Wow, nothing like putting your heart on your sleeve to draw out all of the really nice people and also some of the not-so-nice ones. I appreciated the nice comments and emails. You guys are great!
But I guess I should clarify: I'm not necessarily quitting Astanga. I don't know *what* I'm going to do. I do realise that there's a culture of 'working through injuries' in this practice and I've certainly done my share of that with the hamstring injury. But this shoulder thing is a different beast all together.
I would have to love Astanga a whole LOT in order to suffer through the kind of pain and discomfort I've been experiencing lately on the mat on a longterm basis. I've spoken to other longtime practitioners and this seems to be one of those injuries that can be a permanent fixture. So it worries me.
Because I teach yoga for a living, I need to ask myself if I'm prepared to sacrifice my career for Astanga Yoga. I think the answer to that question is a rousing "NO". I think there are times when a line needs to be drawn. This is a classic 'overuse injury'. It's awful - I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
I've never sought to be the poster child for Traditional Astanga, so I'm sorry if I've disappointed anyone. But the bottom line is, this is about me. Me, me, me. And my life, my passion and my sole source of income. If the past month of 'yoga tourism' has taught me anything, it's that I can be happy without Astanga. My joy in life is not based on one particular style of yoga (though the jury is still out on whether I could be happy giving up yoga altogether).
Private to 'Anonymous': The answer to your question is 'No.' Because this is a BLOG. Not the Bible, the Torah or any other authoritative guide. And I'm not your G-d or your mother or your guru. I'm just an ordinary woman on her own journey, who happens to share her thoughts through writing. If I decided to jump off a bridge, I'm certain you wouldn't consider doing the same. This principle also applies to the decisions I make about my Asana practice. It's time to put on your Big Girl Pants and learn to form your own opinions based on your own experience. A terrific place to being this journey is your own yoga mat. Good luck with that.
And this is for everyone: I moderate my comments. This means that every single comment that is posted on this blog has to be approved by me *first*. If it's not nice or you're being a jerk, or you're trying to push your own agenda, I won't click 'publish'. I hope that as yoga practitioners and people of quality, we can play nicely in the sandbox with one another. But I won't host a flame war on my blog and I won't let anyone shit on me in my own space.
Please, let's practice some Ahimsa and be kind to one another. If our yoga practice isn't teaching us how to do that, I don't see what good it is.
Hi everybody! *waves* It's been awhile, hasn't it? Two weeks seems like a long stretch here in Blogland. I'm feeling a bit rusty, to be honest.
I'm really happy that I took the two weeks off. If for no other reason, I was able to avoid writing those inevitable, semi-obligatory 'Happy-Whatever-You-Celebrate' posts (Happy Kwanza!).
Also, my practice kinda sucked. Just knowing that I could be as miserable as I wanted to and not have to write about it cheered me enormously. One day, I wept through an entire Primary Series practice. As I took rest, a rebellious thought percolated: "I just had an absolutely miserable practice and NO ONE HAS TO KNOW ABOUT IT!"
It was kind of awesome! :-D
I truly savoured the downtime. I was only teaching 5 classes a week for the duration of my break. And what did I accomplish in this abundant spare time? Well, there was sloth, LOTS of sloth! Probably more sloth than was really warranted, but I loved it.
I baked vegan cookies and went for long walks with Princess Fur. I meditated every day, sometimes twice a day. I took epic afternoon naps that stretched into the evening. I watched the lunar eclipse (Happy Solstice!). I watched my entire collection of Jane-Austen-Books-Turned-Into-Movies on DVD (and started thinking in 19th Century Gentry Speak). I spent way too much time messing around on the Internet and not enough time reading. If I were to change just one thing, that would probably be it.
I spent the 25th in the best possible way: I hung out with other, non-holiday-celebrating friends, watching a good movie ('Almost Famous' - I can't believe I had never seen it!) and eating yummy Chinese carry-out (Happy J-mas!).
I did make some small progress on my big decluttering project. Digging deep into storage, I immersed myself in the history and genealogy of my family, scanning the old documents and photographs for my digital archives. I rediscovered my grandfather's draft certificate from the 1940s. I learned that my grandmother was meant to be named 'Patricia' until her romance-novel-reading older sisters judged the name too plain and chose a more froofy, flowery moniker (which she disliked until the day she died). I found an announcement from my mother's high school graduation and my great-great-great-grandfather's birth certificate.
During my break, I heard from a few of you. You wished me a Happy Whatever-I-Celebrate (Thank you! Happy Yule!) But mostly, you wanted to implore me not to Change the Blog. Apparently, polished, professional content is vastly overrated for most of you (or perhaps there's too much of it on the Internet already?).
I thought my daily blatherings might be getting a bit old, but one of you went as far as to threaten to 'unfollow' me if I even *considered* writing a series of those '10-things-blah-blah-blah-yoga-blah-blah-bulleted-list' posts.
10 Ways to Piss Off Your Blog Readership. Okay, I get the message.
I never wanted to be an important 'A List' blogger anyway. Rest assured, my inane practice reports and daily brain-dumps will continue, complete with grammatical errors and entertaining typos. You've been warned! If it isn't your cup of tea, well, the Internet is a BIG place. I'm sure there's more polished content out there, I just won't be writing it.
I've continued my daily yoga practice during the break, with a bit of whinging and heel-dragging here and there. One week was thoroughly awful, then I finally learned the knack of super-heating my apartment (Humidity!). But then my Gimpy Shoulder, which is now officially a 'thing' (read: 'rotator cuff injury'), started to give me huge problems. I couldn't do Downward Dog. Or wipe the kitchen counter. Or open a door. The frustration began to weigh on me, and I started to brainstorm alternatives.
I had a lot of time on my hands. My imagination ran wild.
And this, Dear Readers, is what happens when I don't have a community backing me up for a stretch: I get all creative! Leave me alone for two weeks and before you know it, I've quit Astanga and picked up Bikram's.
You all think I'm joking, don't you? (I'm not!)
I'd write more, but I need to get some sleep. The hot room awaits...
More tomorrow.
(The very fact that I stayed awake late enough to see this eclipse probably qualifies as a miracle! Happy Festivus!)
I practised at Shala North this morning, the late shift so I was there at 9:30. It was nice to be in a hot, hot, steamy room again! The whole place is hot, not just the Mysore room! While chatting with Owl in the changeroom before practice, I had to dig out my wipe rag to mop away the sweat. I was already dewey!
The room was moderately crowded (at North, this means around 20ish people). I found a spot in the middle back row). There lots of space on either side of my mat so I didn’t feel too crowded. I did my full Primary (no Intermediate, because it’s verboten for me in that room) and had a good, focused practice with minimal futzing and no Space Cadet moments!
I wondered how Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana would play out in this different context. It’s been so stable and solid at home, but I was shifting around so an assistant came and rescued me. I was glad for the help. I have a much deeper experience of that pose with some assistance. I probably need to work a little bit harder there when I’m doing it on my own. Noted.
I received a small adjustment in Marichyasana C, with helpful hints for deepening the posture.
For backbending, I just did my ‘thing’. I did my three warm up Urdhva Dhanurasana, then got up to work on my very mediocre dropbacks. Actually, I didn’t overthink them at all, just did them. As I was preparing for the third, it occurred to me that this is the first time I’ve ever dropped back in an actual Mysore room (I wasn’t doing my dropbacks at Shala Central). That’s kind of ironic.
DR wasn’t there (and there was no futon to drop back against), so I skipped the standing-up part and just finished.
I received a fabulous post-backbending Paschimo squish, rare in my world. :-) As always, the assistants at North were terrific. Thanks for your help, guys! :-)
I held Sirsasana for 40 breaths. I *think* that’s about 3 minutes. It certainly felt like it!
My gimpy hamstring felt fine throughout the practice. My hips are feeling particularly tight this week, though. I mostly notice this when I’m *not* practising. My quads are very sore. It was glad to have a one-day holiday from Intermediate to allow some of that to pass.
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After practice, I hopped in Owl’s car and we drove a few blocks south to feed at my favourite Indian buffet. Delicious!
It goes without saying: Owl has a lovely practice (glimpsing her beautiful vinyasas has inspired me to get back to work on those lift-ups, now that the tweaky shoulder is feeling better).
But you should see this woman DRIVE! Holy!!!!
She developed her madskillz-behind-the-wheel in Los Angeles and she *owns* the road. She’s so decisive, all the drivers around her look tentative by comparison! I’m not accustomed to seeing someone new to my city navigate it so confidently.
As she whipped the car in a quick uey to grab a parking spot, I could almost see the thought bubble floating around the driver in front of us: “WHOA! I’m not messing with HER!”
On a more serious note, we had a lovely visit - it really made my week! It’s always fun to sit around and geek out over Astanga with someone who is so passionate about the practice. I enjoyed our conversation so much and I’m feeling all optimistic and inspired about my Intermediate again. Owl has that effect on people. Hang out with her for a few hours and suddenly you’re all “Astanga is AWESOME!”.
This was *exactly* what I needed to feel connected to the community and confident about the direction of my practice. Thanks, Owl!
I’m hopeful we’ll see a lot more of her up in these parts, now that she’s only five hours away by car (that’s probably 7 hours for the rest of us; Owl levitates in an automobile!).
Once again, I’ve spent the day avoiding eye contact with my computer. This time, my procrastination is due to an internal debate over my own comments section.
This blogging thing has gotten a lot more complicated since I broke out of my home-practice-comfort-zone and found myself in a sticky world of people and relationships and loyalties and conflicts. I hate conflict! I try like mad to avoid it.
Sometimes I miss the days of my solitary practice and the five readers who stumbled upon my blog by happy accident. People actually read this thing now!
I appreciate every single comment (and email) I received yesterday - I read every last one. You were all indignant and rallied to my defence and I just love you for that! You offered some good advice about how to move forward as well as some really profound thinking about the practice and how we struggle through it. You offered gentle encouragement, which was something I needed this morning in order to get my tail to the Shala (in the cold, torrential rain; funny how metaphor likes to spring to life).
But a few of the comments were a shade critical of my teachers. I’m feeling so heartbroken and conflicted over this entire thing, I don’t want that responsibility thrown on my shoulders along with everything else that’s hovering here.
When I took my show on the road, I vowed to only blog about my own experience within the confines of my Manduka mat. That seemed like a fail-safe policy at the time. But it’s more complicated than that. I’m sharing the space with two people who I’ve come to care about, no matter what they say to me or think about me (and sometimes I’m pretty sure they rue the day I ever walked into their Shala). I don’t want anything said on this blog to hurt them.
I should have closed comments on that entry. My bad. For now, I’ve closed comments and hidden the existing ones. This is not to say that I don’t agree with some of you 100%, but I need to sort this one out on my own.
What I really feel like doing right now is crawling into a deep, deep hole and ordering a pizza. But I still have five hundred words to go and if you’ve learned anything about me from reading this blog, then you know how stubborn I am when I commit to something!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the past few years of my Astanga practice and how this all began. I’m the ‘reluctant ashtangi’ for a reason! My background was in Iyengar and I teach mostly generic Hatha. I didn’t even like Astanga! That was the whole point.
I started practising the Primary Series, on my own, for 365 days as a sort of masochistic experiment. I had 13 years of yoga practice under my belt. I thought I hated Astanga and I was intent on documenting exactly why before I pitched the practice unceremoniously to the curb. The first few months passed in a spirit of cynical (but curious) experimentation.
I was a woman on a mission! And Astanga yoga was happy to help me out:
This hurts.
This is impossible!
Sirsasana away from the wall? Fat chance!
My body doesn’t DO that.
I’m tired today.
This pose sucks. I’m gonna skip it!
Do Bandhas really exist?
Ujjayi breathing makes my throat dry!
How am I supposed to find these invisible leg-holes, stick my arms through, then touch my ears!!!?
What kept me going were the small things. A bind. A deepening of my forward bends. Discovering that I can actually DO Urdhva Dhanurasana (true confession: up until a few years ago, I didn’t really do Urdhva Dhanurasana).
I moved my headstand away from the wall and taught myself to lift into the pose rather than kick. I learned to fall. I learned to lower to a half-bend. Shoulderstand became possible! I finally found the those invisible leg-holes and started to roll around, even though I felt incredibly silly doing it.
I got the blood stain out of my rug and kept doing Bhujapidasana, albeit with more care.
The one element of the practice that I never experienced was a room with a teacher in it. In my first two years of practice, I didn’t receive a single adjustment or any kind of feedback. It was funny, because I was making all of these Amazing Discoveries on my own, which were not really amazing at all.
It kind of reminds me of the time a young student showed me some Valentines Day heart candies she had ‘discovered’: “You’ll never believe this! They’re hearts! And you can eat them! And the best part is, THEY HAVE LITTLE MESSAGES ON THEM!”
OMG, you’ll never believe this, but if engage my Bandhas? I can hold my legs up in the air in FULL LOTUS! It’s AMAZING!
But to be completely honest, the idea of going into a Shala and trusting a teacher with my practice scared the daylights out of me. I had heard dire, dire things about adjustments, peppered with words like ‘crank’. It scared me.
To be continued, tomorrow...
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I was determined to get through this post without a practice report of any kind, but I did want to offer an update on my backbends: I did seven today. Three in a row, two in a row, two in a row.
Today, I made an important observation about Urdhva Dhanurasana: I think my shoulders must be opening up more, because it’s easier to keep my arms very straight. And when my arms are very straight and I walk my hands in, I kind of waddle more than walk.
