concept of "me", because... I LIKE THIS. It's so much fun! I get to make big muscley bodies bend by saying WORDS!!! Tee hee. Little pee breaks here and there.
4:30 pm: Break to get ready for evening class. Run into the yoga room to reserve a decent spot. Run into men's bathroom, try not to laugh at the "naked guys standing around having a conversation while completely naked" thing.
5:00 pm: Evening class. Second verse, same as the first. Hot, hot hot.
7:00 pm: Dinner. Virtually identical to lunch, only colder outside.
8:30 pm: Either MORE posture clinics or Bikram lecturing. There's no way to describe a Bikram lecture. It's this chaotic, rambling, repetetive thing, and right when you feel like tuning out, he says something that seems poignant. In true yoga geek fashion, I've begun sitting right at the front, close to Bikram, so I don't have the opportunity to tune out. He notices it immediately. Also, work on sitting in indian style with a straight back.
11:00 pm or 12:00 pm or whatever: Back to the van! Drive home! Or, more precisely, be driven home. Lots of singing along in the van to the radio, or talking about the lecture or some such. Jibber jabber! So much post yoga energy!!!
1:30 am: Write blog entry, talk to Clodagh, wonder why I'm not tired.
Actually. Now I'm tired....
Thursday, April 20, 2006
So little sleep!!!
Bikram's assertion is that, as we do more and more yoga - we're achieving stillness and rest in our savasanas, learning to calm ourselves and rest efficiently, and therefore we need less sleep.
And just maybe... he's right? I've been going on 4 hours a sleep a night for days and days and days, and I feel fine! Also, I wake up so quickly! (By comparison - it normally takes me over an hour to wake up, instead of the minutes it does now). I'm weary, and I do seem to sleep whenever I get a chance - 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there... but I don't feel like I'm approaching burnout, which is great! When I overwork at "regular" work, after a few days I just become useless, but here - I feel like I'm sharpening a fair bit.
My mind feels like it's rearranging itself. You know when you play a videogame, particularly a geometric one like Tetris or Tetris Attack - if you play it ALOT, you start to feel like your brain is recognizing patterns on a larger scale, almost subconsciously? I feel like something similar is happening - I really feel like my synapses are firing faster, connections being made more easily - I can't believe the increase in memorization speed. Last week it took DAYS to memorize the first part of Half Moon Pose, and I memorized Back Bending Half Moon and Hands to Feet Pose in an hour or two today, and it just STUCK. THIS IS SO COOL!!!!!
We had a pretty great class this morning, but this afternoon's class was held by the Director of Teacher Training, Craig - and he, for lack of a better phrase, was NOT FUCKING AROUND. As promised (threatened), he did in fact hold Awkward Pose for VERRRRY long, and promised he'd hold it even longer next time. Ow, ow, ow. Bikram took Craig's class as a student today, and it was very, very strange. He had very inconsistent focus - he'd stay in one pose, but in others, he'd hold them for a short bit and then just stop and lie down. He has been awake for a few days and hadn't eaten anything, but it was strange to see him anything but the invincible I had imagined. Also - this is kinda cool - as a result of his knee injury oh so long ago, he can't wrap his legs in Eagle pose without using his arms to crank his legs into place. This comforted me for some reason. I guess I'm feeling more and more okay with the fact that I'm not perfect at this - I suck at a lot of it, but I feel like I have more and more integrity with trying to do the poses correctly. At one point in the class, Bikram indicated that he felt like he needed to leave the room (super super hot class), and Craig told him he could leave if the class said it was okay. When asked, we unanimously and resoundingly answered, "NO". That was fun. It's interesting - the class was HARD. It took a lot to stay in - the girl next to me literally sobbed throughout most of the class, while still doing her postures! I was impressed. But after a class like this, I just feel like I can walk on air. And I had such calm in waiting to deliver my dialog - last time I was a nervous wreck!!!
I learned today that if you're in one of those horrible balancing poses like standing head to knee, you can make it a lot easier to lock the standing knee by just repeating "lock the knee lock the knee lock the knee" over and over in your head. This is cool.
I suppose, though, my favorite moment of the day was when, while lying down on our mats waiting for yoga class to start, 200+ people in the super hot room, people already starting to sweat - this dude just yelled out, "STEAMROLLER" and rolled, mostly naked, over about three girls, who went into giant giggle fits. So. Awesome. I wanted REALLY BAD to do the same thing, but I think that'd be unoriginal.
This, for some reason, reminds me of a weird thing that's been nagging at the back of my head. People basically wear as little as possible to class - underwear, speedos - you get the idea. Anyway, I'm trying to shed the embarrassment of walking around in my underwear (not that hard, we're usually so hurried anyway). I've noticed as I walk back and forth from the locker room to the classroom that people have been scanning me with their eyes and stopping on my PRIVATE AREA. Some people have frowned slightly. Have you ever had a dinner conversation with someone who keeps staring at your forehead or hairline while you're talking? You start thinking, "is there something on my head? Do I look funny?". But in this case, I keep going back to the locker room to check.. do I have some kinda weird bulge? Am I comically tiny? Did I accidentally split my bits into two pieces? WHAT IS IT? I can't really ask anybody....
And just maybe... he's right? I've been going on 4 hours a sleep a night for days and days and days, and I feel fine! Also, I wake up so quickly! (By comparison - it normally takes me over an hour to wake up, instead of the minutes it does now). I'm weary, and I do seem to sleep whenever I get a chance - 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there... but I don't feel like I'm approaching burnout, which is great! When I overwork at "regular" work, after a few days I just become useless, but here - I feel like I'm sharpening a fair bit.
My mind feels like it's rearranging itself. You know when you play a videogame, particularly a geometric one like Tetris or Tetris Attack - if you play it ALOT, you start to feel like your brain is recognizing patterns on a larger scale, almost subconsciously? I feel like something similar is happening - I really feel like my synapses are firing faster, connections being made more easily - I can't believe the increase in memorization speed. Last week it took DAYS to memorize the first part of Half Moon Pose, and I memorized Back Bending Half Moon and Hands to Feet Pose in an hour or two today, and it just STUCK. THIS IS SO COOL!!!!!
We had a pretty great class this morning, but this afternoon's class was held by the Director of Teacher Training, Craig - and he, for lack of a better phrase, was NOT FUCKING AROUND. As promised (threatened), he did in fact hold Awkward Pose for VERRRRY long, and promised he'd hold it even longer next time. Ow, ow, ow. Bikram took Craig's class as a student today, and it was very, very strange. He had very inconsistent focus - he'd stay in one pose, but in others, he'd hold them for a short bit and then just stop and lie down. He has been awake for a few days and hadn't eaten anything, but it was strange to see him anything but the invincible I had imagined. Also - this is kinda cool - as a result of his knee injury oh so long ago, he can't wrap his legs in Eagle pose without using his arms to crank his legs into place. This comforted me for some reason. I guess I'm feeling more and more okay with the fact that I'm not perfect at this - I suck at a lot of it, but I feel like I have more and more integrity with trying to do the poses correctly. At one point in the class, Bikram indicated that he felt like he needed to leave the room (super super hot class), and Craig told him he could leave if the class said it was okay. When asked, we unanimously and resoundingly answered, "NO". That was fun. It's interesting - the class was HARD. It took a lot to stay in - the girl next to me literally sobbed throughout most of the class, while still doing her postures! I was impressed. But after a class like this, I just feel like I can walk on air. And I had such calm in waiting to deliver my dialog - last time I was a nervous wreck!!!
I learned today that if you're in one of those horrible balancing poses like standing head to knee, you can make it a lot easier to lock the standing knee by just repeating "lock the knee lock the knee lock the knee" over and over in your head. This is cool.
I suppose, though, my favorite moment of the day was when, while lying down on our mats waiting for yoga class to start, 200+ people in the super hot room, people already starting to sweat - this dude just yelled out, "STEAMROLLER" and rolled, mostly naked, over about three girls, who went into giant giggle fits. So. Awesome. I wanted REALLY BAD to do the same thing, but I think that'd be unoriginal.
This, for some reason, reminds me of a weird thing that's been nagging at the back of my head. People basically wear as little as possible to class - underwear, speedos - you get the idea. Anyway, I'm trying to shed the embarrassment of walking around in my underwear (not that hard, we're usually so hurried anyway). I've noticed as I walk back and forth from the locker room to the classroom that people have been scanning me with their eyes and stopping on my PRIVATE AREA. Some people have frowned slightly. Have you ever had a dinner conversation with someone who keeps staring at your forehead or hairline while you're talking? You start thinking, "is there something on my head? Do I look funny?". But in this case, I keep going back to the locker room to check.. do I have some kinda weird bulge? Am I comically tiny? Did I accidentally split my bits into two pieces? WHAT IS IT? I can't really ask anybody....
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Six Months Pregnant
The last few days have been SO HARDCORE! This is gonna be a long post.
Yesterday we did yoga in the Westin Airport Hotel's Grand Ballroom while Bikram went on a Los Angeles-wide whirlwind of building code compliance madness! And, most importantly... he got the job done. To our stunned amazement, instead of us being three or four days in the hotel, we were out in one. Which made me a little bit sad, because the hotel had a grand piano that I got to play in the break. One of the side effects of this yoga is that my mind is getting really clearly sharper and sharper - I'm remembering names of almost everyone I meet - my thoughts are converting into words much more easily than I'm used to - and when I sat down to play the piano, songs I haven't played in 10 years just flowed out of me, beautifully and cleanly. It was exciting. Yoga class was COLD! And I learned that the heat is there for a reason. Sure, you've got tons of strength and stamina, but KNEES OW! BACK OW! HIPS OW!.
I stayed up until 3am last night making food for myself for a week - Kris made me recipies that were nutritionally balanced with this practice in mind - fajita steak burritos and nepalese gorkhal chicken with spiced yellow dal). I am, as everyone who knows me is aware, the world's slowest cook. More about the food later.
But today we returned to our shiny yoga studio, with two lovely new frosted glass fire doors, and all the little crossed t's and dotted lower-case j's. With the benefit of our new perspective - instead of dreading the heat, I was really psyched about it. Craig gave an explanation of what exactly "stomach tight" means, and it was one of those lightbulb turning on moments. My practice seemed to leap forward now that I actually understand how to tighten my stomach. Anyway, I actually extended my leg in standing head to knee with both legs locked. I didn't make it through the whole 60 seconds (who are we kidding, Bikram was teaching. 90 seconds? 120?). Still, I feel so much stronger.
Bikram had his claws OUT today. We did Half Moon postures today, and he was just cutting to the bone with some people. He was generally happy with most people, but from time to time, somewhat arbitrarily, he would just choose something that he didn't like and just attack it. There were some noteworthy ones, but the jaw dropper was when a very very surfer-esque girl got up and delivered a pretty great dialogue. Instead of commenting on her dialogue, though, Bikram paused and then said "Nobody's going to listen to a yoga teacher who looks like you do. Look at how you are standing!" She had a somewhat casual stance, with her belly a bit hanging out. Bikram then said, "you've got to learn to hold your stomach in, like me" Bikram stands up and shows his six pack , and then he said, "standing like that, you look like you're six months pregnant. ROOM COLLECTIVELY GASPS. To her credit, the girl held her shit together really well. At first I was horrified, but then... this is what we signed up for. I hold (or don't hold) my belly in, just like her. Though now I'm going to keep my belly in come hell or high water. Besides... I do want that nice stomach. There were a few other gems as well - in reference to a gynecologist (not sure how it came up), Bikram said, "Oh, a Pussy Doctor? All day in the same hole. I don't know how he doesn't get bored". There were others, equally tasteless, but... I laughed a LOT today.
I'm totally drinking the kool aid. It's ridiculous. I like Bikram more every day - of course, he hasn't attacked me yet... but if he does, I feel like I'll probably survive and come out better for it.
Oh yeah - the food. It was a huge pain in the ass to prepare, since I'm so damned slow, but the class after I ate the first of it, I was so incredibly energetic, so strong. And, I don't have to think about food for 5 more days. Genius. Thank you, Kris.
My mantra for the moment. Your Focus Determines Your Reality. (Right Leg Locked. No Knee. No Knee...)
Yesterday we did yoga in the Westin Airport Hotel's Grand Ballroom while Bikram went on a Los Angeles-wide whirlwind of building code compliance madness! And, most importantly... he got the job done. To our stunned amazement, instead of us being three or four days in the hotel, we were out in one. Which made me a little bit sad, because the hotel had a grand piano that I got to play in the break. One of the side effects of this yoga is that my mind is getting really clearly sharper and sharper - I'm remembering names of almost everyone I meet - my thoughts are converting into words much more easily than I'm used to - and when I sat down to play the piano, songs I haven't played in 10 years just flowed out of me, beautifully and cleanly. It was exciting. Yoga class was COLD! And I learned that the heat is there for a reason. Sure, you've got tons of strength and stamina, but KNEES OW! BACK OW! HIPS OW!.
I stayed up until 3am last night making food for myself for a week - Kris made me recipies that were nutritionally balanced with this practice in mind - fajita steak burritos and nepalese gorkhal chicken with spiced yellow dal). I am, as everyone who knows me is aware, the world's slowest cook. More about the food later.
But today we returned to our shiny yoga studio, with two lovely new frosted glass fire doors, and all the little crossed t's and dotted lower-case j's. With the benefit of our new perspective - instead of dreading the heat, I was really psyched about it. Craig gave an explanation of what exactly "stomach tight" means, and it was one of those lightbulb turning on moments. My practice seemed to leap forward now that I actually understand how to tighten my stomach. Anyway, I actually extended my leg in standing head to knee with both legs locked. I didn't make it through the whole 60 seconds (who are we kidding, Bikram was teaching. 90 seconds? 120?). Still, I feel so much stronger.
Bikram had his claws OUT today. We did Half Moon postures today, and he was just cutting to the bone with some people. He was generally happy with most people, but from time to time, somewhat arbitrarily, he would just choose something that he didn't like and just attack it. There were some noteworthy ones, but the jaw dropper was when a very very surfer-esque girl got up and delivered a pretty great dialogue. Instead of commenting on her dialogue, though, Bikram paused and then said "Nobody's going to listen to a yoga teacher who looks like you do. Look at how you are standing!" She had a somewhat casual stance, with her belly a bit hanging out. Bikram then said, "you've got to learn to hold your stomach in, like me" Bikram stands up and shows his six pack , and then he said, "standing like that, you look like you're six months pregnant. ROOM COLLECTIVELY GASPS. To her credit, the girl held her shit together really well. At first I was horrified, but then... this is what we signed up for. I hold (or don't hold) my belly in, just like her. Though now I'm going to keep my belly in come hell or high water. Besides... I do want that nice stomach. There were a few other gems as well - in reference to a gynecologist (not sure how it came up), Bikram said, "Oh, a Pussy Doctor? All day in the same hole. I don't know how he doesn't get bored". There were others, equally tasteless, but... I laughed a LOT today.
I'm totally drinking the kool aid. It's ridiculous. I like Bikram more every day - of course, he hasn't attacked me yet... but if he does, I feel like I'll probably survive and come out better for it.
Oh yeah - the food. It was a huge pain in the ass to prepare, since I'm so damned slow, but the class after I ate the first of it, I was so incredibly energetic, so strong. And, I don't have to think about food for 5 more days. Genius. Thank you, Kris.
My mantra for the moment. Your Focus Determines Your Reality. (Right Leg Locked. No Knee. No Knee...)
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