Vinyasa

For the next five days, posts may be short and sweet: The Mother arrived has arrived and boy, is she ever keeping me busy!

She flew in last night, while I was teaching. No problem! She took a cab into the city on her own, found the Bed & Breakfast I had arranged for her and then she headed to a baseball game. She’s a huge Yankees fan and by merciful coincidence, the Yankees are in town playing here this week. Thank you, New York Yankees, for keeping my mother entertained while I was working!

She bought the tickets online and travelled to the stadium via subway, navigating the system like a pro and making friends with the collectors at a couple different stations as she got lost. I met her at the game. It was a bit weird going to a baseball game to rendezvous with my mother, who I haven’t seen in 4 years!

I’ve been to a few games at this stadium, but always in the upper level nosebleed seats. These seats were field level, 29th row! It was quite an experience! My mother insisted that we bring binoculars and I swear I could see the pitcher’s nosehairs through them. We could practically hear what they were saying on the field and we could easily spy on the dugout. ;-)

Also, did you know that the stadium caramel corn is vegan? I was surprised!

It was a fantastic night for a game, beautiful weather, and the dome was open. As the 8th inning drew to a close, my mother asked “Oh, do you know it’s a full moon?” And I replied: “Actually, I *do*”

But, of course, I practised anyway. :-D Nothing too taxing, just an hour of vinyasa before teaching at the gym, plus some backbending. I’ve talked about this experience before: the music, the people, the distractions and the gradual immersion into breath and Driste that takes me away from the chaos and deep into my own body. There’s something magical about that. I had a good practice.

I did many dropbacks, a bit of rocking. And lots of thinking about what my hips are doing as I’m backbending and trying to stand up. Thank you, Anonymous and Susan for sharing your observations in the comments yesterday. You offered some great tips, plus you helped me synthesize some of my thoughts about this whole process of ‘standing up.’ I’m getting closer!

Vinyasa

Today was a bit odd.

It started out great! I breezed through my morning volunteer shift at the Festival (I’m definitely perkier during the morning hours) and actually had a lot of fun!

I was assigned to monitor a classroom - DR’s classroom, in fact - but wasn’t allowed to sit in. Once the workshops were in session, I passed the time chatting with the other volunteers, playing around with adjustments, doing Sirsasana in the hallway and spying on DR as he taught a workshop on Mysore Style Astanga.

I have to admit, the Iyengar teacher in the other classroom was equally entertaining; lots of party favours (props) and they were doing some crazy, crazy stuff. Stuff that I want to try! The second floor is definitely a juicy volunteer assignment. We were all greatly entertained! :-D

After my shift ended, I had extra time before teaching, so I headed to the gym early and did a practice right in the middle of everything: weights, various contraptions and the swirl of activity. 70s pop was playing in the main gym and pounding house music was pouring out of the spinning room behind me creating a mixed caucophony. Maintaining focus and concentration was a challenge. Also, the spinning instructor enjoys yelling at people. A few times I actually startled, thinking “Is he talking to me?”

I recall Bindi mentioning that she sometimes does her practice at the gym because it attracts new students to her classes. I have often drawn questions from members as they observed my practice. It’s a good promotional tool. I may try to do it more often, at least on Saturdays. I really enjoyed my practice, even with all the distractions!

I didn’t do a full Primary, as I only had an hour. I practised half-Primary and skipped the vinyasas between sides of the seated poses to leave time for postures up to Garba Pindasana. Then I went right into backbends.

So far, I’ve only done dropbacks in three locations: the park, Shala North (during a workshop) and at home. I wondered how my brain would feel about doing dropbacks in a NEW place. I was surprised to discover that it wasn’t a big deal at all! I worked intensively for about 15 minutes and I was comfortable hanging back and dropping back. In fact, these were some of the deepest dropbacks I’ve ever done. I was landing my hands very close to my feet!

After I finished teaching, I started to bike home only to be caught in a downpour. That’s when my day started to get weird.

I paused in front of a building, still on the sidewalk, but taking shelter under an overhang. The rain was coming down in buckets! A crusty old security guard spotted me and came out. He aggressively told me to leave. It was a tense and confusing confrontation, given that I was standing on a public sidewalk! But I didn’t want to make a scene, so I left and was immediately drenched.

But Google made everything better!

I found another sheltered spot and pullled out my iPad. It took me less than a minute on Google to research the building’s management company. I wrote a quick email to their facilities department describing the incident. I did it right there! On the sidewalk! Dripping! Then I checked email as I waited for the showers to ease up and walked back to the building. I politely told the security guard that I had written to his employer and would be following up on Monday. He was nasty to me, but he also looked worried.

That was fun...I *love* technology!

But it left a residue on my day. By the time evening rolled around, I just wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head. Instead, I did some yoga-related retail therapy: I rode to Canadian Tire and bought a oil-filled radiator to use during my morning home practice. There is a delicious irony in buying a space heater on a warm, humid day in August. I was getting some extremely perplexed looks while waiting in the lineup with my heater.

The guy behind me finally couldn’t stop himself, he asked: “Was it on SALE?!!

“No,” I told him honestly, “I’m buying it to warm my apartment!”

His eyes widened.

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This week’s State-of-the-Backbend was taken on Thursday, during the course of my regular backbending practice.

I think this was pre-dropbacks.

Meh. Looks the same as last week!

Vinyasa

The ‘holiday vibe’ is beginning to wear thin. I’m really starting to miss my routine: early to bed, early to rise, twice daily meditation, healthy meals. I was going to try to move back into that schedule this week, but it didn’t make a lot of sense, given that I’m up very late for New Year’s Eve anyway. I’ll definitely get back into the swing of things over the weekend though - I must.

For years, I’ve endured almost constant construction and renovation in this stupidly over-priced building with little benefit. But the amenities are coming: last week, management announced the opening of the gym. I checked it out and discovered it isn’t bad! There’s an elliptical trainer, a stair climber, a treadmill, some weight stuff. Lots of room for yoga. And free yoga classes, which happen to fall on a night that I already teach (not that I would be very interested in ‘beginning yoga’). There’s space for practising inversions and the gym seems to be empty during the workday.

For years, rumours circulated that there was a ‘hidden sauna’ in the basement. I always scoffed, but the those rumours were true! Who knew?! The sauna reopened along with the gym and it’s obviously an old, retro sauna that was cleaned up. But it works fine. I used it this morning. If I want a serious sauna experience I’ll need to heat it up ahead of time but I was toasty warm for my practice.

I also found out last week that I have free use of the gym facilities at the neighbourhood community centre I work at. This is a boon because they’re close by and they have particularly nice facilities - salt water pool, sauna, steam room, whirlpool and a full range of fitness classes. I have access to all of it now. No excuse for not going to the gym! I have three to chose from (I also can use the small gym I teach at downtown).

I had big plans for my practice this morning which fell through because I lost track of time. I had planned to do the free weekly class over at YogaToday, but ended up doing a shorter one, ‘Opening to Hanumanasana’ with Adi. I was not terribly impressed with it, given that the video froze up about 16 minutes into the practice. I already had the gist of what Adi was doing with the sequence so I improvised for the last 10 minutes and did a 5 minute Savasana. I may give this site another shot, maybe tomorrow, maybe the 60 minute class.

The announcement went out for WoYoPracMo yesterday and I’ll excited about it. Even though I’ve been practising daily all year, it’s a great boost to renew my commitment. Plus, I’ll have a posse again, at least for a month! Are any of you planning to participate?