Yoga?

I had a very long talk with a very dear friend last night, who has been through a year so excruciating that I can't even start to imagine what it feels like.  She asked about yoga classes, and I started blabbing jibberish about doshas and vata times of year, and how she could take a class that would make her feel grounded.  And she very kindly said, "Uh, what's a dosha?" which made me realize that we can get so wrapped up in this yoga thing that it's almost like a different language.  There needs to be a back-to-basics guide.  There already is an Idiot's Guide to Yoga, and I'm sure it's way better than what I'm about to write, but I thought I'd throw out a few things that I've picked up.  Disclaimer: I'm writing totally out of my brain and there are no works cited, so if you see something that needs a correction (or is totally wrong) please let me know!

What IS a dosha?
Doshas are the elements: vata is wind/air, kapha is earth/water, and pitta is fire.  Your dosha is the most prominent of those elements in your body and mind.  Here's a handy-dandy dosha quiz.  Your job is to balance those three elements, and it's likely that your needs will change from year to year, and with the seasons.  If you are out of balance with lots of vata, for example, you will be all over the place mentally, and be cold and dry physically, neither of which is very fun.  So to balance that, you can go to yoga classes that are slow, methodical, and grounding, like a Yin Yoga class, or a restorative class, and you can sway your diet toward heavy, wet, and oily foods.  In my experience, cooking for your dosha is actually really fun, but you can really choose how much to delve into ayurveda (the Indian science behind doshas).  I ate for my dosha for a month when I was in teacher training, and I have to say that I felt great.

What is yoga?
This question is super complex.  Yoga means, as far as I know, "to yoke," so we focus on yoking the mind and the body.  If you want to get into the history of yoga, then yoga is an eight-fold path to samadhi, or enlightenment.

Yoga can happen anywhere.  Even on a mountain
with a big sweat-spot on your back.
(Please ignore the big sweat spot.)

(If you are curious, the eight "limbs" are yamas [stuff you shouldn't do: Ahimsa: nonviolence, Satya: truthfulness, Asteya: nonstealing, Brahmacharya: continence or sexual control, Aparigraha: noncovetousness], niyamas [stuff you should do: Saucha: cleanliness, Samtosa: contentment, Tapas: heat; spiritual austerities, Svadhyaya: study of the sacred scriptures and of one's self, Isvara pranidhana: surrender to the universal power], asana [the physical poses], pranayama [breathing], pratyahara [drawing your senses inside], dharana [concentration], dhyana [meditation], and samadhi [yay!].

In American-brand yoga, we pretty much focus on asana practice, or the physical stuff.  This makes sense, because the yamas and the niyamas can be dealt with relatively quickly.  The next thing on the path is getting your body in shape so that it helps you, instead of hindering you.

But what about yoga classes?

There are a million different kinds.

Hatha- the word "Hatha" refers to the oldest kind of yoga, so it's a little bit of a vague term.  I've heard "hatha" used to describe everything from Kundalini to Bikram.  Classes that are labeled "Hatha Yoga" typically are unheated, and focus on slow stretching and strength-building, tied in with breathing, meditation, and sometimes chanting.  I have my teacher training in Hatha, but I've taken some pretty extensive classes in all the kinds of yoga that I'm mentioning here.

Kundalini- these classes are mostly taught by Sikhs (a belief system from India- most Sikhs wear turbans. Sikhism is a very interesting and beautiful set of beliefs, but I won't do justice to it, so I won't get into it).  They focus on repetitive movements and chanting.

Vinyasa- Vinyasa means flow, so most of these classes involve some kind of constant movement, and are usually sun salutation-based.  They usually come in heated and non-heated forms.

Hot Yoga- Usually heated vinyasa, but sometimes Bikram.  These types of yoga require a lot of concentration, but they're typically popular because they promote weight loss.  For me, a room heated to about 95 degrees is delicious.  Anything above that feels like torture to me, but some people love it.  Be sure to ask the teacher what the peak temp will be.

Iyengar- This type of yoga is usually billed as paying extra attention to alignment in each pose.  I was afraid to take a class for years because I'm not typically the nitpicky type, but the Iyengar classes I've taken have 

been amazing.  I've learned more about anatomy, joints, and muscle groups from Iyengar classes than in any other class.

Bikram- I've only taken one Bikram class, so this is based on limited experience.  The room is heated to 105 degrees, the poses are all standing or seated, and every class is the same.  This means limited demonstration from the teacher, and a predictable class with no surprises.  There are no "transition" poses- instead, there is a pause between each pose.  Bikram is very popular, but very controversial. I've always had a problem with the attempt to copyright 4,000-year-old poses, and I didn't like taking the class at all.

Anusara- Anusara is another attempt to copyright yoga, this time by an American (John Friend).  The classes that I've taken have been great- they focus on alignment, opening the heart (or the front of the body), and meditation.  I once spent a blissed-out twenty minutes in a handstand that I had previously thought I was incapable of.  That having been said, John Friend has fallen hard lately, and Anusara has had a lot of fallout to deal with.

Dahn- Dahn yoga was founded by a Korean teacher, and I have it on good authority that it is a cult.  Once you establish a regular practice, you may be pressured to involve yourself, emotionally, physically, and financially.  My advice, based on first-hand stories, would be to stay away.

Gentle- Gentle yoga is great for people with injuries, those who are just starting a workout regimen, or anybody who needs to catch a break.  In my experience, good gentle yoga teachers are very well-versed in anatomy, and are great at making students feel accepted and comfortable.

Restorative- This is the next step above, or below, gentle yoga.  Real restorative yoga only has a few poses, and all of them involve the practitioner to be on the floor, draped over some assortment of pillows and blankets, sometimes with sandbags stacked on top of you.  The idea is that your body can truly relax and heal itself if you can allow it to relax completely, so the class involves quiet talking or occasional visualizations lead by the teacher, and long stretches of silence.  

I'm not totally sold on all the spiritual stuff- especially all the words with weird spellings.

The great thing about American yoga is that you can really customize your level of spiritual involvement.  If you want a lower level of meditation, chanting, and Sanskrit words, try a vinyasa or hot yoga class.  Kundalini, Hatha, Anusara, and Dahn seems to be the most spiritually oriented of what I have listed here.  If you want chanting, but not any creepy cultey stuff, just check out your studio carefully.  Eventually you'll find a practice that you like, and it's all downhill from there.

What if I hate yoga?

Tiny little arms!

I mean, it has to be possible that some people weren't cut out for yoga at all.  And, there are a lot of things that yoga won't do.  Yoga won't heal everything for everyone, and yoga teachers aren't trained, in most cases, to be physical therapists, doctors, or mental health professionals (although there are notable and awesome exceptions).

That being said, there is such a wide variation of yoga practices (the difference between Bikram and restorative, for instance, is huge) that I believe there has to be something for everyone.  But don't stop after one class!  If you hate the practice, try a different type of class.  If you love the poses but not the teacher, try another teacher.  Try another studio.  

Yoga is a different experience for everybody, and everybody needs different things from yoga.  Don't be afraid to be idealistic and take your hopes into the studio with you.  Give each practice a fair shot, but be picky about what you want and who you want to work with.  Life is a journey, and I think it pays to take the time to delve into the American yoga experience and find what works for your body, for your mind.

Limbs. Made of embochures.

On Saturday I took a lesson with a wonderful flutist in Boston. She was kind enough to invite me into her home on a weekend, and the lesson ran over an hour. I tried to soak up all the information as best as I could, since I left the memory for the recording device lodged in my computer (fail). I played the Faure as awesomely as I could, because I figure if I play as well as I can in a lesson, I free up the teacher to tell me what I really need to work on. In this case, it was embochure.

I'm no stranger to changing my embochure. I did it over the summer in 2005ish, and it was awful, and here I am, 2012, heading back into it.

Paul Taffanel: great embochure, or just
correctly shaped facial hair?

How to explain changing your embochure? It's not quite like speaking a new language- maybe like changing your accent to one that feels totally unknown. It affects every area of your playing. No note can be un-scrutinized, and passages that you were playing faster and faster with the metronome have to be slowed back down to the speed of a geriatric snail until you can play them in the right way. Then the fingers get confused because you're not focusing on them (for once). The face feels weird, you question whether you're doing it the right way. You question whether you should do it at all. This time around, the voice is much quieter than the first time I changed my embochure (I was younger and full of pride about my flute playing), but there's still a voice that says "maybe you are just supposed to play the way you did. Who cares if you're doing gymnastics with your face? You like your sharp upper register. What about the edgy lower notes? You're just going to let those go? What if your mouth isn't meant to play that way?"

So then it's a huge leap of faith even to start the process. Fifteen minutes here, then five more. Stop when you feel yourself slipping back into old habits. Only practice the right way, and don't give any more lip service (pun intended) to the old way.

In some ways, it's a giant allegory for practicing in general, or, you know, life. Every time I practice, in some way I'm walking out on a limb, having faith that I am doing the right thing by playing what I'm playing, by pursuing music in general. It's exhausting, and I think that's why I didn't practice for a year and a half after grad school: I ran out of faith. I could always be practicing a bad habit and not know it, or pursuing the wrong thing, only to find out about it later. Anyone could, in any aspect of life. We just don't know all the time. I think about this a lot.

So I'm walking out on three limbs this fall. I'm music-ing. I'm running in minimalist shoes. I'm changing my embochure. 

Vegan Week!

I've always been really nervous about taking the plunge and going vegan, even for a little bit of time, but after the airplane food on the way back from France, we decided to give it a shot for a week and see how it went. For quick substitutions (and to ease into the process), we went with non-soy Earth Balance instead of butter, Vegenaise instead of mayo, and rice cheese instead of normal-people cheese.  Verdict: E likes Earth Balance better than butter (and it seems to work fine in all our recipes, as an added bonus).  I like Vegenaise better than mayo, and the roasted garlic flavor is delish.  Rice cheese is good if you are expecting rice, but you are out of luck if you are expecting cheese.

The best discovery? These "meat"balls, which E found at The Vegan Stoner. Basically the gist is this: you take a can of black beans, drain, rinse, and mash. E made it the first time, but I heard his swearing as he tried to mash a can of beans with a fork, so when I made them again, I did it with my hands. This method worked great and was also fun and gooey. After that, you add a handful of oatmeal (we used quick oats) and some soy sauce. Then you can add whatever spices you want. E rolled them in bread crumbs and baked them, and afterward pan-fried them in some olive oil. They came out like so:

They don't taste like meatballs, but they're so good that we found ourselves surprised that we didn't care. They are easy, fun, and great on whole-wheat spaghetti with zucchini, as shown in the "before" picture.  The "after" picture doesn't exist because it was just an empty bowl and we didn't see the point of photographing it.

So then later in the week we were having two great friends over for a vegan We Made It feast, and we figured that we would use the same recipe. But then we decided to make soup, and thought "meat"balls and soup would be weird, unless it was Italian wedding soup, but these beans would not hold up to that kind of Italian soupness. So instead, we made them into sliders. I made buns from scratch (chock-full of flax seed), and we made a slider bar with tomatoes, onions cooked with mustard seed, the rest of the rice cheese, and very fancy garlic chipotle vegenaise made with the following recipe: add sriracha sauce to garlic vegenaise. Stir.

Today was the first day off of the vegan diet in a week, but we still ate vegan meals. The end result for me is that I feel better and lighter physically, which makes me feel more motivated to get outside and do stuff. To be fair, eating vegan meant that I couldn't snack like I normally do, so that might have something to do with it. I also found myself thinking less about what I put in my mouth- instead of thinking about whether I should eat something, it was just a matter of whether I could eat something. As long as something was vegan, I didn't worry about whether I should eat it, and that seemed to work fine (you'd be amazed how much stuff out there isn't vegan). I even got to work one day to find a big plate of cookies in the break room, and since I knew I couldn't eat them, I didn't waste time mentally agonizing over it.

So How Come You Don't Eat Meat?

I meant to write this like a year ago.  So here it is, one year late.

Redneck caviar, and veggie chimechangas in the
background (a recent meal).  And egg-dying supplies.

There are quite a few reasons that I gave up meat, and those reasons continue to grow more complex as the journey goes on.  Obviously this only applies to me, and this path isn't for everybody or every body. Choosing what to eat is such a personal journey because food is so personal.

I lived on a farm for eight years.  It was a little bit of a hobby farm, but we grew our own vegetables and put up our own animals.  "Put up" animals means to kill animals and wrap them up in freezer paper.  We put up fifty chickens in the fall, a pig twice (if I remember right), and had a cow "done" (butchered) a few times.  I never thought about it before, but the language is interesting; we never said "kill."  Usually I wasn't the one actually doing the deed; we, the kids, got to process the carcasses, cut them up, clean out little bits of lungs or kidneys stuck in the ribcage, wrap them in plastic bags and freezer paper.  We were actually kind of removed from the whole process.  I can remember the days.  I wish I was a better writer so I could accurately convey the smell, the sound, the sunshine.  We used to make the headless chickens dance in the sink and laugh.  It made us feel better.  I wish I could write about the twinge of guilt, the feeling of pride as the packages piled up.  The way the cats hung around to eat the leftovers.  The incredible joints on a chicken's leg.  The realization that my joints were the same.

But all that wasn't the reason that I stopped eating meat.  The taste of the meat was the first reason.  Not the taste of the farm stuff.  That tasted great.  You've never had a steak until you've had the steak of your own cow, carefully raised in a low-stress environment with enough grass and room to spread out, and a little bit of corn for a treat (but never as primary feed).  The chicken was always tender, albeit genetically modified.  And the homemade pork sausage was to die for.

It was the taste of the meat after we moved back to a city, and I started college.  The grocery store meat was full of gristle, and I'd forgotten what that was after eight years of home-grown muscle mass.  It tasted wrong, but I'm not sure how to explain how it tasted wrong.  In retrospect, it probably had something to do with the grain and recycled-meat feed, the lack of exercise, or the antibiotics.  It was just disturbing to me on some fundamental level.  I stopped cooking meat when I moved into my own place, and started seeing sources everywhere about how eating meat is not an eco-friendly way of gaining nutrients.  I started thinking about what I'd seen of factory farming in the midwest, and the aspects of factory farming that are generally kept way more secret than the small feed lot across the road from where we lived.

When I went to grad school, I went through a brief phase as a pepperoni vegetarian (that is, a "vegetarian" whose only foray into the meated world is pepperoni.  I know.  Ridic).  I realize now and realized then that pepperoni is everything that is bad about meat, ground up and spiced and compressed for my pleasure, but I needed that few months to get everything in order in my head and make the commitment.  Like Jonathan Safran Foer's book discusses, a big part of being vegetarian is how it affects you socially, among your friends and family.  That was what I needed time to think about.

McMoogets?

And then, finally, I quit eating chicken, pork, beef, deer, turducken, and anything that walks on land.  As much as I'd love to say that I finally gave it up because of some pristine ideal of how I was going to make the world a better place and reduce water pollution and save the fish in the Gulf of Mexico and spare one cow per year from a traumatic and untimely death, I can't.  When I finally made the leap, it was actually for financial reasons.  I was eating out too much, and I hypothesized that if I gave up meat, my options would be so limited that I would be forced to pack my lunch for school every day.  It worked.  I saved over $150 in the first month, and it was like the money had appeared out of nowhere.  (Side note: often the least expensive dish when I do eat out is vegetarian.)  Being vegetarian was a fun challenge, and I loved altering all my favorite recipes.  I think maybe the reason I stuck with it is because I made Mexican food one night early on, and replaced the ground beef with black beans.  It was amazing.  I decided to not go back, maybe not permanently, but for a while.  That was in January 2007.

Since then, my veggieness has changed a lot.  Being vegetarian (or pescatarian, to be more precise) feels natural.  It's a total delight to go to vegetarian or vegan restaurants, and it's a new realization each time that I can order anything on the menu.  I feel better, controlling my weight is less of an issue.  We shop at the public market, and our grocery bill is mostly negligible: $10-$15 a week, each.  The social eating sometimes still feels nervous - maybe I forget to mention that I don't eat meat, or maybe I forget to thank someone for going out of their way to exclude meat from the meal.  Maybe I forget to thank someone for coming over and eating my meatless cooking.  It's still a process.

My reasons have changed, too.  The financial reasons for giving up meat seem so ingrained now that my inner focus has shifted more toward the ecological footprint reduction of eating a plant-based diet, the health benefits, and (the newest and most difficult to swallow reason) cruelty toward living beings during their lifetimes and during their deaths.  I don't believe that we as a society should allow our animals to be treated so cruelly.  We're better than that.  It's such a small price to pay, to eat less meat, to ensure that fewer animals will live their lives in such an unnatural and harmful (to them, to the environment, to us) way.  I know that I still make mistakes, and I'm still not 100% aligned with my own beliefs.  I'm rethinking eating fish, and have cut down my intake a lot- this is part of my journey and struggle and growth.

Broccoli, wild rice, French lentils cooked in vegetable broth
and baked with an egg, green tomatoes, and gruyere.
And a beer.  Can't forget that part.  :-)  Great for a cold day.

Obviously the story is a lot more complicated than this.  There was adjusting, counting of nutrients and grams of protein, discovery of wheat gluten and French lentils.  There was the day when I figured out that chopped walnuts taste great in pasta sauce, and that cumin makes sauteed mushrooms taste a little bit meaty.  This is just the basics.

Back on the farm, we had two kinds of chickens.  Our laying chickens were yellow, and our eating chickens were white.  One year, we decided to keep an eating chicken past the six or seven weeks when we would have normally slaughtered it.  We took her home and put her in the coop with the laying hens.  She made it about a month, and then the weight of her genetically modified body became too much for her legs, and she couldn't walk.  She couldn't fly up to the roost with the rest of the birds.  She moved by dragging herself around with her wings, and the underside of her body was caked with mud and feces.  It was grotesque and heartbreaking all at once.  We had to kill her because it was cruel not to.  At some point it clicked for me that the amount of meat we consume was feeding (literally) the need to produce birds that were this way- birds that can't stop eating and can't stop gaining weight, that can't live a normal lifespan because of their genes.  At that moment, it seemed so much more simple to me, for my life, to just eat some beans.

Being a Woman

There has been a lot of talk lately about women and their role(s) in society, and I've been watching with a lot of interest.  I haven't done much participating, except in hand-gesturey rants to the wonderfully understanding dude late at night.  This "war on women" is hazy at best.  Because it's such a grey area, it's easy for either side to suggest that it's not real (or that it is).  Every attack is from the side, and every barrage is really just a suggestion.

In the recent political campaigns, women have been reduced to numbers, which are quite black and white.  99% of us use some form of contraception.  We make seventy-seven cents to every dollar that a man makes (or do we?).  We make up 46.7% of the workforce, but are CEOs of only seventeen of the Fortune 500 companies.  Sixty-six of us rank career high on our list of life priorities (and have been duly warned by men that we'll have to make tough decisions as a result).  Maybe the key to untangling all these numbers is to actually ask women what their experiences have been.  I thought I'd start by sharing mine, because if there's one thing I'm qualified to write about, it's my own life.

My family is 5/6ths women.  I didn't grow up feeling less-than within my family, but I grew up in a generation of girls who saw a weird kind of feminism- the sex-as-power, girly girl movement.  The message aimed at us as we came of age at the Millennium was that the only kind of dependable power was the power that came from our bodies.  If we couldn't be everything that a male could be, we could at least dominate them with our feminine wiles.  This message came from the media, from the music.  Susan J. Douglas has an in-depth discussion of this in her fantastic book, and when I read it, my entire young adulthood made sense.

My late teens and early twenties were clouded with mixed messages.  As a flute performance major, I was surrounded by women flutists- but I was told to take off my shoes at an orchestral audition so that the committee behind the screen wouldn't know my gender.  As a practitioner of yoga, I was simultaneously practicing among women and studying a lineage of male teachers.  My professors told me that women were more powerful than ever- but a female president was (and is) a pipe dream at best (and at worst, a joke).  Every sitcom featured a female lead who could be reduced to rubble by her PMS, and at least for that week, was more of a laughingstock than her male partner.  My classmates and friends habitually referred to women (myself included) as "sluts," especially for no-nos like having a late-night conversation with an opposite-gender friend, or going home early to make a phone call to a long-distance relationship.  I was an invitee to a party thrown by a well-known older male musician, because he wanted to have a party full of "young women."  (I did not attend, and heard later that several women had been groped by the man.)  One of my male employers offered kindly to go do my job for me (my first day, with no history of failure on my part to do my job), as he wasn't sure I had the "clout" to get a pianist to rehearsal; another asked if my relocation plans involved "moving for one guy, or are you just going to sleep around?"

Are these major things?  No, not really.  Have I ever been a blatant recipient of gender-related unequal pay?  Not that I have direct evidence of (although I strongly suspect that I was, at one point).  Have I ever been fired for something gender related?  Nope.

But it's the suggestion.  It's that little grey area where enough people hint that you might be unstable because your hormones could be running rampant.  That your physical attributes determine your ability to do your job.  That you are invited to participate not because of your work, your expertise, your ability, but rather because of your butt and chest.  It's that little suggestion that gets in there, and after a few hundred times, starts to make women unsure of themselves.  This is quiet warfare.  This is a subtle, constant barrage of hints that we are not the same, we are not stable, we are not good enough.

In my lifetime, "feminist" has become a dirty word.  "Feminist" has become an insult.  Half the time, "feminists" refers to a group of loud-mouthed, pushy, bitchy women who believe that they should be afforded every opportunity without putting in the work (or having the brains).  Before I go on with my defense, I have to say that feminism has its issues.  I'm writing from a position of racial privilege, and feminism hasn't been kind to women of color.  There are lots of angles of feminism that I don't understand, don't support, or haven't researched adequately, but I do know that the systematic tearing down of the word "feminist" (at least in this way) is an attack on women- at least a good chunk of a part of us, if not all of us.

The Stuff I Should Do

I've been thinking a lot lately, and that's the trick of a blog, isn't it?  Getting your thoughts out.  It's so hard!  Because that thought is there, and then another thought that comes along and is like "naaaah.  Nobody will be able to relate to that first one."  So then you forget, or repress, or whatever happens.  And that's dumb, because if every great author had thought that nobody would be able to relate to the crazy stuff they were writing, we'd have nothing in the way of literature.  Even so, blogging about what's actually in your head is definitely an exercise in confidence.

Anyway, I've been thinking about why it's so hard to do the stuff that we know is good for us.  Not the stuff we HAVE to do; like I've heard myself saying to young children, "it's not a choice we can make."  I'm talking about the stuff we don't have to do but should do.  For me, the top three are as follows:

1.  Practicing the flute.
2.  Not eating crap.
3.  Getting on my mat.

First things first.  If these things are hard to do, I must not like doing them, right?  Right?

Praaaaaaactice meeeeeee.

Oddly, no... I thought maybe that was the case for a while, but if I only like the easy stuff in life, that means that all I like is drooling onto the futon while I check my facebook over and over to see if anybody I knew in high school has just gotten pregnant.  I like doing all of the above-listed things.  I feel good while I'm doing them.  I feel good after I've done them.  So that's not it.

I have a difficult relationship with 1 and 3, both because I get very self-destructive when I'm doing them and they are not perfect.  Now, I'm not often perfect, but I realllllly like when I am.  I like when I do things right the first time and never have to work at them.  I like being a "natural."  If I ever had any natural talent on the flute, the expiration date was up a long time ago, and probably about ten years ago I started having to work at it.  So I work at it, and that makes me self-conscious, and that makes me mentally very harsh with myself.  Same with yoga.  I want my body to do stuff automatically, without me putting in the hours to learn the balance, or build the muscle, or stretch the joint.  When I find that I actually suck at a pose, it's really difficult for me to get back on the mat and try it again.  None of this is much of a surprise to me, unfortunately; my nickname growing up was "Perfectly Margaret" because of my obvious superiority disruptive perfectionist tendencies.

So do I not wanna do this stuff because I'm lazy?

Short answer: yes.  Long answer: yes.  I am absent from my home from 8AM until 6PM.  I often come home tired, with aching feet or back or both.  I eat lunch at 1:30, which is not the best for my bio-rhythm, and as a result, often don't eat dinner until an hour or two before bed.  I also teach yoga and flute after hours, and play in a gamelan with a three-to-five-hour practice requirement per week.  I've also been sick so many times this year that one runny nose has blended into the stomach bug and cough that came after it, so I can't tell where one ended and the next one started.  So... I might be lazy.  I might also be overbooked.

I also wonder about self-sabotage.  Eating right is a constant issue for me.  I LOVE vegetables, don't eat meat, and am reasonably okay at getting all my required nutrients, but I have this sweet tooth that will not quit.  And then sometimes the sweet tooth does quit, but I eat sweet stuff anyway, just to be like HA!  Take that, BODY.  You thought you were doing so well, well enjoy your INSULIN SPIKE!

So what's the answer?  How do we start loving the things we should do?  I don't know, but I have some ideas.

1.  Boundaries.  Kids need them and I'm convinced that I do too.  No cookies before 8AM.  Stop it.
2.  Time for rest and time for not rest.  I'm convinced that not feeling guilty while resting is the key to making it productive, so I can move on when it's time.
3.  I heard this in my lesson last week: Nike.  Just do it.

When the going gets tough, the tough...

Stop writing?  Hmm.  Seems like it shouldn't be that way.

Getting older is very different than being younger.  I have to make my own decisions.  I have to pay my own bills.  And, most startlingly (for me), I don't live in a dorm surrounded by people who are always ready to hang out, consume beverages, and watch movies.  In fact, even if I did live in said dorm, I wouldn't have time for any of that.  Those were days when my friends worried about boys instead of mortality and we questioned professors' motives, not god's.  I know we all hit this point, and it's a comfort to know that I'm not hitting it alone.

The last few months have been a sometimes-epic, sometimes-disastrous clash of my work (which I have to do) and my flute (which I want to do).  Mostly I have been depressed, and have sometimes [personal revelation alert] spent hours sitting on the foof staring numbly at CNN Health stories about children with cancer.

No joke.  Who does that when they're depressed?

So then I get manic, and this month I did a few manically productive things.  I applied for a local masterclass with a well-known flute player, and by some miracle and some kindness on the part of the organizers, I was accepted.  I committed to a sort of minor orchestral audition (because even a minor one is major for me), and I started learning some pieces that have left gaping holes in my rep list, like the Dutilleux.

So now every day is a small, labored step on this larger path.  And music and yoga and anything in life sometimes seem to merge together into this giant journey upon which I'm only allowed to make slow and steady progress.  Breakthroughs come with setbacks, and setbacks require resolution.  So every day requires a new and different resolution than the day before.

And that's life right now, and sometimes it doesn't look very pretty to me.  Luckily, I have a partner who makes every day feel like a reward, and great friends and family to hash it out with when everything feels too gritty.  And a season like this makes a great stage for new yoga poses.

Oh, The New York Times.

I was concerned about a lot of things in the New York Times' article on why yoga can be oh-so-dangerous. I was concerned about the scary stat that in 2002, forty-six people went to the emergency room for a yoga related injury- I worry that people will think that number is statistically significant. I was concerned that the examples were extreme and outdated (one was from 1972). I was concerned because the Times' concerns were anonymous: "One specialist noted that ligaments — the tough bands of fiber that connect bones or cartilage at a joint — failed to regain their shape once stretched out, raising the risk of strains, sprains and dislocations." Who? When?

The only thing this article needed to feel complete was a picture of people doing bad yoga.  AND looking freaked out.

Now, there are some yamas, some things that, especially for the purposes of avoiding injury, yoga is not, and I think this is a great opportunity to talk about them among ourselves and to the newly yoga'ed. We, as teachers, try to make sure that everybody understands that

a) yoga is not a competitive sport. See that woman on the mat next to you? The one who has the grace of a ballet dancer and the hamstrings of Gumby? No you don't. Because you're not looking at her. You checked your ego at the door, so it's not telling you that you can rest your head on the floor in uttanasana.

b) yoga is not about stretching. Yes, working out kinks in your hips can be a very nice side effect, but yoga is (at least for me and many other practitioners that I know) about breathing through anything, practicing mindfulness, learning to listen to and love your body, and de-cluttering your mind. So are you trying to lay your whole palm on the floor when your body is cold? Nope. You are breathing.

c) yoga is not where you go to tell your body what to do. Using the statistical methodology of the Times, I would say that telling your body what to do when your body is screaming in pain actually does cause injury about 74.38% of the time (66% of statistics are made up on the spot). I can't say it enough: your body is your best teacher. No yoga instructor in front of a class can tell you what only you know. If your body is telling you to stop twisting, are you pushing to impress the betighted yogini in the front? Nay, good sir. You are listening to your spine.

d) yoga is not about ego. I'm sure Glenn Black is a wonderful teacher, but I was confused by much of what he said, including this:

“It’s ego,” he said. “The whole point of yoga is to get rid of ego.” He said he had seen some “pretty gruesome hips.” “One of the biggest teachers in America had zero movement in her hip joints,” Black told me. “The sockets had become so degenerated that she had to have hip replacements.” I asked if she still taught. “Oh, yeah,” Black replied. “There are other yoga teachers that have such bad backs they have to lie down to teach. I’d be so embarrassed.”

Um.

I have to say, it would be a big lesson for my ego to have to teach flat on my back. But if the point is to get rid of the ego, why be embarrassed? Shouldn't we be bringing our experiences to our students to help them in their journey? And that brings us to the next troubling question for us yoga teachers: if we are ashamed to have pushed our bodies to breaking, and we don't share that information with our students, what's to stop them from doing the same thing?

Dear New York Times, the yoga community isn't sniffing disdainfully because you let us know that people get injured in yoga.  Of course they do. We're mostly concerned because it's an article full of old science, outdated human interest stories, irrelevant statistics, and concerning contradictions.  But since many of these things are readily apparent, I guess my biggest concern is that there wasn't anything more exciting for the Times to print.  

Valuing the Important Stuff

This is an odd subject for a new year's first post, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately: what has value, and what that means, and how much we should be paying for it. I'm especially interested in this since I've been working with kids for the last couple of years, and I also teach yoga and flute. I'm going to call those three things intangible. Tangible things like food (although this is another complicated one- I'll save it for another post), clothing, furniture, or something else that you can hold in your hand would fall into the simply divided second category. I know there are better or cleaner ways to divide services, and I'd love to hear them, but I'm going with this for a minute. Please keep in mind that I know next to nothing about economics (but would love to learn), and these are my thoughts based on observation.

I would imagine that tangible things are a little easier to value because you have them in your hand at the end of the day, and maybe even the day after that. If you buy a futon for a hundred bucks off Craigslist, you'll be sitting on that futon for a while. If you sit on it for one hundred days, the value is a dollar a day. If you sit on it for three years, you've only paid nine cents a day. That's one heck of a deal.

If you attend a yoga class, you're looking at a whole different beast. First, buying a yoga class is not the same as purchasing your CL futon because what you acquire can't be sat on, and has to be maintained with more yoga classes. You might buy one class for $16, loosen up your hips a great deal, and think "wow, that was totally worth it." But if you don't continue to go to yoga classes, your hips will tighten right back up, and you might think "well that class didn't do anything for me. It wasn't worth it." On the other hand, intangible things have the ability to change your life in a way that tangible things might not: you continue to purchase yoga classes, you are more in shape, more comfortable with your body, all of your joints work better, you are more at peace. Heck, maybe you sell your futon because you can finally sit comfortably on the floor. And this isn't just about yoga. It's about zumba or pilates, joining a gym, or getting a massage from an experienced bodyworker.

The reason I've been thinking about this so much is actually because of childcare. Is it important to have quality, consistent care for your child? Of course. Is it the case that many people in this country cannot afford good quality childcare? Yes, and I think that's a huge topic for another post. What concerns me is the reality of people who need childcare paying jaw-droppingly little for someone to care for their offspring. I ran across this post on Craigslist the other day:

i am looking for a full time babysitter for my 2month old. the hours would vary weekly but not much. generally there will be two days that the hours would be 7amish - 12ish and the rest of the week would only be until 4ish. Im looking for someone who has experience and has refernces. pay will be $75 a week i will supply diapers and formula. 

Assuming this is a five-day proposition, the provider would be working thirty-seven hours a week for $75. That's $2.14 an hour. (But don't worry: they're supplying the diapers and formula. If you had to shell out for those, it might eclipse your pay altogether.)

I'm assuming a lot of things here- I'm assuming that the poster can afford to pay for childcare at all, for starters. But offering $5.16 under minimum wage (which I'm reasonably sure is not legal) for someone to either transport themselves to your home to care for your infant, or to use their utilities to care for your infant in their own home... it doesn't strike me as being an offer that would attract someone who would be committed to your child. It also has an effect on the childcare provider, regardless of the provider's strong beliefs about childcare or the value of their work- if her work, or his work, is only worth $2.14 an hour, how hard should they be working? Why is their work worth so little? Why are they even doing it?

The dude and I have been discussing this pretty often lately with regard to piano lesson cancellations. He's changed his policies to reflect a lot of these thoughts, along the line that musical instructors are highly qualified, highly trained individuals, and it's troubling when their time, travel, and energy is undervalued.

There are a lot of things to pay for in life. We're faced with a barrage of material things for which we need to shell out every day. I would love to see some attention paid to the insubstantial things that matter- caring for our bodies, caring for our artistic spirit, caring for our next generation. These things are love, for ourselves and for those around us, and they matter. Even though they are intangible, they are central in our lives, and they deserve to be valued.