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.