Boisterous Seas

Thursday Off

Friday 6:30 pm with Rohit

Saturday and Sunday Off

Monday 6:30 with Sherry

Tuesday 8:15 pm with Amy

Wednesday Off

Thursday 6:30 pm with Libby

Each class was slightly better than the last. Twice, I managed to do both sets of Locust without throwing up. That shouldn't seem like that much of an achievement, but now it is. I'm pretty sure that most of my trouble with this reflux is a by-product of my blood pressure medicine. And gradually, I think I may be able to overcome it.

My knees feel a little better one day, a little worse the next. But Awkward Pose seems to be coming together again, if slowly. And I can almost imagine again the day when I will get my butt down in Fixed Firm. So there's definite progress here.

On the other poses. My backbends seem to be coming along, but I don't get comments on them. Instead, I get good comments now in Standing Head to Knee, Standing Bow, Triangle, and Locust. When I can do Locust, my legs still go way up, and straight. I find it really funny that what others think of as my best pose is, subjectively at least, my worst.

In the day 305 meditation, Gates talks about "the boisterous sea of liberty." It's boisterous, he says, because we are forever turning inward, from our smallest to our largest decisions. I'm trying to make this idea sit easily alongside the idea of stillness that pervades this work. Somehow, stillness doesn't seem to coincide with being "boisterous." But what if its not us that is the boisterous thing, but rather the world where each of these decisions is made. Then I can see how we could be like a still vessel, bobbing with the waves, and hardly even noticing the movement because of the still center that we keep. Maybe that's what he's getting at? But I'm not really sure on this.