Thanksgiving

Because I'm human and there are many things in life to be thankful for:

I'm so happy to have friends who love me even when I'm totally buried in my own pain.

I'm lucky to have a place to go where I can be myself.

I'm very fortunate to have this opportunity to find myself and figure out what I want.

I'm deeply grateful to be alive and healthy.

I'm thankful for my time at Michigan State, and for the amazing and lasting friendships that resulted.

I'm thankful for my family, who told me today to not listen to anyone but myself about this, including them.

I have enough financial stability to live for a while.

I can go anywhere and do anything.

I'm actually thankful for the last year.

I'm thankful for what I know about myself from this experience. No matter what, it will be useful in the future.

I'm thankful for yoga, and thankful for how yoga and meditation have helped me in dealing with the absence of music in my life.

I'm also grateful for how yoga has helped me realize how necessary it is to me to have music.

I'm thankful for wine and organic cotton.

I'm thankful for the earth under my feet.

I'm thankful for this song.

I'm thankful for the person that I am.

I'm thankful for the person that I am.

I'm thankful for the person that I am.

Yoga

Yesterday we graduated. We all wore white (it's a Kundalini thing) and had a small puja (fire ceremony) along with a pretty spectacular gong meditation. While our teacher was giving us our bindis, she said "you are now teachers of yoga... you are now in union with the universe."

Yoga means "to yoke." So it means to tie two things together, to bind one thing to another thing. Ideally, this would be a person in union with the universe, or the eternal, or the reality, or god, or God, or whatever the person desires to be in union with (yoga's not picky, in my admittedly limited experience). Our human minds, connected to the infinite god. So nice (and optimistic) of our teacher to say, but so not true.

Yesterday while we did 108 sun salutations at 6:30 in the morning, I was trying to think "okay sun. You've done a really great job of coming up every day for my whole life. This is the least I can do for you." What I was really thinking, though, was "oooo boy, my triceps are going to KILL tomorrow."

It's not that I haven't been there before. I have been in that place of communion, and I'm fortunate enough to say that I've experienced some pretty great moments lately... not samadhi, but not bad either. But I obviously have a long way to go. I have a very, very erratic mind to calm, and I have big decisions to make about my life, and I have a life to live. That means that I will always struggle to maintain the balance, and that there will always be something that I haven't done that I need to do. It's not me to live a monastic life, so I'll be balancing these things until I give up my body, and that means continual work on my windy (vata) mind, on my sluggish (kapha) body, and my (pitta doesn't translate well) temper. I'll always be working on yoga.

It made me think about other ceremonial "markers" in my life... college and grad school graduations, for instance. They always seemed like a smoke screen to me. Like a silly trick to play for your family... "X is now educated! X can be sent into the world now to do things that are hopefully good." Marriage too, seems to me to be a misleading ceremony. Like your relationship hasn't really started yet, or like it will substantially change for the better. As if the learning and growth is over. As if the work has stopped. As if yoga has been achieved.

Maybe we need that, as people... maybe we need to stop in time and appreciate how far we've come just for an hour or so. But it seems so dangerous and misleading. I know my education hasn't stopped, and I definitely haven't "finished" yoga.

In any case, I can teach in a studio now, and am looking forward to continuing to teach the little brood I have already. Here's to a lifetime of yoga.

So.

So I'm awake in the middle of the night and I need to do something to calm my mind down, and there's something about meditation and pranayama that are just not cutting it right now (like... I'm not good enough at them yet!). So here I am. And I think "I should post something that's not heavy," but it's the middle of the night. It's all heavy right now.

The reason I'm awake is that I'm tachycardic. This happened once a couple of weeks ago, also on a Sunday night when I'd had a particularly miserable week the week before with the kiddos that I watch. I'm nervous about going back to work tomorrow (and I have them for the whole day), so the nerves bypass my conscious brain and go straight to my heart rate. Meditation is just making me worry more (note to self: practice meditation), so I'm doing an outside thing to calm my mind and maybe work out some of the heebie-jeebies about tomorrow.

This week in teacher training, we read the Bhagavad Gita, which is the most fabulous little book. It's a dialogue between Krishna, a chariot driver, and Arjuna, a prince. In the beginning, Arjuna is about to go into battle against some evil usurpers of the throne. He asks Krishna to drive the chariot in between the two armies so he can see what he's up against and looks his whole family smack in the face. His cousins, his uncles, his teachers... they're all there, ready to fight against him. So Arjuna does what any prince would do.

He has a total panic attack. (Sounds familiar.)

So Arjuna starts hyperventilating into a paper bag and saying things like "it'd be better for me to die than all these guys... even if I won, life wouldn't be worth living without my family." He throws down his bow, sits down in the chariot, and starts crying. His chariot driver, Krishna, looks at him and is like "really? Really?" and Arjuna says "what? YOU tell me what to do. I'm your student. Instruct me and I'll do whatever you say." In a surprise twist, Krishna the charioteer is god. So Krishna explains that he has to fight, because choosing not to fight is choosing evil. He's not condoning violence... the whole thing is an allegory for the fight that we have inside ourselves every day. In that fight, it's hard to kill a part of ourselves, but choosing not to fight the bad parts of ourselves is letting them win.

The part that really sticks out to me is when Krishna tells Arjuna not to be attached to the results. "Don't worry about if you win. Just fight." It brought up a lot of memories for me of times when I was much less attached to the results of what I did, mostly musically. When I wasn't so worried about getting a job, or whether getting a graduate degree in flute performance was worth it, I practiced better. I was less worried. I was happier. I tell myself that I'm just being practical, but the worrying and the wondering doesn't do anything but undermine my own fight, just like Arjuna's wondering would have undermined him if he hadn't lucked out and had Krishna for a taxi driver.

So here's to detaching from the results, and to detaching from tomorrow.

To Be or Not To Be

I've always had this idea that I was supposed to be great at something. Like, really great. Ideally world-changing kind of great. It's not that wonderful to have that feeling, because it's a lot of pressure from inside to perform, and I feel like I have no direction beyond the great thing. I don't know what it is that I'm supposed to do so greatly. Sometimes I think I should just pick something, but what if I pick the wrong thing?

Habit

Habit is a funny word, isn't it? The first definition that pops into my head is actually the nun's habit. When I was little and we used to take walks in the seminary down the street, sometimes we'd see nuns walking around and my dad would always say "hello, sister" very politely, like he was a kid in Catholic school. Their habits, all black with white around the face and neck and a cross hanging down, made them look otherworldly and untouchable.

Supposedly it takes six weeks to change a habit (not a nun's habit- I'm sure you could change that in five minutes). I'm always frustrated with myself when I try to change something. I feel like I make it a few days, then slip. Then maybe I have a couple more good days before I slip again. This hasn't always been the case (I became a vegetarian successfully almost three years ago), but I struggle with making and breaking habits all over the place in my life.

I know it's because I over-think things. I'll be intending to practice, but won't be sure that I want to apply to DMA programs, so I'll put it off... and in my uncertainty, I don't get anything done. I wish most of the time that I could just turn off my brain and live, maybe, in a state of perpetual hangover. If I didn't ask "why?" all the time, maybe I'd just do things, go for things, stop selling myself short. Maybe then I could get through more than a few days and actually make a habit.

Maybe, though, it's just a different way of looking at it. If I were a nun, I wouldn't think "I have to wear this stupid piece of clothing again?! Why? Do I even believe in everything this stands for?" Rather, I'd want to think "This habit elevates me as a person. It removes me from a lot of harmful things and brings me closer to the divinity that I'm seeking. Even if it's the same old thing I put on every day, of course I want to wear it."

Mahamrityunjaya Mantra

This mantra is addressed to the trinity of Hinduism, composed of Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver) and Shiva (the destroyer). The mantra comes from the Rigveda, a collection of scriptures about 4000 or so years old. I'm a latecomer to the scene as I learned it yesterday.

Om tryambakaṃ yajāmahe sugandhiṃ puṣṭi-vardhanam

urvārukam iva bandhanān mṛtyor mukṣīya māmṛtāt

Some interesting translations (note to self: learn Sansrit):

We meditate on the Three-eyed reality which nourishes and increases the sweet fullness of life. Like a cucumber from its stem may we be separated ("liberated"), not from immortality but from death.

We Meditate on the Three-eyed reality

Which permeates and nourishes all like a fragrance.

May we be liberated from death for the sake of immortality,

Even as the cucumber is severed from bondage to the creeper.

We worship the Three-eyed One who is fragrant, immensely merciful and who is the Protector of the devotees. May he liberate us from death for the sake of immortality, Even as the cucumber is severed from bondage to the creeper.

Moving On Up

When I started teacher training, we wrote a list of goals and put them into an envelope. We get them back when we graduate. I love that idea- it's like a time capsule of goals and emotions. I don't remember too much of what I wrote on my card, but I know I was really unhappy when I wrote it. I was in the midst of my blah job and really wishing I was back where I feel like I belong- in school or in a teaching situation. Or out of Boston. You know, whatever.

I know some things have changed. I may not be one hundred percent out of my rut, but I know I'm making progress. Some of the more expensive progress came in the form of the $160 charge on my card for the GRE.

Sherman used to say that he only advised students to go into music if they didn't have a choice. That is, if they absolutely couldn't see any road ahead of them except for music, if music was their only option aside from desperate unhappiness, then music was a good idea.

I haven't been the most driven person in the last few years, and I know that. I haven't even come close to what I feel I could potentially do. It's hard to be in your twenties and getting ready to enter a PhD or DMA program (hopefully!), without any promise that you'll have a job when you exit. I don't think this was the case forty (or even twenty) years ago. But I want to do what I want to do, and I can't see myself doing anything else with or in my life.

So this time, I'm ready.

I feel like I've been failing at yoga lately. Things have been hectic with the move and the upcoming trip to Denver (which we knew was right around the corner, but we're leaving tomorrow...), and when the classes don't fit my schedule, I haven't been practicing on my own. It makes everything sort of worthless when you practice intensely, but only a couple of days a week.

I wonder how much more I could get out of yoga (or... you know... life) if I put more in?

Sunday, Yoga Sunday

Sunday I went to the 8:30 AM teacher-trainee yoga class. Basically, whoever shows up from our class gets a chance to teach and participate, and we usually go around in a circle and teach a few poses. It's fun, but early... luckily, my body's pretty happy about getting up at 6:30 lately (except for this morning), so I have a couple of hours to veg and drink my tea. There were only two of us there, but it was great.

Then I stayed for my teacher's 10:00 class. Since they've opened another studio in Burlington, their time has been split, so her classes at the Cambridge studio are usually pretty packed. It was a great class- very relaxing. The hubby came with me, and had some mat slippage issues. It's either time to start storing the mat towel with his yoga man, or time for me to sell his mat on Craigslist and get him a Jade mat.

Then I had a couple of hours to kill, so we came home, made lunch, and I scarfed it down and went back to the studio for teacher training. This week we started our section on Kundalini yoga, and I'm not gonna lie- I was hoping it was just going to be lecture. And I lucked out for about an hour; we learned about the chakras, through which the kundalini energy is supposed to rise, and we talked about different poses or series of poses to help align everything. Then we did about an hour of Kundalini. And let me tell you, Kundalini is not kidding around. I felt like the room was buzzing with energy by the time we finished.

Then I was finally done with yoga! But I had to stay and observe a class at 5:00. So I went next door to this awesome Asian cafe and got some iced coffee, then went and watched people do yoga in the hot studio for an hour and a half. Have I mentioned the heat wave? The studio is not air conditioned, so it was about 95, give or take, all day.

And after that, I had the greatest sleep ever.

Strengthening the Spirit (and the abs)

I decided that while my sort-of lackadaisical hatha practice was doing wonders for my spirit, it wasn't as awesome for my body. Plus, the studio is a sort-of wasteful ten-minute drive or twenty-five minute walk away, and it's just that distance where I feel like a scumbag for not going to more classes, but it seems SO far. Add to the mix that we've been encouraged to try out different studios in the area to more fully form our own style of teaching. So I decided to try a new member special at Samara Yoga, a studio about five minutes away in Davis Square. I love the walk down there- it's full of tree-lined streets and pretty houses. Plus, the classes at Samara are vinyasa flow classes, which I've been really missing since I left Michigan (vinyasa was my first introduction to yoga, and I think I'll always have a soft spot for the mind-clearing flowiness of it).

The first class started with so much ab work that my entire front half was cramping up by the time the teacher finally let us collapse to the ground. The next day (yesterday), I could feel my abs probably better than I've been able to in years. Today they just hurt! The class yesterday was a lunch-hour flow class, and the instructor played music all the way through. At my usual studio, the only music is usually just a never-ending om in the background... but this music was like Thom Yorke and Coldplay and all my favorites. She actually used Sigur Ros for savasana, and I was in heaven.

It made me think a lot about the use of music in yoga, and how it can strengthen or detract from a practice. When I first joined my studio in East Lansing, I found the use of pop music really distracting from my focus, but I guess I got more used to it as time went on. I remember one really fantastic class that we had right after MJ died- we were doing sun salutations to "Smooth Criminal" and it was awesome. I think it takes a special touch to make a playlist that inspires the students with every track, however... I'm not sure this is a touch that I possess yet, but the instructor yesterday definitely had it. She didn't have to adjust the music or look for a new track at all.

That having been said, my first instinct is to stick to "authentically" Indian music- Ravi Shankar, Jagjit Singh, and so forth... but the context in which I teach (with what I'm assuming will be young, American-born students for the most part) might beg music with which they're familiar once in a while. Music from outside their sphere might serve to increase the mysticism of the practice, but I wonder if it would also alienate the student when I want them to feel at home. I feel like the stakes are high: for me at least, the right music can elevate me onto a new plane where I feel more inspired and more clear-minded. The wrong music can distract me and actually physically disrupt my balance. Really. I've fallen out of balance poses before because of the music. I want the music to strengthen the spirit of the class, and maybe the abs too.

I'm sure that, like everything else, the answer will be in some sort of balance between the two. But it's still something I have to do some thinking about.

Doing Stuff

I think my problem is that I think too much and don't do enough.

I'm ready to change. Let's get this party started.

Yesterday I did headstands. I still have to use a door for now, but it's getting easier with practice (like most things, right?).

Being Present

As basic as it seems like it should be, it just doesn't make sense to me that we have to live in the present. I mean, we just came from the past- we were just there. And as far as the future goes... we seem to be hurtling toward that at the speed of... well, time. Not just individually, either- all together. Sometimes I look around in a crowded intersection and am amazed that all the people there are aging, skipping forward in time, at the exact same rate that I am. Weird.

In any case, I have a complicated relationship with the past and the future. As far as past goes, it's there and you did it and you can know it, but you can't change it. And future, you can change, but you can't know it until it becomes present and then past.

I realized (not so recently) that my musical practice consisted of the following three parts: 1) practicing taking place in the present. 2) mourning the past in which I didn't practice enough. 3) fearing the future in which I would not be successful because I hadn't practiced enough. The problem is, #2 and #3 were encroaching on the present so much that I could barely stay focused on my present, real-time practice. Not only did it erode my playing time-wise (why bother to practice for two hours when I'm never gonna make it in the future anyway?), but it eroded the quality (I'll never be able to play this right because I didn't practice enough in the past!).

So what's a flutist/yogini (flowgini?) to do?

I'm gonna try this week to live like I sight-read- one note at a time, with my eyes looking only one or two notes ahead. If I think about what I can do that's productive and positive in this minute (and the next five minutes, say)... that's something that I can handle! In every minute, I have to embrace the present, let go of the future, and forgive myself (and sometimes others) for the past. That's a lot, but I tried it in class today, and it worked!

... then I came home and stuffed my face with ice cream.

And now I'm forgiving myself for the past and moving on. :-)

Inversions

I'm a worryer. I worry about everything, especially death. Especially health issues... I'm terrified of cancer (it's silent and hidden). I worry about car accidents. I worry about the issues that I've been having with my back (even though I knew my terrible posture would catch up to me someday). I worry about these things happening to me or to the hubby. I worry that we'll end before we're supposed to, not because we had a silly fight like last time, but because we get smashed on the highway, because cells decide to multiply out of control, because of a random event. And I worry most when I'm happy, which is most of the time lately. Last week it was starting to get out of control, to the point where I was seriously thinking about going to see a counselor (and I still might, because it seems like a good idea).

On Sunday in teacher training, we did inversions. So basically, we did headstands, handstands, and shoulder stands for almost three hours. We'd try something, then rest (headstands are hard on the neck, shoulders, and almost everything else!). The feeling after all of that inversion, though, was amazing. We were all so mellow that we were struggling to have conversations! When I got home, I realized that I felt really strange... after trying to figure out why for about ten minutes, I realized that it was because I hadn't worried about anything in hours! So I think this week, every time I start to worry about something that I can't control right now, I'll go into an inversion.

Patanjali

This weekend was tough. In teacher training, we were discussing the yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which were probably written three or four thousand years ago. We used the version with commentary by Swami Satchidananda; commentary is very important, because the sutras are extremely short. The purpose of the sutras is basically to explain what yoga is, and how to use it to attain samadhi (or liberation from the current human state without having to be reborn a zillion times).

So much of the first book made so much sense to me, but was still really troubling. Patanjali says that nothing that we can see, hear, smell, touch, or taste is real, and his rule of thumb is that if it changes, it's an illusion. This seems to be exactly what Descartes was going for in his First Meditation, except Patanjali takes it further. Everything changes except the inner self. And he says there's a self so far in there that it doesn't change- rather, the purpose of life is the building up of this inner self, and the bliss of samadhi is when that self gets to join with all the other inner selves who have achieved samadhi, and that joining is god. Phew. The first book also says that things in life that seem at first pleasurable often are actually painful. Well, yeah. You love someone, you get married, and eventually it will be painful for one partner to lose the other partner, and that's best case scenario. When people are too attached, he says, even when things are going well you're scared that they won't be tomorrow. How do you deal with this pain and at the same time get close to your true self? Non-attachment.

So, non-attachment to stuff I can understand. When my bike got stolen last summer I realized how attached I'd become to it, and it hurt when it was taken away. Stuff just isn't worth being attached to because it's all temporary. But Patanjali says to avoid attaching to people as well, both to avoid pain and to avoid clinging to this life. This, I'm having problems with.

One of the other teacher trainees (who is a beautiful, very enlightened woman) said that she thinks of it like this: if she would experience a crushing amount of grief on the loss of a person in her life, then maybe she is stifling the growth and life of that person. So, holding them too close. Smothering them with her attachment.

Our guru was careful to point out that non-attachment doesn't mean indifference. I'm struggling to find the meaning of it for myself, though. I'm not sure if this is an attitude I want to adopt or even want to think about too much, but I feel like it's something that I need to consider, especially given how scared I've been over the last year that something would happen to the hubby.

Product Reveal

I think the first time I thought about what I was putting ON my body, instead of IN, was when Katie was talking about natural makeup. Even though every woman knows that her skin soaks up the lotion she puts on, it hadn't occurred to me before to question what was in the lotion I was rubbing all over my body's largest organ once or twice a day. Lately, partly because of the yoga and partly because I'm trying to become more conscious of my impact on the world, I've really started to think about what Katie was saying about using natural products.

In teacher training last weekend, we talked about habits and routines, and the literature that we were reading mentioned skin care, that you should rub oil into your skin every night before you go to bed. One of the other trainees said that she uses almond oil on her face, and that you can see the difference the next morning. So on the way home, I bought a jar of organic coconut oil, and started using it as lotion.

Coconut oil is a good oil for cooking; supposedly because it's solid at room temperature, it has a high flash point and is slow to develop cancer-causing free radicals (same as ghee). It's also easier for the body to metabolize than olive oil, according to our teacher. It's not particularly good for my dosha, so I figured I'd try it out as a moisturizer and see what happened. Even though it's solid at room temperature, it's liquid at body temperature, so the easiest way to get in on skin is to scrape a hunk out with the back of your fingernail and just rub it into your palms; it'll turn into a nice-feeling oil, not too thin and definitely not like rubbing shortening into your legs. It's unscented, which surprised me. It's good, though, in that if you dislike coconut or don't want to smell like a tanning salon all the time, you don't have to!

It's been awesome. I don't know whether it's real or psychosomatic, but I feel... less toxic, maybe? I feel good about what I put on my body before I go to bed. And the morning after I first used it, my whole body felt like a baby's butt. In a good way. This is also the best oil we've ever used for back rubs, because it seems to have a saturation point where you don't need to keep reapplying.

So now I have to ask, if this unscented, hypoallergenic, organic, natural moisturizer works so well, why have I been rubbing chemicals into my skin for the last twenty-five years?

Hey Baby, What's Your Dosha?

This weekend we learned about Ayurveda. It's a little frustrating, as it's a system that seems to dictate what you eat, when you sleep, and basically everything else about how you live, and yet every source is different. My body type (pitta, fire) isn't supposed to eat bananas, for instance- and then I see a recipe for pitta breakfast that's full of bananas (but it's okay because there's a spice in it that neutralizes the properties that disagree with pitta).

I know that this system isn't perfect- no system is. But I like this one, and I'll make an attempt to explain why.

There are three body types: vata (or wind), pitta, and kapha.

I'm a pitta. Pittas are a fire dosha (type), so if they eat too much spicy food they get heartburn (that's me). They often have red hair and spots on the skin. They have a temper that can flare up with almost no warning (yup). They have to be careful of the sun (I often feel like I look like Michael Jackson when I go outside). They are medium build and tend to maintain weight pretty easily. My secondary dosha is kapha (water/earth), and kaphas can be sweet if they're in balance, but if they're out of balance, they have a tendency to get sedentary. Obviously thousands-of-years-old documents didn't specify laying on the couch watching Tough Love and eating a carton of ice cream as a kapha behavior, but I feel that they would have if it'd been an option.

So in this system, all the negative things that I feel live I've dealt with since we got married (the temper) and my whole life (my tendency to not want to get off the couch) can be dealt with through diet, aromas, and colors. If I feel lazy, I eat a slice of lemon. If I'm about to blow my stack, I stick to yogurt. The thing that I like about it is that you just accept these things... and then deal with them. Rather than being embarrassed and not talking about my championship couch-sitting, I say in front of all the other teacher trainees "my kapha is out of balance. I don't want to do anything lately." And then I work on it, but I feel like the work comes as much from the inside as the outside food I'm eating.

There's also been this cool change, which is basically miraculous if you know how I've been about my body image my whole life: the other day I was walking back home from grocery shopping, and I saw this really skinny girl walking opposite me. My first reaction is to start beating myself up almost instantly... "why aren't YOU that skinny? Why can't YOU stop eating? Why don't YOU go to the gym twice a day?" ... which usually only results in me feeling terrible and going home and eating more ice cream (helloooo kapha). This time, I thought "I'm a pitta kapha, and that's how I'm supposed to be." And it was like this huge internal smile. I'll never be stick-skinny like a vata type, and that's okay. I can watch my weight without obsessing, I can be healthy without beating myself up for not weighing 115. It's like all of this suddenly makes sense to me, when it never has before. And it's also like I have this huge secret when I'm walking around, that I know that I'm a pitta, and that means that I'm a little more accepting of myself than I was before.

Eat Your Spinach.

It doesn't make sense to me, really, that it's so hard to get out of bed in the morning, but after being on my mat for half an hour, I feel so good. When I wake up, I'm sleepy and cranky and cold, and even the ten or so sets of surya namaskar that I did just made me feel awake and alive... and ready to face my last day of work.

So why is it so hard to do the things I need to do? This isn't the first time I've asked myself this question... it popped up once or twice (or every day) in college and grad school with the flute. Why is it so hard to get in the practice room when it feels so good to be there?

I wonder if this quote has something to do with it, at least for me:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most."

-Marianne Williamson

I actually think that sometimes I'm afraid of doing things that are good for me because I might succeed... and it's silly. I feel like Popeye, afraid to eat spinach because then I'll be strong. I think this feeling is something that I'll have to confront head-on, especially because I'm trying to find students on my own, rather than another job.

Yoga Is All Around

I've had this obsession since I was little with being individual. It's a weird thing. I always wanted to read the books that nobody else in my age group was reading (like Les Miserables in middle school... that was before I attempted [and failed at] the French version). I want to have a unique subset of talents, because I feel like it gives me a sense of identity. When I was at MSU, I felt like I had no identity as a flute player until I started to develop into "that flute player who teaches music history and can probably help me edit my paper." I don't know why it is that I've always needed to stand out so much, although I'm sure it has to do with a subset of insecurities that probably stem from decades ago.

In any case, I'm sure I'm not the only ethnoflautoyogini ever on the face of the earth. In fact, I'm pretty sure Krishna was all of those things, in a way. I feel strangely compelled to defend my title, though, and to add more little things to make sure that I'm the most oddly-accredited person in the world, just in case anybody needs an ethnographer who also knows how to play flute and teach Hatha. I think what I'm trying to express is that ultimately, I've always been fine with nobody else doing the things I do. More individuality for me.

Then I had this thought the other day while watching this: yoga could solve a lot of problems for a lot of people. It should be so obvious, but I hadn't actually considered that getting more people to do yoga is a good thing, not only for me personally but for the rest of the world. A peaceful and meditative mindset could stop a lot of bad things from happening, and could stop a lot of hurt and fear. I'm not saying that yoga makes people perfect, but I do think that it causes us to confront ourselves in a way that is totally uncomfortable, but ultimately good. I have a suspicion that it may be difficult to bomb people if we're aware of ourselves.

Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

So I've had a minor setback this week... I'm usually not too much of a hypochondriac, and I have a good doctor which helps. However, this week I started to get a couple of numb spots on my feet, on the insides of my big toes and the back of one heel. I'm okay with a lot of things, but numb spots are not cool. So on my day off from work, I went in to my doctor's office to ask the NP about them. They thought it was most likely a lower back injury (surprise surprise), and told me to heat it and take a (mild) ibuprofin regimen to help with any inflammation.

Lower back trouble? Now I know I'm old.

In any case, I haven't been to yoga at all this week. I've been trying to keep up with meditation, but this week has been so crazy (mostly with work stuff, culminating in my giving my two weeks' notice on Tuesday) that I've been mostly terrible about everything. Luckily, tomorrow is another day of teacher training, so I'm going to do my best to not do anything else to the ol' lumbar region while we discuss the shoulder girdle.

Yoga Therapy

I have a few things to write about, not least because I didn't post anything after my last practice. The class (on Friday) was a lot more strenuous than the ones I've been attending, but it was so good. At the end, my body was tired so my mind was quiet, and I really liked it. Tom put us into a shoulder stand and then into plow, which finally (!) released my lower back. It was so exciting to finish class and not have my back bugging me anymore.

Today in TT, we learned about the pelvis. And, I guess more importantly, we learned what bones do and don't do, and how it's vastly different for everyone. One person may be able to completely straighten their elbow, one might be able to bend it backward (at more than a 180-degree angle), and another might not be able to get it straight at all, and it's nothing they can change! How mind-blowing is that? I mean, I'm usually pretty accepting of what other people's bodies can do, but it's my own that gives me problems. I notice this especially in triangle pose- my pelvis only rotates so far! I've been thinking for years "oh, if I just did more yoga, I wouldn't suck as much," but alas: it's my bone structure. Wild. Also, good to know for teaching.

After kichiri for lunch, we sat down and talked about twenty-seven questions that ranged from "what time did you get up this morning?" to "what is an evil habit that you are trying to break?" to "what terrible event have you been carrying around with you for years?" I feel like answering those questions as a group really brought us close together, and maybe made us feel like we're not so alone as individuals. I was shocked when one of the other teacher trainees described exactly the way that I've been beating myself up because I don't feel like I'm "doing" what I'm supposed to be "doing." I'm trying to let go of things like anger and a short temper.

Then I went to work for six hours and out for nachos with the hubby. The nachos part was awesome, although I'm back to my sort of beginner-ayurvedic diet tomorrow!

Pain In The Back

Yoga last night for me was all about looking forward (to the forward bends)! I think I stayed in a backbend too long the day before... then, to complicate things, I bought a mortar and pestle made of marble yesterday, and then carried it around with me for a few hours in a messenger bag. The thing probably weighed twelve pounds, and with everything else I had in my bag it really twisted my back and I felt like my spine was compressed in the lumbar region. I don't know how I did it in college, carrying around all the music I had with me all the time. My back must have been messed up.

I talked to the woman on the mat next to me, and said that I was in teacher training. I don't quite know how to represent myself in that regard... just because I'm in teacher training doesn't mean at all that I know everything about yoga. I feel like every class is a new idea or a new pose. The teacher actually had to correct me last night because I was doing a completely wrong pose. At the same time, I don't want to be a bad example so I'm trying really hard to do everything right. Which is a joke. "Right" is for music, not for yoga... at least not this kind of yoga.

White Light

I've been struggling a lot with my beliefs versus yoga. The problem is that I don't think I need to be struggling... yoga is such an open system of ideas, and most of it is devoid of this concept of a larger, external deity. I consider myself to be a believer in the connection between people, and a believer in signs as far as using them to keep my eyes open (and maybe not completely believing, if that makes sense). So, what I'm trying to say is that when I meditate and see something, I take it with a grain of salt because I'm aware that it's something that is going on in my brain and can probably be explained outside of the world of spirituality.

However, it is comforting to have things pop up every once in a while. A few weeks ago in a women only class, we were doing some pretty deep meditation. As we went over each part of the body, I felt/saw a hand soothing those areas. This was particularly awesome when we got to feet (I love a good foot rub). The hand was orange and warm, and it was so comforting to have this idea sort of wrap me up and relax all my muscles. After class, our teacher said that if we felt something, it was our spirit. I love the idea of that, and ever since then I've been trying to stock my life with orange things to reflect the color of this hand, my spirit.

So tonight a similar thing happened, except it was more of a revelation. I have a lot of trouble living in the moment, and I usually feel the future bogged down with mistakes and baggage from the past, in such a way that it's sometimes hard for me to move on my own. Tonight I stumbled into a clear sense of the past (which seemed irrelevant), and the future. The sense of the future that I had was a big white room, so large that it had limitless possibilities, dome-shaped, bright. There were no mistakes, no obstacles, no anything. It was like anything I wanted to do with it, colors, furniture, ideas... it was all possible because it was a three-dimensional blank canvas.

I know that sounds kind of out there (and it sounds that way to me too)... but it was such a relief. Seeing the future that way is something that hasn't happened for a long time, and it was like fresh air into lungs. Now if I can just repeat that idea in my head for another few weeks, maybe it'll really get internalized.

Bending Backward

I started yoga teacher training a week ago, and in that time I've started to realize how much I carry with me. All the stress from years of playing an instrument as a college and graduate student is stored in my body- and not just the physical stress of playing, but the mental stress of having to be perfect all the time. I felt like it was stored in my shoulders and hips and middle back, but yesterday I felt like it was in my spine.

We were working on bending backward without compressing the lower back, and it was very hard for me (and frustrating!). My lower back wanted to cave in, but my upper back refused to bend. Making sure my knees weren't locked helped, but I still had to fold forward every few minutes to undo the compression in my lower back.

I don't want this experience to just be about the physical body, which is why I'm so glad I found the teacher and studio that I did. Mentally, I'm frustrated at my frustration with backbends (if that makes sense). I tried not to let it show in class too much, but inside I was so upset about my body's seeming inability to bend that way. My first thought was that I'll just avoid that pose in my own practice, but I know that's not the right answer... I guess this will be a good exercise (no pun intended) in learning a new skill without letting myself get crazy about it!