New Year

I love the arbitrary (Gregorian calendar) date for New Year's Day, and I think whoever came up with that must have really known what they were doing.  I mean, if you think about it, the year is circular, right?  We orbit the sun and it's not like there's a pause or invisible ticker that's like "ding, new year!"  So the date could be whenever.  Wikipedia tells me that England and Wales celebrated on March 25th, up until 1751- that's quite recent, when you think about it.  Sikhs celebrate on March 14th.  In Bali the new year follows the moon cycle, so it's different each year (but usually in March).  It's celebrated with twenty-four hours of fasting and meditation.  In Punjab, they celebrate on April 14th.  Rosh Hashanah is in the fall, and the Muslim new year date varies, but in 2008 there were two celebrations.

But January works pretty well, for me anyway.  It's right in the middle of winter, so right when things are getting pretty dull and bleak, I'm stuck in a rut, and I need a bit of a break, there's the restart button.

And I know it's symbolic, but lots of good and meaningful things are symbolic, and so are lots of things that really matter.  If symbolism gets me off the couch, cool.  If symbolism causes me to re-evaluate, reflect, and set new goals for the next arbitrary chunk of my life, I feel like it's done a pretty great job.  Plus, it's a rare opportunity to give oneself a well-deserved pat on the back for changes and accomplishments made in the previous year.  I love the New Year because it gives me an opportunity to consider what I've done and what I want to do, and design a plan for what I want to do next.

It's also one of those handy year-markers, like birthdays (or Halloween, the winter solstice, or Bastille Day... anything that we celebrate), where you can see a clear line from birth until the present, and every year there's growth and change.

For example, when I was a kid, my new year's resolutions every year were basically this:
1.  Get skinny.
2.  Write in my journal more.
3.  Obtain a kitten.

Now that I look back, that first one is a little problematic coming from an eleven-year-old... but luckily I've experienced some obvious maturation.
1.  Get into a habit of avoiding processed sugars.
2.  Eat more leafy greens.
3.  Cultivate a frequent yoga practice
4.  Spend lots of time with family and the people I love.
5.  Spend lots of time working toward my own goals.
6.  Write in my Blogger more.
7.  Obtain a kitten.

Why I've Been Talking Politics

(This is a long and confusing post with too many ideas.  I'm sorry.)

I have a lot of stuff I want to write about, but I haven't been able to pick a topic for a few days.  I didn't particularly want to write the "Eleventy Things I'm Thankful For" until sometime later, after the holidays are over (although I have many, many things to be thankful for and I'm sure it will be a massive read, so make sure you grab a cup of coffee and probably a snack, just sayin').  Beside that, all that's been on my mind other than living and stuff are issues that could probably be deemed inflammatory, either positively or negatively (depending on your beliefs/political views).  And I didn't know if I wanted to do that, because I didn't really want to put myself out there like that, all saying what I actually think and stuff.

And since I have a tendency to miss the obvious points in my life, it took me three days to realize that really what I should write about is my thoughts on... my thoughts.  How I got there, why I think that, and how come I feel so uncomfortable saying so.

Speaking my mind has been a life-long battle for me for a couple of reasons.  The first is just that I try to be nice, and I guess my definition of nice has never included running others over with my opinion.  The second is that I genuinely believe that everybody has something to say and a right to say it.  If I don't listen to the opinions of others, why should I expect them to listen to me?

I'm re-reading that paragraph.  It makes sense, and I still agree with it.

The problem might just be that in the last several years, I've gotten "listen to others" confused with "don't say anything back," "hide my own opinion," and "as a result, carry around sub-surface, deep-seated doubts about the things that I believe the most."  This might explain why I shrug apologetically when people ask me if I'm a vegetarian, and other similar scenarios.  But the fact remains that I'm in my mid-twenties, and who I am is starting to solidify thusly: I'm a borderline-hippie vegetarian yoga practitioner who is very concerned about environmental impact, arts education, and feminism/the status of women today and in the future.  Phew.  Even writing that makes me uncomfortable.

I don't want to shout my opinions.  I've never felt at ease around people whose voices were so loud that they overshadowed their actions.  Even peaceful and respectful dialogue can end really poorly, especially if you are trying to dialogue with people who aren't so peaceful and respectful.  That can be much worse than just keeping one's mouth shut, in my experience.

But I'm an adult, or at least I pretend to be.  And that means that I need to stand up for myself and learn to do difficult things like advertise my own business prowess and flute playing, and basically figure out how to convince people that I can do all the things I know I can do.  And I thought a good place to start would be a blog.  I'm not shoving it in anybody's face, and nobody has to read it.  Everybody can start conversations in the comments section, and they don't have to stare at my face while I say stuff they may not want to hear.  But I can practice saying the things that are true for me without constant second-guessing, hence my political/personal posts.

So that's that.  I wonder if other people have these thoughts?

Pepper

In grad school, I was involved with the graduate student union.  While I have mixed feelings about unions, I really believed in this one.  The graduate TAs and GAs unionized when they hadn't had a pay raise for over a decade, had no benefits, no health insurance.  They were doing important work for the university, for other students (graduate and undergraduate), and for various branches of learning (including agriculture and the sciences) and weren't able to make ends meet.  At that particular university, the grad students did a third of the teaching and two-thirds of the grading, so it was no wonder they felt that they should be better rewarded for their work.  As an aside, a number of other groups also felt shorted and unionized against the university, including clerical and technical staff, and even a portion of the university faculty.

I was a part of the union the year we were bargaining for a new contract.  While I was sorry that I didn't have the time to be a part of the bargaining team, I turned up for every event that I could manage, including the most awesome one (in my opinion): a grade-in.  The TAs and GAs didn't do anything special or different than usual.  We just took our stacks of grading from our office to the floor of the administrative building.  We spread out our papers on the floor and sat cross-legged and peacefully caused a little bit of gridlock for the administrators who wanted to cut our health insurance and pay, even as they raised university housing by five percent.  And, as a side-note, tuition doubled between 2004 and 2011.  Doubled.


But my point is, I'm a big fan of the peaceful protest.  I believe that there's no better way to educate the people you're trying to change than show them who you are and what you do in a peaceful way- no yelling, no screaming, no throwing liquids of any kind (or solids, for that matter).  I just think that pacifist protest is really the way to get things done.

Then again, when we did our grade-in, we didn't get pepper-sprayed at point blank range by the police.

I don't go to UC Davis, and I've never had any affiliation with them, but I was horrified (as I'm sure many people were) to see a video of seated students and non-students being pepper-sprayed and manhandled by the police.  I thought it was especially ironic that the Chancellor (Linda Katehi) said that camping out on campus was not allowed because it posed a safety issue to students.  I imagine that's true, especially if the students are having their sculls fractured by thrown canisters of tear gas, which actually happened to one protester.

While I have no affiliation with the school, I do have a lot of sympathy for the protesters.  I'm a young, well-educated adult and have consistently struggled to make ends meet since I finished my dual masters.  I have many of the same frustrations as all of the "Occupy" movements, and a big part of me feels like the pepper-spraying and tear-gassing of peaceful protesters is a big fat analogy for the whole reason they're out there protesting in the first place.

I'm not totally finished processing this, but I think I have two hopes for the outcome of this event having been widely broadcast.  The first is that I hope it doesn't deter people from demonstrating their dissatisfaction with a broken system.   If there's anything that we can learn from large-scale, long-term peaceful protesting, it's that it doesn't achieve results overnight.  And secondarily, I hope that it encourages everyone, police or student or otherwise, to practice peace and compassion.  As angry as watching the video made me, it was a good reminder that violence doesn't just come in the form of pepper spray.

Savasana Adjustments

Before I had accumulated any of my (minimal) experience teaching yoga to kids, I would have thought what they liked best was the opportunity to be more bendy, or to take a nap, or to do pairs poses and giggle at each other.  But after teaching kids for a year, I find myself continually surprised that their favorite pose is pretty consistently savasana with some kind of guided meditation.  I have a few ideas why, but I think I need a little more experience and a little more time working consistently with kids to really figure it out.

However, I think one of the reasons is the adjustments.  I had a yoga teacher when I was first starting out who made really fantastic savasana adjustments.  She would grasp a foot, one at a time, with her thumb on the arch of the foot, and pull.  The way she did it, it adjusted the hip and made the legs feel longer and relaxed.  I imagine you could get a similar result from pulling on an ankle, especially since some ankles tend to pop uncomfortably if you put even moderate pressure on them.  In any case, the almost all the kids I've worked with have loved this adjustment - in fact, I can't think of one off the top of my head that hasn't.

The second adjustment is to do essentially the same with the arms.  This can relax tension in the shoulders and neck, and make the arms feel more relaxed.  I'm consistently amazed by how many kids carry tension in their shoulders.  Sometimes I'll see even eight- or nine-year-olds with their shoulders around their ears.  I usually follow this with making sure the palms of their hands are flipped toward the sky and either pulling fingers lightly, or putting light pressure on palms with my thumb.  This is another favorite.  When it's done to me, it makes my hands feel grounded and my fingers seem longer (a nice bonus if you're a musician or teaching musical kiddos).

Adjustments are tricky things.  As yoga teachers, we have to be careful not to cause any injury or pain, which means being hyper-aware of any previous injuries or sore spots.  I'm terrified of making an adjustment that hurts a student.  Because of that, I likely make adjustments less frequently than I should.

That being said, the ever-present yoga student in me looooves adjustments, and there's nothing better than a yoga teacher mindfully helping me to where I need to be.  Yoga in the West is a mind/body fusion (emphasis mostly on the body), and I think it's important because of that for teachers to be aware of how to adjust and not be scared of it.  In the end, I'm still a teacher coming to terms with the student in me that just wants that adjustment. 


Adult students, by the way, also love the savasana adjustment, according to the feedback that I've had from adult classes.  And heck, feedback from myself.  Some days when I couldn't get off the couch to a yoga class for any other reason, the promise of that little bit of extra stretch was enough.

Meet loaf.

I love Jonathan Safran Foer's stuff- "Everything Is Illuminated" was one of those books that leave such a lasting impression that they become a part of you, and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" had me in tears in public.  So when my up-to-date S/O saw that he was writing a non-fiction book about vegetarianism, I was really interested in what he had to say.  And it was a lot.

Vegetarianism is a complex issue.  It's a relatively small choice, sometimes, but it has a huge social ripple.  I think my family was very concerned when I showed up for Thanksgiving and made a broccoli quiche for myself, and I was a little concerned myself.  Foer talks about his grandmother's signature dish, chicken soup, and how important it was to her to feed her children and grandchildren fatty pieces of meat after running from the Nazis and starving for years.  For him to give up her soup, and deprive himself and his son of the stories and family history inherent in eating it, was a very poignant illustration of the issues I'm sure many vegetarians battle (albeit sometimes unconsciously).

When I went veg, it was very important to me not to "make a big deal out of it."  I didn't want to make any family or friends feel the least bit guilty for eating meat, and I didn't want anybody to feel judged.  That's something I still feel strongly about, but it's been difficult to accomplish because the act of me turning down meat sometimes seems to make people uncomfortable about eating it no matter what I say.  Foer confronts that issue head-on too, and discusses frankly the moral and ethical issues that we grow up with concerning eating animals.  Not meat, animals.  As an aside, what an interesting book title.

Think about it: from the time that we're tiny we read the story of the three little pigs.  The wolf wants to eat them.  Why is the wolf bad?  It's in his nature to eat other animals.  But that doesn't matter, because he's going after a living thing and he wants to nom it, and he's bad because of it.  And then we wonder why we have guilt complexes while eating pork chops.

Before reading this book, I ate a lot of fish- not at home, but when I was eating at restaurants.  Because of the points that I can't reiterate eloquently here, I haven't had fish in a couple of months.  I don't want to make any shining proclamations about how long this will last or its universal application (I ate a small amount of meat in France this summer because so many of the issues that made me go veg weren't issues with the meat I was offered there), but having a plant-based diet has become something really important to me, surprisingly so.  I find myself becoming an outspoken advocate of reduced meat consumption more than almost any other issue.

Maybe some other time in a shorter post I'll talk about why I went veg in the first place.  There wasn't any one reason, and it's kind of a complicated story, so I'll leave it for another day.

Anyway, the whole point to this post was that I made this recipe for this vegan loaf that I can eat on my homemade tomato thyme bread.  I wasn't sure about it, as it had a bunch of stuff that I've never cooked with before (like nutritional yeast and vital wheat gluten) (which totally sucks since my friends with gluten allergies can't enjoy :-( ).  But it turned out yummy... it has the texture of sausage (with a hard outside and firm inside) and has a spicy-delicious-salty flavor that I totally want to eat with ketchup and mayo.  And maybe a tomato slice.  On an open-faced sammitch.  And maybe I can put it in the toaster oven.  Drool.  And my wonderful, supportive S/O likes it too.  Victoire.

So then I shamelessly stole said recipe and reposted in the hope that the three people who read this will make it and love it.  And there you go.  This is worth trying out, even if you aren't going the veggie route.

Back to the Beginning

So I move to Rochester and what do I do for a living? Guess. For those who know me, it's the most ridiculous, out-there thing ever.

I'm teaching preschool.

What.

And then sometimes I come home and throw tantrums, just like the kids. :)

Give Up

I bought a yoga mat in France. It was the only one I could find at a big sports store, and it came with two foam blocks. I took it outside for two days in a row and did fifty-six sun salutations (it's hard!) and stared at the horses and the mountains and got sun on my back and shoulders. And then I just kind of stopped.

I mean, we got busy. We had the recital, then E and I went to Cannes for a couple of days, then there were family things and I just didn't have time. After we were in Cannes, we were only back in Mons for a couple of days before we left, and E got really sick so I was with him most of the time. Then we came back to the US, spent some time in NYC with his cousins, and moved here. And we went to one class, but it wasn't enough to even make me sore the next day (and believe me, I'm so out of shape that standing up and sitting down could make me sore).

And it's funny, because I'm only talking about the physical side of yoga, but all the mental stuff went to crap too in a big financial freak-out that I had when we sat down and I realized how much I need to keep me going, just based on my bills. I haven't felt quite right mentally since then.

What is right? This living situation. I love it. I love the apartment, and between the two of us we don't really need any more furniture (except a kitchen table). I love the time we've been spending together and with other friends. I love that I have a job, that we have a recording studio in our apartment (with a piano!). I hate that our horn-playing neighbor plays Mahler excerpts at 10:00 PM, but I sort of love that at least we have a musician neighbor. But if she does it one more time, I'm going to start practicing Stars and Stripes Forever on piccolo right into her window.

So pretty much what's missing is exercise in general, yoga in specific. But it's definitely been an interesting study in how much the physical affects the mental.

Some Non-Yoga Thoughts on Leaving Boston

So I'm moving in twenty days- one month in Connecticut, one month in France, and then heading west for a year. And I've been thinking a lot about Boston and what my year and a half here has been like, how I've adjusted to the city, how I haven't adjusted at all. Personally, my time here has been very, very confusing. Getting married and divorced within a year is nasty business, and I struggled for a long time with feelings of anger and guilt over being duped into moving to Boston in the first place. But I have to admit that the city itself, while confusing and seemingly contradictory at times, is definitely interesting.

Boston people are pushy. They know what they want, and you'd better damn well give it to them. This was especially apparent when I was working retail, and middle-aged Bostonites would come in expecting a personal shopper (and getting one, through pure pushiness). If you do something that's aggravating in traffic, like merging late (even though you've been signalling for five minutes), or stopping for a pedestrian (even though you're supposed to), you can expect to be yelled at and shown interesting variations of the middle part of the hand. Living in a really urban apartment has made me strikingly aware of how much Boston drivers honk their horns. Especially at four in the morning. I hated the pushiness initially. I like to think (or maybe pretend) that it's given me a little bit of an edge that I didn't have before, though. At least now I think I have the option of going all Boston on somebody if they need it. :-)

Boston people are really proud to be Boston people. On the upper crust, there's the serious and studious Harvard/MIT/BU/Tufts crowd that's mostly non-local but which seems at first to be the pulse of a city that basically shuts down at 9:00 PM and mostly doesn't party. But after living here for a while, you start to become aware that the Harvard crowd is just the skin of the city. All the blood and guts are made of the real natives, the ones that might drop "r"s and tell hilarious-but-slightly-racist jokes and really are Boston. No Yankees fans allowed. I've seen three people in two days with large, noticeable Red Sox tattoos.

Boston is a really, really green city. Every subsection of the population throws their cans into a recycling bin that gets picked up curbside once a week. People take the T to work to avoid driving their cars (not just because traffic in Boston moves at an average of 8 MPH, but also because it's better for the environment to use mass transit. And there's such a good system here). You can't walk two blocks without running into a yoga studio. The young, working, mostly-tattooed yuppie population can be seen after hours drinking herbal tea and carrying yoga mats. Nobody looks at you sideways if you mention that you're on an Ayurvedic diet or ask where you can get kombucha. This is a part of living here that I love.

There's also The Cambridge Mom. The Cambridge Mom has lofty ideals about how to raise her children... and actually follows through with them. The moms I have been fortunate enough to work with all are extremely well-educated (don't know one without at least one masters degree), most of them practice yoga, work and raise kids, and care deeply about their families and their community. One mom has quotes all over her kitchen from various philosophers, holy books, and writers that remind you, every time you take a glass out of the cabinet, to breathe deeply and enjoy every moment you've been given. One mom's kids run to the fridge to grab the jar of wheat germ to put on their yogurt for dessert. The kids are kids- but they often surprise me with grains of wisdom that seem very mature for their years. All of The Cambridge Moms seem to want to give their children this indomitable sense of hope- that life is good, and people are good, and you can make the world a better place right now! You don't even have to wait until you grow up. I love that about living here too.

Plus, after I moved here my sister followed, and I think Boston has been exactly the right place for her. She fits in well, she found work immediately, and now she's going back to school to be an NP. She also found her dude here. And that's a total positive.

So I might be back, after this year. And I wouldn't mind at all, because I feel like I know the ropes now. I can navigate the subway like a pro, I know which windy, poorly-maintained streets are one-way, and I'm fairly adept at avoiding the $50 street-sweeping parking tickets (god, these people love their parking tickets). I think I'd be much better at Boston a second time around. But for now, I'm a little relieved to have a year off to spend with my best friends, working and living in an environment that's a little more laid-back.

Yoga Slacker

I went a week, and then went more than a week, and then my life went temporarily insane and between babysitting and spending time with people I really didn't have time to hit a class sometimes. But I'm alive, and feeling pretty good. It's Friday. Sunday I'm going to take an overnight trip to Connecticut. I'll update more later, but things are going.

Day Six (Still A Failure)

Murgh.

Yesterday I had a very... uh... negative bodily response to the idea of going to yoga. I was tired, my joints hurt, and I was feeling a little bit on the down-side. Maybe more than a little bit. So instead of going to yoga, I took a nap and felt a little bit better afterward. I felt like I was having a reaction against this idea of continuity. Some part of me really hates routine, especially self-induced routine, because it feels a little like an addiction process. I must have been really addicted to something in a previous life, because I shy away from anything that feels like addiction, even habit. Even habits I like. I can't even commit to one brand of deodorant for too long.

But I'm not going to be beaten by freaking going to yoga once a day and blogging about it, so today was back in the saddle. I taught a class this morning and think I may have accidentally killed my regulars trying out all the new poses I learned this week, and then I took just a basic vinyasa class at the studio down the block this evening. I was still triggered from feeling like a Yoga Failure, I think, and I tried to go into it with the best attitude that I could, but to be honest, it's just not my week. I feel bloated and I'm eating a lot of chocolate, I don't feel lithe at all, and these issues with arm balances are really starting to bother me. Plus, it looks like I'm starting to have issues with my balance in general. So I'm trying, but it was weird.

But there was one minor victory- I made it successfully into a new bind that I've never been able to get before. It looked like this:

So tomorrow is back to business. I'm teaching four times this week, and hopefully taking at least one class every day. Although I don't want to jinx it with my expectations.

Day Five (In which I feel like a yoga failure)

Wowee, today's class was a difficult one. It was another Anusara-inspired class where the teacher took us through a series of poses that might or might not be advanced by Anusara standards, but definitely were by Hatha standards. But regardless, I made two discoveries about my body- one is good, and one is not so good.

1. The instructor was having us pull our shoulders out and pulling our abs in, then taking almost a cow-like back and pulling our shoulderblades together behind us. I have never in my life felt my shoulderblades grinding together, but I did today. The front of my chest felt open, my heart area felt open, and I had so much less pain in backbends than I usually do (and I assume that it had to do equally with being able to bend in my upper back, and also tucking my tailbone and engaging my core to prevent my lower back from bending too much.

2. It became apparent during the class that I have really, really tight quads. This explains soooo much (like why my butt doesn't hit my heels in child's pose. I assumed I had really tight knees, but I never had any knee pain). The classes I usually take, and the classes I teach, have a lot of poses that engage the quads, but very few that stretch them out. Even pigeon on the floor- usually I am not asked to (and don't ask my students to) bend the extended leg. So, quads. One area I really need to work with.

I still found myself today working with some major fear. I have no problem getting into a headstand against the wall, but handstand was completely different. I had to ask someone in the class to assist me just getting up. And it's not like I couldn't- I have the core strength for it now. I'm just too freaked out by the prospect of falling. So I'm considering the possibility that I'm going to need to start practicing twice a day: once in a class, and once on my own.

Day Four

I went to a one-hour class today. It was a lunchtime Vinyasa flow, and boy was I achey and sore from the classes yesterday. Opening up my shoulders to bind things and fold forward hurt like hell. And I came face-to-face with my biggest yoga foe at the moment: arm balances.

Arm balances. I suck at them. Crow pose? It seems like every yogini on the planet can do crow pose. Except for me. And originally I was like, well, maybe I just don't have the wrist strength yet. Or the ab strength. Or the upper arm strength. But lately I've realized that I do have that strength. I'm just terrified of falling on my face. And this is what kept me from playing soccer and what kept me from enjoying tetherball and other mundane things. But seriously. Why can't I do a freaking arm balance?

So I guess the only thing to do is work on it.

But, BUT. There was a girl in the class today who was probably ten years old. And when the teacher demonstrated the arm balance, she said "wowwwwwwww." And everyone in the class was thinking it, but she was the only one brave enough to say it, and it was awesome. I wish there was a ten-year-old in every yoga class.

Day Three (Yesterday)

Yesterday I hit not one, but two hour-and-a-half classes. The first one was an Anusara-inspired flow at the studio right down the block. I guess I've been steering away from Anusara classes because I find them a little bit cultey, and although I won't be becoming a devotee any time soon, I did love the class. Afterward I felt well-rested, well-stretched, and kind of radiant. It was cool. Maybe because of the first class, I was really paying attention to how I felt in the second class, which was at my old studio. During the meditation, I felt like I wanted to jump out of my skin. But then, during the class, I conquered a major obstacle for me: the splits. I came farther into Hanumanasana than I've ever even gotten close to before- I just had a bolster holding my hip about two inches off the floor. For me, who spent most of middle school not even being able to touch my toes, this is huge. Me: 1, Fear: 0.

Thinking about the fear thing has been making me think about all the things that go with fear, like hate and judgment. I had a few friends who identify as Christian post some things on Facebook that I felt projected intense hatred and belittlement toward people who practice Islam, in the wake of Bin Laden being killed. Last night after I got home (from my almost-total Hanumanasana! Score!!) I felt emotionally dragged back to high school, where this kind of debate was commonplace in the mostly-Christian group I was a part of. I always felt ignored, slighted, or put down for my beliefs and views, even when they weren't that different. One of my best friends in high school told me that when I practiced yoga, I was worshiping Satan. I was told by various Christian sects that I wasn't baptized early enough (I was seven), I was baptized too early for it to "count," I wasn't really baptized at all since I hadn't had a full-immersion baptism, that I couldn't take communion (by Catholics), that I wasn't really Christian because I was too close to Catholic (by Baptists), that I wasn't spending enough time in church, that I was spending too much time in the wrong kind of church. These messages were really confusing for a kid, and I hope they have made me very conscious of the judgment that I pass on the beliefs of others.

But I didn't do a good job last night. The post that triggered me so much started with a lamentation that six million Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust, only to be replaced with twenty million Muslim people in Spain, who had presumably brought with them poverty and sloth and idleness. Then there was a list of Jewish people who had won the Nobel prize, and a much shorter list of Islamic people who had won the same prize. This was supposed to be shocking because there is a much larger Muslim population in the world than Jewish population. Then there was a quiz, where the answer to a lot of violent "who done it" were Muslim men.

There are obvious numbers to refute these facts, and I'm not going to post them here because I've been thinking about them all day and I think that my thinking about it any more is not going to do anybody any good. Suffice to say, something similar to this could easily be posted about any major religious group, and a part of me wanted to produce an almost identical post targeting Christianity, just to prove a point. We are all individuals within a belief system, and we can't hold others within that system culpable for the actions of a few, no more than we could hold an entire race or gender culpable for the actions of a few. I'm not saying that I agree with everything in the Muslim faith. I definitely don't. But I don't really hold 100% to any major world religion, and I have similar issues with them all. Many of them, including Islam and Christianity, appear to condone violent acts if you read the texts that way.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I, within and concerning myself only, want to feel compassion for both people practicing Islam, and people practicing Christianity. I don't want to get into a place where I feel so trapped and exasperated and am trying desperately to make an argument that I know won't be heard, and I definitely don't want to be judgmental or appear violent myself because I'm trying to prove a point. I don't want to be a giant oxymoron, yelling and stabbing at people in the name of peace. All I can really control is myself, anyway, and I feel like that's all I should want to control.

But I don't have all the answers. And I know I won't- so I think maybe for right now instead of pretending that I do have answers, I should just listen to what's going on around me and think about it as peacefully as I can. Maybe all this yoga can help with that.

Day Two

Today instead of going to the new studio, I went to my friend's class this morning. It was yoga stretch, and it did. My hamstrings need some rest and probably ibuprofin this evening. After the class we went to Whole Foods and got stuff for a picnic and took it out to Walden Pond in Concord. This is where Thoreau lived, and (more importantly) where Louisa May Alcott grew up. The weather was beautiful, the sun was shining, and I soaked up a month's worth of vitamin D while we ate on the beach.

My skin really hates the sun, and this evening feels slightly angry and sore even though I was covered everywhere with sunscreen. It's like my little skinules, underneath the protective blanket of sunscreen, are like "WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID!!!" And boy did I. We walked around the whole pond and it looked and smelled and felt fantastic. Spring was popping out of everywhere. My collarbone and hairline are definitely pinker than usual.

I'm wondering if this yoga journey is going to hinder my transition into moving to Rochester, or help it along. I can't wait, and I can feel myself moving toward The Move faster than it's actually coming toward me, so it's nice to have the groundedness of a little bit of routine to help stabilize things.

Month of Yoga, Episode One

Today I did something that I've totally been meaning to do for a long time, and totally can't afford: I bought an unlimited pass for a month to the yoga studio a couple doors down from my apartment. I figure I'll only be living here for a couple more months, and it's a great opportunity for me to deepen my practice (which has been more than a little lax lately) on a consistent basis. I'm not so good with getting to class every day when I have to, you know, walk a few miles or drive and lose my parking spot. I'm pretty good at talking myself out of going to class when that's the case. So now that I've dropped the money (or, really, put the money on my credit card) I'm excited to see what happens with my body and my mind and my soul after a month of much more frequent and consistent practice than I've been having.

Today I went to a level two class, and I was really scared that I was going to totally suck. With my lax practice and all the Easter candy, I've been feeling really, really down on myself and I was not excited about making a fool out of myself in front of the studio I sort of just committed to. My fears were... um... heightened considerably when I walked in to the yogini in front of me doing a beautiful, unsupported handstand. I had to stick myself into a child's pose to keep from running out the door.

But one of the things I really like about yoga is that it's a fear thing. Everything about yoga is something that I used to be afraid of: forward folds, inversions, wearing tight clothes... every class is an opportunity to overcome a fear of mine, and same goes for every time I teach. So I stuck around, and I'm glad that I did. The experience level of the people in the class allowed for a lot of individual movement (at the end, the instructor just told us to do a few wheels, do a counter-pose, and stick ourselves into the resting pose of our choice). All the benefit of my own practice with all the benefit of having the guidance and support of a class! I also added a couple of new motions and poses to my rep that I think the more advanced women in my Sunday class might find interesting.

Then I ate some Easter candy. But after that I cleaned the bathroom, which I haven't been able to motivate myself to do for a whole week. Can't win them all, but I forgave myself for the sweets... I feel great right now, and think I might actually hit two classes tomorrow: one taught by my yogini goddess friend, and one at my new temporarily-home studio.

Today I took the train downtown and took a hip-hop yoga class at Back Bay Yoga. I didn't know the teacher and had no idea what to expect other than hopefully some good tunes. I love rap, so I figured the combo of the music and the BBY vibe would help me to really push myself.

I think the point I knew I was in trouble was when a woman with very cute and very short yoga shorts walked into the room, set up her mat right by the front, and popped right into a forearm balance. I've been very blessed with hips that open fairly easily and generally problem-free shoulders, but arm balances just aren't my strong suit. So far, anyway.

So the first song was "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice, and I was like, fail. This class is gonna suck. And I laughed for the whole first song because that song is so terrible, but then she started playing Dre and Rhianna, and then the sequences started happening, and boy were there sequences. Left leg back in a lunge, pop forward into half-moon, reach back and grab your left foot, push your foot into your hand and open your shoulder, bring your foot forward into a standing pigeon without touching it down, bring your hands up to heart's center, twist toward the right and set your elbow into the arch of your foot, grab your foot and set it at tree pose, lift up, take reverse namaste and bend backward, exhale forward into a standing split, shoot your left leg back into lunge, take a vinyasa, repeat on the left side. And that was just a warmup.

The way the music was used seemed like a distraction for the most part. I could barely hear the teacher and had to watch the front rows for the next poses. But, the teacher had us do a simple surya namaskar flow for an entire song, and that was where I felt like the music was awesome.

The advanced poses were intense. There was an option to take crow four or five separate times, plus about four variations of crow. There were options to take headstands, handstands, and other arm balances. I was in standing split like ten times. This was a much more advanced practice than I am used to.

And I kind of loved it.

I dunno. I haven't taken a class that kicked my butt that much in a long time, and the challenge of it reminded me that I have a long way to go with my asana practice, and a lot more poses to explore. I think I'm gonna go back next week.

I feel like every time I write something in this blog, it needs to be some big life realization or lesson that I've learned or epiphany that I've had or light bulb that was burned out but magically re-lit itself. I'm re-reading my entries and getting tired of listening to myself. I'm not like that! Maybe it's just me, but I'm looking at this blog and seeing somebody who is obsessed with finding a lesson or meaning in everything when maybe she should just be focusing on the present. Not that this is this entry's big realization or lesson, but I'm gonna give it a shot for a few entries and see how I feel.

The weather today was gorgeous, really for the first time this spring. I love breaking out the flip-flops. I meant to go to a class at Prana after I babysat, but I got done in that annoying time where I was just five minutes too late for the 6:00 class, and an hour and a half early for the 7:30. So I came home and chopped up a bunch of greens and am in the process of making dinner. I put walnuts in my rice. Will let you know if it's gross.

Eating habits are in massive flux. I'll eat brown rice and greens and then chase it with Easter candy... not the best thing ever. I'm trying to cut out that last part, but I'm feeling like the only way to get it gone is to not buy the stuff. At all. So no more grocery shopping when I'm hungry.

And as far as big spiritual realizations... no huge ones, except that I'm still holding onto bad habits from the dead relationship (hey, that's pretty good. I feel like I'll call it that from now on), and I feel like I've got my fingers wrapped around them like they're life preservers. I'm worried that if I don't let them go (and letting go is one of the things I do least well... I'm great at holding on, and remembering, and making histories, and writing things down, and holding grudges, but I'm terrible at letting go) they're going to affect my current awesome life. Any pointers?

Crunchy Living

There's something about being in control of my eating that makes me feel in control of my whole life. I don't think it's an unhealthy thing, at least not in the way it seems to be working for me- but when I eat pizza and tons for cheese and beer and crap, I feel like everything is sort of spiraling out of control in a way. If I can't even control what my hand feeds to my face, how am I supposed to control the rest of my body? How am I supposed to look good, or sleep well, or manage my time with anything resembling responsibility?

So I was like, hello kale.

I'm on a serious health food kick lately, and for once, I'm doing it to be healthy and not to drop 16,000 lbs. Despite my periodical and insistent cravings for chocolate (which I've decided I can't do anything about, so I'm just going to eat nice chocolate in small quantities), I'm eating a lot of brown rice, healthy oils, and leafy greens. Broccoli has kind of always been one of my favorites, but I'm getting really into steamed kale too. And lots of garlic.

It took about three days of this before I started to feel less like a sickie on the road to recovery from strep throat and more like Superwoman. Or, as I'm going to say in France this summer (presumably when people ask me what prompted me to visit), je voudrais m'eloigner des Cheez-its. I would like to distance myself from Cheez-its. Heck oui.

It's Okay. I'm Back. :-)

I know it's been a long hiatus, and I thought it was going to be permanent for a while. But, like Slim Shady, I'm back again.

I was going to say that I've been dealing with some struggles when it comes to yoga and its place in my life, but that's misleading. And anyway, more recently I've been doing a lot of thinking about my place in yoga. It's a tricky series of thoughts, but I'll try to get it out in a way that is at least partially comprehensible.

Without going into details, a monstrously hurtful thing ended in November. And I have a tendency to want to, in situations like this, throw out the baby with the bathwater- so when a relationship ends, I want to throw out everything that came from the relationship, or was a byproduct of it, or that I associate with it in any way, or even that happened around the same time. And so I looked at yoga in my life, for a little bit, and really scrutinized it. Is this really me, or did I just get into it to make others happy? When I started teacher training, was I finding myself or obscuring myself? Are the yogic beliefs my beliefs, or did I lose my beliefs somewhere back along the path? Do I need to do some serious re-tracing to pick them back up?

But I kept practicing and teaching through the whole thing, because I figured, what the heck. I'll just back off the mental thing for a bit and see what happens. And then somewhere between learning how to touch people in a healing way in a workshop at Back Bay Yoga and practicing on my bedroom floor, I had this realization.

This practice and lifestyle isn't a cover-up of me. It's actually helping me to uncover me.

I'm nobody to be talking about yoga. My practice isn't the most perfect or steady. I have random and sporadic issues with my right hip flexor and I have a tendency to collapse into and injure my lower back (my lower back is an allegory for a lot of things in life: it seems to be very flexible, but really it's just weak). Money is tight right now and I don't go to as many classes as I'd like to. I sometimes eat junk food. I beat myself up about everything (and violate ahimsa [non-violence] in the process).

But.

I'm happy. I'm deeply fulfilled. I'm less prone to attack myself than I've ever been in my life (although I have good days and bad days). I'm playing my flute with an intention that hasn't been present in years. I'm listening to my body in a new way. And there's still that little voice in my head that whispers "your headstands suck. And you need to lose ten pounds." But I figure, I'll just keep reminding that voice that practicing yoga has never been about the asana practice for me. It's been about learning to love myself and the people around me more fully, and about opening myself up to what the universe has to offer me. And that even if I'm never, ever perfect, I can't keep up my life-long pattern of directing violence and hatred against myself for every mistake.

So. Yoga and I are friends, and I think this is going to be one of those beneficial friendships that last a whole, long, imperfect, mistake-ridden, beautiful lifetime, for better or worse.