Bikram 60 Day Challenge

Dog Bite

2010-02-25T19:09:00.002-06:00

Friday through Monday Off

Tuesday 6:30 pm with Libby

Wednesday off.

Four days in a row off. Yikes. I don't have a real excuse, except for a persistent runny nose that has been interfering with my breathing. But, that's pretty much a phony excuse.

Libby's class was interesting. She's changed something in her delivery recently, I think. Mostly, the pranayama seems to take forever, and with my breathing difficulty, it seemed like double forever. In the second set, I felt like I was going to pass out a couple of times. She has a thing she does now on some breaths where she counts one to six, and gives an instruction between each of the counted instructions. And this time, it felt like "One ... The Gettysburg Address ...Two.. The first chapter of War and Peace ... Three ... etc..."

Then, the other thing that seems to have changed since her vacation is the timing in the standing series. The postures and sets come immediately after one another. I don't have any problem at all with this style. It's very demanding, and that's just fine. But it does feel different to me, and I haven't yet asked her whether there was a deliberate change. If not, is she aware of some change or am I just imagining things (always a strong possibility).

Once pranayama was done, things actually went pretty well. I got a nice compliment in the first part of awkward, and then in final stretching of all things. I also got some good corrections: elbows again in first backbend, then chin to shoulder in Standing Bow.

And I also got a "Duffy, what did you eat today?" during back strengthening. The reflux problems are not going away yet. And this class wasn't even that bad. I had to sit up twice in back strengthening, but briefly, and I only skipped one set of Locust. I've had much worse days, but it was bad enough to get that comment. And the answer was "A turkey sandwich" and nothing else, and that was over six hours before class. I think I may need to ask my doctor about whether the medication might be causing it, and if so, to try to explore some other alternative.

Now, the dog bite. I have two lovely and very active Samoyeds. I take them to a nearby dog park almost every day. Yesterday, within a minute of getting to the park my boy got into a squabble with a Pit Bull. I didn't see it start, but saw the dogs lunge after each other at least twice before I got there. By then, my dog had grabbed and locked onto the loose skin on the top of the Pit Bull's neck (the area where mother dogs pick up their puppies). I grabbed my dog by the chest under the shoulders, but he wouldn't let go of his grip.

Almost everyone around is freaking out, especially the Pit Bull's owner, who keeps yelling "He's tearing up my dog." I reached around with my right hand to try to pry open Papa's mouth. The Pit Bull got my hand, hard. Then he bit my foot, almost through my sneaker. He bit my friend three times. He kept trying to bite my dogs throat, but Papa's grip on his neck made it impossible for him to grab Papa.

The Pit's owner is now screaming "He's getting defensive." As if to explain the bites. But was doing nothing to help. Eventually, a smart woman poured water down Papa's nose, and Papa let go to breathe. And, as I expected, at this point there were no visible wounds on the Pit Bull's neck or on my dog.

Two seconds later, for reasons I can't even begin to fathom, the Pit Bull owner let go of his dog. I was still on ground holding papa, and the dog tackled me. This time he bit through my leather jacket and into my forearm. (I could feel the sharp bite, but didn't know that he had punctured my arm until after I got home.) In this second, short squabble, my dog bit the pit bull on the top of the head and drew some blood. In return, my dog got bites on his mouth and one leg, but they were very minor.

The police and animal control arrived. Most of the witnesses had left. The Pit Bull owner and his friends said that my dog started the fight, and this might be true. They also said that my dog was the one who bit both me and my friend. I asked the police how my dog could have bitten us when the problem was trying to get his jaws unlocked from the other dog. The officer went back to them and then came back and told us that it was my other dog who bit us, even though she wasn't at all involved. When we said we knew who bit us, the policeman said we were interested in the outcome and that we were lying.

What does all of this have to do with yoga (or my yoga)? Well, two out of the three bites were no big deal. I've got some nice holes in my forearm, but they don't bother me that much. The problem is with my index finger. The bite there runs ragged for about a half inch, and it goes to the bone. The doctor won't stitch it because it increases the chance of infection. No bandage will last through a yoga class. And I can't interlock my fingers or do anything at all with my right index finger (typing seems to be an exception today, which is a big improvement over last night). That means I will be taking a break from yoga practice, probably until the wound closes up enough that I can do an approximation of the basic Bikram grips without re-opening it.

In the meantime, I think I will try to focus on the Gate's meditations on a daily basis. I'm skipping the meditation that would ordinarily have gone with this post because I think this has gone on long enough.

And if you are interested, the upshot of the squabble in the park is that my dog got put into quarantine today for nine days! His rabies tag had expired a little while back. And even though he didn't bite anyone, animal control decided and arguing with them can only make things worse. (One year rabies vaccines last for at least five years. The only point of a quarantine is because rabies can only be passed on through saliva for about 6 days before a dog dies, so if a dog stays healthy for 10 days after it bites a person, the person can't get rabies. But the incubation period for rabies can be as long as six months. So if the Papa were not immune to rabies, then the reasonable quarantine period is not 10 days, but six months -- and I wasn't about to make that argument to animal control for obvious reasons. So, no matter how you look at it, this quarantine is pointless and is basically being done to punish me, as if the pain from the bites I got are not punishment enough.) And if you are wondering, no action was taken at all against either the Pit Bull or its owner.

Boisterous Seas

2010-02-20T15:49:00.004-06:00

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.

Leaps of Faith

2010-02-11T19:39:00.002-06:00

Monday 6:30 pm with Libby

Tuesday Off

Wednesday 6:30 pm with Sherry

On Monday, everything went pretty smoothly. My knee felt better than it has in a long, long time. I almost got my butt to the floor in fixed firm. I skipped a set of triangle, half from nursing my knee, half from stamina concerns, and half from recently formed habit. And yes, I know that's three halves, but I've been watching American Idol recently, and if they can have someone be "a billion percent yes," then I can have as many halfs as I want.

I also did much better in back strengthening series, and almost completely avoided any reflux problems. I had sushi for lunch, and I'm wondering if that's the difference. Maybe, I just need to simplify my meals? I'm going to try a simple sushi lunch again and see what difference it makes.

Wednesday was the polar opposite. Instead of sushi, I had Indian food for lunch. For some reason that I don't get, yoga and Indian food don't mix. At least for me. It's probably the spicyness. The meal was almost completely vegetarian and well cooked -- very savory. And it started playing havoc with me almost immediately in class. I started having some distress in Half Moon.

On top of that, the room was humid, and the sweat was really flowing. I did a reasonable imitation of a yogi through standing series. But coming out of the first separate leg pose, I got really dizzy. Then again after the Separate Leg Head to Knee poses. Then I found myself needing a bathroom break before Cobra. And when I came back in, I just didn't have it anymore.

So for the day, I pretty much gave up. I came in early, and lay down before class. Next thing I knew, Sherry was telling me to wake up because class was starting. But asleep was really where I wanted to be. In the floor series, I gradually got back to that point. The back strengthening series was crippled by the Indian food. I skipped half of the first three poses. Then I was on track until Camel, but just going through the motions. But I skipped out on half of Camel, half of Rabbit, and then everything else until final breathing. Sleep, or near-sleep, was what I was craving, and that's what I got. I took a nice long Savasana afterwards, again on the edge of sleep though not quite there.

All in all, it was one of my strangest classes. It wasn't a struggle, because I basically refused to struggle. And I can't quite say that I gave up either. Afterwards I felt good. So I'm not going to beat myself up over this kind of performance. But I don't want to make a habit of it either. Did I do the best I could? I don't really know the answer. I probably could have forced myself to do more, but I think I might have felt worse, or injured myself as a result.

The day 304 meditation talks about applying meditation to everyday life. Meditation starts out being nothing but a jumble of distractions. Over time, we learn to shed the distractions. Gates says that at that point we find some direction. In life, Gates says the same process turns us away from simply following the expectations of others, or heeding our own fears. In its place, we learn to listen to our hearts. This process involves a leap of faith: the faith that what our heart tells us will be the right thing -- that we won't get burned in the process. Gates also describes this as the faith that "the love that wished you into existence will never let you down."

The only thing I have to add here is that what Gates says is a leap of faith actually strikes me as having two distinct leaps. First, there is the leap of faith involved in deciding or discerning that you have truly listened to your heart in the first place. Oftentimes, I will ask myself what I really want in a situation, and the answer comes up with a resounding "I don't have a clue." So the first part is simply learning to listen. The second leap comes with acting on what you hear, that's the part I think Gates seems to be addressing. For me, this part would be easy. Or maybe they aren't as disconnected as I suppose. If I really knew that it was my heart telling me something, I would probably be more willing to act on it.

Inspiration

2010-02-07T19:42:00.003-06:00

Tuesday off.

Wednesday 6:30 with Sherry

Thursday off.

Friday 6:30 with Libby

Saturday and Sunday Off

Monday 6:30 with Sherry

Tuesday 6:30 with Libby

Wednesday and Thursday Off

Friday 4:30 pm with Sherry

Saturday off

Sunday 9:30 am with Sherry

How's that for a list? I'm not even going to try to list the details of each class. As a general trend, I'm having real reflux problems, which might be related to my new blood pressure medicine, or might not. Today's class was the only one where I didn't have to skip something to prevent myself from messing up the mat. And I'm having stamina problems, which comes from skipping so much. So typically I miss a pose in standing series, sometimes because of stamina problems, and sometimes because I feel some tightness/weakness in my left knee after the first Separate leg pose.

The only odd thing I'm feeling recently is a sensation deep in my shoulders during opening pranayama. I've been concentrating on really keeping the elbows up from the start of each exhale, and its really hard. I haven't gotten any corrections on what I'm doing, at least not yet, so I doubt I'm overdoing it.

The day 303 meditation has a contradiction that Gates has skirted with before. First he talkes about getting in touch with an "inner being" that allows us to be creative. He says that all religions recognize this inner being, as do many artists and other creative people. And he says that pratyahama is the moment in yoga when we let our answers come from this being. From this point he talks about inspiration and its role in yoga, and basically says its the same thing as what he just described.

The intellectual problem I have with this is that inspiration does not come from the inside. The very word means "to breathe in." What we breathe in comes from outside of us, not from any inner self. Moreover, there certainly have been cultures who believe that creativity comes from outside. The muses are a pretty good example of this.

I don't, however, think this confusion or contradiction is a particularly big deal. In some ways, I think that Gates is making a distinction that yoga doesn't. Since yoga deals with union, eventually union of everything, I doubt it makes much difference in yoga whether you get in touch with your inner self, or whether your inspiration comes from outside. And to a certain extent, I think that Gates' confusing language on this point only reinforces my point. I tend to think he's being sloppy here because you can look at it from either side. In the end, I think it matters little where inspiration comes from, certainly not in comparison with the importance of simply being inspired.

2010-01-27T15:09:00.002-06:00

Saturday Off.

Sunday Off.

Monday 6:30 pm with Sherry.

Last week I got some new blood pressure medicine. The first medicine the doctor gave me brought my blood pressure down from emergency hospitalization levels to about 150/100 (+/- 10 on either side). The new medicine actually works, perhaps too well. I'm typically around dead normal now, which is alot better than dead. And I've had readings as low as 100/65.

The reason I'm mentioning this is because the new medicine also seems to have a side effect. It does something strange to my constitution about 1-2 hours after I take it. And that's exactly when I took it on Monday. The upshot was that coming out of a forward bend made me dizzy. Toward the end of standing series, I started to get chills. Think of it, chills in a Bikram class! And I had some really bad reflux issues on top of it. By Half Tortoise, I was an utter mess. And I limped to the end, doing one set per pose. A couple of times, on the floor, I nearly fell asleep, and almost missed the instruction to get up for the second set.

I'm forgiving myself for this total disaster, because I think quite a bit of it was drug induced. And I hope over time I will be able to wean myself off these drugs. And now for the funny/remarkable thing: After class, my knee felt much, much better. And it has since, as well. That just goes to show that even an amazingly shitty Bikram class is way better than nothing at all.

The day 302 meditation focuses on two things -- keeping it simple, and taking risks. Keeping it simple, in this context, means showing up. And for Gates, showing up and being present end up being the same thing. The more present you are, the more you are in the moment, the more you have shown up. And, for him, its as simple as that. Everything else follows.

The cool thing is that taking risks, for Gates, means exactly the same thing. Playing it safe is withdrawing from the moment. It's not showing up. And in the end, it is more harmful than taking a risk. Part of me wants to say, "But that's so simple." But that's exactly the point, isn't it?

Willingness to no Longer be in Pain

2010-01-23T21:09:00.003-06:00

Tuesday off.

Wednesday 6:30 pm with Sherry

Thursday 10:30 am with Lenette

Friday 6:30 pm with Rohit

Each of the classes was good in its own way. Wednesday was one of those days where the body was willing, but my mind was all over the place. I started with some worries about my ability to even get through the class. But everything settled out, and overall it was very good.

Thursday's class was better. I thought the room was cool, but I was wrong. Instead, the humidity was down just a little bit, to maybe 35%. It's amazing how much of a difference a small humidity change makes for me. For the first time in what seems like ages, I didn't skip any of the poses. And Friday was pretty much the same, except that I missed the second set of Standing Separate Leg Head to Floor, to spare my left knee.

Here's something I've been wondering about. I tend to have really good classes with the same teachers. And, of course, these teachers also are the ones I like the best. The question is about cause and effect. Do I have good classes with the same teachers because they are really good teachers (at least for me)? Or do I have good classes with them simply because I like them so much? Or is it the other way around? Meaning that for some other reason, or perhaps coincidentally, I have these good classes, and then I tend to associate them with the teachers I seem to like best. I don't know the answer to this. (And don't get me wrong. I don't dislike any of the teachers at our studio. I actually like them all, but as with other things, I have minor preferences even among those that I like. It's kind of like my preference for Beethoven over Mozart, or Chopin over Liszt.)

The day 301 begins with an interesting idea: that our practice centers on "a mature willingness to no longer be in pain." I think that Gates is probably right about this, but it sounds strange when thinking about Bikram's "torture chamber." I've heard some teachers quote Bikram as saying that we endure 90 minutes of pain in his class to avoid 90 years of pain outside. But I think dancingj summed it up better in a comment on an earlier post. That post was about pain masquerading as pleasure (like stuffing yourself at Thanksgiving), and she commented that Bikram yoga was the opposite: pleasure masquerading as pain.

Gates goes on to say something I don't quite understand. He says that this willingness comes from an acknowledgment of two admittedly contradictory things. First, that we are powerless. And second, that we are absolutely responsible for all of our actions. Even if I knew how to wrap my mind around the contradiction (and I think it has to do with gaining access to abilities we hadn't thought we had by letting go), I still don't see quite what it has to do with a willingness to no longer be in pain. There's something about this idea that I simply do not understand.

Letting Go of Junk

2010-01-19T12:19:00.003-06:00

Thursday 6:30 pm with Libby

Friday through Sunday off

Monday 6:30 pm with Sherry

Libby's class was great. I drank no water, for the first time in months, and as usual, it helped my alertness throughout class. Instead of slogging through from Camel to the end, I had some energy and was able to stay with the dialogue. It was one of the most fun classes I've had in a while.

I took Friday off because I planned to take it off. And then something hit me, and I woke up both Saturday and Sunday intending to go, but couldn't breath through my nose, and decided against. Yesterday was not much different, except that in addition to not being able to breathe, I had a bad headache. (Note: three days off of yoga = headache. Remember that next time, and maybe I can avoid it.)

So I went into last night's class with a splitting headache, and wondering if I was even going to be able to breathe through Pranayama. In typical Bikram fashion, I got the opposite of what I was expecting. I thought the room was a little on the cool side, but when I checked, it was perfect Bikram weather -- 105 degrees, 37% humidity.

My breath cleared up by Eagle. My headache was gone by Balancing Stick. My knee felt like it was improving throughout the class. I skipped the second set of Standing Separate Leg Head to Floor because I felt some strain in the knee. But otherwise, I felt good through everything.

The only notable thing in any of the poses is that I sort of flew backwards out of the first backbend. Sherry said "Well, I guess you found your edge." Then, in the second set, I concentrated on holding it more, and through my arms I could start seeing several feet down the back wall. In the past, I've talked about being able to see down to the ballet bar, and I still can do that. But that was looking past my arms, not between them. This is different, and I think that it means my arms are coming back closer to where they should be.

For a long time, I wondered why the dialogue for the first backbend says "Don't be scared." Yes, it felt odd, and I could get so I thought I was hallucinating in the bend. But it was never scary before -- I think because I was too inflexible to get to the tipping point. Now, I think I understand. I'm hitting a point where the pose just seems so unnatural that it really is a bit scary, because bending that far leaves you with no idea what is supporting your body. Add that to the general disorientation and I can now see where the fear enters in.

The day 300 meditation is about letting go. There are a bunch of rhetorical questions he asks, but I'm not so sure they actually are rhetorical. For example, "Can we really lose or own anything?" The answer he wants is "No." But my philosophical training rebels against this kind of question. The question is asking for absolutes, and thus ignores that words like "lose" and "own" are ordinary words that mean something in ordinary usage. The "really" in the question tempts people to jump outside of ordinary contexts. That temptation may be to a good purpose here. But typically its a mistake that leads to all sorts of philosophical conundrums. But enough of the brief foray into philosophy.

I really like the last two lines of this meditation: "Letting go is the opposite of fearing death; it is trusting life. When we let go of something;our hand opens and we are able to receive." Both parts of this are both simple and profound. The first is that letting go is an act of trust, and that trust, by itself, is worthwhile. The second is a bit more involved. The idea is that we can only deal with a certain number of things at any one time, and that letting go of things enables us to bring new, possibly better things into the mix. Clear your closets of junk, and you can start to collect new, better things.

Restlessness

2010-01-14T15:59:00.005-06:00

Saturday Off

Sunday 9:30 am with Rohit

Monday 6:30 pm with Rohit

Tuesday Off

Wednesday 6:30 pm with Sherry

Sunday's class started cold. Houston was in a cold snap (well, for Houston anyways) with temperatures dipping into the high 20s. When I got to the studio, the heat had been on for almost an hour, and the temperature was still only 83 degrees. It got up to 87 by the start of class.

To make up for it, Rohit tried introducing people to the "Breath of Fire" as a preliminary warm-up. This is basically the same as the final breathing exercise, but he wanted us to do it standing up, and you breathe through the nose, not the mouth. It was working for me, but basically noone was buying into it. I got the feeling that there was much resistance in the room to trying something new. Rohit went back to the standard Bikram series, and we warmed up as well as we could, which was not that well, even though the room hit 102 by the end of standing series.

Despite the lack of heat, class went pretty well. I adjusted decently to the lesser flexibility that comes with a cold room and a less than throrough warm-up. And did better than usual in the balancing and the strength poses. My knee, however, was not going to co-operate in the cold, and the kneeling poses were pretty much a total bust.

Monday's class was much better for my knee. I had to skip a set of Triangle, because the forward bend just before it puts alot of pressure on the back of my right knee, and I started to feel a bit unstable coming out of it. Then, on the floor, I finally started to feel things opening up a bit. After class, my knee felt better than it has in months, and that lasted the rest of the night.

Yesterday was a repeat. My knee felt great after class, and now it hurts just a little, but it seems to be making real progress. The other big progress I've made in the last several classes is in the compression poses. I'm getting my hairline to my knee in Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee, and in Rabbit I can bring my forehead up on my thighs.

The day 299 meditation talks about the last of the hinderances to meditation: restlessness. My first thought on this is that restlessness encompasses all the others. Craving and ill-will, for example, are just different ways that one loses one's rest. Gates runs through a familiar catalog of the restless ways we might have in class, from adjusting our clothes to wiping sweat to fidgeting from one foot to the other, etc...

He then says we need to drop our autobiographies. I wouldn't have connected restlessness with an "autobiography" but I think he has a very profound point here. This little autobiography is our pre-occupation with our "selfs" (with a small "s") It's the focus on what's going to happen after class, or even in the next pose, or the focus on some little problem from the day that we brought into class. And this reminds me in turn of two Bikramisms:: "Kill your self." and "Don't let anyone steal your peace." Killing your self means killing your ego, which means letting go of your little "autobiography." And, when someone steals your peace it means that you have allowed them to make you restless.

Ill Will

2010-01-09T21:29:00.002-06:00

Wednesday Off

Thursday 6:30 pm with Libby

Friday 6:30 pm with Sherry

Classes are back to normal again. My stamina is back to where it was, making me think that I must have been fighting off some illness last weekend. I used to get sick. Now I have really bad yoga classes instead. It's a pretty good tradeoff. And normal also means that I'm in the middle of nursing one of a seemingly endless series of petty knee ailments.

Here's the strange thing. I set up my towel on Friday and felt some drops on my head. And then some more. I looked up, and there was no leak anywhere. Rather, it was raining on my mat. Inside. That's how strange the heating system combined with our cold snap is. So, while the usual for cast for Bikram is hot and humid, now I'm going to have to factor in the probability of rain as well.

I don't have much else to report on the classes themselves. My balance is better the last few days, especially in Standing Head to Knee. So has my forward bending. I did really well in Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee, getting a nice tight compression and keeping both legs straight. I also had a killer Rabbit yesterday. My forehead was on my thigh (not the knee), I kept the heels together, and my hips went up. And for whatever reason, I could breath in the pose, too. What a difference from how the pose has been for what seems like months.

The day 298 meditation is about ill will. Gates says ill will stems from the conviction that something is wrong, and the problem resides in someone or something other than ourselves. The example he gives is one I've seen many times in the Bikram studio. An experienced yogi comes to his first class. He finds himself in some difficulty, and blames the difficulty on the heat, on the instructor, on the series. He refuses to follow the directions. And the first class completely beats him up. The reason for his difficulty is his ill will toward the new practice.

This problem is one that arises very easily in Bikram. I've experienced it again and again. There are times when I blame the heat for my troubles, or the humidity, or the teacher's timing, or the person next to me doing things I find distracting. And even while laying blame, I know those things would go away if I could just stay within my breath, and let things be.

Libby wrote on Facebook a while back after some class she taught something to the effect: "I don't care if you hate me, if you just do the pose." At the time, I replied that anyone who is doing the pose will not hate her. A bunch of other teachers chimed in, telling me that I must not be a teacher, and that one of the hardest things for a Bikram teacher has to deal with are the constant looks of hatred, fear and loathing they get from the students.

Of course, they must be right about what they experience from students. But I also know that when I'm really doing the yoga, and am doing it right, there's no hatred at all -- no ill will to the teachers or to anyone else. And if I do find myself hating a pose, or the heat, or even the teacher, that means that I'm not really doing the pose. So my comment still stands -- anyone really doing the poses won't hate the teacher. Now I just have to acknowledge that, and let go of my ill will, the next time I find myself glaring at some poor teacher.

Optimism and Pessimism

2010-01-06T23:25:00.003-06:00

Sunday Off

Monday 10:30 am with Connease

Tuesday 6:30 pm with Rohit

Every time I've had a bad class, I've consoled myself with the Scarlett O'Hara idea: After all, tomorrow is another day. And that's always true. But now I know that as bad as one class can be, its always possible for the next class to hit even harder.

I'm reminded of a joke my screenwriting teacher used to tell: The difference between an optimist and a pessimist. A pessimist goes around saying "Things are horrible, things are terrible, things can't get any worse than this." And the optimist says "Oh, yes they can."

It started getting bad in about the third breath of pranayama. I actually skipped a set of Standing Bow. That's never happened before. I know I'm just supposed to go where my practice takes me, but this was really testing my patience and resolve. How many times are you supposed to get knocked down before you throw in the towel? I don't know the answer to that question yet, and I hope I don't end up learning it.

I did learn one fairly useful thing about my practice. Even with things that bad, I didn't notice what was going on with others until Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee. At that point, when I hit the floor, I wondered if it was just me. I looked around and over half the class was down for the count.

By contrast, yesterday's class was just hard. I only missed one set of Triangle, and then a set of Locust. I bailed on Locust because of reflux issues, not because of stamina. Otherwise, the class seemed fairly normal, at least to me.

The difficulties came in the knee poses -- anything that involves fully bending the left knee is very hard for me. The wonder of the class, however, was that by the end it seemed like I had pretty much worked out whatever was wrong with the knee. And the rejuvenated knee lasted the rest of the night and even feels better today.

The funny thing was that after class Rohit commented on how hard the class seemed to have been for me. I think he could see some grimacing in the kneeling series, and definitely in the third part of Awkward, when he asked whether I was OK. Add the bout of reflux when on my belly, and I can see how he might have thought I'd had a train wreck of a class. And there I was thinking that it was good to be back on track again. I guess that shows how genuinely bad (scary bad) the last two classes had been.

The day 297 meditation makes a couple of points about craving. The first is that cravings result from dissatisfaction with your life as it is. The second point is that the way to get over cravings is simply to start living your life. This makes perfect sense to me now. Craving is in some ways the opposite of contentment. And contentment is not something that you are, but something that you practice. I think that's pretty much what this meditation restates.

Resolution Time

2010-01-03T22:59:00.002-06:00

Friday Off.

Saturday 9:30 am with Amy

You could easily tell it was January 2nd. Typical classes in the last month have been in the 12-20 range. Thirty would be alot. Saturday morning we had closer to 50.

Before class, I thought it might be a good idea to try to start the year as if I were a beginner. But I wasn't really expecting how that would manifest itself. I started feeling bad right away, and it never got much better. It was really humid and I simply was having trouble breathing. My worries over my blood pressure still being out of control doesn't help in that kind of situation. I skipped one set of: Standing Separate Leg Stretching, Triangle, Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee, Tree, and then Locust, Camel, Rabbit. And even skipping those, I still felt wiped. Who knows, maybe I was getting sick? It was kind of a repeat of my Thanksgiving class in New York, and much worse than anything I've done in this studio.

Anyway, I still felt better after class. But it wasn't what I would call the greatest start to the new year. I'm sure there will be better times ahead.

I'm not much for resolutions. I haven't looked back to what I said last year, if anything. Usually, I tell people that my resolution this year is not to make any resolutions. And, of course, since I make the same resolution every year, I end up not keeping it either.

There are some things I would like to make some progress on this year, though I hate to make them rise to the level of resolutions.

For health:

1) Get my blood pressure back to reasonable levels.

2) Eat more fruit and veggies, less sugar. (On this note, I've started doing this, and nothing else, and have already lost 19 lbs.)

3) Add some bicycling in addition to yoga, to get resting pulse down some (its 68 in the mornings, which is way too high, I think.)

In yoga practice:

1) Get over my fear of Locust.

2) Make some progress on my leg wrap in Eagle.

3) Do fuller first sets in the balancing poses.

4) Stop anticipating the teacher when I get tired (this one will be tough).

In general, be kinder and less quick to anger and frustration over stupid little things. Maybe spend a month at a time concentrating on one each of the yamas and niyamas?

For those of you interested in yoga resolutions, I suggest you check out the Bikram 101 challenge. A group of the yogi bloggers has decided to start a 101 day challenge, starting Janurary first. It's not too late to join. And if you don't join, think about cheering them on. I'm putting the site on my blog roll, or you can see it here.

The day 296 introduces us to the classic hinderances to meditation. These are: craving, ill will, sloth, restlessness, and doubt. Lord knows that I've seen each of these crop up, both while simply trying to meditate, and also during class. Take cravings in class: when I'm standing in my spot and the humidifier isn't blowing air on my, I find myself looking forward to it coming on, just for that brief respite. Sometimes its the water. Sometimes its wanting to do the pose better. Sometimes it's just wanting to hear that word of encouragement. And sometimes it can be nothing more than an itch, or the urge to wipe sweat from my eyes. To an outsider, these may not seem like much, but the more I practice, the more I see that they really are getting in the way of something better.

Gates introduces a cool idea in this meditation. These hinderances are always there, he says. Too often, they are simply sitting in the background, behind the noise of our everyday lives. They are ingrained habits of mind. When we meditate, we strip away that noise, and become aware of the hinderances themselves. And then we erroneously jump to the conclusion that we have failed in the meditation. Quite the contrary, he says. When we start facing the hinderances themselves, that shows that the meditating is actually making progress, that we have succeeded in stripping away some of the noise.

231/365 - I'm Back

2009-12-31T15:29:00.005-06:00

Sunday Off

Monday 6:30 pm with Rohit

Tuesday 6:30 pm with Libby

Wednesday the 23rd through Monday 28th Off (Merry Christmas!)

Tuesday 10:30 am with Lenette

Wednesday 6:30 pm with Rohit

Thursday 10:30 am with Rohit

This is by far the longest I've taken without posting. My apologies to any of you who were anxiously awaiting what I might next say. The Wednesday through Monday break was also the longest I've taken off with no yoga at all. I'm not entirely sure why I didn't make it to a class while on Long Island. Maybe I didn't feel like it. Maybe its proof that I didn't really like the studio there.

I'm not going to summarize each or the last five classes in any detail. I learned something fairly big in each of the first two. First, Rohit said I'm falling out of Standing Bow the way I am because I'm charging forward before I've gotten all I can out of the backward kick. He's getting to be more and more of a stickler on this point, and his advice really helps me. The idea is to kick back with your leg (creating the back arch) until you can't kick back anymore. Then you start to kick up, and its that kicking that drives your body forward. It's not simply a matter of bending at the waist. Rather, you should have no choice but to bend at the waist. This tip has since helped both with the stretching feeling in the pose, and in my ability to hold it. Of course, my new improved Standing Bow doesn't look as cool as the way I was doing, but it will get there.

In the second class, Libby called me out a few times for not locking my elbows. I make a very big deal about keeping the elbows locked in Half Moon, and I can do it pretty well. But there are so many other poses that call for the locked elbow, and its so easy to relax the idea in these poses. First Backbend, Balancing Stick, Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee, Half Tortoise are the main ones, but I may be missing something. This is very similar to the same point that Janna has been making about Half Tortoise. It's obviously one of those things that I "know" yet forget with such ease.

As for the three most recent classes, I've had some real stamina problems, especially in the second class after the break. I dropped a set each of Triangle, Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee, Tree!!!, Camel and Rabbit. I wanted to drop even more. This morning I did better, but still lost a set of Triangle and Tree. I've never skipped tree pose before, and I think its related to my blood pressure. Coming out of the tuck in the earlier pose, I get a little dizzy, and I think that may be a sudden drop in blood pressure. And then I can barely balance on two feet, much less one.

The only other thing is another, and different, pain in my left knee. This time it's on the inside at the back and I don't think it has anything to do with any of the earlier problems. My calf has some related tightness, so I think I must have just pulled something a bit carrying luggage and stuff up and down stairs. This time, I can't fully flex the knee at all. Japanese sitting position is impossible. Third part of Awkward is a major challenge, and I can't go all the way down. Fixed firm is a pipe dream, and Half Tortoise and Rabbit don't get the set-ups they deserve, and suffer pretty badly as a result.

After class this morning, a tranplant from Los Angeles who is new to our studio said that I was "really intense." I'm taking that as a compliment. I do think it's a bit odd that other people see me that way.

The day 295 meditation talks about doubts cropping up over meditation. It's so easy to doubt meditation. As soon as you ask yourself whether you are meditating properly, or even whether you are meditating at all, then you aren't. And at the start (where I am now), thoughts like that crop up all the time.

Once again, Gates assures us that it's not rocket science. There isn't any great body of knowledge needed to start meditation. Rather, like so much else in yoga, you just let go of the doubt and do it. The nice thing to hear is that asana and pranayama are already forms of meditation, but they are in some ways more difficult. With the meditation he's talking about, all you need to do is focus.

On a personal note, I've found one very nice bonus to my recent blood pressure worries. I've got a wrist monitor that may or may not be accurate. The doctor told me to take readings in the morning and the evening. The monitor suggests resting for 10 to 15 minutes before taking the readings. Voila! This is an instant time set aside for meditation. And I've got to do it anyway for other reasons, so I've been trying to do it right.

226/352- Doing It

2009-12-19T22:54:00.002-06:00

Friday 10:30 am with Janna

Saturday 9:30 am with Connease

Janna really wants me to do Half Tortoise correctly. It's so easy to ease off in this pose -- to think that Fixed Firm and Half Tortoise are both well deserved resting poses after cramping my entire back for the last 10-15 minutes. (Is back strengthening series really that short?) In this class, Janna told me she was going to guide me through the corrections in first set, but I had to do it on my own for the second.

Here were the corrections: Thumbs crossed, and use them to squeeze the hands together. Only pinkies on the floor. Straighten the neck even more. The last was something of a surprise. With my neck straight, both my forehead and my nose pressed flat on the ground. I didn't know I had that in me, and thought I was doing the pose fairly well because I was getting good contact with the forehead. The really cool thing about these corrections is that they seem to have stuck, at least through another class. And that's a start.

In general, class was good. I've been reading up on blood pressure symptoms, so now I'm getting all of them. It's a good thing I didn't go to med school. I would have had every symptom known to man. Anyway, I felt a bit lightheaded after Standing Separate Leg Head to Floor, and skipped a set of Triangle. Otherwise, it was a nice solid class.

Today's class was tougher. I think it might have been hotter, at least in the Standing Series. Or maybe I've just honed my psychosomatic skills. I started feeling a bit weak in Awkward. By Balancing Stick, I didn't know if I was going to make it. Then I skipped a set of Triangle, and then a set of Standing Separate Leg head to knee.

The parts I did, I did pretty well. Standing Bow is getting better, both in terms of how high I'm kicking up, and in how long I can hold it. The real stretch right now is underneath the shoulder blade of the arm holding my leg. I feel like I could get much deeper into this pose if my shoulder blades would just open up some more. (Same goes for Floor Bow and Camel.) In fact, after class I'm feeling the most in that area right now. It's getting hit in just about every pose these days: Half Moon, Standing Bow, Balancing Stick, Locust, Floor Bow, Half Tortoise, and Camel.

Another interesting note. I took my blood pressure after yoga both of these days. On the first day it dropped 20/15 points. Today, it dropped to normal -- 122/80. It's not permanent, but it does seem pretty miraculous. Maybe I should just do five classes a day, and I'll keep it down for most of my waking hours.

The day 294 meditation applies a lesson we learned about asana to meditation. It's pretty simple. Don't worry so much about doing it perfectly, and just do it. Sit still and be quiet for 15 minutes a day. Just try to focus and be still during that time, and don't worry too much if it's not going "right." The important thing is doing it. The rest you can let go.

224/340 - Pi/e (and Sloth)

2009-12-17T20:10:00.004-06:00

Tuesday 6:30 with Libby

Wednesday 8:15 with Rohit

Thursday off.

First, some housekeeping. I need to look back over my post titles. My day count is at 340, and I think there are 14 days left in the year. Did someone change the calendar this year? Or (perhaps more likely) I goofed on the count somewhere? (Edit: Oops, strike that. I goofed with this post. I went from 347 to 340. Doh! I will keep the title of this post as it is, and get back on course with the next post, maybe...)

This raises another interesting question: Why am I bothering with a day count at all? At one point, the days were going to match the meditations in Gates' book. Now, instead, they serve as a reminder of how far off the track I've gone. At this point, I think I'm doing it just to do it. And also, it gives me a convenient title for a post when I can't come up with anything cute. But random numbers would serve that purpose just as well. Hence the name of this post. (BTW, I have a nasty habit, when people try to get to think of a number between one and ten, of choosing either pi or e.)

I had three really good days of classes in a row. Libby's class was inspiring. I found new things in several of the poses. Most notably, I discovered how to go even more deeply into my shoulders in Half Moon. Here's the strange, but typical, discovery I made. I can get a much deeper stretch in my shoulders in the pose by paying even more attention to locking my legs and making sure that the inside foot is bearing the weight it should. That's just another example of how totally connected different parts of the body are in these poses.

Mostly, what I did in this class was pay even more attention to the set-ups. More and more, I'm impressed with the importance of the set-ups for every pose. The more attention that gets paid to following every detail, the better the pose. It's pretty much that simple. After the set-up, everything is a matter of breathing and determination.

The class itself was great. There were eight of us, and Libby had us all move to the front row. This means that there was basically no-one in my field of vision. But still, the energy was really high, and several times Libby complemented us on how we were staying together. Part of the reason, I think, is because the studio is in the holiday doldrums. For the most part, the only people who are coming are the ones who are very committed. And it makes for small, but high energy classes.

After two really good classes in a row, I thought about taking a day off, but decided to push my luck. At the last minute, I grabbed my stuff and headed for class. The only reason I had for not going was that I didn't really feel like it, and that's not going to be a good enough reason anymore.

Class was really good. Again there were about eight of us, and the class was strong and together. During Triangle, Rohit commented that it was the first time where he had nothing to say about anyone's Triangle during a class. Then in Floor Bow, he mentioned how no-one in class dropped out of the pose early. It's been that kind of week in these classes, and its really cool.

The day 293 meditation visits an old friend of mine: sloth. As Gates talks about it, sloth is basically whatever gets you to say that you don't need to practice today, that you can do your meditation sometime later, that tomorrow will be as good as today for starting some project. I think there's some difference between procrastination and sloth, but it's probably not worth mentioning.

As Gates notes, its pretty to overcome sloth with Asana practice. Once you get involved in your practice, its relatively easy to let yourself become completely involved. I think that's just the nature of the poses. Of course, in Bikram, the dialogue delivery has something to do with it as well.

He also notes that sloth is a bigger obstacle in meditation. This seems kind of counterintuitive to me. In some ways, when you are meditating, you aren't really doing anything. So I would think that meditation and sloth would make fairly good bedfellows. But here's the rub. Meditation requires focus and concentration, and sloth doesn't particularly like to keep company with them. So it will constantly try to bring you away from your focus, to turn you away from the meditative state and bring you back to the "comfortable" area where thoughts just sort of flit about as they will.

222/347 Doctor, Yikes!

2009-12-14T22:52:00.002-06:00

Friday through Sunday off.

Monday 6:30 pm with Sherry

I had a check-up today and I'm mostly fine. The blood work hasn't been done yet, so I may be jumping the gun. And he wants to x-ray my knee, but mostly because I complained about it.

But... I've definitely slacked off about my weight. I haven't weighed myself in almost a year, I think. And my clothes still fit, but may be a bit more snug than the were after my big challenge last year. I knew that. According to the doctor's scale, I've regained 25 pounds of the forty plus that I lost. OK, I can deal with that, and I basically know the adjustments I need to make to get things back on track.

Now here's the scary part. My blood pressure this morning came in at 175/116 !!! I thought I had it licked, and even went off my medications and had no problems a year ago. I had a headache this morning. And the doctor says its possible that the headache, or whatever caused it, also caused a spike in my blood pressure. But it's also possible, and more likely, that the high blood pressure is actually causing my headache. This little problem puts a bit more urgency into shedding a few pounds. My guess is that going back to the weight I should be will significantly lower, if not eliminate the blood pressure problem. And if it actually is as high as this morning's reading indicates, then its a VERY serious problem.

The headache stayed with me, until about Triangle in tonight's yoga class. So there is one thing I'm wondering. I get these headaches pretty regularly when I skip a day or two of yoga. So, you might ask, why do I skip these days? Because even smart people can be really stupid about some things is the best answer I can come up with. I'm definitely going back to 5 or more days a week, and maybe to every day. I would join the 100 day challenge that's beginning on Jan. 1, all accross the country, but I know I'm going to miss a bunch of days in mid February from travel. Maybe I'll join anyway and try to make up those days as best I can.

Class tonight was very pleasant. The temperature was perfect. I didn't skip a pose, but crash landed early out of Locust. I came in with the headache, and had it completely disappear. I kicked out and held it for a full set on both sides in Standing Head to Knee. But the best thing about the class is that I felt alert and with the dialogue the whole way through. It was one of the most satisfying classes I've had in a while.

The day 292 meditation recommends a 15 minute meditation in the morning. I really need to start trying this. First off, there's the benefits. And then, of course, its kind of silly for me to be writing anything about this stuff unless I've dived in. The meditation also has a beautiful quote from Shakespeare, which stands on its own:

And this our life exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

The quote is from As You Like It, which is one of my absolute favorites. It's never gotten a good film version, as far as I know, but the two stage productions I've seen of it were extraordinary and delightful. I had never considered the retreat to the forest as a kind of meditation, but here again, Shakespeare proves that he simply knew more than most people had ever imagined.

221/343 - Ferdinand the Bull, and Devo

2009-12-11T23:17:00.003-06:00

Monday off.

Tuesday 10:30 am with Sherry

Wednesday off.

Thursday 6:30 with Sherry

Tuesday's class was going great. I felt good and flexible, and my knee felt as good as it has in a long time. I even thought about doing Toe Stand, but refrained. I did, however, go back on my elbows in both sets of Fixed Firm.

Then, after the first set of Rabbit, I spun around, and something popped in my right knee. I really wish I knew what was doing it. It seems that getting comfortable with a healthy knee is an almost surefire recipe for reinjury.

I took Wednesday off to give it a rest, used some herbal patches, and after last night's class, its basically back to where it was. So it ended up being more of a scare and a reminder, than anything serious. (And now that I've said that, I'm probably going to tweak it again.)

Last night's class was one where the room seemed hotter than it was. I skipped a set of Triangle, but not for lack of stamina. I went into the first lunge and my knee felt like it might give out. So I took a breather, and took more care in the set-up of the second set.

I also had a realization about one of the songs that repeatedly pops into my head during yoga classes. The song is "Praying Hands" by Devo, of all things. There are several lines of this song that haunt parts of the yoga class, but the realization came over the following "Roll over, play dead. Get spiritual minded." Take away the Sanskrit, and that's Savasana in a nutshell. (And the Devo song is most decidedly not about yoga, or at least, I wouldn't have thought so before. But somehow I had made the connection without realizing it.)

The day 291 meditation gives a practical exercise as the first step in meditation. The idea is simply to take the first step toward eliminating distractions and into concentration. It's not much different from pranayama. All Gates requires is to sit up, on a chair or cushion, and count your breath or simply focus on it, for 10 minutes. That's it. The cool thing about this is that it makes meditation seems so simple. And the instruction is pretty clear as well: focus on something and let the distractions slide away.

The rest of this meditation reminds me of Ferdinand the Bull. Gates says that part of turning inward stems from the truth that we already have everything we need, that we are already in heaven if we would just let go of our fears and allow it to be so. And that's pretty much the message of taking time to smell the flowers. The idea, at least as I am drawing the connection, is that meditation can help open the gateway to appreciation and gratitude.

219/339

2009-12-06T18:37:00.002-06:00

Friday 6:30 pm with Rohit

Saturday off.

Sunday 9:30 am with Rohit

Rohit took a drink during Eagle and I started laughing. He asked why. "No drinking before party time, " I squeaked out, managing not to fall out of the pose. The between poses, I said I was laughing because he had managed a three-fer. No drinking before party time. No drinking during a pose. And no drinking while people are balancing. After that it became a running joke for a little while. For me, that kind of humor lightens up the class, but I also suspect that some others might not appreciate it. I did notice that I was the only one laughing.

Class was good. I skipped nothing, and managed to avoid getting stuck at any of my sticking points. Instead, I got the hiccups again, this time during the end of Full Locust and the start of Floor Bow. And I went back on my elbows in Fixed Firm again.

A half hour before class today, the room had heated up to 72 degrees. By the time class started, it had zoomed up to 76. And by the end of class, it had climbed gradually to 90, with the humidity holding steady at around 60%.

The condensation in the room was pretty incredible. We're told to focus on our eyes in the mirror, then on our knee, etc... In this class, there was no focusing in the mirror at all. I would have expected my balance to suffer, but it didn't. Rather, not having the mirror interfered most with half moon. It seems that I've got a pretty good internal compass about how to balance and where everything should be in the other poses. But in half moon, I rely very much on the mirror to gauge hip and shoulder alignment.

As expected, the strength poses were much easier today -- Awkward, Triangle, and Back Strengthening always benefit from a cold room. If they could somehow turn the temperature down 10 degrees before Locust, I might be able to overcome my reflux problems and my mental block for the pose. Today's Locusts were the best I've done in recent memory.

I've heard lots about the benefits of the heat. No doubt it improves flexibility and depth in stretching poses. It also makes strength poses more challenging. And it often presents a mental challenge all on its own. But I still have some doubts about the long term physical benefits from a very hot room. If the room is 90 degrees and you push a stretch to its edge, is that stretch really less effective for you than a somewhat deeper stretch that you do to your edge at 103 degrees? I don't really know the answer to this, and I have my doubts about whether anyone else knows the answer either.

Ultimately yogis in all disciplines tend to get really flexible. They also improve their strength. I don't question that there are other benefits to the heat. It speeds up the warm up. Sweating tends to be a good thing. It can add a challenge on its own, simply by providing another distraction. But I really don't know about any lasting physical benefit.

The day 290 meditation talks about three stages in practice. First, there is the decision to improve yourself or to try again. According to this meditation, that is the part where "turning inward" comes into play. Then there is the honeymoon period, where dramatic changes happen. And then there is maintenance.

I'm sure his description applies to a great many situations. For example, it surely takes a certain amount of courage for an addict to give up an addiction. And it takes courage for a person to try again after some significant failure.

But I also think that it's possible for the turning inward to come later. How many people come to their first Bikram class with almost no idea of what to expect? Or come because they've heard that it's a good work-out. And then the changes start happening. And for lots of people, I think, that's all that ever happens. The turning inward never happens, and they get lots of benefits from the Bikram class, but it remains an exercise program, a hard work-out.

And then other people go through the same thing, and a light goes off. They start to learn how to forgive themselves. They start to focus and approach class with discipline. Their breathing cleans up. They start noticing that they are nicer to people generally, that they have adopted better eating habits for no particular reason. And that awareness, at some point, starts the turning inward. I think that that probably more closely describes the process in my case.

217/336 - Snow! and a Recipe for Happiness

2009-12-04T15:26:00.002-06:00

Wednesday 6:30 with Sherry

Thursday off.

It's snowing and has been since early this morning. In some places, the ground has accumulated as much as 1/4". Here in Houston, that's incredibly rare and enough to make people wonder whether they should brave the traffic. The radio stations are all reporting many minor accidents. It makes me wonder whether there really are more accidents today because people are freaked over the snow, or if they are just reporting accidents that they ordinarily would ignore so they can make the snow out to be a big hazard.

Anyway I can't wait to take my dogs out for a romp. They are snow dogs (Samoyeds) and they have never seen what they were born for. And then I might just dare the treacherous roads for another Bikram class.

Wednesday's class was good. My stamina improved and I made it through standing series without even wanting to sit out a set. And then I got stuck with the hiccups of all things between the Camel sets. I made it through Rabbit without coming out early, and Sherry tends towards long rabbits. With her timing, she manages to give long holds in most of the poses, full Savasanas, and still finishes a few minutes early. I don't know how she does it -- maybe the laws of physics are different in her classes. (Maybe at home she can make magic grits -- and bonus points to anyone who gets the reference).

The other first in Wednesday's class was a hamstring cramp in the right leg when trying to pick up my foot in Standing Bow. The foot would go up, I would grab it, and then CRAAAMP. So I extended it, and tried again. Fortunately, the stretch you get in the leg when its actually the standing leg worked things back to normal, and I was fine from there on out. I don't know what caused the cramp, but I'm taking it as a sign that something is happening in my hamstring, and that's probably a good thing.

The day 285 meditation focuses on an incredibly powerful and challenging thought: "To become happy, we simply have to stop making ourselves unhappy." My first reaction was that it can't really be that simple, and the next thing Gates says is that most people don't think that it can be that simple. So I guess, at least at first blush, I was in the majority.

Studies (and I don't have any cites off the top of my head) show pretty consistently that happiness has very little to do with wealth. These studies exclude the truly destitute. But for people who have the basics, meaning food and shelter, the rich don't tend to be any happier than the poor or the middle income groups.

The next thing that seems to be true is that happiness depends much more on a person's attitude than on circumstances. And perhaps that means that happiness is more of a disposition than it is a result. In yoga, contentment is one of the things that we should practice. Once again, being content is an activity, its not something that happens to us.

Give all the above, I think there's probably a world of truth to the idea that the way to become happy is to stop making ourselves unhappy. In class, I've certainly learned that I can turn the class around with a smile. I can make a bad class better by refusing to dwell on how much things hurt, and in its stead, start telling myself how grateful I am for the opportunity to be there. And if I can do it in class, then why not elsewhere. I think I will try it out this afternoon by tolerating the drivers who simply can't deal with the idea of a little snow in Houston.

216/334

2009-12-02T11:33:00.002-06:00

Sunday off.

Monday off.

Tuesday 4:30 pm with Rohit.

I planned to go on Monday, but our plane from New York arrived late. Before boarding, they told us that we had to make a stop in Birmingham to refuel because of bad weather. I'm not sure I like the idea that my plane can't hold enough fuel to handle a little circling. We got home at 3 instead of 12:30, and that meant I would have to go to yoga without eating anything at all. And then there was my cold.

I went into Tuesday's class wondering how long my cold was going to drag on, and how badly it would effect my practice. The answers: It hung around until about Cobra, and after class it was like I never had a cold at all. And it had a big enough impact that Rohit left the room during the long Savasana to find some tissues for me. The amazing thing, and its happened before, is coming into class with symptoms of some illness and leaving with them gone. The only difference today is in how dramatic the contrast was. From coughing, runny nose, and some sneezing to nothing at all.

As for the class: I skipped Triangle only. I still stuck at some of my sticking points. I crash landed out of Locust, dragged myself into Camel set-up behind the rest of the class, and came out of a set of Rabbit way too early. On the plus side, my butt hit the floor in Fixed Firm for the first time in a while. Standing Head to Knee was also better than its been in a while. I came out just a bit early once, but otherwise held the pose for the duration and kicked out for most of the time -- at least on the right side, the left side side not so much.

The day 288 meditation opens with an Indian fable. When the star Svati rises and it rains, the oysters come to the surface of the water and open their shells. They know that if they can catch a raindrop, it will become a pearl. Once they catch some of the rain, they close their shells and hurry back to the bottom to develop the raindrops into pearls. The one telling this fable then says we should be like the oyster, first opening ourselves to experience and understanding, then closing ourselves off and diving deep inside to develop the truth.

I've been trying to come up with some sort of Western comparison to this fable, but I'm getting nothing at all. If anyone can think of something, please let me know. In the meanwhile, I think this fable is a pretty good illustration of the difference in cultures or ways of thinking.

Gates says that when he started his book he also thought he would continue teaching, but that became more difficult than he thought. He took some time off, wandered around in the woods, watching fish in the river, and as he did this the book began to take shape for him.

I really like his description here, partially because it describes the way I worked when I was a student. Before writing a paper, I would first read everything I needed for it. Then would come the time when everyone else thought I was either procrastinating or goofing off. I would wander around campus, chat with people, listen to music, while everyone else was busy writing and re-writing their papers. And then, I would write. Using this "method", I once wrote a 10 page paper in less than an hour. At the end of my senior year, I wrote three 25 page papers in a day and a half. I would tell people that I was composing the papers in my head while wandering around, but that wasn't really true, at least not on the level of sentences. I can't really describe what I was doing, but I think this fable gets it about right, I was taking what I needed it and turning it into a "pearl", even if in my case they were sometimes more paste than pearl.

This process was fine until I started working at a law firm and had to bill by the hour. It's one thing to tell your friends that everything is alright while you seem to be procrastinating. But how do you bill the ruminating process? So I gave it up, and its too bad, because the work I did with it, I think, was much better than anything I did with the drafting and re-drafting process that makes bosses so comfortable.

215/331 - Pain masked as pleasure

2009-11-29T15:12:00.003-06:00

Friday off

Saturday 8am with Lara

I went to a non-affiliated Bikram class on Long Island. The owner is one of the early teacher trainees. As I understand it, their certification gives them considerably more latitude than the current teacher trainees get. There were a number of fairly startling differences.

First, the studio was not carpeted. I've been in non-carpeted studios before, and it generally is not a big deal. The only difference it makes in the series is in the separate leg portion. Except, the wood floor gets slippery. I discovered that in Standing Bow when I fell forward off the front of my mat, and nearly slid onto my butt. It was a precarious, but funny moment, and there was no harm done.

The teacher used music during class. I noticed it a little at the beginning, but quickly shut it out. Then I noticed again during the long savasana. I've been in Yoga classes with music before, but never a Bikram class. Since I didn't hear it at all during the poses, I have a hard time saying whether it made a difference or not, but probably not.

The big difference was in the noise. There were 22 people in a room that could hold maybe 23. And there was no carpeting, no fans, and a passive heating system. That all meant that breathing became very audible. Pranayama was great, very loud and very energizing. The rest of the class varied somewhere between being entertaining and annoying. There were six other guys in the class, and they grunted alot. They held their breath, and then gasped for air. Some did something like uji breathing, making an audible throaty sound with each inhale. I've never heard anything like it before, and was a bit surprised that the teacher didn't say anything about it.

Then there were the differences in the poses. Hands behind the back was an option in the first backbend. Bridge was offered as an optional substitute to Fixed Firm. In Standing Head to Knee, many people stopped with their leg lifted and thigh parallel, without bending over to grab either the knee or foot. I don't really understand the point of any of these modifications. It seems to me that they are unlikely to lead to significant progress.

As for the class itself, I discovered that I'm on the verge of being sick. I had a hard time staying with the breathing in Pranayama. I started off OK after that, but lost my stamina very quickly. I sat out a set of Triangle, then a set of Standing Seperate Leg Head to Knee. That's happened before, but then in Tree I got dizzy and had to come out early.

The floor series was about the same. Lara was running behind, and either she was cutting savasana short, or they don't do twenty second savasanas on the floor at this studio. By Camel, I decided to take my savasanas whether the class did or not. That meant missing a set of Camel and a set of Rabbit. They only did one set of Fixed Firm, and then one set of the Final Stretching. Overall, I'm happy I went to this class, but it was definitely not one of my best classes.

The day 287 meditation talks about our being "embedded in pain masked as pleasure." I can think of perhaps no better description of the ridiculous holiday eating that has gone on here for the past few days. Wednesday night: a wonderful, huge meal at a very fine French restaurant. Thursday; turkey feast. Friday: turkey feast redux. Does anyone actually feel good an hour after Thanksgiving dinner. Then, another great but enormous meal out, this time at a seafood house. Of course, I volunteered for it all. And nothing compelled me to continue to eat and eat and eat. But it surely is pain masked as pleasure, and the pleasure really does not last all that long.

According to Gates, pratyahara (turning inward) is the decision to stop hurting ourselves with this kind of pain. Maybe so, but I have to say that this is not the first time I've had this realization about Thanksgiving, but the realization and the decision not to do it again hasn't worked before. So I can't say with any confidence that I won't be back at the trough next year too. What that means, I guess, is that there are decisions and decisions.

214/329

2009-11-27T19:22:00.003-06:00

Tuesday 6:30 pm with Libby

Wednesday off

Thursday (Thanksgiving) off

Tuesday's class went well. I was a bit worried beforehand because I had pizza with lunch. (This is one of those lessons that I seem to refuse to learn.) It caused some havoc in one set of Locust, but otherwise I was just fine. I felt especially good in the backbends. In the first backbend, I think there is some point of relaxation that I simply don't get, and that if I could just figure out what it was and let go of it, I would get much deeper.

My knees are gradually improving. I'm still slightly hampered in the second and third parts of awkward. No bouncing like a motorcycle ride for me yet. I am almost to the point again where my hips touch the floor in Fixed Firm, which is some real progress. And I don't really feel any other big limitation from them anymore. I'm thinking maybe a month or two before I try Toe Stand again.

I thought about going to a studio on Long Island on Thanksgiving morning, but I only got two hours of sleep the night before, so I opted to sleep instead. I hope to get one or two classes in while here on Long Island. But there is also something to be said for simply vacationing once in a while.

The day 286 meditation discusses turning inward in a bit more detail. According to Gates, pranayama gives the experience of having one foot planted in the external and another in the internal world. Part of the attention is on sensation and physical technique, but because this attention is on the breath, we can't help but at least partially focus inwardly. The next step is to turn completely inward.

Gates says we should first try this in asana practice (for me this means tomorrow morning). The interesting thing is that he asks a series of questions, and one of them is "What resistance do you have to letting go of the past and the future?" To me, this seems to show that either turning inward, and being present, are the same thing. Or, maybe its that being present is in some way a prerequisite. I'm not even sure if there is a real distinction there.

The other point Gates makes is that this is not supposed to be hard work. That's nice to know. Maybe its sort of like those magic eye posters, the ones that look like nothing but a mess when you first look at them. But if you learn to look at one the right way, a three dimensional object emerges from the mess, and sometimes the image is quite extraordinary. Maybe there is a similar "trick" to turning inward -- so that its not hard to do once you learn how, but learning how might be a matter of either getting the knack or finding it to be impossible, with no middle ground.

213/326 - Unwinding

2009-11-25T15:54:00.003-06:00

Sunday Off

Monday 6:30 with Sherry

I remember Thursday's class as being one without high points, and without any real difficulties. I didn't skip anything. I remember being somewhat distracted by other people lying down. I don't mean someone sitting out a set of Triangle. But sometimes I simply don't understand when I see someone out for the count in second set of Fixed Firm, or in Half Tortoise. I think this must show how vastly different peoples' experience of the series must be. It's hard for me to imagine being so wiped out at those points that I would need to sit out. But obviously it happens, and to people who seem to have a pretty strong commitment to their practices.

The day 285 meditation ends the "external" limbs of yoga. It's time to turn inward, which it turns out is the translation of pratyahara. Gates compares the process of turning inward to the first couple of days of vacation -- the time where you have already arrived at your destination, but your mind and your rhythms are still back at home. Often, over the first couple of days of a vacation, there is a process of easing into the vacation itself, of unwinding. So it is with turning inward, but instead of getting used to the rhythms of a new place, you become attuned to your own internal rhythms.

This is a point where the navel gazing stereotype of the yogi might seem preferable to a Bikram practice. But even here I'm not so sure. In Bikram, the dialogue might be seen as a distraction. So too the heat. But there's no music. The poses don't change. The room doesn't change. And what you are left with is you and your reflection in the mirror. When class is going well, that's pretty much all there is. How much you get out of the class often depends solely on how much you can focus on yourself, how deeply you can turn inward.

And in some ways, it may even be easier to turn inward during this practice. For example, in Standing Head to Knee, I think it might be impossible to do the pose while having your attention elsewhere. It almost demands this kind of shift of attention. The same goes for some of the longer strength holds. Here, its possible simply to tough it out. But, if you can focus on your breath and learn simply to enjoy the sensation, then you can find ease in these poses.

212/324 - Putting your eyes out

2009-11-22T20:31:00.002-06:00

Friday Off

Saturday 9:30 am with Lenette

The cool thing about Lenette's classes is that, while basically every other teacher says how good I'm doing Awkward, Lenette almost always finds something to correct. This time I was down too far in the first part, and she had me come up just a half inch or so. It didn't make much difference for my thighs, but it did allow me to actually get more of a backbend feeling than I usually do.

Back strengthening was as good as its been for a long time. I felt composed in control in Locust, which is pretty much a rarity. Otherwise it was just a nice solid practice. I had to skip out a set at the end of standing series again, but otherwise I felt strong and good. And following my moaning about the third part of Wind Relieving, I just pulled in tighter and held on, and I made it through without losing the grip. But I still need to be a bit more mindful about food...

The day 284 meditation is the last on pranayama, but it doesn't have much to do with pranayama. Instead, Gates talks about advice from his mother. No matter what he wanted to do, his mother would likely object that someone had died from doing that. After a long, long time and seemingly endless hours on the mat, he finally realized that he might be better off not asking his mother for advice. But, of course, the voice still lived inside him.

This story reminded me of an uncle/caretaker who played a big part in raising us up. We called him Unk, but he wasn't a relative. Instead, he met my grandfather the day he arrived in the U.S. in a bar in downtown Manhattan. They got drunk together. Eventually my grandfather asked him where he was staying, but he didn't know anywhere, so my grandfather said it would be OK to stay the night, and he ended up staying for the next 60 plus years.

That's all beside the point. The point is that whenever I had a new small toy that I was playing with, Unk would assure me that "You could put your eye out with that." For the most part, what he was saying was preposterous. I mean, I suppose a really determined kid could put his eye out with silly putty, but I doubt it's actually happened more than a handful of times. Yet, even to this day, I have a kind of irrational fear about putting anything near or in my eye. Watching people put their contacts in makes me shudder. And this meditation made me remember and realize that that fear almost certainly came from Unk.

Now that I know where that irrational fear comes from, does that mean that mean it will somehow vanish? I doubt it. But since this fear has never been all that troubling, especially since I still don't need glasses, much less contacts, it is amusing to realize where it came from.

211/322 - Breathing and Non-Violence

2009-11-20T23:10:00.002-06:00

Wednesday Off

Thursday 6:30 pm with Rohit

I pushed really hard in the standing series, and then had to skip a set in Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee. I've thought for a long time that, no matter how conditioned you are, you should be just on the edge of your stamina limit by the time that pose rolls around. If not, then you probably have left something on the table. And if you push too hard, like I did this time, you have to sit out.

Getting it just right can be elusive. Some teachers can convince me to go on when I'm certain I need a break. I'm not always the best judge of my own limits, though I think I'm gradually getting better.

Recently, one of my hardest poses has been the third part of Wind Relieving. For a while this seemed pretty easy. Now, when I grab my elbows my legs start to slip out of the grip. I try to hold on, but then I start tensing up in my upper back. I'm not sure what's causing this, but I think its a pretty clear sign that I my belly has gotten bigger and I need to be a bit more mindful about food. That's a nice thought with Thanksgiving just around the corner...

The day 284 meditation is about the infectious nature of nonviolence. Gates says that people and nations continually respond to violence with violence in return, and then wonder why peace is so elusive. I don't know if non-violence as a response to violence would always work. At the extreme, I have doubts about whether any non-violent approach would have stopped the holocaust. So, on one level, its hard for me generally to accept the idea.

Having said that, in many, many more cases it seems to me that non-violence is the much better approach. And I think that that's true almost universally in my personal life. I've also noticed that its been much easier to refuse confrontations since I started yoga.

Gates also talks about non-violence in the yoga practice itself. This is a point that I'm still developing. If I push myself to the point where I lose my breath, as I did in this class, then I've slightly crossed the line . And that, I think, is one of the central points to this meditation: learning to breath comfortably is learning non-violence. And from learning to breath, all the rest can follow naturally.

210/321 - Oz Revisited

2009-11-18T11:52:00.002-06:00

Saturday Off

Sunday Off

Monday 6:30 pm with Sherry

Tuesday 6:30 pm with Libby

I skipped two days again. Sometimes I feel like I'm really slacking off.

Sherry's class was good, but I can now remember almost nothing from it. I was next to a noobie and trying pretty hard to set a good example. I don't know if I actually did or not, but I didn't skip anything and I was paying pretty good attention to both form and dialogue. I still couldn't find my breath in Rabbit, but otherwise everything went pretty well.

Libby's class was great. There was lots of energy, and it was just good fun. Plus, I got lots of nice compliments and good corrections. Here's a short rundown on the compliments. First, in the set-up to half moon. I've worked really hard on getting my elbows to lock, hands together, and arms back behind the ears. This was the first class where a teacher commented on it and it was surprisingly gratifying to hear the compliment, even when I know that I'm doing it pretty well.

Then the great compliment came in Standing Bow. She said I was doing perfect form and that I was definitely competing next year. I laughed and she said "What are you laughing about?" I was laughing because the main goal for me right now is fixing my knee, and if my form is any good its because of my bad knees. After class, I told her and she said "Aren't the injuries like a gift?"

There were some other compliments along the way, but those were the real high points. On corrections, she told me to keep my chest up in Standing Head to Knee. I was at the second step, just kicking out, and apparently I'm arching/rounding too early. This was a good tip, and the posture was easier to hold after the correction. (It was one of those few corrections that did not make the pose harder.)

And then in Rabbit, she said to get my heels together. Concentrating on doing that actually allowed me to get through the pose, even though I still had no breath. Maybe all I need to do in this pose is focus on something other than not getting any air.

The day 282 meditation reminded me again of The Wizard of Oz. At the end of the meditation Gates says that pranayama "confirms the central message of yoga -- that we have already arrived, that we are already home, that we must simply wake up from the dream that this is not so." And that could be straight from the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy had the power to go home from the start, all she had to do was believe it, and that would wake her up from her dream. And as Dorothy says "But it all seemed so real." And I guess the same could be said for all the baggage we get rid of, a layer at a time, through yoga practice.

208/317 - One Thing

2009-11-15T23:07:00.002-06:00

Thursday Off

Friday 6:30 am

I left the house a minute later than usual but then hit every light between here and the studio and had slow traffic on top of that. I've only been late to class once before. This time, I got into the studio halfway through the first set of pranayama.

That's not that big a deal, and I know what I should do so I rushed into the room and threw my mat and towel on the ground and started in. Rohit immediately pointed out that I was directly in front of someone in the back row. Oops! I usually consider myself to be both considerate and observant, so I was a little mortified by this. I moved away a bit sheepishly. And that shows a bit how out of sorts being late made me.

The other thing was that I had been planning on using the bathroom before class. Then I thought I might be able to make it through in my rush to get inside. No such luck. As soon as I calmed down a bit, my bladder started to complain. I left the room after Eagle, but didn't miss anything. Instead, I just blew up part of the point of warming up.

Once things settled down, it was a very nice class. In Rohit's classes, it seems easier for me to strike a balance between working really hard and finding some calm and peace in the practice itself. In this class, the room was very hot. I worked really hard and pushed myself through without taking any breaks. I did a solid back strengthening series, without bailing on any part of either of the Locusts. I came out of Rabbit early on the second set, but that's because I still can't figure out how to breathe in that pose, at least not when I'm really compressed.

But despite the huge effort I was putting into the poses, I always felt composed and confident. I'm not sure what it is about his classes, but I definitely like the effect. (I like other teachers classes as well, but often for different reasons.) So lets just say that this class just hit the spot. For what I needed on this day, it was just right.

The day 281 meditation begins with a quote that I find quite surprising:

Those who really want to be yogis must give up, once and for all, this nibbling at things. Take up one idea; make that one idea your life. Think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave other ideas alone.

I hear all the time that yoga aims to strike a balance. This quote sounds like it involves a single-mindedness that crosses the line towards obsession. If one picked the wrong idea, then wouldn't the pursuit of it lead to disaster. Weren't the great megalomaniacs doing exactly what this quote recommends? So I have some initial doubts about this quote.

Gates says that for him, the idea he took up was "God." And this makes me wonder too. Very often, I think that peoples idea of "God" is basically an infinite vessel into which they can pour all things that strike them as being good. And yes, I admit that that's my projection and may not be what others do. But it makes me doubt about whether God really is a single idea in the way that is meant by this quote. For Gates, it may be, and so much the better for him.

It also occurs to me that I saw this same idea expressed in a more popular form. It's the scene in City Slickers where Curly explains that the secret to life is just "one thing." Stick to that one thing and everything else "doesn't mean shit." What's the one thing? That's up to each one of us to figure out. The problem I have with this quote is that it makes it seem like it might not matter what idea one chooses to adhere to.

I still have reservations about whether this type of single minded focus on one idea is consistent with what I've come to understand about yoga over the last year and a half. Is it unbalanced, or does the focus on one idea provide a platform from which someone can find balance? I don't know the answer to this.

207/315 - Transcendent Breathing

2009-11-12T23:44:00.002-06:00

Tuesday Off.

Wednesday 6:30 with Sherry

What a contrast from the last class. I went in with the same trepidations, perhaps more. But very early on, that all melted away and the class was a pure joy. Easy, focused, strong. I skipped nothing. I had really good focus in the balancing series. I felt on the outer edge during the spine strengthening series but managed to hold things together.

I'm not sure how Sherry times her classes the way she does. I swear that she holds the early standing postures for longer than most. In Standing Head to Knee, for example, you could easily squeeze in five or six forevers in the first set alone. Half moon is always a full, honest minute. But somehow, even with these full holds, she finishes the standing series with 45 minutes left. This leaves lots of time on the floor, so there is never any skimping on the savasanas. And she also holds the floor poses longer than many other teachers, since there is no need to rush at the end trying to catch up.

The timing is great, and I'm thankful for no skimping on the savasanas. But it also makes for a seriously challenging class. And I'm still not sure how she manages it. Is she saying less dialogue? Spending less time on the set-ups? Giving less time between poses in the standing series? (I don't think so on that one.) She doesn't spend much if any time between poses giving general corrections or demonstrations, and that might have something to do with it.

The day 280 meditation talks about "transcendent breathing," breathing that is "effortless and non-deliberate." Gates says that this is the point where breathing actually becomes meditation, and that most people have their first encounter with it during asana practice. He also says that he's felt it at times while training for marathons.

This is the point where effort ceases, and the person crosses a threshold. At this point, we are "no longer the doer." The breath and the action becomes effortless, our minds find stillness, and we start to experience our still center: "inaction in action." Here, we are revisiting the idea of losing yourself in the moment, finding the place where the music plays the band.

Gates says that we are likely to first experience this in asana. I first experienced this sort of thing playing basketball. And then again, at some times, playing music. And I've also had moments, and even whole stretches, in Bikram classes where I think I may have crossed the threshold. Still, this kind of meditation either makes me yearn for something I've been missing, or it gives me hope for what is to come. Which one depends upon my mood.

206/313 - Married to your Breath

2009-11-10T23:06:00.002-06:00

Sunday Off

Monday 6:30 pm with Connease

Often I will go into the room 5-10 minutes early. This lets me do some of the pranayama exercises Gates recommends, and also lets me get acclimated. And that's what I intended yesterday. I lay down on my mat and settled into some deep breathing. I still wasn't feeling all that well, and wasn't at all sure how I would respond to class, so the acclimatization seemed even more important.

I woke up as Connease was just starting Pranayama. I had fallen utterly asleep, and came awake with the kind of start that I remember from school days, where the head starts to drop and then BAM -- awake again, and startled all at once. The jolt basically killed the gradual relaxation I was looking for. And then, I had to consider whether I would rather take the class or simply go back to sleep on my mat.

Class was hot and hard for me. I skipped a set of Triangle, and still felt like I had nothing left by the end of standing series. Floor series was one of those classes where I alternatively felt totally exhausted, and then felt like a bit of a slacker. In short, there was very little balance or ease in the class. I had a good set of Standing Bow, and did nicely in Standing Seperate Leg Head to Knee. Otherwise, I simply felt off, and I think that all stemmed from still being a bit sick.

The remarkable thing is that after class I felt really good. No traces of sickness, lots of energy, no pain in either of my knees. So, even though the class pretty much sucked, it also turned out to be exactly what I needed.

Speaking of my knees, I have a new theory. I recently noticed that my knees are not quite as bow legged as they used to be in the resting pose. And my elbows get a bit closer together behind my legs in the first forward bend. I think my legs may be getting straighter, and that's what's causing the shifting pains in my knees, from one knee to the other, back and forth. When I first started, I had fairly constant pains in my feet, even though my plantar fascia-tis went away very quickly. These pains were definitely the result of my feet getting better and stronger. Now, I think the same sort of thing is happening in my knees, and this makes me think there is nothing seriously wrong with them.

I love the day 279 meditation. Gates says that when we start asana practice we take marriage vows to our breath. But its a strange marriage, because the fighting comes first, and then we get the honeymoon. In my experience, the relationship is even stranger than that. In some poses, breathing is quite easy and natural from the start. In others, with some understanding of the pose, its pretty easy to develop an easy breathing rhythm, at least most of the time. For me, poses like Triangle, Awkward, and Half Moon fall into this category.

Then there are the poses where it's just hard to figure out how to breathe. For me, this includes Rabbit, Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee, the first backbend, and Locust. I'd love to get to the point where I could even call on my breath to help me out in these poses, but more often than not, breath simply eludes me in these poses -- especially Rabbit and Locust.

Amy has always told us, breath first, then form, then depth. Gates reminds us here that we may often need to remind ourselves to return to a relaxed, regular breath. And makes me think again how brilliant the floor series is for adding the savasanas between poses. Each one of these is a call to bring your breathing under control. To make it natural and flowing. To slow down.

205/311 -

2009-11-08T23:53:00.002-06:00

Friday Off

Saturday 9:30 am with Lenette

I was feeling off, and maybe a little bit sick, before class. By Eagle, all the ill feelings were gone, and class was simply nice and pleasant. The heat felt perfect. I didn't skip anything, and I didn't lag behind as the class wore on.

It's been a while since I've had a Lenette class, and its always fun. She made a big point about discipline somewhere towards the end of class. Her two points were: if you come in late, be a bit meek about it and hurry up and get into the class. A latecomer is an energy pirate.

And, if you are in the front row, you have taken it upon yourself to act as a leader. That doesn't mean your poses are perfect. It just means you are committed to sticking with the dialogue, trying your best, and staying still between poses. Even those can slack off some. Everyone has bad days. But if you are shifting from foot to foot, wiping yourself constantly, fidgeting in Savasanas, going into poses late all the time and coming out early, well, then maybe you should think about going to one of the other rows in your next class. (Thankfully, she wasn't talking about me. And besides, I was in the middle row this class.)

Libby hits on discipline from time to time. Amy is just too nice to call anyone out. At the most, she will make the most general suggestion to people. The other teachers tend simply to ignore discipline "problems." I tend to think that the discipline is a part of the practice, so I'm perfectly happy to hear people reminded about things like not drinking water at the wrong times, or lying down with the feet toward the back.

On the flip side, everyone's practice is their own. And if someone really thinks they need to wipe their sweat, or readjust the towel on their mat, there's no reason why it should bother me or anyone else. So I'm glad we don't have any true "drill sergeant" type teachers.

The good feeling that came along with practice didn't stick with me. I actually did get sick, but maybe not so sick as I otherwise would have. The Texas Asana Championships were today, and I was really looking forward to going and cheering on the folks I knew who were participating. I barely slept at all last night, and woke up feeling rotten. So I stayed in instead, and am pretty bummed that I missed these championships for the second year in a row. Oh well.

The day 278 meditation is both short and dense. I think I'll quote the whole thing:

The physical and mental calm that comes over us with pranayama practice makes it possible, often for the first time, for us to perceive the pain we are in. Rushing through our days, we feel only hints of the deep waters that swirl beneath our surface. In the stillness of practice, we dive right in. What I have found is that I have held the present a prisoner to my past. As I breath into my body, into my life, I glimpse an alternative reality, one in which I simply am.

I don't understand the first sentence. If pranayama brings us into physical and mental calm, how does it make it possible for us to perceive pains for the first time. I can understand how the absence of pain that one feels while in pranayama might make one more aware of the pain that they otherwise are in. But pain and calm don't generally go together.

When I was in my twenties, I lost a filling and had a back molar break into several pieces. My tooth had rotted away from underneath the filling. It led to my first root canal. I was very close to having an abscess, and my mouth was a swollen mess. The dentist did the first steps of the root canal in one visit, and after he was done, he apologized for any pain that he might have caused. But quite to the contrary, the very short sharp pains of the visit were nothing compared to the relief I felt afterward. I simply had not realized how much pain I had been living with for the past few months -- a nearly constant pain in my mouth and head that I had pretty much managed to ignore (at significant cost to my moods, as I soon realized). For me, that was a vivid example of becoming aware of a pain by removing it. And it's by thinking about this, that I can best understand what Gates might be trying to say here.

The deep waters that swirl beneath our surface are what I'm thinking of as suppressed pains. We do a much better job of suppressing past emotional hurts, those slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, than we do in ignoring a true physical pain. But the lasting damage from them is probably at least as great, if not greater, and I think its that kind of damage that Gates is referring to when he talks about being a prisoner to the past.

204/309 - Alternate Nostril Breathing

2009-11-06T00:36:00.002-06:00

Tuesday Off

Wednesday 6:30 pm with Sherry

Thursday 8:15 pm with Amy

Wednesday's class was pretty strong. I don't think I missed any of the poses. I had some trouble with the last part of Awkward pose, but felt better in the second set when my knee finally cracked. I'm also having some congestion problems, and it's having an impact on the forward bends and the spine strengthening series. Sherry brought me some tissues, which was a trifle embarrassing, and at another point, I was really stuffed up and having trouble with breath, and she asked whether I was OK, so it must have been really obvious.

Tonight's class was better, but harder. It wasn't actually hotter than usual. But it felt it, and I wasn't the only one feeling it. People were dropping all over the place. I cracked up in second set of Standing Bow, because Amy was encouraging people to turn it up at the end of the pose, and then she said by name "John and Duffy" because we were the only ones still trying at all. And then I laughed so hard that I fell out early too.

Instead of nasal congestion, tonight I had a slight cough. I still think its probably allergies, but sickness has been going around, so I'm not dismissing the possibility. This took a real toll in back strengthening. The cough became reflux, and I was basically spitting up liquid from Cobra through Full Locust. Not fun.

On the plus side, I had a really strong Triangle, even though I was feeling beat at the time. Sometimes, if I nail the set-up, the pose itself just seems to fit and becomes almost effortless. Or at least it seems effortless until its over, and I suddenly realize how hard I was working. And then, I did my best Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee in ages. Both legs straight and locked, back nicely curled, arms straight, and the posture felt good.

The day 278 meditation introduces a fourth breathing technique: alternate nostril breathing. Seated, with one hand on the lap, you put the other hand by your nose, so that the thumb can close one nostril and the fingers can close the other. This is just another aspect of the miracle of having opposable thumbs. Close the one nostril with the thumb, inhale. Switch the pressure so the thumb valve is open and the finger valve is closed. Exhale and then inhale. Switch the valves again. Exhale. That's one cycle. Do 10-20 cycles easily.

If feels really odd at first, but its not actually difficult. Gates says its a great way to gain focus, concentration, and relaxation. I wonder why. Maybe the strangeness of the feeling of breathing only through a single nostril makes it that much easier to center your attention on your breath. The very strangeness of it makes it an aid to concentration? This is another one I need to do for a while with some seriousness before i can really comment on it. I've tried it before when reading about it in books, but never for more than a minute or two.

202/306 - The Music Plays the Band

2009-11-04T15:46:00.003-06:00

Sunday Off

Monday 10:30 am with Janna

My knee hurts. And it's the other knee! It's not so bad this time, and it doesn't look swollen at all, but it feels a bit like I have a brace on it. Japanese sitting position was impossible at first, but that got better. And Fixed Firm was a joke. I spread my feet apart, but did not go down at all and probably ended with my butt 5 inches off the ground.

Other than that, class was really nice. I skipped one set of Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee, and because I was a bit worried about the knee, not because of stamina issues. I did very well in the balancing poses, and really pushed in the back strengthening series. I think I might have pushed harder there because I thought that the later poses where you are on the knees might end up being a bust.

Janna gave me some gentle prodding in Half Tortoise that worked wonders. She slightly pulled/encouraged my hands forward and together. Then touched the back of my head, reminding me to get my nose to the ground, and then lightly touched my hips, which gave me a clue as to how to get them further down. These were really good corrections for me, and I think they stayed with me for the second set.

After class, I felt better and my knee seemed to have improved. I also noticed that Janna seemed to have changed her timing. In the past, I've noted that she has tended to skimp on the Savasanas. Today, the standing series seemed to go more quickly, and then she allowed us to luxuriate more on the floor. The differences can probably measured in mere seconds, but it made the class more enjoyable -- at least for me.

I think this is one of the things that is probably really hard for a teacher. Very small changes in timing can make very large differences to the students experience. I've joked before about how many "forevers" its possible to fit into a single 90 minute session. And I've found myself frustrated more than once with a teacher correcting someone on the triangle set-up while I'm trying and failing to hold the lunge with some degree of patience. All those small timing changes can make a world of difference. And to complicate the matter further, the changes have a different impact on different people. If the teacher decided to hold the first part of Awkward for an extra fifteen seconds, or Camel for however long, I might not even notice the change. But other people would start wilting.

The day 276 meditation expands on the idea raised in the last -- that we breath with intention but without taking control. And it does this in a way that makes a bit more sense to me. As my brother suggested, it seems like this is another way of saying that the goal is to arrive at a place where you lose yourself in the exercise, where "the music plays the band."

As Gates puts it: "...watching the ocean tide of my breath, I let go." And then "[f]loacting on my breath ... I want to be the channel, I want to be the witness, I want to be grateful." I love the way he starts with the image of the breath as an ocean tide, and then sees himself first as floating along, and then as simply being the channel through which the ocean flows. Not only is this a beautiful image, but I think its something I can try to imagine myself. It's something I can work with.

The last part of this meditation leaves me a bit in awe. Gates seems to be saying he can put himself into this state pretty much at will. The idea boggles my mind. I might fall into this state from time to time. But I can hardly even imagine getting there with any regularity.

One other thing about this idea of letting go and losing yourself. I think this is one of the areas where the Bikram dialogue can be a great aid. First, we're told again and again that pranayama "sets the tone" for the rest of the class. One of the ways that it sets the tone is that it gives the first opportunity to lose yourself in the dialogue itself. And then, maybe you can stay with the dialogue, maybe you can get to the point where it seems like the dialogue itself is moving you without any intermediary. As Zeb used to say, "My mind, your body." Using the dialogue in this way, I think, can lead to exactly the sort of thing that Gates has in mind. And in the Bikram class, you don't really have to think about it. Instead, you just do it, and if you are doing it right, eventually the magic will happen.

201/304 - Intention vx. Control

2009-11-01T23:21:00.003-06:00

Friday Off

Saturday 9:30 am with Connease

It was another humidity feast, and during the floor series I just hit a wall. It was probably my fault. I came in with too little sleep and maybe a bit dehydrated. But then I was stoked for the class because Sherie was practicing behind me. She's on a Bikram binge, preparing for the Asana Championships next sunday. And I haven't seen her in a while, so I was just happy that she was there, and I was expecting maybe to feed off her energy some.

That worked fine for most of the standing series, and I thought things were going along pretty well. But maybe I pushed just a bit too hard, because Triangle was a real struggle, and then I had to go down for the first set of Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee. And then, I was disoriented. I almost interrupted Connease, telling her she had skipped a set of Triangle (probably because I was sitting out, and I'm supposed to sit out Triangle, so what was she doing skipping ahead?). I caught myself on time, but that was a signal of things to come.

Then, during the long Savasana, Connease shut the fans off. I don't know why. Sometimes the fans go off when its too cold. But it wasn't too cold at all. I'm thinking that maybe she was trying to control the humidity by cutting back on the sweat evaporation. The reason doesn't really matter, and neither should the fans have mattered. But they did, in a big way. I was in a perfect mood to blame all my woes on the lack of air circulation. And, I just reacted badly.

I struggled through the back strengthening series, and did a fair job of it. Then the resting poses just got to me. In Half Tortoise I felt like I couldn't breathe. I skipped the second set of Camel. I felt even more disoriented after one set of Rabbit, and then I limped through the home stretch, but made it. All in all, it was a class just to get through.

Afterward, I felt fine, but as the day went on, I got one of those dehydration headaches. So that was definitely one of the problems. In general, I think I've become a bit too complacent about my out of class water, and it's taking a subtle toll. So, for the next week or so, I may start apportioning a water intake at the start of the day, and just drink it whether I think I need it or not.

The day 275 meditation draws a distinction that I don't really understand. It's all the more troubling because I also get the sense that its a very important distinction. Most people go through their lives without paying any attention to their breath. I would have thought that it was fair to say that they simply let their breathing happen. Pranayama is breathing exercise. When we do pranayama, we focus our attention on our breathing. And I would have thought that, if anywere, it is in pranayama that we take control of our breath.

Apparently this is wrong. The goal is not to control the breath, but to ride it. The goal of pranayama is to let the breath happen, but it happens in accord with our intention. And that is the distinction I don't understand. We intend something to happen, and it does, but we don't take control of it. To me this is simply a puzzle at this point.

It might be simply that there are different levels of control that Gates is getting at. But that's not what he says. He's quite clear that we simply start with an intention and then "let go and let the universe respond." On this, I'm not sure I have a clue what he's getting at. It's definitely not something that I've experienced in any pranayama -- certainly not in Bikram. And I don't really have any idea how I would go about doing it, either.

In some ways, it sounds an awful lot like the endpoint of meditation to me. That there is a kind of unity going on, so that there is no longer an "I" that is controlling the breath. But I really am not sure if that is the idea here or if I'm simply missing the point.

200/302 - Taming the Bull

2009-10-30T20:29:00.002-05:00

Wednesday Off

Thursday 6:30 pm with Connease

I was expecting a really hard class. It was pouring outside. The humidity soared. Just sitting out in the lobby, I started dripping sweat. Then, when I went to put my mat down, the temperature showed 107 degrees. Gulp.

And once again, I got something totally different from what I expected. I felt strong, focused, and together. I flowed with the dialogue for the most part. I made it all the way through without skipping any parts, even when I wanted to go down at the end of the standing series. Right now, most of the wanting to go down is just a newly formed bad habit.

Overall, it was one of the more pleasant classes I've had recently. I got a good correction in Balancing Stick -- not pointing my toe enough. And a nice compliment in Triangle: Connease said she could feel me stretching through the chest in shoulders just by looking at me.

For a while now, I've been feeling a bit self satisfied about my arm position in Half Moon. But a couple of days ago I demonstrated for someone how far back Rohit gets his arms by his arms, keeping them totally locked. Most men don't do this, so I think men might come to think they have something of a pass on this one.

Anyway, while demonstrating, it occurred to me that if I could demo this form, then I should also really be doing it in class. No excuses for slacking on that. I really tried harder to focus on the arm lock in this pose, and I can still feel it through my shoulder blades. It's not like I was doing it badly before. But as Rohit says, these poses really are bottomless. The surprising thing is that I thought that paying attention to this aspect of the form would hurt the overall depth. It didn't. If anything, I was going maybe a little deeper than normal.

The day 174 meditation begins with a quote about taming a bull. First you bring out the whips. As the bull learns, he becomes naturally tame. Eventually, the restraints come off, and the bull willingly follows its master. The bull is the mind. At first, we have to use the will and all of our focus to get the mind to stop bucking. Then, over time, with practice through pranayama and asana, the mind starts to become a bit more naturally tame. And, according to Gates, with the passage of months and years, eventually the mind will follow its master.

On this progression, I'm still beating myself into submission. But I like the analogy. And I have had relatively tame classes, and relatively tame days. But it still feels like the fully tame mind is a long, long ways away.

199/300

2009-10-27T23:34:00.002-05:00

Sunday Off

Monday 10:30 am with Sherry

Tuesday 6:30 pm with Rohit

Monday's class was basically good. I skipped one set of Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee, but otherwise held in and through my "sticking points." The only other stuck area was one set of Rabbit, where I felt like I couldn't breathe, and came out early.

I held myself back on Monday by getting stuck on something else. For some reason, I became acutely aware of other people coming out of the poses early. Sherry tends to count down at the end of poses -- Five, four, three, two, one, release... In half moon, I noticed that nearly everyone was popping up somewhere between two and one. This bugged me, and I couldn't stop myself from paying more attention, and the more attention I paid, the more it bugged me. By Camel, I saw people in my peripheral vision popping up somewhere between five and four.

I know this shouldn't bother me. If people want to cheat themselves, well, its their practice. But it bugs me all the same.

After class, Sherry asked what I was laughing about during class. She said that I came out of Camel one set and I was laughing. The really cool thing is that I didn't even remember it, and I don't think I was aware of it. The best answer I could come up with is that sometimes you've got a choice between melting or laughing at yourself, and if I can, I try the laughter. That's how I usually feel about it, but I can also usually remember those times. I think this was something different and much better. Apparently I was just really happy to be doing Camel, or coming out of it.

Today's class had a different satisfaction. Libby took class, and just before she asked where I had set up and parked her mat next to mine. I always like practicing a teacher, so that was cool enough on its own. But I was also flattered and a little stoked by her wanting to practice next to me. It's as nice a compliment as I've received in a while.

And practicing next to her made class fun. I always like being next to someone with great focus, and I felt through the standing series like I was feeding off her energy. I didn't skip any poses for the first time in a while. And after class, Libby thanked me for pulling her through, which I thought was funny because I was thinking exactly the same thing -- that she had pulled me through. I guess that may be what it means for people to feed off of each other's energy, and for the sum to be greater than the parts.

The challenge in this class came from drinking too much iced tea at lunch. I started thinking about leaving the room around Standing Bow, but I put it off. It got really bad in the floor series, and peaked in Floor Bow, where I could feel painful pressure in my bladder. By then, I thought it would be silly to leave, and nothing else really puts direct pressure on the area, so I stuck it out. I hate leaving for any reason, and in this class I really don't know if I made the right decision or not.

The day 273 gives us a third pranayama exercise. Rather than pause halfway on the inhale, Gates suggests pausing halfway on the exhale. So this one goes: Inhale, pause, exhale half, pause, exhale remainder, pause, repeat... The other advice here is to pay attention, be mindful, notice the differences between a good day and a bad day, etc... I haven't tried this at all.

The last exercise is much harder than I thought it would be. Taking long breaths is just an extension of what we do all the time. But pausing in the midst of an inhale is not something I've done very much at all. It takes a great deal of focus and control, and even then it doesn't feel at all natural. I've noticed that the first part of an inhalation tends to come deeply from the belly. Then the second half seems to involve the chest more than the stomach. I have no idea if that's how it should be, but that's what I'm observing.

I'm looking forward to the double exhaling. I'm guessing that I will find it easier than the interrupted inhale. We do double exhales on the sit-ups. And the final breathing exercise is a multiple exhaling exercise. Those may provide a connection for this exercise. I'll try to report on it later.

197/297

2009-10-24T22:33:00.002-05:00

Thursday Off

Friday Off

Saturday 9:30 am with Amy

Before class started the humidity was almost as high as the temperature. So, at least at the start, the heat wasn't a problem at all, but breathing through all that water presented some difficulty. I've said it before, but I would trade heat for humidity any time at all. The point of the extra humidity is to make sure that people sweat. No Pratt has ever had a problem sweating. I can't think of any other benefit to the excess humidity. It's not like it loosens anything up. As near as I can tell, that comes from the heat only.

I parked in the back row because the front was all taken. And from where I was, the front row looked like a big game of WhackAMole. The first one went down in Half Moon. Then the one next to her dropped in the first part of Awkward, just as the first was popping up again. Then a third one dropped in the third part of Awkward. And so it went, up and down at odd intervals all through the standing series.

The popping up and down annoyed me at first. Then it just became funny. It made it impossible to draw energy from the rest of the class, so for that, I was on my own. And I did an OK job of things. I still skipped a set of Triangle, one of my sticking points. But on the other sticking points, I showed a bit of progress. I fell from the balancing poses, but I stayed with them as long as I could, so it was falling without giving up. And I did a very good floor series.

The day 272 meditation is instructional rather than meditative. It introduces the concept of "place" to breathing. The place is the place where the breath is retained. The exercise Gates gives is a variation on the original pranayama exercise he gave us. As you might recall, that was deep inhale, pause, exhale completely, pause. Now, on the inhale, he says to inhale 50%, pause, then inhale the other 50%.

I'm going to try this a few times, and probably should refrain from commenting until I get a better idea of what its actually like. From the description and the few tries I have made, its very clear that this exercise will help quite a bit with control. It's also the first exercise he gives that stands on its own. I can do the others, for example, while in asana. I'm not sure I would want to be trying to deal with this while I'm doing asana. What I'm not sure about, however, is what this exercise teaches about "place." I will have to try this some more and see if I'm noticing anything about where the breath gets retained while doing it.

196/294 - Is Prana Amoral?

2009-10-23T00:07:00.002-05:00

Tuesday Off

Wednesday 8:15 pm with Rohit

Before class, Rohit said that the 6:30 class had been a decent size -- 24 -- and that it was all women. I've had a few classes that were all women except for me, and it's never bothered me. It hasn't even bothered me in classes where Lenette has used the generic "ladies." Even if I did think about it, how often do women have to live with the generic "guys" to talk about men and women together.

Anyway, the late class was only 12 and we had 5 guys, which is the closest I've ever gotten to a class with half men. Did it make a difference? Not that I noticed.

I've been thinking recently about sticking points in class. There are some predictable points in class where I lose focus, or energy, or otherwise fall short of what I should be able to do. Falling out of the balancing poses. Sitting out a set of either Triangle or Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee. Losing it in one or both sets of Locust. Coming out of Rabbit early and wiped out. For me, these are the most common sticking points.

On the one hand, I know that judgment is bad, and that I shouldn't beat myself up over these moments. And for the most part, I don't. But I can't help but wonder when not beating myself up veers into being too easy on myself. I'm not sure exactly what to do about this, but I think I may have to start concentrating on one of these sticking points at a time, and just bring a bit more focus to it for a few classes in a row and see if anything changes.

There's another oddity that amuses me. For me, Locust is always the hardest pose. It's the only one that actually brings up a bit of fear. And yet, I think if you asked my teachers, they would probably unanimously say that the third part of Locust is my best pose. I'm not sure what to make of this. If I could identify an easiest pose, I wonder if it would also be one my teachers thought of as my worst? Happily, I can't think of an easy pose.

The day 271 brings up some thorny, but ultimately not very practical, questions of philosophy. It starts with a quote from Mother Theresa. She compares us to light bulbs. Her idea is that we are the wires, and god is the current. If we let the current flow through us, we can light up the world.

Gates has a slightly different take on this. He talks about prana, the root of pranayama. It means "life force." Gates says that there is enormous potential in prana, but that it is neither good nor bad. It simply is. Gates thinks that people minimize the prana available to them because they are afraid of what they might do with it. I take this to mean that people shut themselves off from prana out of a fear of the evil they might do. He goes on to say that's why surrender to God is so important -- because it allows us to open ourselves up to the potential of prana.

I wonder if Gates has this right. It sounds to me like he has the priorities wrong. Surely, if surrender to God is important, its not for some instrumental reason. If there is a priority to these things, I would have thought that it worked the other way around -- that opening yourself up to prana is worthwhile because it ultimately makes it easier to surrender to God.

In some ways I think this whole discussion is utterly impractical. And it bears a strong resemblance to the Euthyphro, a dialogue where Socrates tortures some poor student with arguments about whether the something is good because the Gods approve it, or whether the Gods approve of it because its good.

But a similar, and interesting, question arises from this meditation. Could someone use the techniques of yoga -- pranayama and asana and mediation and such -- and powerfully put them to bad purposes? Here, Gates seems to suggest that its possible to put prana to evil uses. From everything I've read so far, I would have thought otherwise. What I've admired so much about yoga so far is that just doing it tends to make people better, both in body and mind. This makes me wonder whether I've misread this meditation. It does seem to go against quite a bit of what Gates seems to have said consistently throughout the book.

195/292 - The Gold Ring

2009-10-20T20:55:00.003-05:00

Sunday off.

Monday 8:15 pm with Rohit.

I haven't been to the late class for a while. It's been long enough that Rohit expressed surprise at seeing me so late. I don't know why exactly I haven't gone. It turns out that I really like the class. I have more flexibility at that hour, which is always nice. And there is something really soothing about having the sun set during class. But mostly, what I like about the class, especially at this time of year, is the cool, fresh feeling the evening air brings when I step outside. That early autumn feeling (and its only a fake feeling here in Houston, but I'll take what I can get) just gets amplified by the sweaty satisfaction that comes after a nice Bikram session.

Class was good. I dumped out of a set of Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee because I balled myself up so tight in the set-up that I started cramping in the abdomen. I couldn't keep the pose together, keep my breath, and deal with the cramp all at once. Otherwise, things went smoothly. I had a nice smug feeling in first part of Awkward, when Rohit said "Everyone go lower, unless your name is Duffy." And after Rabbit, Rohit turned to me and said: "You see, I made it through the entire pose without telling people to "pull" once." I really like a class that has some humor in it.

In the day 270 meditation, Gates suggests a new mantra, sort of. He opens with this quote:

The goal cannot be anything apart from the Self, nor can it be something gained afresh. If that were so, such a goal cannot be abiding and permanent. What appears anew will also disappear. The goal must be eternal and within. Find it within yourself.

Gates suggests internalizing the last two sentences as we try pranayama. As he puts it, let the energy of this statement intertwine with your practice. I haven't tried this yet. But I will. For a long time I've been haunted with a similar thing expressed in the closing lines of Crazy Fingers, a Grateful Dead song with lyrics by Robert Hunter. I may have quoted these before, but if so, they are worth a repeat:

Midnight on a carousel ride

Reaching for the gold ring

Down inside

Never could reach it

Just slips away

And I try....

The connection is pretty simple. Life is like whirling in circles at midnight, which is "everything apart from the Self". The goal is the gold ring down inside -- after all, gold is eternal. What I like better about the song than Gates' quote is that the song acknowledges how difficult or rare it may be to actually achieve the goal. And the song is not at all despairing. Instead, I think it has an odd kind of hopeful resignation -- of letting go, if you will.

194/290 - Easy yoke, light burden

2009-10-18T23:14:00.002-05:00

Friday off.

Saturday 9:30 am with Amy.

I'm in an every other day habit these days, and its serving me fairly well. Still, I can't help but feel a bit like a slacker. I've slipped on the frequency mostly because of my knee. But being perfectly honest, I have to say that there are days where I could go to class, but I just don't for whatever reason. I think I will probably try to do every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas break. And I'm sure Amy will have some beginning of the year challenge to jump start the New Year. But for now, I'm pretty content with the every other day routine I've fallen into.

One thing that I've noticed, however: no matter what routine I fall into, it seems to be something that seems to fit. I've gone every day, five days a week, now every other day. They all seem good. And the only time any routine seems like a burden is actually during a challenge.

Class was good. There was lots of strong energy in class today. I worked really hard at the start of standing series, and knocked myself out of a set of Triangle and Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee as a result. But what I did, I did well. I got a nice compliment for coming down really slowly in the third part of Awkward pose. It turns out that the extra care I use going down, to make sure that I don't blow out my knee, is also just what you are supposed to do.

Floor series was very nice. It feels like a luxury being able to spin around without worrying too much that it will lead to something popping. And I can keep up with the class for the first time in weeks.

The best thing in class actually happened right afterward. There's a regular who has been coming to Amy's studio since she first opened, and been doing this yoga for five years with strong consistency. He's in his mid-60's (by my guess), and is in really good shape for his age. Today, after class he announced to Amy that he got his butt on the floor for the first time ever in Fixed Firm. He was beaming. He had the attitude and delight of a six year old. He said when he first started, he couldn't even sit on his knees, and he was positive for years that he would never get his butt on the floor in that pose. The progress is amazing, but even more amazing is to see the effect that this breakthrough had on him -- the joy, astonishment, and the pleasure in just being alive and having a body that works. It's truly amazing, and inspiring stuff (there's that breath word again).

The day 269 meditation starts with the quote from Matthew (and one of the greatest parts of Handel's Messiah): "His yoke is easy, and his burden is light." Gates describes the typical day of a woman he knows who teaches yoga. She too is in her 60s, but has the body of a 30 something and deep wisdom. She works hard at her practice, but the work is also a joy, and it has led to results that are much, much easier than the alternatives.

Gate's example is pretty easy, and I don't have any quarrel with it. It may not be all that the quote from Matthew means, but its a pretty good start. I've actually hit on this kind of meaning twice, at least, in this post. First, I said that regular practice only starts to feel like a burden during a challenge. And that burden is more mental than physical. The actual work of going to class is really hard, but in the overall scheme of things it makes daily life so much better that its an easy burden to bear. Second, it took five years for his butt to hit the floor, and there was some real work involved in that process, and I can imagine that there were setbacks along the way. But just feeling the satisfaction radiating out from him, because its actually possible to fulfill the promise of the yoga, and you can see that the burden of it was extremely light.

193/288 - Learning attention

2009-10-16T23:48:00.002-05:00

Wednesday off

Thursday 6:30 with Rohit

Thursday's class was a joy because it was simply a normal class. My knee wasn't limiting me at all. I was properly hydrated. No reflux problems. The temperature in the room seemed perfect. And I just stayed with the dialogue (to the extent that Rohit does dialogue), and stayed with my breath.

I didn't skip anything. I worked hard in Triangle, and still had gas in the tank to finish standing series. Floor series was challenging, but good. Locust was particularly strong. And I finished without fading. All in all, just a very pleasant class.

The funny thing is class was that, for the second class in a row, the teacher mentioned my question about pulling in Rabbit. I checked the dialogue, and my problem isn't in the dialogue. Once you are tucked with your head on the ground, the dialogue simply says to keep the elbows straight, and says nothing about pulling. Most of the teachers I've had say that you pull with your arms, even when your elbows are straight. And this is simply not possible. There might be tension in your arms, but if you are pulling and your elbows are locked, then you must be pulling with something other than your arms. (Moreover, in all the other poses where you are told to pull with your arms -- first forward bend, Standing Separate Leg Stretching, Wind Relieving -- its quite clear that your elbows are bent and your are pulling with your biceps.)

The day 268 meditation discusses what is so important about learning to focus the attention. In several of the backbends, we are told to look up and back as far as possible, because the head will go where the eyes go. Wrestlers learn to pull someone down from the neck, because where the neck goes, the body follows. A similar thing happens with attention. When we focus our attention on something, that thing grows bigger for us. It becomes more present. There's a trivial application of this idea -- we have the ability to focus and concentrate on something far from us, excluding other stuff from our attention. With practice, we can isolate everything else out and simply pay attention to what we want. This ability to focus makes it possible to read things at a distance, to pick out small details of color or expression.

Everyone does this to one extent or another. But few people actively practice this kind of focus. That's one of the things pranayama is for. It teaches us how to pay attention to something specific, and to make the object of our attention grow and become more present for us. Once we learn to get better at this ability with breath, we can apply it elsewhere -- increasing our focus, our ability to be more present with anything we want to concentrate on. So, just as our head goes where our eyes go, and our body follows our head, so too our minds follow our attention. So it's best that we actually learn to pay attention.

192/286 - Back to Normal

2009-10-15T01:18:00.002-05:00

Monday off.

Tuesday 6:30 pm with Libby

Back in high school, I sprained my ankles alot between playing basketball and skiing. The first sprains took forever to heal. But over time, I would start to come down badly on the ankle. It would hurt like hell for awhile, and then it would basically be OK. The explanation I came up with for this progression was that there simply wasn't much left to tear in the ankles anymore, so the later injuries didn't really hurt anything. I have no idea whether I was right about that or not -- probably not.

But I'm beginning to think the same thing about this strange knee problem. On Friday and Saturday, the knee hurt as badly as it ever had. I was pretty much convinced I was looking at another month or more of slow rehab. Two yoga classes, and a little rest, and now it feels as good as it did last week when I was prematurely announcing that I was pretty much healed.

So now I don't know what to think, but I'm not complaining.

Tuesday night class was great. I really like the 6:30 class even though I rarely get to go to it. I'm not hungry. Revisiting my lunch isn't an issue, and my flexibility is much higher at that time. It was also my preferred time for bike riding and running. It just feels like a natural time to exercise. I wonder how much of that has to do with late evening basketball practices when I was growing up?

I got called out by Libby in the first backbend. My arms weren't straight. For me, this is one of the easiest things to forget, and I seem to forget it all the time. And it was actually nice to have that drill sergeant voice bringing me back into line.

Later on, I got a compliment in Triangle, but I think it was more because I started correcting my head alignment just as Libby called for the chin to touch the arm. It was one of those satisfying moments when I seemed to be perfectly in tune with the dialogue, and I think Libby was praising that sense of being in tune more than the actual pose.

Then, between sets of Rabbit, Libby started talking about a "student" who questioned how you could pull in Rabbit at all. Of course, I was the student, and it was from something I asked back in Rohit's workshop. I didn't question whether you could pull. My question was: What are you pulling with? The arms are locked, so you can't be pulling with your arms. And it was never quite clear where the pull comes from. In some ways, I'm still not that sure what muscles I'm using. I just know that it's going ok if I feel tension in my hands and wrists, my arms are locked, and I'm trying to move my ears away from my shoulders.

Anyway, after this, I got basically a little guided tutorial in second set of Rabbit, and it helped a bunch. There are so many details in this pose. Often, by the time we get there, I'm so wiped that I can barely pay attention to tucking my head in. But this class, I got the tuck right, got my forehead up on my thighs for the first , time in a while, and then worked pretty well on arching the back, sucking in the stomach, getting separation between ears and shoulders, and then getting my feet closer together. It was a really tough posture, but it felt great, and put a nice cherry on top of a good class.

The day 267 meditation brings us through three scenes in Gate's life. First, there is the first grader in New England, holding away from his classmates as they, returned inside, hiding behind corners, seeking the "magic that called to [him] in the quiet." Contrast with the man overseas, an alcoholic, part of "a group of men dedicated to killing other men." This incarnation looked back on the woods of New England, and his quiet moments there, as a kind of heaven. Finally, Gates talks about his return to New England, and his seeking out the Maine woods to find his lost heaven, to find the quiet he sought as a child, and how grateful he was for those quiet moments.

Finally, Gates suggests that we can know something of what he felt on his return by closing our eyes and taking a few deep, focused breaths. This idea is very powerful, but I have my doubts as to whether its true. Gates is suggesting that, if you are truly present, the experience is the same regardless of where you are. So, sitting in my room in front of this keyboard, I can share something of Gates' quiet in the New England woods simply by focusing my breathing and becoming present in the moment.

Is this right? If you are fully in the moment, then do the individual characteristics of the world become indifferent, so that all present moments are one? Actually, it may be so. This is what yogis are talking about when they say that there is nothing wrong with the world, and that yoga is union, ultimately union with everything. And if this is right, my deep resistance to the idea itself is a pretty good indication of how far I've got to go.

And yet, I still can't help but think that there must be some difference between these things. I don't think its an accident that Gates picks an idyllic place to make this connection. I will wait a long time before someone tells me how they sought out a roaring, urine reeking cubbyhole deep near the tracks of the A-train 180th street subway station in New York. Is it because the place ultimately makes a difference? Maybe not. Maybe its because the woods, which we easily imagine as "lovely, dark and deep", make it easy for us to slip into the feeling of presence. And the subway, not so much.

191/284 - Repetitive as Breathing

2009-10-12T23:08:00.002-05:00

Saturday Off

Sunday 2:30 pm with Rohit

Saturday was not good. My knee was back to where it was just after I first injured it, back to going up steps one leg at a time. I basically couldn't find a position where it didn't hurt. I'm almost beginning to wonder if it's some sort of Rheumatoid Arthritis, and this was just a flare up. But from what I've read, RA tends to hit the joints on both sides of the body, and more than one joint at a time, so I'm discounting the possibility.

Sunday was a bit better, but I rode the fence about whether or not to go to class. Some of that was the knee. More it was my distaste for the 2:30 class, because it means no eating until late afternoon. Even on the way there, I was debating whether I was really going.

I'm glad I did. I felt much better for it, not necessarily in the knee, but more alive afterward, and just more satisfied. The heaters weren't working well, so Rohit jacked up the humidity and it was really wet. I much prefer high heat and low humidity. The low 100's with really high humidity has made it very hard to breathe in the past. But not in this class. I'm attributing that to my newfound focus on breathing.

For having a gimp leg, I did a really good balancing series. I wasn't kicking out for long, but I held the locked knee the whole time in Standing Head to Knee. And I had respectable Standing Bow, and a solid Balancing Stick.

I skipped one set of Triangle, but not for lack of stamina. The first Separate Leg pose put enough stress on the knee that I needed a break. And the floor series was my odd progression of gimpiness. I was moving well enough to get into and out of Savasana, but still really slowly. I think its the oddest thing that the poses don't do anything at all that worries me about the knee, but the simple act of turning 180 degrees is a bit treacherous.

Oh, and one other odd note. I got a great compliment from Rohit on the first part of Awkward Pose. That's one that's supposed to be hard on the knees, but it has nothing at all to do with what's bothering me. (The third part is a different story, that one is really tough now).

The day 266 meditation is again an exploration of the connection that breathing makes between mind and body. In this one, the point is that focusing on breathing brings us into the present, and thus connects us to our bodies. At this point, the meditations on breathing have started to strike me as a bit repetitive, sort of like breathing itself. Here, to reinforce the point, Gate says: Stop reading, close your eyes, take ten deep breaths and concentrate on the breath as you do it. Do it. It's powerful. It really works. And ultimately I think this is the point about the basic pranayama exercise. Doing it is so much more powerful than anything I could actually come up with to say about it. I think I'll try it again.

The nice thing here, is this is an exercise where I think having music on is really cool, because it lets you bring the music fully into the present as well. So that's one thing I might add. Try the same exercise with some good music on. Don't think about the music, just the breathing, and let the music flow through you as you do. See if you don't have a different experience of the music when you try this.

190/282 - Breathing to end wars

2009-10-10T10:52:00.004-05:00

Thursday Off.

Friday 4:30 with Janna

A big cold front came through, and proved that my knee is not so good as I thought. It also helped prove the wisdom behind the idea that each yoga class is new. With a freshly sore knee, the poses all came as new challenges, with new limitations put before me.

Overall, class went very well. Standing series was good. My stamina was better than it’s been for a while. This time I skipped a set of Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee, but not because I was tired. Rather, going into it, I felt like my knee was not up to it.

Floor series started off well. And I had the best back strengthening series I’ve had in a while. Locust was really good, and surprisingly controlled in the first set. I even managed to keep control of my breath in Locust, a true rarity.

Then came the rolling around poses. The ones where you have to roll over to get into Savasana. My gimpiness came to the foreground. At first, I was just moving around slowly. By Half Tortoise, I was just finishing straightening my leg when the Savasana was already over and it was time to sit-up. And I slowed down from there. After Rabbit, I gave up the idea of getting into Savasana at all. But I stayed with the poses, and I felt much better after class than before, even with a very stiff knee.

The day 265 mediation brings up the connection between pranayama and meditation. According to Gates, meditation is the goal of pranayama. In traditional yoga, asana practice also aims to prepare people for meditation. Ultimately, I don’t think the three need to be separate from each other. As yoga means union, in the end an asana class will also be a pranayam class, and it will also be a moving meditation. Sometimes I can see how that might be possible.

Gate’s other point is that pranayama gives us a means for ending our war with reality. This is a broad statement, but its fairly easy to see how it works in practice. Just the other day I was trying to wire the back of receiver with a thick guage bare speaker wire. My thumbs were too large for the spaces between the plugs. The wire was almost too thick to go through the posts. I couldnt see the holes. So basically I was trying to thread a needle, blind, with my hands inside a pickle jar, and with a thread that was too thick for the needle. I was getting more and more frustrated. Then I noticed that my breathing was out of sorts, a bit rapid and shallow, and i had started to sweat too much. I was also begin to curse myself out for my own incompetence. The answer? I stepped back and forced myself to breathe slowly ten times or so. The breathing calmed things down and took the edge off the frustration. Going back to the task, I managed to do it in just a couple more tries.

That’s a ready example of pranayama ending a war with reality. And I don't offer it as some sort of revelation. Rather, it's an illustration of how simple, and perhaps mundane, the idea is. But it's just that simplicity that gives it it's real power.

189/280

2009-10-08T16:15:00.002-05:00

Tuesday Off

Wednesday 10:30 am with Sherry

I missed going to morning classes. In some ways, going to morning class just seems to make for both a more relaxed, and a more productive day. Sure, flexibility is a bit off compared to afternoons. But it's also a bit easier to focus.

I haven't even felt twinges in my knee for almost a week. I'm still hesitant to say that its 100%. As soon as I do, I'm bound to twist it in some unknown way and be back at square one. For now though, its not having any effect at all on my practice (always excepting Toe Stand). Outside of class, the only think I'm wary about is running around too much with the dogs. That's still a bit iffy. But the improvement over the last few weeks has been amazing.

My stamina still is not fully back. I made it through Triangle again, only to drop out immediately afterward for one set. This isn't a big deal, and I know that the stamina will come back just as soon as I start going for several consecutive days. Otherwise, class was solid. I paid good attention to breathing, and to stillness between inhales and exhales, for most of the poses. This really seems to help a ton in Half Moon and Standing Bow especially. In Standing Bow, the pauses seem to give an extra level of concentration which helps with the balance.

The day 264 meditation is a bit beyond me. Gates introduces the idea of having three different types of brain as a result of our evolution. I'm familiar with this idea. First there's the reptilian brain -- it hunts, kills, and eats. Then there is the limbic brain, or mammalian brain. It is largely emotional. It deals with communal areas. In some respects, this is where love and comfort resides. It's what we have in common with dogs, for example. Lastly, we have our primate/intellectual brain. It does the reasoning. The primate brain has a very high opinion of itself, and would have us forget all about the demands of the reptilian and limbic brains. This is a very quick and sketchy summary, but its still more detailed than what Gates has said. Furthermore, having introduced this idea, I'm not really sure what Gates is trying to do with it.

More of the meditation is involved in showing the resonance between the Sufi idea of breath and the Yogi idea of breath. I have no reason to doubt what Gates says here. But I know only a little bit about the yoga ideas, and nothing at all about the Sufi ideas. So I basically take it on his word that the two mesh so well. But that fact does little for me.

And to a certain extent, I think this meditation has flown over my head. The problem probably lies with me, and not with the meditation itself.

188/278 - Brain in a vat.

2009-10-06T23:40:00.003-05:00

Sunday Off

Monday 4:30 with Janna

Monday's class was fairly ordinary, but it was so much better than Friday that it seemed a triumph. Class was hot, humid, and fairly quick paced. I was determined to make it through Triangle, and I did, but had to bow out right afterward.

On the floor it seemed to get hotter, and I started to fall a bit behind the dialogue. That's been happening more and more recently. I fell into the habit, I think, with my knee problem. And now I have to fall out of the habit, because I don't really have an excuse anymore.

It was nice and satisfying to have a thoroughly ordinary class, without any extreme ups or downs.

Since Descartes, western philosophy has obsessed over the split between mind and body. My second semester in philosophy was basically a survey on the subject. Later in school, I took a class called Minds, Brains, and Bodies. We spent much time discussing the brain in a vat problem. (Suppose a brain in a vat got wired up so that it could experience everything that we experience. Now, how do you know that you aren't such a brain. I guess this is the precursor to the Matrix movies.)

Descartes himself spent a great deal of time wondering how the mind and body were connected. He thought the connection was in the pineal gland, which is not a bad guess. No-one knows what the pineal gland does, even today. (Even though we don't know what it does, I'll bet one of the 26 poses is designed to stimulate it, probably Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee).

The day 263 question answers this problem of connection in a very practical way. The breath is the connection between mind and body. Of course, yoga rejects the whole concept of dualism in the first place, so it doesn't really need to answer the "problem," since there simply is no such problem. But even so, it seems typical of yoga to have a concise and practical answer to such a problem. And furthermore, its an answer that you can actually do something with, even if you are just a brain in a vat.

187/276 - Remember and begin again

2009-10-04T23:19:00.003-05:00

Friday 4:30 pm with Janna

Saturday off.

Friday's class was about the worst I've ever had. I know of probably said that a few times before, but this one was special. I started feeling nausea in Half Moon. I had some reflux problems in the first forward bend. My nose was either clogged or running or both. I felt like I had to go to the bathroom. And between all of these things, it was just getting to me.

I managed to sort of stay with the program in standing series. I skipped a set of Triangle, but I've been doing that fairly often. Then I skipped a set of Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee, again no big deal. But then I felt like skipping Tree, and Tree doesn't even take any energy. And about this time, I started to feel like I NEEDED to leave the room, even though I probably didn't.

Everything fell apart at Cobra. I couldn't keep myself up with my back strength in the first set. A big "Fuck it" switch went off in my head (and it's not something I'm proud of). I also felt like I had to vomit. I started for the door, and Janna tried to talk me out of it, asking whether I could just stay in the room. I was having none of it.

It turns out she was right. As soon as I got out of the room, I lost the need to vomit. I did use the restroom, but I could have made it through without. Next time I see Janna, I will have to apologize to her and tell her she was right, and I was wrong about my "need" to leave.

I missed second set of Cobra, then all of Locust, because I was out of the room. I was fine for a little while, but started getting dizzy again in Half Tortoise. I skipped a set of everything after that - Camel, Rabbit, Stretching. I even bailed on the final spinal twist. Not one of my best days.

The most positive thing I can say about the whole thing is that I shrugged it off afterward. I don't want to make a habit of it, but on the other hand, it was only one bad practice. Except for the fleeing, I was making an honest effort. It just happened to suck, and sometimes suckyness happens.

The day 262 meditation has some bearing on this. Part of the goal of mindful breathing is to create a kind of steadiness of intention. The quality that we are looking for in breathing is the same as what we seek in asana practice: steady, relaxed, calm and deliberate. The training we are going through aims at treating each pose, and even each breath, with the same intent.

Often, however, we lose sight of this intent. We get something other than steady, relaxed, calm, and deliberate. Friday's practice, at least for decent stretches of it, was a pretty extreme example of that. Gates says that the course to take when we forget is simply "to remember and begin again." And that's what I will do. (Interesting that we are alway beginning again. In yoga, we are perpetual beginners.)

186/274 - Breath and Spirit

2009-10-03T00:58:00.003-05:00

Wednesday 4:30 pm with Amy

Thursday Off.

My knee is back, almost one hundred per cent. But it's allergy season, and in the midst of these meditations on pranayama, I'm having difficulty breathing. In class, the biggest impact is on my stamina. I'm back at a point where I can't seem to get myself through both sets of Triangle. Actually, I am tending to skip the first set. I haven't quite decided if this is just some mental block, or if it really is the allergies.

I've been thinking more about the idea of the opening pranayama setting the tone for the rest of the class. More and more, it seems to me that the object of the opening pranayama is to set a deep rhythm, a rhythm that will perhaps carry forward to the rest of the class. For a long time now, I've told people to stay within their breath, and tried to live up to the same idea myself. But this sense of rhythm takes that idea even further. Staying within the breath, for now at least, means not only not getting to the point where you can't breathe comfortably through the nose. It now also means either maintaining something like the rhythm of opening pranayama, or coming back to it between poses. Concentrating on this, when I can, adds a new dimension to the class.

The day 260 meditation is fairly simple. It re-emphasizes the connection between breath and spirit. Gates doesn't mention this, but the word "spirit" comes from the word "spirare" which meant "breath." Thus, respiration (containing the "spire" root) is the system of the body that deals with breath. Inspiration, which is the act of taking in some divine enlightenment, literally means breathing in. And expire, means simply to breath out. The etymology of the word could not make the connections clearer.

There are some every day usages which still emphasize the connection. Think of what it means to be "breathless." Or waiting with "bated breath." There are probably other examples, but I'm not thinking of them now.

185/272 - Between two breaths.

2009-09-30T15:42:00.002-05:00

Tuesday off.

The day 260 meditation simply asks us to observe what's going on when we breathe. It's not esoteric, its not lofty, its meant for all human beings. I particularly liked the opening quote from an ancient tantric text:

Davi: O Shiva, what is your reality? What is this wonder-filled universe? What constitutes seed? Who centers the universal wheel? What is this life beyond form pervading forms? How may we enter it fully, above space and time, names and descriptions? Let my doubts be cleared!

Shiva: Radiant one, this experience may dawn between two breaths.

In some ways this text reminds me a bit of some of the zen koans. But there is a key difference. The space between two breaths might sound mysterious at first (sort of like one hand clapping). But if you stop looking for profundity, its just very simple and practical. That's one of the things I've liked about yoga from the start: this seeming union of the extremely practical with the highly mysterious.

185/271 - Race Goes to the Slow

2009-09-29T01:24:00.003-05:00

Sunday Off.

Monday 4:30 pm with Janna

The good news is that my knee is no longer impeding anything in class (except Toe Stand). That's two classes in a row. I'm still a bit cautious about how I spin around on the floor, but for the most part, it looks like the healing is on the right track.

I'm still not sure whether this was an injury, or whether there is some deep realigning that's going on and causing these temporary problems. I say that because it seems like my knees are just a bit closer together than they used to be when I go into the first forward bend. They still aren't close to touching, but the space does seem narrower.

Class was solid, workmanlike, and fun in sections. Now that I'm supposed to be concentrating on breath, I actually find that I'm smiling (or slightly grinning) more. I've only got the breath thing down for the duration of a few poses. But just thinking about it for some reason seems to wipe the grimace off.

The day 259 meditation talks about the benefits that come simply from paying attention to your breath. The first point is that simply by bringing our awareness to our breath, we start to experience a host of benefits. Of course, most people know that gaining control of breath is one of the ways to fend off panic. But the same thing works on a smaller scale whenever you want it to. That's one of the reasons I like the name of Hannah's blog so much: Just Breathe. There are so many situations where you could offer much worse advice than this.

The other striking thing is that almost all the benefits we talk about have to do with slowing things down. The breath slows. The pulse. Metabolic activity. Even skin conductivity. With practice, we find stillness, and eventually peace. From the standpoint of well-being, it looks like slowness is just a good thing. I'm not sure why this should be so, but I have no reason to think there's something wrong with the idea.

The funny thing is that I've spent much of my life trying to be faster, and feeling a bit behind because I lacked speed. This was definitely true about foot speed. And then about my finger speed both for playing guitar and piano. And even when it came to mental games, I was never really very fast: we would have things like math quiz/races in elementary school and I never excelled at them. When it came to these sorts of things, I did better with things that were deep and hard, or sometimes with things that involved a seemingly impossible (almost intuitive) leap. But speed was never really on my side. Reading this, its kind of good to know that there's a lot to be said for slowness as well.

184/269 -

2009-09-26T23:38:00.002-05:00

Wednesday 4:30 pm with Amy

Thursday Off

Friday 4:30 pm with Janna

Saturday 9:30 am with Lenette

I give up on trying to catch up. I've gotten so far behind on the classes that I can barely remember anything useful about them. I've also had this idea that I would somehow catch up on the meditations, so that I would fit the full 365 within the calendar year. But I won't worry about that any more. I may do more than one on some day, but I'm not going to give them less attention than they deserve just so I can finish "on time."

Onto the classes for the last few days:

Amy's class was the first where I paid serious attention to pausing between inhales and exhales. For some poses, the difference is almost miraculous. I felt a real difference in Half Moon for example. It may seem simple to hold still for a bit, then trying to lengthen the body on an inhale, really reaching for the wall, then staying still, and then trying for depth on the exhale. But the process really seems to clarify things. I find a greater sense of awareness at the still points, and I think its already made some difference both in depth and form.

There are other poses where the process doesn't work for me, at least not now. Locust is the prime example. And some of the forward bends have the same problem. Basically, where the breathing is cramped to begin with, and where the pose is really demanding, it becomes very, very hard to have the kind of control that this breathing demands. I don't know if its impossible, but I can't see how to do it right now.

Another interesting thing in this class. I've had allergies, and before class, I had a sinus headache that had lasted for almost a full day. It interfered with sleeping. Yoga knocked the headache out by Awkward Pose, and I thought I was in for smooth sailing after that. And so it went, until Rabbit. But then, as I curled my head and lifted my hips, I got this amazing burning sensation in my mid forehead that just got more and more intense, until I had to abandon the pose. I never have felt anything like it. It disappeared almost instantly, but it felt like if I held the pose much longer, I could pass out or burn something out of my head. Whatever it was, it worked. The headache never came back, and my sinuses were perfectly clear for the next day.

I was looking forward to more experimentation with this breathing on Friday. Instead, I got another lesson in how brutal the class can sometimes be. It started a bit cold, but just seemed to get hotter and hotter. I was doing fine in the first half of standing series, and had a really good Standing Head to Knee, and Standing Bow. But I think I pushed it too hard, because I was wiped for a set of Triangle and then also for a set of Standing Separate Leg Forehead to Knee. From there, it just seemed to get hotter and hotter.

By the middle of floor series, I was in one of those states where I was beginning to wonder whether I would taste better boiled or braised. My skin was burning. My heart raced. I was moving between poses a bit awkwardly. At one point, I thought I hurt my knee again, but it was a false alarm. (I felt the telltale pop that has recently meant a few more days of pain, but nothing came of it this time.) By Camel I thought I was done, and then, either the heat came down again, or I somehow got my control back. By the end of class, I was thoroughly wiped out, and as difficult as the class was, afterward I felt great.

The morning's class was delightful. I set up front and center, and it turned out that we had an unusual line-up in the front. To my right was Brad, who has about the most disciplined practice I've ever seen. Herb was on his right. He's a bit older than me, but in great shape, and he's been practicing at the studio basically since the day its been open. And to my left was an Indian gentleman (I don't know his name). He's also a regular, and has the best locust of anyone in our studio.

I'm not sure I've ever been in a line up of four men, and certainly not four with such strong and disciplined practices. The energy was through the roof. My knee felt great, almost 100%. And the class simply flew by.

I got a couple of compliments from Lenette. First on the first pranayama exhalation. I thought this was funny since I've been focusing so much on breath recently. And then in the final stretch, where Lenette grabbed my feet and turned them into proper alignment, guiding me through a really hard, but good, set.

The day 258 meditation adds some detail to the earlier pranayama exercise.. First there are props. Gates suggest using three pillows. Two go underneath the base of the spine. The other goes under the head. The spine pillows should be comfortable and help open up the chest. The head pillow tucks the chin slightly forward. I haven't tried this yet, so I can't report on it. Maybe tomorrow.

Then imagine your torso is a glass of water, with the base of the spine being the bottom of the glass and the shoulders being the top. When you inhale, you slowly fill the glass from bottom to top. And on the exhale, you empty the glass from top to bottom. Without this imagery, I think I've arrived at this same approach to deep breathing, but the imagery might help focus it even more.

The most interesting tip to me was the idea that the rhythm you set in pranayama should be the rhythm for your entire practice. In Bikram, we are often told that the opening pranayama "sets the tone" for the class. I always thought what was meant here was that the harder you try in pranayama, the better the class would be. Maybe I had that partially wrong. Maybe the tone that we set in pranayama is the rhythm of breathing that Gates thinks should be carried through the class. I think that's an idea worth exploring some.

181/265 - Inhale, Pause, Exhale, Pause

2009-09-25T21:29:00.002-05:00

Tuesday Off.

In a rather surprising twist, with the day 257 meditation begins an instructional segment to the meditations. Gates is going to guide us through the simple pranayama exercises he teaches to beginning students in his own classes.

The first should be somewhat familiar to Bikramites. It's the title of this post - Long inhale, pause, long exhale, pause. Gates recommends doing it as a warm - up to practice. Again, no surprise for Bikramites. He also suggests doing it lying down. No funky chicken with the elbows, no engaged thighs, no sucked in stomach, no neck movements. So it's a bit different.

I was going to try this as a warm-up to the class today, but got into the studio too late. The cool thing is that you can do this just about anywhere. I've been focusing on it some while driving. And also while in bed watching TV. It's a fun thing to do, and it seems to slow things down, and make it easier to focus.

The other point that Gates makes is that the benefits of pranayama are not esoteric. I've noticed this in my singing. Breath control has gone a long long ways just from doing the Bikram exercises. And I expect I'll notice something similar if I ever get back to riding my bike.

There's a teacher at our studio named Steve. He teaches only the 6am classes, so I've never had a class with him. He also is a rolfing practitioner. And he works from time to time with another friend of mine. My friend was talking to him about pranayama, and he recommended doing this same exercise that Gates described. He said the thing to work on is the length of each segment. Start by trying for four or five seconds on each part: thus, a single round of breath would take somewhere from 16 to 25 seconds. My friend asked him how long he is doing it for, and if I remember correctly, I think he said that he was doing 37 seconds for each part. Yup, thats a 37 second inhale, a 37 second pause, a 37 second exhale, and then a 37 second pause. A 10 breath set of that would take almost 25 minutes!!! There's clearly something to work on here.

181/264 - Experience of yourself

2009-09-24T21:40:00.002-05:00

Monday 4:30 with Janna

I've fallen so far behind that I can barely remember the classes anymore. Here's what I vaguely recall from Monday. The heat was up, but it felt good. I got through the whole class without skipping. My knee basically felt better, but it still definitely comes and goes.

I only remember one thing about the poses. I was in second set of Cobra and I felt something strange and nice going on in my inner back. I was thinking to myself that I should try to remember and repeat whatever I had done to get into the pose. And then Janna complimented my pose. This came as a surprise for two reasons. First, Janna usually sticks pretty close to the dialogue, and I could probably count on one hand the number of specific compliments I've gotten from her. That's not a criticism, its just how it is, and I take it to mean that each compliment from her means just a bit more. On top of that, I almost never get a compliment in Cobra. So that means that whatever I was feeling, it matched up with something good in how the pose looked. Now if only I can remember how I did it. (It may be simply from working on Rohit's workshop tips.)

The day 256 meditation takes us on a very quick recap of what the yamas, niyamas, and asanas do for us. Yamas purify negative energy. Niyamas channel energy to promote health. Asanas teach us to focus on the matter at hand, and to strip away all things superfluous. On top of these, pranayama forces further focus, while refining health. It's an amazingly terse summary. I have no quarrel with it, but it seems to me that it basically takes the entire book to unpack that brief summary.

Gates then goes on to ask us to try an experiment. Focus on your breathing, and remember something that happened yesterday. Then do the same, but remember yourself doing a very good deed. Then simply breath while focusing on your breath and listening closely to your environment. In all three cases, he asks "What is your experience of yourself?"

I tried this, but I have a problem. When asked this way, I find myself completely at a loss. If he asked, what did I feel, I might be able to come up with something, and perhaps even something different, for all three things. But for some reason, when he asks what my experience of myself was, I simply don't know how to respond. Here's what I'm trying to say: I have emotions like most anyone else. I get angry, happy, sad, troubled, etc... But when I'm angry, for example, I am simply angry. I don't typically have an experience of myself as being angry. That's just a bit too mediated for me. Or maybe I'm just quibbling over words. Anyway, when I think of the question as he asked it, I find that I am just at a loss about how to answer it.

180/263 - Breath Retention

2009-09-22T20:33:00.002-05:00

Sunday 9:30 am with Rohit.

I hurt my knee again -- in my sleep! I was rolling over or something and I woke up feeling that something was out of place in my leg. But it didn't hurt yet. Then I tried to straighten it, really without thinking, because I was still half asleep, and yikes, it was painful.

So I was set back a couple of weeks in practice. I skipped all of Triangle, more out of fear for the knee than anything else. And I felt pretty terrible just standing at the beginning of Pranayama. But gradually, it started to feel better during practice, and then better and better through the course of the day.

The big problem that my knee is now giving me is that it takes me forever to get into and out of savasana from Fixed Firm on. After Fixed Firm, it can take me almost the full savasana simply to straighten out my right leg. I'm not missing much, but I have the impression that the teachers think I'm really suffering, when the truth is that I'm just a bit of a gimp for now. Actually, its closer to the truth to say that I'm riding the border between caution and fear when swinging my body around. Controlled movements are fine for now, but its exactly the kind of lateral swinging that gets you quickly into savasana that is also the most perilous for the knee right now.

Other than that, practice was solid. The biggest improvement I've seen since the workshop is in Rabbit. The tip about how to move the shoulders, along with dancingj's image of having no weight on the head have really helped with the depth of this pose, and surprisingly, its easier to breathe in the pose as well. This may be the first time when I've made a big correction in form, and the posture actually got easier as a result. It makes me wonder if I'm doing something wrong...

The day 255 meditation is our first on Pranayama. It opens with this sutra: "Pranayama is the regulation of the incoming and outgoing flow of breath with retention." There's an awful lot packed in those few words, and I doubt I will get close to unpacking all of it today.

Gates says that pranayama is where the internal and external parts of the practice meet. The control of the breath trains the mind to concentration on a single thing. And this concentration, in turn, opens the doorway to the metaphysical.

How do we start? Simple: just do what we are already doing but bring more attention to the breath. Inhale and exhale evenly through the nose, and try to retain the breath with a pause at the end of each inhalation and exhalation. From the sutra, we can see that there's extra emphasis on the retention aspect, on the pause I think there are two reasons for this. First, the pause is not totally natural for people, so focusing on it develops concentration. More important, its in the pause where we can find true stillness.

The idea of pausing and holding the breath comes in other disciplines as well. I use it all the time in photography. To get a better shot, especially with a slower shutter speed, simply make sure that you are holding your breath as you depress the shutter. I learned this trick, in turn, from reading about snipers, who do the same thing as they squeeze off the shot. In both of these, the object is to cultivate as much stillness as possible. And the same goes for yogis.

I need to focus some more on exactly this aspect in class. In many exercises, I know what to do on inhalation and exhalation, but the teachers rarely emphasize the still point between the two. In final spinal twist, for example, the idea is to lengthen the spine on the inhale, and twist more on the exhale. But the unspoken part is to find a still point in between the two. So that, I think, is my new big project. (And not just in final spinal twist.)

Of course, we have two breathing exercises in Bikram. The first is called pranayama, and it does just what this sutra describes -- regulating the inhalation and exhalation with retention. I wonder about the Blowing In Firm exercise at the end. It's a breathing exercise of course, but there is no regulation of inhaling. Instead, the inhales happen automatically. And, of course, retention is out of the question. Its just, blow blow blow blow blow blow blow. So, that makes me wonder whether other yogis consider this a form of Pranayama, or is it another kind of exercise. (Just to be clear. This question doesn't worry me at all. I'm not bothered in any way by the last exercise. I just am curious how it fits.)

179/262 - Farewell to Asanas

2009-09-20T20:17:00.002-05:00

Saturday Off.

I fully intended to go to class, but life intruded. (I ended up waiting for the contractors to show up and remove a great deal of debris from our driveway.)

The day 254 meditation is the last in the chapter on asanas. With this, we have gotten an introduction to the yamas, the niyamas, and the asanas. These, I think, are probably the aspects of yoga that westerners (or at least this westerner) are most comfortable with.

In this meditation, Gates dismisses the idea that yoga is there simply to soothe. As he puts it, it is not a "time-tested alternative to Valium." I don't think anyone who practices Bikram would ever even begin to make that mistake. Bikram does promote relaxation, but not during class.

Instead, Gates insists that yoga aims for big things: namely, realizing our divinity and sharing it with all beings. It doesn't get much bigger than that. And allowing big things to happen is the main point of this meditation.

Next up will be Pranayama.

179/261 - Too Clever

2009-09-19T19:44:00.002-05:00

Friday 4:30 with Cisco

For the first time in a while, I made it through class without skipping any sets. When I've had a long streak where my stamina is off (or where I've been hampered by injury), I get a bit excited about any class where I feel like I'm back on track and back to normal.

Apparently, my face wasn't telling the same tale. After class, Cisco asked me if it was a rough class. Apparently I had some other-worldly expression on my face coming out of Locust, and he thought I was having an especially hard time. I'm not aware of it, and my guess is that an "especially hard time" is just the norm for me in Locust. Even so, it sounds like there's some extra gymnastics going on with my face, and it might be a good idea to try to bring that under control a bit.

The day 253 meditation begins with a quote from Herman Hesse: "Be on your guard against too much cleverness." There follows a charming story about Gates' observation of one of his students. She first went to one of his non-heated classes, away from the Studio, and she struggled through it. He pegged her as someone likely to quit. She then came to one of his studio classes, and had a really hard time of it. He was sure she was a goner. She became a regular at his 9 am classes, despite his expectations. A month later she showed up for a 7 am class, and by this time it was clear that she was committed to the practice. After that class, she asked her name, and she said "Faith."

Its a cute story. But what does it have to do with the quote from Hesse, I wonder. Here are a few possibilities. First, perhaps Gates was being too clever when he pegged her as someone who would quit. I've seen beginners all the time, and you do get a sense of who will come back and who is likely not to stay with it. There's nothing particularly clever about it. In Bikram, I've noticed that people who come in with high expectations of themselves tend not to return. Athletes, seasoned yogis from other disciplines, people who think that the hot room shouldn't be a problem. They tend to get blown away, and if that first experience is enough of an ego blow, they are gone for good.

By contrast, there's a remarkably high return rate for people in really bad shape to begin with. The class shows its benefits to these people more immediately, and for the most part they don't have their ego all wrapped up in their current conditioning, so getting blown away by the first class is pretty much what they expected.

The second candidate for cleverness in this story is the woman herself. Maybe her response was just a clever way to answer him, perhaps because she had caught on to his expectation that she would give up. Maybe so, but if it were so, I don't think it would be the end of the story. And even so, what is there to be wary of.

The third possibility is my favorite. Gates gives away the cleverness of the story with one detail. He asked her for her name after she had been a regular for a month. This defies belief. A teacher like Gates, I believe, would get to know each of his students by name after the second or third class at the latest. So, Gates is telling us the story to make a point about faith, and the opening quote is letting us know that the story is simply a story.

And, then there is the last possibility: that the quote is warning me against my own cleverness in overanalyzing the story. It's saying to simply take some things at face value, and not worry too much about analyzing it deeply. In this case, that would mean simply reading the story as a charming story about the nature of Faith, and leaving it at that.

178/260 - Learning to Die

2009-09-18T23:25:00.002-05:00

Thursday Off -

The Day 252 meditation takes us deeper into the meaning of Corpse pose. It begins with a quote from Seneca: "In life we must learn not only how to live, but how to die as well." From what I know of Seneca, I think he may have taken this idea much more literally than Gates seems to. But I also think Gate's gloss on this quote has lots of merit.

Gate says that life is filled with many little deaths. We prepare for a long time for any given moment. Think of any of the major events in life: a big game, asking someone for a first date , a wedding, a big presentation or business opportunity, anything that we've worked hard for which comes to any sort of culmination. Often, regardless of the outcome of one of these events, a letdown and perhaps even depression follows. These culminations in life can also be like little deaths. All the preparation and work comes to a head, and a let down afterward comes perfectly naturally.

By learning how to die, Gates thinks Seneca means learning how to let go of the culmination that has just passed, and put yourself into a state where you can welcome the next moment. By developing this ability of timely letting go of a culminating moment, it makes it more possible to be present and to live a fuller life.

Gates then connects this to asana and savasana. Asana or a series of asana, is an exercise in living in the moment. Every class, maybe every pose, gives us the opportunity to experience a kind of culminating moment in miniature. (And perhaps not so miniature.) Savasana teaches us how to let go of what we just accomplished. To simply lie back and be.

Given this idea, I think it shows some of the extra genius in the Bikram series. We don't simply get a long savasana at the end. We are trained instead to try to let go of each pose in the floor series immediately after doing it. And, if we approach this with the right attitude, we simply accelerate our ability to let go. Bikram speeds up the process of learning how to die and become reborn.

178/259 -

2009-09-17T20:03:00.002-05:00

Wednesday 4:30 pm with Amy

Sometimes, it feels like there is just nothing in the tank. Before pranayama started, there was a nice puddle forming at my feet, and that should have been the warning sign right there. By Eagle, I was feeling drain. Then, trying to keep true to what I learned in last weekend's workshop, I basically sucked myself dry in Balancing Series. And the rest of the class, I alternated between feeling sorry for myself, and making it better by concentrating on breathing and simply trying to stay present. It basically worked, but the class was really tough even so. I haven't had one like this in quite a while, so I guess I was about due.

On the plus side, Camel was still really good. And I think I've finally got a feel for what the arm position is in Rabbit. And, amazingly enough, it seems to create more room to breath. That's a fairly big blessing for that pose.

The day 251 meditation is a simple, but elegant description of an idyllic scene in Costa Rica. A walk on the beach. A return through the jungle to the hotel. Practicing with his wife on a terrace overlooking the Pacific. A tropical rainshower, and its aftermath. Absolutely beautiful stuff. Hell, I like it when it's raining outside, and our studio only overlooks majestic Highway 59, not the Pacific.

The point of the description, I think, is to illustrate the beginning quote, from Mohammed, in action. And its a beautiful quote (and surprising for someone whose main exposure to Islam is from less idyllic sources). "Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don't claim them. Feel the artistry moving through, and be silent." This is a wonderful thought, and Gate's illustration, I think, captures the spirit of it very well. And then I wonder if that's a contradiction or not. If you capture the spirit of a moment like this, and reduce it to writing it, have you then "claimed" it, or not? I don't know the answer to this one, but if not, then part of me wonders how else one would go about claiming a moment. And I don't know the answer to that one either.

177/258 - Attaining Nothing: More on Savasana

2009-09-16T15:32:00.002-05:00

Tuesday Off

It was a nice day off. I have to go back to see whether I stated any goals for the number of classes for this year. If I did, I'm probably falling behind. But I probably didn't: usually my New Year's Resolution is not to make any New Year's resolutions.

And that leads us to the day 250 meditation, which brings up the paradox of savasana. It's a pose. We're often told that its the most difficult pose, especially for Westerners. Why? Because its a pose where we are striving towards stillness. We are trying to attain nothing. And let's face it, in an odd way that just does not compute.

Gates asks what it means to have nothing to attain? I won't go all Heidegger on people, and make a noun or even a verb out of it. (Favorite Heidegger quote: "The Nothing nothings.") I never liked that style of philosophy anyway. And Yoga is always, at bottom, supremely practical. So my stab at answering this question: "It means learning to accept things as they are. It means learning the feeling of sinking into the floor, and growing comfortable with that. It means trying to find new ways to relax. It means learning to be content with whatever you just did in class, no matter how tortuous it might have seemed, because it will be good for you, and being content with it afterwards will be even better. That's my answer, and I'm staying with it at least for now.

177/257 - Savasana Again

2009-09-15T20:35:00.003-05:00

Monday 4:30 pm with Amy.

What one thing did I learn from the workshop, more than anything else? If anything, it's that I let me practice fall into something of a rut. It's not that my practice was bad before. I would have said it was pretty good in many ways. But the workshop definitely showed me all sorts of new ways to push my limits. As a result, this class felt very fresh and new.

Also, since I was leaving a lot on the table before, without really being aware of it, this class also beat the crap out of me. Let's fact it, trying to do each pose to the best of your ability is just plain hard. And while I wouldn't say that I had done things to put myself into a comfort zone, it might be correct to say that I permitted myself to sink into certain areas of tolerance.

Here are some brief comments: You know how we hear that Bikram calls Balancing Stick your daily heart attack on a stick. Well, he should also call the first backbend your daily 10 second hallucinogen. When I come out of this pose after going really deep, its like I don't even know where I am anymore. Amy called change, and I was still going down, so I did until I fell out. Pulling the arms back really makes a difference. And if I keep this up, I might even see the floor sometime this decade.

Second part of Awkward really hurts the bunions. I wonder if there's any correction or adaptation for those of us with huge bone growths on the sides of their feet.

On the first part of Standing Head to Knee, I can legitimately start dropping my elbows now. I did this for the first time in a class, and Amy looked really happy about it. The form was there, and it felt good.

I spread my legs as far apart as I thought was possible in Separate Leg Stretching. I still didn't get my head on the floor. But rolling forward, it felt like I might be getting closer. So I did a hand check and I'm within a couple of inches here. Again, it looks like head to the floor might happen this decade.

I really compressed in Rabbit going down. And then tried the pulling thing the way I saw it. I think it was better. The stretch felt deeper. It also gave me unbelievable cramps in the upper abs.

There are lots of other little details that I tried, and I could see how they might help. But overall, the amazing benefit from the workshop is simply the extra enthusiasm it's given me for the practice. I know that, eventually, I'm supposed to transcend these little boosts. But there it is, so I might as well acknowledge it and take advantage.

The day 249 meditation again talks about savasana. It says how, as beginners, we are so thankful for the long savasanas. But that after getting more used to the practice, we are more likely to be thinking ahead in the day after the end of class, and so we tend to rush from the room and skimp on Savasana.

I don't think this observation is as true in Bikram. For the most part, beginners are dashing out of the room as fast as they can, not to get on with the day, but simply to escape the heat. The people who stay for five or eight minutes, or even more, tend always to be the same people, and for the most part, I've noticed that they are steady practitioners, and they are also people who tend to bring much discipline to their practices.

I've gone both ways on this. Gates talks about Savasana giving the sense of ending to the class. Again I don't think that's quite right in Bikram. After all, we get lots of Savasanas, so they aren't really the end of anything. And I wouldn't make as much of it being corpse pose as Gates wants to in this meditation. After all, in Hindi philosophy, death is just a transitional state. It's not an end. In Bikram, we're told that Savasana is where the body gets to absorb the benefits. That's as good an explanation as I need. I do know that I feel better later if I allow myself a longer Savasana, and that should be all the proof I need. The class - with preparation, driving, class, cool down, and drive home - lasts for just over two hours. An extra few minutes in Savasana simply shouldn't be that big a deal. And if it is, its proof that there's something wrong elsewhere.

176/256 pt. 3 - Posture Clinic, Fixed Firm an On

2009-09-14T14:08:00.002-05:00

The rest of the class divides fairly nicely into series: warm-up, balancing, separate leg, etc... I haven't thought of the same idea of series when it comes to the end of class. Instead, I tend to think of the final poses in pairs. First there's the rest pair: Fixed Firm and Half Tortoise. Then there's the bendy pair: Camel and Rabbit. And then the home stretch (pun sort of intended): With final stretching, and spinal twist. The main carry over I see here is that the compression in Rabbit leads naturally into the one legged head to knee compressions.

Fixed Firm -- For those of us with big calfs, Rohit recommended actually pulling the relaxed calf flesh out to the sides to make room for the hips as you go down. I need to try this.

The first controversial point here is about when you should start going back onto your elbows. I've heard over and over again that you shouldn't start to go back until your hips are on the floor. I've taken this as gospel. Rohit says, if you are close to the floor, and your knees feel fine, that's good enough and you can start to go back.

On this one, I just checked the dialogue. There's nothing about getting the butt on the floor. It says that heels should contact the hips. Of course, if your heels and hips are touching, your butt will be pretty close to the floor. So maybe that's good enough. Still, I found this one to be surprising, since I've heard so many times not to go down until the butt is on the floor, or maybe just a hair or two off.

The other interesting thing here is what to do with the back once you are fully down with the elbows over the head. Rohit says the question used to be whether or not you should keep your back flat on the floor. Bikram said that there was no point to flattening the back because it has a natural arch.

Over the years, the "natural arch" of the back has morphed into lifting the stomach and chest to "create a perfect human bridge." This is something that clearly has changed. Rohit doesn't see the point. The main benefit of the pose, he says, is a deep stretch in the quads. By arching the back, you reduce that stretch. I think this is an example of where the practice has developed into something different from what he learned. For me, this distinction is purely academic. It's sort of like asking what's the next thing you do once your head is firmly on your knee in Standing Head to Knee: interesting, but it will be quite some time before it has any bearing on how I practice. And who knows, by the time I get there, the instructions might be different than they are now.

Half Tortoise -- Rohit put more emphasis on keeping the hips down than I have heard before. And even here, I may be subtly misunderstanding something. If the hips pop up and the back curves to get the head on the floor, thats clearly wrong. But I'm not quite as sure about what to do with a straight back.

For this pose, Rohit and Sherry helped people into and out of the pose by holding the hips down properly and guiding them through the bend up and down. Mostly what I learned from this is how great it would be to have a personal assistant, who knew what to do, who could give these little assists. Keeping the hips down on my own still feels impossible. But I've had Rohit, Sherry, and Miranda all assist me going into the pose. Each time it happens, I have a "Eureka" moment, and feel like I finally understand the pose. And then it all goes away the next class when there is no helping hand...

Camel -- The Iyengar people go into this pose differently. They start basically the way we start in Rabbit, and then keeping the grip they bring the hips up and forward and then lean back into the pose. Rohit said that going into the pose that way showed him what part of the pose causes that Camel fear and loathing. He says it comes from the opening in the throat as this area opens up.

This would explain why I almost never get anything like the overwhelming feeling others get in Camel. My neck and throat simply don't bend that way yet. Maybe someday.

Rabbit -- I asked my perpetual question about this pose, and again I got puzzled looks to begin with. We are told to get our elbows straight. And then told to pull harder. So the question is: What are you pulling with? You can't pull with your arms if your arms are straight. On top of this, I never actually see people or myself doing this pose, so the pulling has stayed a mystery.

It turns out that you are pulling with something in your back, maybe the rhomboids. But what you are trying to do is create distance between your shoulders and your ears. I saw a few people doing this, and got to see the difference it makes in the pose. And for the first time I think I may understand what's going on at that point in a way that I could actually repeat.

Seated Forehead to Knee -- Most people don't twist their bodies to the right position at the start of this pose. Rohit had us try the following. Right leg extended. Grab the outside of the right foot with the left hand, palm inward. This forces the body to turn into alignment. Then put the right hand over the left hand, release and get the normal grip.

For a while now I've been more or less hanging out on the right side in this pose. My knee is flat on the floor, and my head very well tucked. But little was going on. I didn't have the feel for what was going to get my heel up off the floor. Here, I got guided into kicking out the heel. It's another use of the term kicking that I did not grasp. I don't think I can explain what I did. Basically it felt like I was reaching for the wall with my heel, while pulling back on the toes. And I think it helped. Its another thing I'm looking forward to trying in a few classes.

Stretching Pose -- One of the hardest poses for me. I simply don't hinge forward at the hips, so my upper back ends up being arched. The solution, as Rohit said elsewhere, is the same thing that gets people to Carnegie Hall.

Spinal Twist -- Two tips I learned here. First, you start with one arm propping you up from behind, and the other is going to lift up and cross over to grab the front knee. Before reaching up with that arm, use it to actually pull back on the knee and give you a head start into the twist. (And its much easier to see what he means than to try to explain it.)

The second tip is not to rush to reach around with the back hand. Instead, he suggested that you walk it around as you go deeper into the pose. This can help keep your spine straighter, and give you some more leverage for the twist itself.

Sit-up -- We're told there is a double exhale toward the end of the sit-up, and there is. Lots of people will inhale between the two exhales. The purpose of the second exhale is to empty the lungs. That gives you a better chance of getting your head to where it's going.

The sit-up should be a smooth motion. Libby said that Emmy has changed her instruction on it because so many people were first jerking their bodies first up to the ceiling and then forward, in a kind of jack-knife motion.

The only other big emphasis was on keeping the feet flexed and heels on the floor. If you do this, you get 14 extra hamstring stretches in every class.

On a self-congratulatory note, I got a nice compliment on my sit-up. I've worked extra hard on keeping my arms with my ears in the sit-ups, ever since my first class with Rohit. And apparently it's paid off.

Final Breathing - (I don't know how to spell Kapulbati, so I put it in a parenthesis). Nothing really new here. Shoulders and upper body as still as possible while still having good exhales. Get rid of excess tension in your mouth and face. The puffed out cheeks, the puckering, the noise making, etc..., these only inhibit airflow which is the opposite of what you are trying to do.

Savasana - Don't skimp. In floor poses, put one hand to the opposite side of your body and spin on it to get to the floor quickly. With practice, this is basically a one step move into savasana, and can get you an extra 3-4 seconds in the pose.

The clinics may have taken less time than it took to write them up. The feeling I've had since doing the clinics is very reminiscent of how I felt when I was first starting. Lots of good aches, and the feeling that things are opening up. Maybe that's just from doing 4-4.5 hours in a row, instead of a measly 90 minutes. To test that, I think maybe I will have to try some back to back doubles.

176/256 pt. 2 -- Posture Clinic, Back Strengthening

2009-09-14T11:24:00.002-05:00

Back strengthening, for me at least, is probably the core of the series. And it's also the part which says "torture chamber" more than anything else. The things that really drain my stamina in class are: 1) Half Moon and Awkward. I find these two poses to be about as hard as the rest of the class combined. 2) Triangle, sometimes. And 3) Back strengthening series. And of the these, back strengthening is by far the most intense. Here goes:

Cobra -- Bikram says this is the hardest pose to teach. Rohit says its one where he has seen about the widest variation in approved final positions. In other words, two people can look very different from one another in this pose, and Bikram might still think that both are doing the posture correctly.

Rohit doesn't put much stock into the "looking up" that many teachers stress. For some, the body will naturally follow the eyes when they look up. For others, looking up simply puts a crick into the neck. I was surprised at this, because Rohit insists that we not look down when going into Balancing Stick. Looking down leads to arching the back. In the end, he says to try looking up and stay with it if its working for you, but don't make a fetish of it.

What to do with the hands? He suggested actually pulling back on the hands. This has the effect of pulling the body a bit further forward from the hips. The other interesting point was that the initial hand position depends upon your flexibility. The less flexible your lower back, then the further forward your hands might need to go, so you can get the 90 degree bend in the elbow at the end. A flexy back might can put the hands a bit further back.

Locust: One Leg -- The teachers have noticed that some people slack off a bit on the one foot part of Locust, because they are saving up energy for the two feet together. I wonder if there's anyone out there who has not done this? Bikram says that working hard in the one leg part of the pose makes the two legged version easier. It's not clear to me if he means that for a single class, or whether its a long term proposition. Either way, its good advice that I will try to heed. This is another one where I may have been cheating myself, because I'm too focused on the end product.

I also have gotten the priorities a bit wrong. The off side should be relaxed. The lifting leg needs to be as straight as possible, and stretching away from the hip. Then, you go for the height without moving your hip out of line or rotating in any way. And then, you should try to keep contact between raised hip and the arms. I thought that the contact was essential, and have been giving up quite a bit in the way of height. Letting the hip come up some makes it possible to get even deeper into the upper back muscles.

Locust: Both Legs -- The two main points here were: legs straight and don't throw yourself into the pose. When you bend your knees, you get the feeling that you are going higher into the pose. But you are doing it without any benefit. This is one where what you are feeling actually fools you some. As for throwing yourself into the pose, its never a good idea, but its something that happens quite often with Locust because the pose is so intense.

Someone asked about how you go about using your shoulders to push up even higher. As it turned out, I'm the only one in the clinic who gets up high enough that I actually use my shoulders (sometimes). So I got to demo, even though I wasn't sure if I still had the strength. I got up pretty well, and under control, and then I really tried to push with my shoulders. Someone said something like "Wow, he's up really high." But it didn't feel like it was anywhere near my best.

Anyway, I was trying too hard. I came out of the pose, and Rohit said, "That was really good, but..." And I joined in "You forgot to breathe." That just goes to show how easy it is to forget the most basic things. It was a nice demonstration of what not to do, however. Rohit says that he forgets to breath in Locust all the time.

Full Locust - Bikram says arms like airplane wings, and everyone puts there arms out to form a "T". Airplane wings are almost always pointing back a bit toward the stern. I had a question about this. A long time ago, Lenette said to start with your arms actually a bit forward of the T position, so the hands are pretty much parallel with the forehead. Then, as you go up, you sweep the arms back into the airplane wing position, which helps open the chest. This is another one where it seems like whatever works for you. And I'm going to have to toy with it both ways.

Next point: engage the thighs enough beforehand so the knees lift from the floor. This insures that your legs are straight. And finally, this is one of the big grimace poses. Try to smile. Try not to wrinkle the brow.

Floor Bow - We started with an illustration that Floor Bow is actually a relief. With our arms at our sides, chin on the floor, Rohit had us come into a variation of Full Locust and hold it for about 10-12 seconds. Then he said to bend the knees and reach back with the hands to grab the feet. Notice how, when you get the feet, you relax into Floor Bow, and it actually comes as a relief. Full Locust, of course, is much, much harder to hold.

The keys here were relaxing the shoulders, and kicking up instead of back. That means the kick is more at the hips than at the knees. I've always had a bit of a problem with all the "kicking" language in the series. It appears again and again, and it rarely means the same thing in any two places. And in some places, it simply does not seem at all like a "kick" at all to me. For example, in Standing Head to Knee, we are supposed to kick out the heel of our raised leg once the leg is straight, and we keep kicking out that heel. That imagery does nothing for me, and I have had to translate it into something that means something to me. The same has gone for floor bow. I've kicked lots of balls. And I've taken martial arts and done front kicks, side kicks, roundhouses, etc... For me, the kicking in Floor Bow has just never felt like a kick.

Rohit and Sherry went around the room and put their hands lightly on peoples feet and told them to push the hands away. That little physical assist worked wonders for me. I think I finally have some idea of how I'm supposed to get my feet up higher.

The other interesting part of Floor Bow is what happens if your feet are not up the same amount. Rohit says the problem is usually in the wrist. One is likely to curl in more than the other, and the curled in wrist will keep that foot down some. (I've noticed a different reason for it recently. With a weak knee, there's simply an imbalance in how much tension my legs can stand in this pose. My weak knee leg doesn't want to go up as far as the sound leg on some days.)

Next post will be the rest of the series, and then we will return to our regular scheduled programming.

176/256 - Posture Clinic, The Floor

2009-09-14T00:05:00.002-05:00

Sunday 9:30 am with Sherry

11:15 Posture Clinic with Rohit and Sherry

Class was mixed this morning. First off, I tried to apply everything I learned yesterday to the standing series. The result? I was pretty much wiped out by Balancing Stick. I'm truly astonished by how much I have been leaving on the table. And I thought I was doing really well, and I end most every class pretty well drained as it is. But there was just another level that I was at during the start of class, and it really took it out of me, both physically and mentally. The most startling thing is how the clinic has opened my eyes to an even deeper level of concentration that could be available.

I also learned that treating class as a prelude to anything is not such a good idea. I was looking forward to the clinic that was coming up, and because I was already wiped out, I think I held back some in the floor series. Holding back in Bikram only leads to distraction. It makes time go more slowly, and it makes what you are doing hurt a bit more. Not a good combination. I realized this somewhere in back strengthening, and pulled myself back into just being present and doing what I'm told. And things got a bit better from there.

Before the clinic, Rohit talked a little bit about how the game "Telephone" works. To prepare for the clinic, he went back to the notes he took during his teacher training. Sometimes he found things in it that he teaches, but which other teachers find unorthodox, and which are not part of the current dialogue. And he found a bunch of things that he had simply forgotten, probably because they weren't particularly relevant to his practice (though they might be important in teaching). He thinks that every teacher develops their own gloss on what Bikram teaches, and as they share things with one another, other things start to sneak into the teaching as well.

I like this, because what's happening here are my imperfect notes and impressions of what I learned from this clinic. Those, in turn, are based on what Rohit said, which in turn comes from his notes about what Bikram taught, and through the haze of many years of memory. So to a certain extent, it really is like "telephone."

Rohit also confirmed my impression that there's much more I could be doing in the poses. He said that while demonstrating poses, and then in how he felt afterward, he realized that there was much he could be doing in his own practice, but instead he has somehow avoided doing it. We spend lots of time in the room. Add to that the driving, the showering, the cool down, the laundry time, and it really adds up. Given that, we might as well be making the most of the time we put in. It's a great thought, and would be an even better conviction, but of course, its much much easier said than done.

Onto the poses (probably again in two posts):

Tree - Tree pose prepares us for Lotus. So its mainly a hip opener. The hands in prayer, and even the balancing, are incidental. The keys are dropping the knee down, and pushing the same hip forward while keeping the two hips in a line parallel to the front wall.

Toe Stand -- The following is not Bikram and Rohit was very clear that its not. He's not a big fan of Toe Stand. In India, its considered more of a trick than a pose. Like Tree, the idea of Toe Stand is to prepare you for Lotus. But to get people into the pose, they can compromise by not raising the leg as high on the thigh. This gets people into Toe Stand, but does very little to help prepare anyone for Lotus. So the pose, for many people, doesn't accomplish its main benefit. On top of that, its high risk for anyone with knee problems.

He says that if you have any problems at all with your knees, then do Tree again. If you can keep your leg in place with hands in prayer in Tree, and your knees are good, then Toe Stand is just fine. If you can't keep your leg in place in prayer in Tree, then you aren't ready to get the main benefit from Toe Stand, but you should still try it anyways if your knees are up to it.

Libby asked about what to do in Toe Stand if you have bunions. I wonder about that too when I'm up for the pose. The answer was basically a shrug. I guess life just sucks sometimes.

Wind Removing -- I've been confused for a while about how you pull in this pose. Sometimes it sounds like you should be pulling the knee toward the shoulder. Other times I get the impression that you should be pulling down toward the floor. The answer is to pull down toward the floor.

In the two leg part of this pose, we talked about hand towels. Rohit likes to use a hand towel to help with the grip in this part of the pose. Almost every studio now forbids the use of hand towels to help with the grip in any pose. When he took teacher training, a big towel and a hand towel were provided. They were also common at the few studios that then existed. There wasn't any prohibition on using them to help with grip in some poses. Rohit thinks Bikram got rid of the hand towels to reduce the amount of laundry to be done, and from there it somehow turned into one of the Bikram rules.

I have a hard time in the third part of this pose. If I'm really pulling on my knees, tucking my chin, and trying to get my tail to the floor, then my elbows are almost certainly going to start slipping off my knees. If the room is cool and I'm not that sweaty, then there's plenty of traction, and there's no slippage. It's much easier to find the benefit of the pose that way. But in a typical class I try desperately not to slip out of the pose. Rohit says one solution is to use a hand towel and risk the teacher's disapproval. He doesn't know of any benefit that comes from slipping out of this pose. Or, he recommends trying to dry the legs and arms as much as possible before this pose, but that's probably hopeless the way I sweat.

Back strengthening in the next pose, and maybe more...

174/255 pr 2 -- Posture Clinic Part 2

2009-09-13T17:21:00.002-05:00

I left off in the middle of the balancing series, keeping everyone on one leg. In this post, I will try to get to the end of the first session.

Standing Bow Pulling -- We spend lots of time discussing the details of this pose in class. For several of my teachers, this pose seems to be a big favorite. It's pretty. And it definitely appeals to ex-dancers. I've seen two people in class doing this to near full expression, with the legs in a standing split, and it is an amazing thing to see.

Given all the class attention this pose gets, we didn't spend much time on it in the posture clinic. The main point emphasized was getting the shoulders right and feeling a good pull/stretch in the shoulders. The error most people make is to keep the shoulders too square. Instead the extended hands shoulder is really reaching out and forward, and the other one is back, creating something like a twist in the torso. Other than that, the best advice I got on this pose is that it really is 50/50 between stretching forward from the arm and kicking back on the leg.

Balancing Stick -- By contrast, I don't usually hear much about this pose in class, and there was much to say in the clinic. First, its another pose where so much depends on the arm extension. Ideally, the arms should stay behind the ears, like in Half Moon. That's aspirational, but thats also how to set the intent.

Then, to avoid "broken umbrella" syndrome, the key is not to look down. Looking down causes the back to round. The trouble I have with looking forward, however, is that I lose any fixed point and it makes the balance really hard. That's something I need to work on.

Finally, once you have got a really nice traction going between your arms and your raised leg, is getting the hip square and parallel to the floor. It's really a ton to think about in a ten second pose. Fortunately, the pose hurts like hell, so the ten seconds seems like its alot longer...

Standing Separate Leg Stretching -- I've had the priorities wrong in this pose. Here's how it should go: 1) Feet parallel; 2) Legs straight with thighs engaged (Rohit hates the word "locked"); 3) Legs spread so wide that the head can touch the floor; and 4) Grab the heels and pull. I've been putting too much emphasis on the grip, and haven't been close to touching my head to the floor. Even spreading my legs as far as I can, I still can't get my head to the floor, but its within a couple of inches now, instead of being close to a foot or so.

About the feet being parallel. The dialogue says to pigeon toe your feet. Rohit believes this crept in the dialogue because most people tend to splay their feet when they take the big step, and also because most people feel like they are pigeon toed when their feet actually are parallel.

There are two problems with going pigeon toes in this pose. First, as I found out, it can cause sciatica. That's bad enough. Worse, one of the main benefits of the pose is to open up the hips. Pigeon toed feet will tend to close up the hips. They work against the benefit of the pose.

There is a good reason not to splay the feet outward. It protects against injury. But the right orientation of the feet is the same as Awkward, with the outsides of the feet parallel to each other. The dialogue gives a literally wrong instruction, probably because it is a shorthand that works well for most people. (I see people who, after hearing the instruction, will turn their feet in some but still have them slightly splayed.)

Triangle -- It's all in the set-up, and the set-up is painful. I already knew that. The other point that's worth mentioning is that, if you are doing the pose correctly, the only way that you will touch your foot is if you have an abnormally long forearm. Otherwise, if you have the elbow connected to the knee, and the thigh parallel to the floor, your hand just will never get there.

Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee -- Here, the tips were pretty much the same as I've heard in class. Make sure you roll down, no flat back. Empty your lungs on the way down to help with the rounding bend. Use the hands on the floor for leverage to get a better head/knee connection. This is preferable to putting the hands in prayer.

He had us do an interesting experiment. Stand straight with the arms up and in prayer position. Now start moving the arms forward some and back some. Find the place where the throat is most choked. For most people, the maximum choking comes with the arms forward a few degrees -- like 15 to 25 degrees forward. That choking is the main benefit of the pose. But the pretty pose has the arms reaching forward in prayer. This last step gives an incidental shoulder stretch, but actually takes away from the main benefit of the pose. So why do it? You are supposed to be choking your thyroid, and you can do that by bringing your hands by your feet and pushing on them to get an even better compression.

That was it for the first day. We covered alot of material. And I felt some strong opening up in my hips and upper back. After class, I had the pleasant aches that I associate with the first few weeks of class.

174/255 - Posture Clinic, Part 1

2009-09-12T21:37:00.003-05:00

9:30 am with Connease

11:15 am Posture Clinic with Rohit and Sherry (and Libby and Connease)

Since the posture clinic was coming directly after class, I intended to take it easy on myself. Yeah, right. Every time I say I will take it easy, I then start feeling guilty about it, and then I end up working even harder than I would have. It doesn't fail, and it was always the same for my "light" days when I was riding a bike. So I should know better by now.

Class was very good. Connease said one thing that had never occurred to me before. She said the arms in Eagle are a warm-up for Standing Head to Knee. You are opening up the shoulders in Eagle and that will help in the next pose with the grip. I hadn't ever thought about it. I have noticed that the Balancing Series actually begins a pose early. But here is yet another way of showing how well designed the series is.

I skipped only one set of Triangle this class, and nothing else. And I probably could have done both sets, and might have tried if the Posture Clinic was not coming right afterward.

There were close to twenty people in the clinic, including Libby and Connease. And there was even one woman who had never done a Bikram yoga class before. Talk about information overload! But she was a very good sport about the whole thing, and in some ways the clinic was much less physically overwhelming than a real class.

Rohit started with his main theme for the two days: Aim for the benefit. The first point is that we don't do asana so we can get good at asana. This seems totally obvious, but its so easy to become obsessed with getting better at the pose. And in doing that, we often lose sight of what the pose is trying to do for us in the first place. So the idea is to take the emphasis over what looks good in the orange room. And instead, to perhaps find ways that bring about more benefit, even though they might make the pose less pretty in the short term.

After this introduction, we went through the standing series up through Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee. We alternated demonstrations, questions, and some doing of the poses. Overall, it was a great experience. I learned a ton, and I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. So what did I learn?

Pranayama -- The big tip I got here was on how to get the throat working properly on the inhale. Rohit had us put a hand about 4-6 inches in front of our mouth and make the "HAH" sound while we pretended that our hand was a mirror that we were trying to fog. No big deal here, and I've never had a problem making the right kind of noise on the exhale anyways. For the inhale, he said to pretend that we were holding a mirror 4-6 inches behind our neck, and try to fog that one up. What that means is that on the inhale we are breathing through the back of the throat, and visualizing the breath being pushed backwards. It may not sound like it makes much sense, but it made a world of difference. The volume of noise I was making on the inhales basically doubled, and it's really coming from the throat and not the vocal chords.

Half Moon -- Not too much new here. The big tip for me here was that hip alignment is more important than shoulder alignment. So, first get the hips square. Then try to get the shoulders where they should be. But don't compromise the hips. If the shoulders won't go into the right line, ease off on the depth.

Backbending -- It's all about the arms and knees. Knees locked, butt squeezed, and bring the arms back. This one is hard for me, and I will probably need to hear it many, many more times.

First Forward Bend -- People put too much emphasis on locking the knees here, and there's tons of stuff to do before you get anywhere close to locking the knee. Rohit wanted me to really get my hands behind my feet, and I resisted. He asked what would happen if I crossed my pinkies, and I said: "Who could say?" So I crossed them, and I've never felt anything like it before in my shoulder blades. I'm still feeling it some. I've clearly resisted going this far with the grip because I need this stretch more than I would have imagined.

The other minor point here is that the knees and legs should ultimately come together. Mine tend to bow apart, and this pose is one of the worst for my knee right now.

Awkward 1 -- I thought that this pose focused on developing quad strength. Rohit says that Bikram says that the quads are incidental to the pose. It's really a standing Cobra, for the lower back and to open the hips some. (I've noticed sometimes when doing this well that my hips will POP when I come out of it, so that makes some sense to me.) The point here is to really focus on getting some kind of backbend in the pose.

Awkward 2 -- I've been doing this wrong. I go up to the balls of my feet. Rohit said to lift my heels higher, so I did. And I immediately said "That' hurts." So he smiled and said, "Congratulations, you've found the pose." I was sparing my bunyons. When I come up further, I'm putting real pressure on them, and it really does hurt some. But I can see the point. It's amazing how much avoidance is going on even in the poses that I thought I was doing well. That was another theme of the clinic: the series is bottomless, there is always more.

Awkward 3 -- Here, Rohit said the dialogue is not complete. He went back to his notes from the first teacher training. Bikram said to pigeon toe yourself before going down in this pose. It's to protect the knees. If you just bring the knees together without turning the feet at all, you are torquing them, and that has nothing to do with the pose. Turn your heels out a bit, and you can squeeze the legs together without putting the extra pressure on the knees. Given the current state of my knees, I like this tip.

Eagle -- Lots of time spent on the arms, and that's one area I don't have trouble with. The legs are another story. To get the hip flexibility, he suggested doing the leg wrap at home while lying down. It's worth a try.

Standing Head to Knee -- We spent a long time on this pose, which I guess is not surprising. Here's the big surprise: on the right side, I'm ready to go further that I've taken this pose, and I actually started dropping my elbows some in class.

Rohit stressed not bending too far forward when grabbing the foot in the set up. Lots of teachers insist that the thigh stay parallel with the floor and that the student hunch forward. Rohit doesn't know where this came from, and says it places too much stress on the back. It also leads to having the head be out ahead of the knee from the start, which makes it almost impossible to curl the head back to the knee as the final expression. He said he has watched Bikram and Rajhashree do the set up, and they both do it the way he recommends, and that's good enough for him.

In the second phase, we kick out and are supposed to then lock the kicking leg. Here, he says that its ideal to get the kicking leg completely straight. But, if you are pretty close, and kicking toward the wall with your heel as best you can, then its ok to start bending the elbows and arching the back forward, even if your leg isn't 100% perfect. That's why I can go a bit further than I thought in this pose. And to my surprise, going a bit further for some reason made the pose a little easier, and alot more fun.

That's enough for the first part. More later...

172/254 -Simplicity beyond Sophistication

2009-09-12T16:38:00.003-05:00

Thursday Off.

Friday 4:30 with Rohit

The weakness in my knees still shows itself in Triangle. At this point, its possible that my knee is actually strong enough to do it, and I'm harboring some fear that's preventing me. But soon, I think it will obviously be strong enough again, and then I will only have Toe Stand to work myself back into.

I got called out in the first part of Awkward pose. I've been awfully fond of how low I can go in this pose. There have been a few classes where Rohit has said everyone but Duffy needs to go down lower. And in this class, Rohit said I was down too low. Worse, he said going down too low puts the knees at risk. Yikes!

Everything else was pretty standard for a weekday 4:30 class. I had some bad reflux issues in the first forward bend, first set. But I got my breathing and everything else under control, and they didn't crop up again, not even in back strengthening. More and more, I'm becoming convinced that I have pretty complete control over these reflux issues, and that when it strikes, its because I'm doing something wrong in the pose -- typically not breathing properly.

The day 248 meditation begins with a wonderful quotation: "We must strive to reach that simplicity that lies beyond sophistication." Gates, in talking about this, mentions running into people who have no idea how complex life is. He says that for them life is quite simple because they "come from a place of love."

I don't doubt that Gates has met such people. He may even be right about why they can treat things with seeming simplicity. But I think he misses the point of the quote. The idea is that someone goes through all of the complexity, and after putting all the complex things together, ends up with the truly simple.

I've often admired this quality of accomplished simplicity, whether in music, in art, in writing, or in any other field where it can crop its head. Let's take music first, and I will give three examples. First, Mozart's music, especially his piano music, has a deceptive simplicity about it. Young students often play Mozart, because people mistakenly consider some of it to be easy.

A more concrete example is the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. The main melody is a single note repeated over and over. But out of this a completely simple melodic material, Beethoven creates music that is deeply moving and tragic. Here it is if you care to listen.

The other example is in much of the music by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter. When at their best, it seems like they were writing folk songs or traditional music. There best songs are ones that could have been around for literally hundreds of years. I'm thinking of songs like Ripple or Brokedown Palace or even Cumberland Blues.

In the arts, the sort of thing I have in mind are the wonderful later cut-out works by Matisse, or maybe the sculptures of Brancusi. In Chinese art, there are painters who work on painting a goldfish with a single brush stroke. I think its that sort of thing that the quotation is getting at.

I especially admire any writer who can write both simply and powerfully. In writing, I think of things like Frost's poetry, which seems so simple and often is not at all. Or maybe just my favorite poem by William Carlos Williams:

So much depends upon

A red wheel barrow

Glazed with rain water

Beside the white chickens

And the same sort of quality applies even to a field like Math, where a proof is a good thing, but a simple and elegant proof is something that mathematicians truly admire.

The same quality ends up being the goal of asana practice. We work and work on the details and on the techniques so that ultimately the poses might become simple. It's a simplicity that does not come naturally at first, but one that we might ultimately reach after we have wended our way through some sophisticated knowledge applied to the same poses.

171/252 -

2009-09-11T23:45:00.002-05:00

Tuesday Off.

Wednesday 4:30 with Amy

Wednesday's class was solid, and fairly typical of recent classes. My knee felt pretty good, but I still had to skip a set of Triangle and Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee.

Once again, I got a compliment in Standing Separate Leg Stretching. I still don't come close to getting my head to the floor, and I haven't noticed any progress in this pose, at least not in how far I go. Sometimes, I feel a better stretch in my inner thighs, and that's what it felt like in this class. I guess my form is improving here, and I can only have faith that that will lead to a deeper, better pose someday.

The day 246 meditation is about connection, and how breath leads to feeling the necessary connection. It makes a distinction between being present, and "right action as it is definced by our lif philosophy." According to Gates, the end or goal is to connect the moment to this philosophy. As the opening quote puts it, we need "to see both the forest and the tree."

As I see it, this is one of those overview meditations. I don't disagree with anything said here, but I don't have any substantial experience that fully relates to this sort of end. For me, its still pretty much aspirational.

Moving on to the day 247 meditation. (I need to catch up some, because I'm going to posture clinic both days this weekend, and I expect to have loads to think about and write about from those sessions.) Here, Gates talks about seeing his face in every face. He's talking about universal love, having the feeling that every living thing is family. In this meditation, he doesn't draw a distinction between a forest or a crowd.

This one comes a bit closer to home. Practice has made me more open to others, at least much of the time. This is one of the things that came totally unexpected, and its one of the best things about the practice. I can't go so far as to say that I see my face in trees, but I think I at least see the direction that Gates is heading in, or the point of his metaphor. But that assumes that it is a metaphor, and I can't say with certainty that that is the way Gate's means it. Rather, it is the best way for me to understand it right now. In a few years, maybe I will think differently?

170/250 - Flexible Mind

2009-09-10T23:35:00.003-05:00

Monday 10:30 am with Sherry.

Class was surprisingly full for a holiday, with about 38 people. I got a spot in the front right next to Lenette. It's always nice to practice next to a teacher. It brings a little extra energy for me. I know it probably shouldn't make a difference, but there it is.

Again, I was a bit concerned going into class because my knee wasn't feeling that great. And once again, the yoga defied my expectation and turned things around. After class my knee felt much, much better. And it has since. As for the class itself, it was pretty solid. I skipped one set of Triangle, and one of Standing Seperate Leg Head to Knee, both because I didn't want to push the knee too hard.

The day 245 meditation talks about how the asana develops flexibility in the body, but also by showing us that we can push our limitations, develops flexibility of the mind in the process. This is a great point, and I think Gates makes it well. Thinking about it, there are more parallels between the physical attributes we develop and the attibutes of mind or character that come along with it.

Take balance. It's hard to even separate physical and mental balance. If your mind is flopping all over the place, it's unlikely that you will be able to stay on one foot. And the opposite is probably true too: falling out of the pose again and again tends to lead to frustration and can easily put the mind out of balance. So, when we are cultivating balance in class, we are getting at both the mind and body at the same time.

And the same thing goes for strength. Think of Awkward pose, second part. Of course, this is working on inner thigh and quad strength. But the way to develop this strength is by also exercising focus and determination. Thus, yoga is developing physical and inner strength all at once.

Flexibility, strength, balance, stillness. A mental and spiritual aspect gets fostered for pretty much every physical virtue we try to cultivate. Of course, if we keep in mind that yoga is union, then this all makes perfect sense. But when you break it down this way, its a pretty amazing thing to behold.

169/249 - The Attention Yo-Yo

2009-09-09T21:28:00.002-05:00

Sunday Off.

My Friday class with Janna, or something after it, set my knee back quite a bit, so I decided to take an extra day off again. I'm feeling like quite the slacker.

The day 244 meditation describes an all too familiar process during class. For this post, I'm calling it the attention yo-yo. We might start out distracted, with the mind on all sorts of things that just happenned -- the driver that cut you off, someone who yelled at you at work, maybe just a feeling of being pressed by that inner to-do list. And then, as practice goes on, attention focuses on breath, on the feeling of the poses, on finding the edge. And then something breaks that connection, the mind starts wandering again, of maybe just starts cursing the heat. And again, with attention to the poses, we try to bring it back into control. And so our level of distraction tends to yo-yo up and down through a typical class.

Over time and with lots of focus, Gates says we gradually get more and more control over the yo-yo effect. We cultivate stillness in the poses, stillness between the poses, and that stillness gradually comes to our minds as well. I think this is an apt description, but its nothing like the linear progress a novitiate might suppose. Instead, I'm finding that there are whole weeks where my mind seems to be bouncing where ever it will, doing Walk the Dog, Loop the Loop, and maybe even Buddha's Revenge, and all sorts of other yo-yo tricks that I could never actually do. But over time, and I'm still very early in this process, I think there is genuine progress.

Gates also calls attention to savasana at the end of class as part of learning rest and peacefulness. Here's where Bikram really is different, and I think the difference really pays off. We get Savasana in the middle of class, and then a short savasana between all the floor poses. At first, these breaks were great because I was just so happy not to have to be doing another strenuous pose for a few seconds. I've come to appreciate them more, and when things are going well, the savasanas are genuinely energizing. We're told again and again in class that these short savasanas are one of things that truly sets the Bikram series apart from other styles of yoga.

The final savasana, however, gets kind of short shrift in Bikram. I've taken other classes where there's 5 minutes or more of simply lying still before class is over. And in those classes, the teacher usually emphasized that that time was the most important part of class. In Bikram, for most people, its two minutes or less and they are out of the room. Often its less.

Thinking about it, I realize I've recently been skimping on the Final Savasana. For a while, I told myself that I could not leave the room until it no longer felt like an escape. Now, I rarely feel like I have to "escape" the heat, or anything else, so that rule doesn't work well anymore. And I probably should come up with some other way to extend that time.

169/248 - Explorers and Adventurers

2009-09-08T16:18:00.002-05:00

Saturday Off.

In the day 243 meditation, Gates calls yogis explorers and adventurers of the body. He says that instead of traveling to distant places we set out to explore what is closest at hand. I really like this comparison.

There are a few ways to travel. Frequently, people opt for quick tours, with lots of their compatriots. They may ride a bus, or a train, or cruise on a ship. If so, they are likely to stick together with people they know, or at least with people from their own country. They will see some wonderful sights, and perhaps have a guide tell them about it. And they might have a wonderful time. When they come home, they might even have some snapshops: that's mommy standing in front of the Eiffel Tower -- the French were so rude; or there's dad, throwing a coin into Trevi Fountain. Didn't you just love Roman Holiday?

I don't really have as much disdain for this type of traveling as it may sound. And I certainly have nothing against Roman Holiday. (I do, however, absolutely hate those kinds of snapshots.) But there is an alternative to the Six Night, Seven Cities tour.

I took my first trip to Europe when I was nineteen. I rented a student garret in Paris for the full month of June, and stayed in the city and its environment. I walked, alot. I started frequenting the same cafe and getting to know some of the people there a bit. I played my guitar in the subways and in front of the Pompidou center to make money for a slightly better dinner. I had a blast, and I like to think that I actually absorbed a tiny bit of France in the process.

Now, I prefer to find a spot or a couple of spots on a vacation and stay there. To eat, I do my best to find out where the locals go, and I have found wonderful, small restaurants this way. In Ravello, Italy, there's a family owned restaurant called Compa Cosima (and I'm slightly guessing at the name). In town, they know it as Netta's place. She's the owner and learned to cook from her father, who was the owner before her. They serve the best seafood and pasta you can imagine, and Netta treats the customers, at least any who return, as her kids. Last time we were there, we stayed in Ravello for almost a week and ate at Netta's four nights. By the last meal, she was asking us the night before what she could make especially for us.

The town itself was similarly homey. There's a town square where basically everyone goes to hang out and socialize in the evenings. There might be a group of men playing cards and talking trash to each other, while drinking the evening away. There is sure to be some kids making up games with each other on the spot. Elderly couples just sitting on the church steps, watching their grandkids and enjoying the evening.

On one magical night, there was a local band, all brass instruments. They preformed a brass arrangement of highlights from Rigeletto, by Verdi. And, they were good. Probably the whole town turned out. The people knew each other, but were equally welcoming of strangers, like me and my wife.

This kind of travelling is quite different, and I think it has an element of what Gates is talking about. To really get to know someplace, you have to drop your preconceptions about what it should be like, and allow yourself just to be present in the environment. In travelling, to me, what this means is that you have to understand the difference between on the one hand "doing the Louvre" simply to be able to say that you had done it, and you were disappointed in the Mona Lisa. Or on the other hand, going to the little museum where David stands, and just sitting there for an hour or two to bask in the work, and then coming back again the next day to take in a little more because its just so freaking awesome.

And that's the way it is with yoga as well. In asana, instead of trying to become present and allow ourselves to absorb the daily feel of Paris or the joy of a summer night on the square in Ravello, instead of that, we are trying to accomplish the same thing with our bodies. Instead of trying to simply do some exercise and get it over with, we are trying to learn how to bask in the feeling of our limbs aligning as they should, our muscles stretching just at their edge, or our breath making a difference because its just so freaking awesome.

Yeah, I liked this meditation.

169/247 - Sustained Attention

2009-09-06T22:16:00.003-05:00

Friday 4:30 pm with Janna

Class was great. I made it all the way through without skipping anything. I didn't feel hampered by my knee at all. I felt like I'm making progress in Half Moon, and in the backbends. I put myself in the hottest part of the room. Janna had the heat cranked, and it didn't bother me at all. I came out of class feeling great and very pleased with myself.

And then, a while later, my knees started to ache, and I have no idea what I did to them. This time it wasn't just the injured one, though it hurt more. Both of them had a kind of deep ache in them, and it didn't make much difference whether I was bearing weight or staying still. Very strange, and I'm not sure what to make of it. But it means I'm in store for some more rest.

The day 242 meditation asks us to conduct an experiment. First he says to let your mind wander, either over past events or over your expectations. He suggests that you notice how readily your emotions track the quality of the things you remember -- happy memories tend to yield happy thoughts, and sad memories are just that. Gates says that the emotions here are real, but they are based on a fantasy. The danger, he says, is that our emotions become a slave to the "soap operas" that our imagination produces.

He then contrasts this with sustaining your attention on something you are doing here and now. When we do this, we might still feel joyful, sad, angry. But in this case, we know that the basis for the emotion is real and that we can work with it.

So what? It's tempting to think that happiness based on a fantasy is just fine, and may be preferable to some of what reality pushes at us. That was my first reaction. Gates' point, however, is that when we stay in the present we can work with it, and this gives us room to grow and develop. Sticking with our imagination and our memories leads to a kind of stasis. It gives us nothing to grab onto, nothing to change, and no way to grow.

Asana practice gives us the laboratory for learning how to work in the present. And it shows us the changes that become possible by simply staying present. And I think this is very useful.

But I think Gates misses out a bit on the importance of daydreaming. In the right perspective, a good daydream can be a very nice, pleasant and satisfying thing. In fact, I think where the real difficulty lies is when people start confusing or intermingling the two. There's nothing wrong with retreating to a very nice daydream. And there's certainly nothing wrong with living and working in the present. The problem arises when people let their daydreams, their memories, and their illusions interfere with their everyday life.

168/246 -My Inner Lenny Mintz

2009-09-05T23:20:00.002-05:00

Thursday Off --

In the day 241 meditation, Gates talks about how sometimes his best practices happen when he decides to take it easy. He explains that, ordinarily, he is ruled or guided by an inner coach. That coach is sort of an amalgam of his high school sports coaches and his army drillmasters. When he decides not to try so hard, sometimes an amazing thing happens and his practice simply opens up for him.

The coach from my past, the one who drives an inner voice that I would be much better off without, was a particularly nasty, bitter little man named Lenny Mintz. He first coached me in 9th grade football, and then again he coached varsity basketball.

For me, the keynote for the football season came when Mintz gave a long speech to the team praising one player for being the only one on the team who had never missed a practice. He basically was telling everyone how noble and dedicated that was, and what slackers and degenerates the rest of us were. Every day before practice, I went to the locker room, deciding whether I was going to go to practice or quit the team. And every day, I went to practice, without missing one. So after this speech, when I got a chance to be alone with him, I said to him: "You know, I never missed a practice either." He shrugged his shoulders and said, "I was talking about someone who made a difference to the team."

Later, coaching basketball, he would have us do sprints until a few people had to run into the lockers to puke. When they would come back out, wiping the puke off their chins and pretending to be ready to go, he'd make sure to tell the person how worthless they were, how they didn't deserve to be on the team and should probably just quit. He took some delight in running "offensive foul" drills, which were basically an excuse to let players knock each other to the floor.

A friend of mine, who was an excellent player who could have played top notch college ball, broke his arm before his senior season and missed all but the last two games. In one of those two games, largely because of my friend's amazing play on defense, we beat the number one team in the state that year. Mintz refused to give him any help in getting a college scholarship, because my friend "ruined his (Mintz') season" by breaking his arm and missing most of the season. Why should Mintz help my friend when my friend hadn't done anything for Mintz?

That was the main coach I had in Junior High and High School. And unfortunately, he's been a big part of my "inner coach" for years and years after that. Very often, when on an exercise program, I can hear those encouraging words: "You suck. You're worthless. You don't deserve to be here. I don't even know why you even try. Why don't you just quit, already."

And yes, I have known for years and years that he was just a petty little man, not worth my attention. In fact, I didn't even go out for basketball in my senior year after having played varsity in my junior year, precisely because I no longer wanted to have anything to do with him. But even with that knowledge, he managed to worm his way into my mind.

One of the things I love about yoga, and Bikram in particular, is that this my inner Lenny Mintz almost never says a word while practicing. That's one of things I love about the dialogue. Listening to it makes it a bit more difficult to carry on an extensive inner monologue. It shuts Mr. Mintz up.

168/245 - More is More

2009-09-05T00:01:00.003-05:00

Wednesday 4:30 pm with Amy

For the first time since I tweaked my knee, I made it through a full class without skipping anything (except subbing Tree for Toe Stand). The extra attention I paid to detail seems to have paid off some. I got compliments from Amy in poses where I usually hear nothing.

First, in the first forward bend. I felt like I was actually getting some lengthening in my lower back, and Amy said the pose was "beautiful." That's not something I thought I'd ever hear about this pose.

Then I got a compliment going down in the third part of Awkward. This one was a little funny. I was not sure how strong my knee was, so I took an extra long time going down, what seemed like forever. And now I know that that's what they've been asking for all along. Ten counts actually isn't long enough, and they really mean it when they say the slower the better here.

And then, I got some more nice praise for Camel. I really like this pose again, and I've gotten to where I look forward to it. Strangely, the pose that now bugs me the most is the last part of Wind Relieving. My knees start to slip out of my elbows, my upper back isn't really open enough to relax into the pose. I begin to lose the pose, and I never know whether to set up again, or to try to hang on for dear life.

In the day 240 meditation, Gates talks about doing doubles. For Gates, a double is a morning practice and then an afternoon or evening practice. He likes doing them from time to time because the morning practice acts as a nice warm up, and then he can go even further in the evening practice.

I've only done a handful of doubles, and they were all in my first challenge. I liked doing them, but for whatever reason, I've had little desire to do one outside of a challenge. A while ago, Cisco told me the whole practice escalates to a new level when you start doing more regular doubles. I was a bit skeptical, and he said that I just hadn't had enough of the kool-aid yet.

Of course, the main trouble is finding the time. A morning and afternoon class, with driving time and cool down, takes close to five hours. A back to back double would save about an hour. But for Gates, I don't think a back to back counts as his sort of double. Instead, I think he would view it as an extra long single practice.

Anyway, the double is one way in which, as the quote at the start of the meditation says: "Sometimes more is more."

167/244 - When to Practice

2009-09-03T21:21:00.002-05:00

Tuesday off.

The day 239 meditation deals with the very practical issue of when is the best time of day to practice. The opening quote says to practice before 5:30 in the morning. I agree. I always practice before 5:30 in the morning, in two senses. First, if I practice and then wait a certain amount of time, 5:30 in the a.m. will eventually roll around. Of course, when it does , I will almost certainly be asleep. But, in a literal sense, I practiced before 5:30 am. And then, of course, when I'm done with practice, 5:30 am will roll around somewhere on the planet, so again, I practiced sometime before 5:30 am, somewhere.

But, if the idea is to wake up, practice and be done with it before 5:30 am, that's both not possible with Bikram, and it wouldn't happen even if it were possible. Amy would have to have 4 am classes. She'd have to find someone crazy enough to teach them. And I'd have to wake up at 3:30 am to get to them. That would put my bedtime before my dinnertime, and while that would probably be great for the waistline, I don't see it happening any time in this life.

We do have a 6 am class and I keep saying I want to try it, but that's a noble thought that is easily repressed, especially at 5:30 am on the few times that I set the alarm to try it. I'm glad we have the 6 am class, because there may come a time when I need to go to fit a class into my schedule. Fortunately, I have been spared that necessity so far.

Gates says he used to do early practice and loved it. It woke him up and got him ready for the rest of the day. The downside was that he was much less flexible and capable in the poses. This mirrors my experience as well. In Bikram, there are some other considerations for a morning class. It's more difficult to be sure of how well hydrated you are before a morning class, and that can be some cause for concern. But on the plus side, my stomach is always empty for morning classes, and that means having no concerns over spitting up anything.

Evening classes have kind of the opposite advantages and disadvantages. The day is done, and Gates points out that there can be some trepidation during the day about whether to go to class. That's certainly true. Flexibility and strength are both much better for me at night. Hydration is usually easily managed with drinking water through the day, but spitting up can be an issue for me (especially at the 4:30 class).

The Bikram difference in the evening, or at least something that Gates doesn't mention, is what to do with the incredible energy you get from class. Often, still, I can take an 8:15 class and find myself wide awake at 2 or 3 in the morning. I never have this problem with the earlier classes, and there are things that can help even after the 8:15 class -- a long final Savasana, a long hot shower, a nice book to read before bed.

For me, I don't think there is a right or wrong time for practicing. They are simply different. And frankly, I like mixing them up. I like the feeling of going to a Saturday morning class and working myself through the morning stiffness. I like the peace and energy that it brings today. And I like just as much the satisfaction of going to an evening class and being totally on top of everything. Then, coming out of the class and feeling like I've made a very satisfying end to the day.

167/243 - Recreating ourselves

2009-09-02T21:42:00.003-05:00

Monday 4:30 pm with Rohit

My knee felt fantastic on Sunday, but then something backtracked while sleeping, and it was sore going into class. And then class worked its magic, and I felt much better afterward than before.

I'm getting closer to doing the full class. I made it through both sets of Triangle in this class, and then had to skip out on one of the Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee sets, because I was a bit afraid of losing strength and falling out sideways. I came close to making it through Eagle on my standing right leg as well.

Other than that, I don't remember much about class. The temperature was good. I felt good. I think back strengthening was good, especially for an afternoon class. There were no reflux problems at all. Instead of being a constant, as it was for a long time, it's now pretty much a hit or miss thing.

I'm not skipping over the day 237 meditation. I actually discussed it out of turn, here. So I'm now skipping to day 238. It starts with a quote about how we are literally different every time we come to the mat. Every day, millions of cells die and fall off of us, while millions more grow to replace them. We replace our eyes, in their entirety, every couple of days. On top of that there is all the metabolized food passing through us, always different (if we're lucky), and always having different effects.

The point I take from this is that in a very real sense, every practice is new. And as we make progress, or hit setbacks, the newness of each practice becomes even more striking. Part of this happens because of the physical changes that occur. But it's at least as much a result of growing awareness. Over time, as we get more in tune with the way things are, with the feeling of particular types of alignment, or of different ways of stretching or easing into a pose, we also gain a greater awareness of what's actually happening, and this growing awareness renews the practice itself.

I've seen this just over the past few weeks. The knee injury really limited the first backbend I was doing. I just wasn't seeing as far down the wall as I was used to because leaning back the way I had did something to engage the inside of my right knee. So, instead of just giving up, I tried exploring ways of opening my upper and middle back, relaxing into the pose in a way that might get me a little deeper without having any impact on the knee. And I focused on really squeezing my hands together and working even more on the arms. And it's helped. It's shown new aspects to a pose that I thought I was doing pretty well in. As my knee has started to come back to normal, I think that the attention I've paid to the other aspects of the pose will pay off in a deeper and more well rounded pose.

Gates says the same process opens up new psychological and spiritual processes. The asana practice gives us something like a blueprint for learning how to re-create and reinvent ourselves. And I can see how it might be possible to generalize the same process of stepping back, re-evaluating, and taking a somewhat different and more helpful course. The new course would take into account how things actually are, rather than some idea of how they should be.

166/242 - Attention to relationships

2009-09-01T23:37:00.002-05:00

Sunday off.

I planned on going to class. First in the morning, but I couldn't wake up, and when I did, I still had the headache I had when I went to sleep. Then in the afternoon, and I was on my way to class, but the headache, which had gone away for a few hours, returned with a vengeance. It was bad enough that I didn't think I would even make it through pranayama. So I took Sunday off as well.

That's two days in a row again, and I was feeling very guilty about it. But then, my knee thanked me. It made tremendous progress with the extra day off, and now its almost back to normal. So maybe the screaming headache was trying to tell me something.

I think the day 236 meditation is really funny. Gates says that yoga seems to present us with a "bewildering array of practices and priorities." But, he assures us, the truth is much simpler. We just need to focus our attention on relationships and bring the yamas and niyamas to our relationships. Which relationships? As examples, he mentions our relationship to our breath, to the bottoms of our feet, to the ant crawling across the kitchen floor, to our families, to God. And it's with the examples that I laugh. Yes, its simple, but it doesn't seem to me to be any less bewildering. In short, we need to focus our attention to every relationship we have to every single thing no matter how big or small, no matter how concrete or abstract. That's a whole lot of attention to focus...

I'm not saying I disagree with him on this. And in concept, I suppose it is fairly simple. But it also strikes me as enormously daunting. I'm not sure that a focused mind could really concentrate on each and every relationship individually. Maybe that's where surrendering and becoming one with things comes into play. You try so hard to focus on all of those relationships that eventually you have to just give up, and let go, and perhaps that's where it all comes together. Or maybe its possible to develop a much more focused mind than I have.

The point that I think is very interesting is his insistence that learning this focus is connected to our time on the mat. And here, I basically see the point. We focus intensely on ourselves, and ultimately we should be coming more aware not just of an individual part of the pose, but of the pose as a whole. And I can see how that development of increasing awareness might expand even further outward. So, I can see the direction that he's pointing in, but the destination strikes me as being way over the horizon, at least for me.

166/241 - Spiral Lines

2009-08-31T21:50:00.002-05:00

Saturday Off.

The day 235 meditation introduces another type of line in body work. These are spiral lines. There are at least two of them. They run from the arch of the foot, through the front of the leg, then travels up around the body and ends up at the base of the ear on the same side it started. I don't have that clear a picture of this line, and its not clear to me to what extent a spiral is a line in the first place, but I think I get the basic point.

Gates says that we use these lines of connective tissue when we do twists. In Bikram, there are really only three twists. Standing Bow involves a very slight twisting of the spine. Triangle is a bit more pronounced. And then there is the final spinal twist. In the last one, we're told to twist like we are wringing out a towel. Even though we haven't been told this way, I like to think of my spine resembling a double helix, or recombinant DNA, in this pose. In this way, I get a bit of a charge about trying to mold my spine into the basic shape of life.

Given that, I think its nice to try to picture these spirals of connective tissue that weave through our bodies. In the end Gates talks about growing used to the spiraling energy that flows through our body. I guess the picture of these spirals of connective tissue might help with that, but I still like the image of twisting my spine into DNA better.

166/240

2009-08-29T22:54:00.002-05:00

Friday 4:30 with Sherry

I held back a bit more in class. I eased off on anything that made my knee feel funny. This meant doing less in Awkward, not crossing the left leg in Eagle, and skipping Triangle and Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee. Taking it a bit easy helped; I felt much better after class and have felt even better since. Right now, I feel about where I was before I re-tweaked the knee.

The day 234 meditation again addresses fascia and connective tissue. The point is that asana is not just muscular effort. Instead, as we develop, we can learn to spread our attention throughout the fascia, so that we are not just focusing on some isolated area. Rather, the goal is to become aware of all the connective tissue at once.

Gates quotes Iyengar: "Where does the body end and the mind begin? Where does the mind end and the spirit begin? They cannot be divided..." The fascia connect all parts of the body. And if yoga is the union of mind and body, it makes sense that awareness through the fascia would help develop this union. So far, so good.

Here's the problem? How do we become aware of the fascia in the first place. I never even knew I had plantar fascia until it started hurting so badly. I know how to move a finger, or move some bones, or how to flex some muscles by bringing my attention to them. But I simply don't know what I'm looking for when I'm supposed to feel this kind of connective tissue. Thus, aside from doing asana practice as best I can, I really don't have any clear idea how to bring my awareness to the connective web Gates talks about. I don't doubt it's important, but right now I feel its sort of like Gates is trying to describe the colors of a sunset to a blind man.

165/239 - Cultivating Stability

2009-08-28T15:38:00.002-05:00

Thursday off.

My knee hurt, so I'm still on the day on/day off routine. I hope to slip through that today and tomorrow.

The day 233 meditation talks about the difference between plants and animals, at least in relation to their connective tissue.

Plant's mainly use cellulose. They put down roots. They stay in place. Almost everything about them is designed to increase stability. Yes, some will flex better in the wind instead of being blown over. So while stability in plants may allow for a decent amount of flexibility, mobility is still not a common or favorable attribute.

Animals use collagenous tissue to create a connective net that runs throughout the body. It fovors mobility, and animals achieve a kind of dynamic stability. Stability in animals requires near constant maintenance. Just look at your foot and ankle when doing any balancing pose. It's amazing, while staying still, the activity and twitching involved in the small muscles and tendons. I've watched people with excellent balance, and there is still this endless parade of corrections. I've tried to minimize these little corrections, with some but very little success. Balancing, which is one way of finding stability, does involve constant maintenance.

Applying this to asana practice, Gates recommends approaching class with the goal of finding stability (stillness?) in the poses. He says that if we find stability, strength will come, and so will come the room to explore the pose and find additional length. I'm headed off to class in just a few minutes, and I can't wait to try this.

165/238 -

2009-08-27T10:23:00.003-05:00

Wednesday 4:30 with Amy -

Have you ever had a song stuck in you head during practice? Songs float around in my head all the time, and often one gets stuck. Very often its a song I detest. If I ever hear the them to the TV show The Nanny, for example, I have to find something really good and lasting to wash it out of my head. And usually its just snippets -- perhaps only a line. For a long time, when asked to go down in a forward bend, I would hear the lyrics "And lower down, and lower down again..." for St. Stephen by the Grateful Dead.

Yesterday, it wasn't just snippets, but an entire song. Fortunately, it's a song I love. And in an odd way, it didn't really act as a distraction. It didn't stop me from listening to the dialogue, or from staying with it and giving my best. I just had my own soundtrack loop running on again and again. And since I really like the song, it actually made for a pleasant, if slightly weird class.

If you are interested, the song was Que Reste t'il de Nos Amours. This you tube clip is from a film version of Gatsby that I haven't seen. I knew the song first from another movie: Stolen Kisses (Baisers Vole), one of the most purely charming movies ever made, by Francois Truffaut. The thing about this song is it somehow makes me completely nostalgic for a time and place completely outside my experience. I think of the song as typically and wonderfully French. The very light swing is almost perfect, the voice completely relaxed and natural. And now that I put it on the YouTube version, it will be swirling in my head for another day.

Even with the accompaniment, class went really well. Standing series basically flew by. I made it through both sets of Triangle, but it put enough strain on my knee that I had to bail on the first set of Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee.

In the floor series, I started to think that it was a little cool in the room. Then Amy cranked up the heat and it got very challenging. I had my best Locust in a long time. And both Camel and Rabbit were very good. In Camel, I held the second set for a bit extra because it felt so good. And I don't know if I've ever done that before.

Then, somewhere very late in the second set, I tweaked my knee a little again. It was a little thing, and I barely noticed it. But I was somewhat hobbled coming out of class, and it continued to hurt the rest of the night. I don't think it's a big setback, and I don't know how I could have avoided it (short of not doing class at all). I'm not going to worry about it. I'm still way ahead of where I was just a week ago.

The day 232 meditation (I'm back tracking from yesterday's error, and I will try to catch up) discusses the "deep front line". As Gates puts it, this line connects the things we have direct control over to the things that we don't. Those things are basically internal organs. The way to open up the deep front line is with backbends. So basically, this meditation is saying that backbends are good for you because they give a way to expand the area around the internal organs, and fight the ongoing effects of gravity.

Again, I agree with the point. The Bikram series is just loaded with backbends: Half Moon, Awkward first part, Standing Bow, Cobra, Locust, Full Locust, Floor Bow, Fixed Firm and Camel are all backbending poses to one degree or another. And the more I do the series, the more I seem to both like and appreciate the back-bending. But I still am at a bit of a loss to understand what adding the inclusion of the terminology "deep front line" adds. I guess I'm just going to have to be patient with this part of the book. I never did have much use for scholasticism.

164/237 - An Intuition Toward Health

2009-08-26T21:37:00.003-05:00

Tuesday Off.

(Note: I messed up the order of the meditations. Instead of proceeding to the day 232 meditation, as I should have, I skipped to day 237. This is a pretty clear indication that I need to catch up already. Sorry.)

The day 232 (actually 237) meditation has a very interesting and powerful idea. Gates says that everyone has an intuition towards health. But somehow, through day to day life, we get disconnected from it. Asana practice puts us back in touch with this intuition.

In some ways, I think this is exactly right. Asana practice has definitely steered me toward healthier eating, healthier sleep habits, and other small things that have made improvements in my physical health. I think most people can see this aspect of asana practice.

Gates takes this further. Look at people who are connected with others, people who are kind, people who tend to care about others, happy people. People like this also tend to be healthier. In the west, health is pretty much defined negatively -- its the absence of sickness. In yoga, perfect health comes when the mind, body, and soul are one and the person has achieved complete balance. And that is the aim of asana practice. It will not only help straighten out your illnesses, but it also tends to make people kinder, more co-operative, and more at peace with themselves. So, it helps point us toward true health, and not simply the absence of illness.

164/236 - Superficial Lines

2009-08-25T23:04:00.003-05:00

Monday 4:30 with Cisco

Cisco led another good class. This time, his theme was stillness between poses, which is right up my alley. He confessed to adjusting his towel with his feet between poses. I thought I had the stillness thing pretty much licked, but I still find myself fidgeting with my shorts when I'm not thinking about it.

I'm still feeling some limitation from my knee, but it's not keeping me out of any poses. It's holding me back some in the standing poses, with one notable exception. In Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee, I've been going into the pose with a straight forward leg, because it hurts the knee to bend it. Of course, this is where the pose is supposed to end up, and it turns out I can go into it without the bent knee if I really apply myself. Today, with my bad leg forward, Cisco still said that I was doing this pose beautifully. So that's one pose where the knee injury has actually led to progress.

The high point in the class came somewhere toward the end of the floor series. I was coming out of one pose feeling a bit sorry for myself. My eyes met Ciscos, and I just started to laugh a bit and smiled. A little later Cisco said, for all the class to hear: "I love it when Duffy smiles in class. Most people look at me and all I see are daggers in their eyes." Bikram likes to call the room his "torture chamber," but its really only torture if you let it be. It can be just as easy, and much nicer, to treat the class as being fun and a bit lighthearted. And it's possible to do that without compromising the class itself.

The day 231 meditation returns to the body work ideas of a "superficial front line" and a "superficial back line." Forward bends (down dog is the example) open the back line, and backbends (up dog) open the front line. Maybe so. But I've got some problems even with this. The back line runs from the bottom of the feet. Well, what about the separate leg poses? Is it one line, or does it somehow split? The superficial back line makes sense if you are talking about a pose where the feet are together nicely, but it doesn't fit for other poses.

And then, what about compressions. In Rabbit, does it make sense to talk about a "line." The goal of the pose is to make your back look like a nice arc, not at all like a straight line. Now this is probably picking at nits, and I'm pretty confident that there could probably be some good explanation and useful analysis from these body work ideas. But, at this point in the meditations, I think they basically present many more questions than they answer.

163/235 Body Worker "Lines"

2009-08-23T22:51:00.002-05:00

Sunday Off

The day 230 meditation talks about how recent discoveries in body work fit nicely with asana practice. Gate's uses the seated forward bend as his example and talks about expanding the "superficial back line."

The body work information sounds very interesting, and sometime I might want to read more about it. And I have no reason to doubt the usefulness that Gates finds in this way of thinking when applied to asana practice. Gates says its particularly good for designing a series of poses. That makes me think that it would be very interesting to see this sort of analysis applied to Bikram's 26+2.

But beyond that, this meditation does nothing for me. I know nothing about body work, much less about recent developments in it. So explaining asana by making reference to body work does nothing for me (except perhaps show me yet another area where I am ignorant, and whet my appetite to learn more about body practice). Aside from that, it simply sounds a bit like throwing on a layer of jargon on top of something and saying "Voila! An explanation."

163/234 More on Connective Tissue

2009-08-23T16:10:00.002-05:00

Saturday 9:30 am with Connease

The pattern of resting the knee one day and going to class is still helping, but I'm starting to get anxious about skipping so many days. I know there's nothing wrong with it, but I feel a bit odd on my days off.

I saw big improvements again in class. I did a full set of Triangle. The lunge on the right side was just a bit off, and I was very wary about balance one I tipped my arms. But at least it was possible again. Even more amazing, I did a set of Eagle, keeping my right knee bent somewhat and trying to wrap the left over. Now, the only pose which I fail to attempt is Toe Stand. I'm still not 100% by any means, but the recovery seems to be proceeding faster than I anticipated.

I came across something new in the first standing backbend. At the start, we are supposed to drop the head back and let it relax. Ordinarily, I just relax and let the head fall back some. Yesterday, I not only relaxed the head, but also something in my upper spine sort of between my shoulders, so the dropping back came from a bit lower down than usual. I don't really know what I did, but thats pretty much what it felt like. And it seemed to get much more of a bend in my cervical spine than usual. It also got much more of a stretch in the muscles under my shoulders near my armpits (maybe the deltoids?). Does this make sense to anyone? If so, have I stumbled on something that's good, or am I compromising the intended form? I'm going to ask a teacher in my next class, but I'm happy to get anyone elses input as well.

The day 229 revisits the idea of connective tissue. First, Gates says that the connective tissue in our bodies is all of a piece. Remove everything else, and you would still have a structure that resembled the body itself. Then, he says that main function of asana practice is to expand the connective tissue -- all of it. After it expands, it then contracts again, but doesn't fall back into the same rut that it was stuck in. It stays somewhat expanded.

I like the description, but I don't actually know if its true. It sounds a bit like the "tourniquet" theory we hear all the time in Bikram. It's another theory to explain some of the benefits of asana practice, but as far as I know, there's no proof for it.

This makes me wonder what the point of these theories is. The asana practice works. If you want proof, try it. It's so much easier to prove that asanas work than it is trying to explain how or why they work. With the idea of expanding connective tissue -- maybe thats so for the flexy poses, but what about the strength oriented poses? And what about the Bikram poses that are aimed at compressing the spine and choking the throat to get at the thyroid? Every pose in the Bikram series has some stretching in it as well, even if its only a part of the set-up. But stretching is only a part of each pose. With the exception of Fixed Firm, every pose in the Bikram series also has a strengthening element. The idea of expanding the connective tissue as the main focus of asana practice, it seems to me, neglects the strength and balance aspects of the poses, unless I'm missing something.

162/233 - Connective Tissue

2009-08-22T14:38:00.002-05:00

Friday off.

The day 228 meditation continues on the same discussion of the difference between asana practice and other exercise. Gates now focuses on the web of connective tissue which "gives shape to the innumberable spaces within the body..." As we talked about earlier, one of the big problems with the Nautilus approach to health was that it focused completely on a single, isolated muscle and completely neglected the supporting muscles and connective tissue. Thus, people overdeveloped muscles without doing anything to build up the strength and connections between muscles.

When you look at the chronic problems people develop as they get older, it seems pretty obvious that we should pay much more attention to the connective tissue. How many older people do you know who have serious problems because of weak hamstrings, or weak calves, or any other particular muscle? Maybe there are some, but the number is probably pretty low. Now, how many older people do you know who chronically suffer from bad knees, or a bad hip, or frozen shoulders? People who get joint replacements. People with carpal tunnel syndrome? Plantar fascia-tis? Lots and lots of the serious physical impairments that people get have to do with either the joints or the fascia -- the connective tissue that Nautilus figured out how to isolate out of the picture.

The stretches that most people do to warm up for exercise are largely directed at isolating and stretching a particular muscle as well. I'm thinking of things like the standard runners' stretches for hamstrings, or the leaning against the wall with one leg back and foot on floor to isolate and stretch the calf muscle. Then, often as not, the exercises that people do after stretching are damaging to the joints, and not restorative. I'm thinking mostly of running and other joint pounding sports. In this model, there's little or nothing to help people with their connective tissue.

I had plantar fascia-tis for years. It can be very painful, to the point of being debilitating. It's a problem that has grown more frequent in professional atheletes. Tim Duncan, of the San Antonio Spurs, has sat out long stretches of a couple of seasons trying to deal with the same problem. I'd talked to doctors about what to do about it. The recommended more comfortable shoes and rest. They didn't have any other solutions for it. With tons of money and an NBA championship at state, I imagine Tim Duncan got even better, and more current advice than I did. But the advice didn't help him all that much, either.

Bikram cured my plantar fascia-tis within a few months. How? I don't know exactly. But my guess is that the poses caused me to rebuild and redistribute things within my feet. This happened without putting any undue stress on the fascia. In other words, Bikram worked to help the connective tissue in my feet while it was working on all the other connections in my body. It's possible that Bikram helped my feet because it was straightening out problems elsewhere -- in my hips and my spine, for example. And as my overall alignment improved, toes to forehead, bones to skin, the problem with my plantar fascia just melted away. Whatever the reason, it's abundantly clear that Bikram eliminated a problem which left my doctors helpless.

162/232 - Isolation in Anatomy

2009-08-21T14:27:00.003-05:00

Thursday 8:15 pm with Amy

I made a bit more progress this class with the right knee. The balancing poses were better, and I'm a little less reluctant about falling out of them. I managed to get up out of the third part of Awkward. And I actually balanced on my right leg in Eagle, with the knee bent some. I couldn't hold it the full time, but last class I couldn't even pick the left foot up. I sat out one set of Triangle, because I still can't deal with the lunge position. But that's the only real sitting out that I did.

And I got some compliments -- in Locust, which is no big surprise. But also in Standing Separate Leg Stretching. My head still feels like its about four feet from the floor in this pose (actually, about 6 inches or so, I think). So I know the compliment was not about my depth. And that means that my form must have been good, which is always nice to know.

The day 227 meditation offers some further criticism of the Western medical approach. Gates talks about how Western medical thinking tends to isolate parts. If there is a problem, it tries to locate which part is causing the problem and then tries to fix that part, very often in isolation from the rest of the body.

He uses the Nautilus weight machines as an example of the result of this way of thinking. I did Nautilus routines back when these machines were new. The system claimed a complete approach to fitness by using its series of 12-14 machines. Each machine would exercise one muscle through its full range of motion. You would do one set on this muscle to exhaustion in 8-12 reptitions, and then proceed to the next machine, working from the largest muscles to smaller ones. If I remember correctly, the progression was Glutes, Quads, Hamstrings, Lats, Lats (pulldown), Pecs, Shoulders, Biceps, Triceps, Abs.

A while later, people started to notice injuries occuring, because a main muscle got developed, but the supporting muscle groups, or supporting joint tissue, didn't get any similar or balanced development. Around that time, free weights started to come back into fashion, precisely because they didn't force an isolation of a particular muscle, and instead tended to work groups of muscles better. Even then, there's still a huge danger in weight training from overdeveloping one set of muscles, and ignoring the balance that should exist between various muscle groups.

Asana practice exists at the other extreme from Nautilus training. When doing the asana correctly, the entire body gets involved. Instead of focusing on isolation, asana practice focuses on integration. In an odd way, this point gets driven home to me more clearly any time I get another minor injury. When some individual part of the body is hurting, there just is a natural tendency to focus on that part during practice. The question comes up: Which poses use that part, and how? The amazing thing is that the answer to the first question is pretty much always the same. No matter what I've hurt, I discover that EVERY pose uses that part of the body, much more than I'd been aware of before. I hope that at least part of that awareness sticks even after the injury disappears. Thus, while Nautilus training focused on treating the parts of the body in isolation; asana practice stresses on learning the complete interconnectedness of the body in each of the poses.

161/231 - Healing

2009-08-20T10:56:00.002-05:00

Wednesday Off

No, the title of this post is not about my knee, though its coming along very nicely. Instead, the day 236 meditation is about one of my favorite topics: the incredible healing power of the asanas.

The meditation starts with a quote from a student who had both a chronic shoulder injury and a thyroid condition. Her doctors told her that her shoulder would never heal. After two months of yoga practice, the shoulder injury was gone. With the shoulder healed, she told her doctor she was going to go off her thyroid medication. Three months later it was borderline, and the doctor still wanted to put her back on medication. Three months later, her thryoid was normal. The thyroid medication, for most people, is a life sentence. Of course, even after this happened, the doctor was unwilling to conclude that the yoga made any difference.

There are tons of stories like this out there. I have my own. Bikram quickly got me off blood pressure medication and tri-glyceride medication. It also eliminated my acid reflux, and cured my planar fascia-itis. It has straightened out my right big toe, leaving me with one bad bunion instead of two (I'm still working on the left foot, and hopeful). I know other people who are dealing with arthritis with Bikram, and with chronic knee, hip and back problems. I know of other people who have gone off lifelong medications after just a few months of yoga practice, including one who got off her thyroid medication.

Why does this happen? Doctors, for the most part, are trained to suggest drugs or surgery. They will give a nod to exercise and weight management, but in my experience, most doctors don't stress these things, probably because they know that their patients are not likely to follow the recommendations, and then will likely blame the doctor anyways for not having given them a pill to take. I don't really blame the doctors here. They simply are doing the best they can with their training and the tools at their disposal.

And I don't blame their skepticism about yoga as a remedy either. They are trained to be skeptical, and have been taught to put their faith only in scientific method. And lets face it, no one has done any scientific study of the benefits of asana practice. In class, we hear lots of theories about why the poses have such amazing benefits. In Bikram, the tourniquet theory gets alot of credit. We shut off the blood to an organ or an area of the body and then let it flood back in, and that has great benefit. But, as far as I know, no-one has ever really studied this theory, and I have no idea if it explains the benefits or not. But it sounds nice and explanatory.

Gates has his own explanation for why asana practice gives such radical benefits. First, he links it to prana, or life force. He says that most people are pretty much cut off from their own prana, and yoga puts them back in touch. This process has incredible healing power. For Gates, this explanation "works." I think this means that he understands this explanation because it fits into a way of thinking that he has already bought into. I tend to agree with this explanation as well, but let's face it, if I gave this explanation to your average doctor or scientist, I expect he would simply roll his eyes and say "Whatever."

Gates comes close to acknowledging this difficulty when he says that he still wonders at the mechanics of this miraculous process. He then offers a more complete explanation. He says that the asana force us to act as a co-ordinated whole. Doing the asana correctly requires integrating the entire mind, body and spirit. And its this program of re-integration (forced bussing for the soul?), that leads to the spectacular health benefits that people see from yoga.

I completely buy into this explanation, but it still leaves something to be desired for the scientists. How does one begin to measure how integrated the mind body and soul are? One answer is: watch the person practice. And yes, I know that begs the question from a scientific standpoint.

In Bikram, we are constantly told that if we try the postures the right way, we will receive 100% of the benefit. I've wondered about this before, because its pretty clear that you aren't getting, for example, a backbend in Fixed Firm if you aren't going all the way back. This meditation makes me think that the "benefit" that Bikram is talking about is the greater benefit if re-integrating body, mind and spirit. That comes from trying the poses the right way, and not from depth.

That's why the miracles can, and often do, occur when people first starting to practice. And it may also be why some people never see much benefit at all; they simply aren't trying it the right way. It also explains why there's such a difference between simply exercising and stretching, and doing yoga.

161/230 - Polaroids

2009-08-19T15:35:00.002-05:00

Tuesday 8:15 with Amy

Last night's class was very nice, and it was another step forward for me. I had several breakthroughs. I could do one set of Standing Separate Leg Forehead to Knee on both sides. I think this may be due to extra flexibility at night: I didn't have to bend my right knee so much to make the connection from forehead to knee, and that let me into the pose.

I also did a bit better in many other poses. My balancing poses were better, largely because I have a bit more confidence about coming down on my right leg when falling out. And I almost got my hips to the floor in Fixed Firm. For some reason, whatever is wrong with my knee doesn't seem to hit the "knee" poses very hard. Awkward and Fixed Firm are not that far off from usual. It's all the other poses...

Awkward was strange. I decided not to compromise on form at all. In the third part, I went down pretty easily. But coming up with the knees together was impossible. It was like my mind was telling my body to try, and by body was just giving my mind the finger.

Since I've started yoga, I've tended to attribute all good things to yoga. And I could possibly do the same about the speed that this knee injury is recovering. But actually, I have no idea. Over a week ago, I could barely put weight on the knee at all. Yesterday, I told some people that I thought I might be able to climb stairs one step at a time in about a week. Today, I was halfway up a flight of stairs when I realized that I was doing exactly that. Is it the rest? The yoga practice? The Chinese herbal patch my wife had me wear? I just don't know. It's possible that more yoga and less rest would serve me better, or vice versa. And I really don't have any good way of deciding.

In the day 225 meditation, Gates compares yoga practice to a Polaroid picture gradually coming into focus. I wonder how long before this sort of comparison will be a complete anachronism. I assume he's talking about the Polaroid color cameras from the 80s that would spit a picture out at you, and then you would shake it for like a minute or so, as the colors would gradually set. Those are the pictures with the big white border on the bottom, and a slightly less big white border around the sides.

When I was growing up, my mom had a Polaroid Land Camera. The film for it was black and white only. You would take a picture and get a covered piece of film out of the camera. Then you had to wait an entire two or three minutes or so before you could peel the paper covering from the print and see the picture you had taken. The main thing this had in common with the later camera was its ability to take pretty bad pictures relatively quickly.

When I was growing up, there was an older acquaintance who used to visit the same beach house where we would go during the summers. When financial matters came up among the grown-ups, he would brag about how he had the great sense to buy Polaroid at $12/share. At the time, it was trading somewhere in the very high $100s or low $200s, and just about everyone had those ridiculous cameras that would spit pictures out at you. This guy was a firm believer in buying and holding. Ultimately, I think he decided to sell out his Polaroid stock at about $6 or $7/ share. I think it may still have been worth it to him. After all, he got years of bragging rights about his financial wisdom.

Back to Gates. The coming into focus that he's talking about is the gradual shedding of fear. It's a timely point, because the knee injury has put fear back into the forefront of my practice. There's a fine line between fear and respect. Several poses can put me at risk of further injury if I do something wrong. That's definitely true of all the balancing and separate leg poses. So, when I'm coming to my new limit, I continually ask myself whether I think I'm at my edge because I'm afraid, or if I'm at my edge because it's really my edge.

The funny thing is that I should probably be asking myself that question all the time. It's not just something that an injury should bring into relief. It's basically impossible to catalogue all the areas where fear alone is holding back progress. Indeed, often I will only realize that fear was holding me back when, for some reason, I get over the fear. That's really easy to see when its a simple question of going up a step on a bad leg. It's much harder to see, for example, that perhaps I'm easing off on keeping the legs perfectly straight in Full Locust because I'm afraid of something. Afraid of what? I don't know, and probably won't until I start getting the legs as straight as they should be.

160/229 - Home

2009-08-18T01:28:00.002-05:00

The day 224 meditation is both simple and powerful. Asana practice teaches us to relax into strange postures. We breath into them, grow comfortable, and start to explore. Eventually we feel at home in the postures.

Then, over time, we can extend this process to strange situations in everyday life. We breath into them, relax, grow comfortable, and start to explore and grow. Eventually we feel at home in the same situation. Thus, in the end asana practice makes home out of the world.

160/228

2009-08-17T00:47:00.002-05:00

9:30 am with Sherry

The nice thing about having an injury is that the breakthroughs start coming fast and furious. It's another way that being injured is like being a beginner all over again. Today, I first got all the way down in the third part of Awkward. Two days ago, I thought that might take weeks or maybe even months. Then I grabbed my foot in both legs in Standing Head to Knee. And again in Floor Bow. Those were the big changes, and each of them was a minor cause for celebration.

I still skipped right side of Triangle and Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee. I need to ask whether skipping one side of a pose for a while is bad or not. I'm not sure, and I can think of reasons both why one should, and reasons why its a bad idea. But overall, it was a satisfying and encouraging class.

The day 223 meditation gets into some pretty deep water. First, Gates talks about asana practice as linking the physical world to the metaphysical, and the linkage comes through breath. I know this is true. Just doing the postures properly has a big spiritual impact. Part of the reason I started reading this book was to try to get a better understanding of why and how that process works.

Then, at times, we might begin to understand that the physical and metaphysical are one. This is a point where I think words start to become inadequate. As he recently said, there's no understanding presence other than being present. And I think that the feeling of true union is a biproduct of being present. So this sense may be especially difficult to talk about.

At the end of this meditation, Gates talks about being alive to the endless diversity of life, while still recognizing the unity of spirt that underlies it all. This sounds great, but I think he may be pushing it. But maybe not. Again I think of music, and basketball. In both, if you are with a group that is truly together, then all the parts are functioning as one. So the unity is there. And at the same time, each player is distinct. These moments, at least in my experience, are pretty rare and magical. Is this similar to what Gates is trying to say? If so, and if this is where the spiritual practice of yoga is heading, then I'm totally on board with the idea.

159/227 - Evening Strolls

2009-08-15T22:59:00.002-05:00

Day off.

Rest and class are working about equally well right now, and this morning, I felt like taking some rest. So I was lazy and didn't go to class.

The day 222 meditation discusses how Gates can measure his spiritual progress by how he feels about others while taking an evening stroll. He talks about a nice summer's evening walk in Northampton, Mass. The brief description of the walk made me a bit nostalgic. I've had the pleasure of living in lots of great areas for walking. But the Houston area is definitely not one of them, and I miss my walks.

In New Haven, I walked everywhere, of course. And then, often, just for fun we would go for walks -- up science hill and beyond, or just through the town square, or out to Worcester Square for the best pizza in the world.

Then there was Manhattan, where there's something new and interesting every few blocks. For a few years I lived near Fort Tryon on the northern tip of Manhattan, and its one of the nicest parks anywhere. On summer nights sometimes, we would walk down to the George Washington bridge around sunset, and then over it to New Jersey, just to get the amazing views of the river, and to be able to look back onto Manhattan at dusk.

And in Los Angeles, I lived in Venice and would walk up the Venice boardwalk up to Santa Monica to watch the beach volleyball and maybe have a little fun with the chess hustlers. In most of LA, of course, walking is pretty much unthinkable (Hollywood and Westwood are exceptions I guess). But Venice is one of the strangest places around, and filled with people of all sorts. It made for great, cheap entertainment.

In Minneapolis, it was the either the lakes or the river. I lived right on the Mississippi, so my evening walk was across a suspension bridge by the waterfalls. (The city exists because there's a drop of several feet in the river there, and the riverboats had to stop, unload, and then reload on the other side of the falls.) Then it was a walk along the riverfront, through a district with a fairly active nightlife, to the next bridge or the one after, and then back home.

And Paris was best of all, though I was only there for a little more than a month. Of course, in Paris, everything is new and magical. At sunset, I'd walk down one of the wider boulevards, watching the old men playing boules, and taunting each other. Or find a park where children would play with miniature sailboats in the fountains. Or just watch the stylish women walking their dogs. And of course, a walk in Paris is combined with stops at cafes or bars, where I'd try to make conversation in stumbling French.

But here in Houston? There just isn't much made for walking. It's too hot. People avoid the outdoors, especially in summer. And I miss the evening walks (or at least Gates has prompted me to miss it).

Gates main point was about his attitude to others when taking a stroll. He talks about feeling connected to everyone, enjoying their present, and simply being full of love. It's a nice thought, but Robert Hunter puts the idea much more simply, I think, in Scarlet Begonias: "Strangers stopping strangers, just to shake their hands; everybody is playing in the heart of gold band." The second line always seemed a bit like a non-sequitor to me, but Gate's meditation makes me see the point. When everyone is connected, then its like everyone is playing in the same band, and because the connection stems from love, it makes sense that the band would be the "heart of gold band." (And yes, I realize I'm probably over-interpreting, but there it is.)

159/226 - Understanding the Practice

2009-08-14T22:53:00.002-05:00

4:30 pm with Sherry

I set up in the hottest part of the room again. I'm getting to like it. Part of that may be because the class simply is not as strenuous with the limitations that my knee has set. So it's much easier to deal with more heat. After class, I told Sherry that I thought it was a little cold today, and she said that it was 108 degrees up front -- so probably 110-112 where I was.

The major thing I noticed today was how important the development and progressions of the sequences is. There are only two poses where I feel zero effect from my knee: Camel and Rabbit. And as we are told over and over, these are the heart of the series, around which everything else was designed. It all leads up to Camel and Rabbit. Today, I realized what they meant by that. My knee wasn't interfering directly with either of these poses. But, because I had compromised on almost everything leading up to these two, these poses weren't quite there for me either.

The entire series could be looked at as an alternating series of backward and forward bends, all leading up to these two poses. Back bends: Half Moon, Awkward (1st part), Standing Bow, Cobra, Locust, Full Locust, Floor Bow, Fixed Firm. Forward Bends: First forward bend, Standing Head to Knee, Balancing Stick, Standing Separate Leg Stretching, Standing Separate Leg Forehead to Knee, Half Tortoise. These alternations all culminate with Camel and Rabbit, and they are all preparations for it. But I hadn't truly realized until today, when Camel and Rabbit were easy and everything else was compromised, how much they really do pave the way for these poses.

The day 221 meditation starts with a great quote from Ekhart Tolle: "You can't think about presence, and the mind can't understand it. Understanding presence is being present." First off, I like this quote because it is inherently self-contradictory. He's explaining presence, by telling us that it can't be understood or explained. And the weird thing is that I have an inkling of what he means. As soon as you realize that you are present, the realization itself pops the bubble, and you are no longer there.

I've had that happen several times in class. Things will be zooming along, and I'm basically with the dialogue, and everything is going smoothly. Then I realize what's happening, and at that moment the class starts to go south. The ease and the joy that came before simply evaporate. Of course, one of the main goals of class is to learn to become present. And if so, that means that ultimately, as Gates says, that we will never understand our practice. Instead we simply go to it and do it. (And keep in mind that I'm saying this after my long analysis of the back and forward bending structure of the series that occurred to me today. That's a hint that I'm not quite to this point yet. At least not for any extended stretch of time.)

158/225

2009-08-13T23:41:00.002-05:00

Thursday Off

My knee felt a bit better, and I'm still on the fence about whether to go see a doctor. My inclination is not to go. The doctor will tell me not to do any activities at all. He will offer nothing to help that I don't already know, except the option of surgery. Otherwise, its ice to reduce inflammation, heat to promote blood flow, rest and keeping it elevated. I don't need a doctor to tell me that, so I doubt I will go to see one unless I get the feeling that I really need to do something radical.

The day 220 meditation is quite beautiful and inspiring, but its too long to quote in its entirety. The main idea is that if you have your soul, then you already have everything you need. And if you don't, then you have nothing at all. Yoga puts you in touch with your soul. Thus, it gives you everything you need, and it allows you to shine as an example for others as well.

These are wonderful thoughts, and they give me an odd sense of hope. By all rights, I should be really frustrated, hobbling around as I am. Instead, I'm really looking forward to class tomorrow. Maybe I will outwardly be looking like a total beginner again, but I'll be doing my yoga. And I have faith that that will help.

158/224 - Stamina

2009-08-12T22:54:00.003-05:00

4:30 pm with Jean

Even getting to the studio, I wasn't sure whether I should take class or not. I talked to Jean before class, and she said that I should stop anytime I was in pain or my knee felt funny. That was encouraging advice, but it still left me with a decision, especially because my knee hurt no matter what I did, including nothing. But since it was going to hurt anyway, I decided to give the class a try. I don't think I made anything worse, but I also don't know if my knee got any better either.

Which poses work the inside of the right knee? All of them. The first big surprise was that I could do the first two parts of Awkward. But in the third, I could go down about six inches before I had to stop.

Eagle on the right leg was impossible, but I could still do the arms and bend both knees. Picking up the left leg wasn't going to happen. In Standing Head to Knee, I was limited to locking my knee and lifting up the other leg and grabbing it at the knee. Standing Bow was a bit better, I even started kicking up a little bit. And Balancing Stick was even better, almost as good as new.

I couldn't even think of doing the lunge in Triangle, and Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee was also pretty much impossible. Here, Jean suggested I do Warrior One instead, and I realized that I can at least do a partial lunge. So that's what I will do next time I have to do Triangle -- just start the lunge and do Warrior 2 until I can get the set-up right.

I thought the floor series would be better, and in some ways it was. Cobra, Locust, Full Locust, Half Tortoise, Camel and Rabbit were all fine. Wind Relieving was funny. Basically by the time my knee bent the full way, the pose was over. But the knee did bend all the way, and without any real pain.

Floor Bow was even funnier. I couldn't bend my knee and grab my right foot. Jean guided me through a variation where you just grab the left foot, and extend the right hand and foot. Afterwards, she said "That looked like pulling teeth, how did it feel?" And I had to laugh and admit that it felt like pulling teeth as well.

On the plus side, I really concentrated on the set-ups and form. I didn't do myself any harm. I felt better for having gone to class, even if I didn't get the boost to my knee that I've gotten from other minor injuries.

The day 219 meditation is about the stamina that comes with sustained practice. That's one of the great things that I've discovered in each of the challenges I've done. Practicing daily builds endurance and the ability to focus. This is one way that yoga is definitely not like other kinds of exercise. Running, cycling, lifting -- these all lead to overtraining and severe fatigue if done every day. Instead of leading to overtraining, asana practice seems to continually build energy.

The other point Gates makes I also find to be true. When you practice often, and hard, the stamina you build also gives the ability to find stillness and really enjoy the poses. Yesterday, after a week off, I noticed the sweat was burning my eyes at the start of the floor series. The stinging sweat was a real distraction, and if I only practiced a couple of times each week, it would probably be with me every class. Frequent practice seems to clean the sweat, and the sting disappears. On a more obvious level, when you don't have to worry about whether you can simply make it through Triangle, it becomes possible to explore what the pose is actually doing, and that exploration is one of the chief joys in class.

157/223 - I'm Back

2009-08-11T22:44:00.002-05:00

Friday Off

Saturday Off

Sunday Off

Monday Off!

Tuesday 4:30 pm with Rohit

I took Friday off because I hadn't planned on doing more than every other day while on vacation. Then Friday night we decided to go to Niagara Falls on Saturday. It's the fourth time I've been to the falls, once as a kid, and then three times in the last 10 years or so. And it's just as amazing as ever, and probably more amazing to me now than when I was a kid. (For some odd reason, what I remember from the childhood visit was some museum about all the people who survived a trip over the fall in barrels and other contraptions and a guy who walked over the falls on a tightrope. But I don't remember anything about the falls themselves.) Now, what I remember is the sheer power and beauty of the falls themselves. I especially like the rapids above the falls on the New York side. They make me feel both the terror and the allure of that incredible force.

So Saturday was shot, but for a very good cause. Sunday, I went tubing with a cousin and then the storms rolled in. We got off the lake with a little time to spare. It didn't clear, so no dock practice then. But no worries, because I was going to be back in the studio Monday afternoon, right? Wrong. We woke up at 3 am NY time to get a 6 am flight from Rochester. But we took off an hour late in Rochester, missed our connection, and then after a looong day at the airport, and another big wait on a runway, we finally got home at 11pm, instead of the 11am we had planned on. So I ended up missing four days in a row, the longest stretch since Christmastime.

Class started off well. The room was a bit cold when I went in, and I wanted to get shocked back into a real Bikram practice, so I set up in the hottest part of the room. Rohit even commented on it. I've been thinking about it, and I've decided that I have stuck to an area of the room out of a fear of the heat and lack of airflow elsewhere. So, I'm going to ignore that fear and simply set-up wherever. At least that's what I decided today. We will see if I stick with it.

The heat didn't bother me, and I got off to a nice start. I felt flexible and comfortable in Half Moon, and things got better. I started noticing that my knee was not bothering me at all in some postures where it had been. I had a really good standing series, especially toward the end in Triangle, and I was feeling very good.

My knee felt good in Tree, so I decided to give Toe Stand a go for the first time in a long time. I was very careful about going in on the left leg, and everything went fine. My balance was non-existent, but I went up and down with no problem. Right side, however, was not so good. About 3/4 of the way down, I could feel real tension in my right knee, but it wasn't worrying me that much. I went all the way down, and it was very, very intense, but I still would not have called it painful. It was intense enough that I decided to push myself up with my hands. But there comes a time when your hands pretty much have to transfer the work back to your standing leg, and I found that I simply did not have the strength in my leg to get all the way back up. By the time I realized this, it was too late to do anything about it, and I kind of hopped/fell out of the pose and restrained the knee.

It didn't feel that bad at the time, but it does now. It's not swollen, but I'm limping, and its definitely restrained in exactly the area where it has been tender for probably a couple of months now. So, its back to the drawing board, and maybe this time I'll learn the lesson. At least, I now know that if it feels that intense when I'm all the way down, I should just do a backward roll out of the pose. Live and learn.

Oh, and the floor series went really well too. If not for Toe Stand, I would have said the class was great, especially for the first class back.

The day 218 meditation is short enough that I'll just quote it:

In asana our eyes are open, our ears are open, our minds are open: our hearts are open. As the months turn into years, we realize that our practic is a long unfolding, an opening into promise. We learn to stand easy, firm, and relaxed, and our problems become the open window to opportunity.

I really like this. It gives me a good feeling about the future. I can already to the idea that asana practice involves an opening up of just about everything. But I'm still at a point where its more useful to measure my practice in months instead of years. So, I've got lots to look forward to. And I get a certain amount of consolation out of the idea that this "setback" I've had with my knee is actually an opportunity to learn more about how my body works, and how it will heal itself with time and dedication.

156/218 - Goals and Achievemets

2009-08-09T16:00:00.002-05:00

Thursday on the dock

Balancing was better, and I had an easier time of simply settling in on the dock instead of thinking about all the differences between doing the practice alone here, and doing it back in the studio. I cut the floor series short, but overall it was pretty satisfying.

The day 217 meditation is about goals and achievements. Goals and achievements are basically the same thing. Its just that goals lie in the future, and achievements are in the past. I was surprised, and a bit pleased, to read that Gates does not look down on these. Desire, after all, is one of the five afflictions. So it seems pretty easy to conclude that, if desire is not good, then goals must be bad as well.

But, as Gates puts it, goals help "galvanize" him. The trouble with a goal only occurs when it starts to interfere with the present. When the goal overrides the practice, its no longer doing its proper work. In a challenge this starts to happen when you start fixating on how many days you've done, how many are left, how long it will be until you are done. And, yes, that kind of thinking happens. But hopefully it doesn't happen in class.

Achievements can have an insidious effect. Completing a big challenge is a nice accomplishment, and it's very gratifying. The danger lies in thinking that those 30 or 60 or 100 days will have anything to do with class number 155 (or whatever). Every class is new, and equally capable of knocking you on your ass. And achievements aren't going to change that. But they might mislead you.

But its nice to know that its OK to be human, to strive to accomplish goals, and to take satisfaction in accomplishments. These are fine, as Gates says, so long as "each practice brings us back to the importance of now. Our achievements are simply the by-products of our ability to realize the potential of the present moment. ... That is the juice."

155/217 - Learning Like a Child

2009-08-09T11:31:00.002-05:00

Wednesday Off.

The day 215 meditation begins with a quote about how eager children are to learn. And when they are learning, they do it with everything -- their whole bodies tend to move. Gates says that asana practice brings us back to this state. Asana involve the whole body.

I think this is one of those things that's easier to see the more you practice. To begin with, for example, the first forward bend might seem like a hamstring stretch. Over time, as you grow into the pose, you start to feel it not only along the hamstrings, but in the lower back as well. Then, you might start paying some more attention into the arms, and the pulling aspect of the pose. One day you hear, and pay attention, to the idea that your head is totally relaxed and your face is on your legs. My face doesn't hit my legs yet, but simply paying attention to the instruction makes a difference. Or you finally hear the bit about getting your arms close together. Over time, it becomes more and more clear that every single part of your body is deeply involved in this one pose. If you wanted, you could focus literally on any part of your body and probably find some room for improvement there.

But Gates point isn't just that. Finally, the goal is to have your attention on everything at once, so that the pose really is a full body experience. At that point, you might take inventory (as Lenette says). But there no longer is a single part of the pose that is the focus. As Gates puts it, the inquiry is ever expanding. It's childlike. Ultimately, if Gates is right, the asana helps us to learn with the openness and the enthusiasm of a child again, with complete attention and no pre-conceptions, using everything we have.

155/216 - Mastering the Wind

2009-08-08T19:00:00.002-05:00

Tuesday afternoon on the dock.

I did most of a practice before getting called off, enough so that I think I can reasonably take credit for it. Balancing was a bit better than on Sunday. I think with some practice, I might even get the hang of it without the mirrors.

When I was done, Yanzi decided to take some pictures of me in a few of the poses. Now this was totally new for me -- both strange and interesting to see. I did Wind Removing, Camel, Rabbit, Locust, and the first backbend for the camera. Here's what I discovered: My neck bends backward even less than I thought. In Camel, my neck ends up almost horizontal, instead of pointing nicely down. I'm not sure how to work on this, but considering I measure progress in several poses by how far back I can see, this is surely a big obstacle to that progress.

I also saw that I have a much flatter middle back than I thought. In Rabbit, I'm getting a really good bend forward in both the cervical and lumbar spine regions. But my thoracic spine might was well be an ironing board. Once again, I don't know if there's anything specific to be done about this, but it was interesting to see. And it's probably much better in the hot room than at 70 degrees on the dock.

My Locust didn't go up anywhere near as high as in class. No surprise there, and it looked about how it felt. Here, I can say that my form was good.

The first backbend was a big revelation. I've got a nice curve going, and the bend is actually more than I thought it would look like. But, its also pretty obvious that I'm still compromising in the knees and elbows, even when I think that I'm not. I need to bring more attention to my knees and elbows.

The good news is that that is the only place where I saw real form problems. The depth may not have been where I might like it to be in the other poses, but otherwise the postures looked like they were solid attempts. (If I get really daring, I might post them up here. I haven't decided yet. I was wearing a t-shirt, which obscures some parts of the poses, and they are pretty strong silhouettes.)

The day 214 meditation begins with a quote that concludes that the mind "is as hard to master as the wind." This one I can easily buy into. Bikram talks about getting the loose screws out of the mind, but I always thought that idea was a little off. I could get some control over a few loose screws. But often, my mind just runs where-ever it wants, and in courses and currents that I could never predict.

I also like this quote because the idea of the wind fits very well with the goal of practice as cultivating stillness. Sometimes the stillness seems effortless and just right. Other times, some single idea is nagging at me like a steady north wind. Other times, it's a blustery day in my mind and it seems like thoughts swirl like leaves in the currents. And then there are the days where I feel sort of like the weatherman trying to hold still in the hurricane, but unable to keep his footing and always with his eye a bit off camera in case some roof or sign should happen to blow his direction.

154/215 - Layers of tension

2009-08-08T12:13:00.002-05:00

Monday off.

The day 214 meditation is again about shedding the fear of death. As a practical matter, on the mat, Gates says we do this by staying both firmed and relaxed, and by noting unneeded tension. We find "cringing patterns". I take it that this means areas we tighten up through habit, and for no good reason. And in the process, we learn to relax these areas while holding the pose. As time goes on, we start releasing more subtle areas of tension, layer by layer.

Rohit is very big on this idea (even if he doesn't put it this way). At least once a class and very often more, he tells people to take their tongues off the roof of their mouths. When he started suggesting it, I was totally unaware of it. Now, I pretty much smile to myself whenever he says it, because its a layer of tension that was pretty easy for me to remove.

A while ago, I was doing Standing Bow as well as I'd ever done it. And then Libby said, "Duffy, there's nothing in the dialogue about sticking your tongue out." I was doing the Michael Jordan tongue assist before anyone knew about Jordan, and it's amazing I never bit my tongue off playing basketball. Anyway, I stuck my tongue back in and immediately fell. Sticking the tongue out for me, I would have said, helped with concentration. But its just another of these cringing patterns.

In many of the poses, shedding these layers of tension is very much the key to progress. I think that's what happens in Locust. At first, we work harder and harder trying to lift our legs up, and nothing happens. While doing this, the back gets strong enough, but still nothing happens. Then, one day for no apparent reason, something simply relaxes in the back and BOING, the legs pop up higher than you ever imagined possible.

A similar process happens in many of the poses. I think that's why breakthroughs sometimes seem so spectacular. And it's also why its possible to make a great breakthrough on one night, and then lose the progress for weeks or even months. Strength and flexibility develop over time. But the ability fully to relax in certain areas can come and go in an instant, and it takes a while to control.

Finally, Gates says that trust is the opposite of the fear of death. This is a very interesting idea, and one I will have to think about some more. There are several times when trust becomes an issue in class. The most obvious one is the first backbend. Bikram says "Don't be scared." What I think this means is that you can trust yourself in the first backbend. You might fall out of it, but you will then just step back and catch yourself. It's really hard to hurt yourself in that bend, but it's such a weird position, that most people don't trust themselves in it.

154/214 - Fear of Death on the Mat

2009-08-06T13:46:00.002-05:00

Sunday afternoon on the dock.

I did the series about as well as I could on the dock here. It was about 75 degrees with a nice breeze, and the sun was setting. For just about anything else, it was a perfect evening. But these are less than ideal conditions for Bikram yoga, and it showed.

The first and most obvious thing was the balancing. I didn't really have any idea how attached I had grown to the mirror. And it was really hard to balance at all without relying on the mirror. I need to talk to some teachers and see if that's something I should work to overcome. I know that there aren't any mirrors in competition, so my guess is that its better to be able to balance with them.

I also hadn't anticipated what a difference the surface would make. A hard rubber mat on a dock is much less forgiving than my thin mat on the carpet. And the surface was not quite so flat. And then there was the breeze. For everything else, the breeze was quite pleasant, but in the balancing poses a little light breeze felt more like gale force winds.

The next thing that surprised me is how long the series took on my own. I felt like I might be going more slowly, so I skipped the second set on a couple of the floor poses. And I still was at it for more than two hours. Some of this may have been extra time between poses, but I think I held several of the poses for longer than we do in class - definitely Fixed Firm, Half Tortoise, and Camel.

Overall it felt good to practice, and its always interesting trying the series outside of class. This time I did it without any other warm up (like sun salutations), and I didn't notice any obvious difference. I have no idea what adjustments I would make if I did start a home practice. It's an interesting question.

The day 213 meditation discusses fear of death, the last of the five afflictions, on the mat. I have to say that I'm pretty much at a loss here. Gates sees the fear of death everywhere. To me, perhaps in my ignorance, its pretty much irrelevant. The biggest problem I see with this meditation is that Gates seems to want to collapse all the other afflictions into this idea of fear of death. Thus he says that "[i]t manifists in our restlessness, our difficulty in savasana, It is the prevailing sense that we are not doing enough, and that we won't get there, wherever there is." And I simply don't buy it. I see the problems with the things that he's talking about, but I just don't see what they have to do with the fear of death.

I started the path that led to Bikram yoga a year ago February, when my wife insisted I read a book called Younger Next Year. There are lots of books about living longer. In an odd way, this isn't one of them. The authors pretty much take it for granted that, as a matter of statistics, most people are going to live longer. Ninety years is now a fairly reasonable expectation, and that age could increase. If you follow the advice in the book, it would probably increase the chances of living that long, but that wasn't the point of the book at all. Instead, the book focused on quality of life as we age. The aim was to show how, instead of being old and feeble for your last 30+ years, you could live a life that was active and full basically right up to the end. And you could do this by following a few simple, practical rules.

Anyway, my point is that even the impulse that brought me to Bikram yoga didn't have much to do with the fear of death. Instead, the idea centered around how to make life richer. Maybe I just have a blind spot to this idea.