39/54 - More Forgiveness and Hoarding/Non-relinquishing

Sunday Off

Monday 10:30 am with Lenette

I haven't been that good keeping up with my water drinking.  I still drink lots, but I'm not thinking about it as much as I was when I first started yoga.  And since I took yesterday off, I also slipped a bit on the water intake, and felt a bit dehydrated, and consequently anxious, heading into class this morning.  But despite my worries, everything went pretty well.  It was still a fairly good reminder to keep drinking water all the time, even on days off.

A few things worthy of note in todays class.  I pushed pretty hard in the standing series.  My balance was good, and I felt something utterly new for me in Standing Bow Pulling:  twice I felt a pretty deep stretching down the front center of my chest.  I've felt stretches in lots of unusual places with this pose, but this was the first time I could feel it really opening my chest. 

Then, toward the end of standing series, I didn't know whether I was going to have to sit out, and felt pretty beaten up.  I stuck with it, and in Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee, I felt like I was just dying, sweat pouring down my nose and into my eyes, almost unable to breath. Then, Lenette says, out of nowhere: "Good Duffy, that is really beautiful form."  I almost cracked up, and felt really, really good about this compliment -- because I was really right on the edge, and still managing to hold the form together and doing it in a way that Lenette did not see any of my internal misgivings.

Next high point came somewhere in the back strengthening series.  By this time, I was feeling hot, oppressively hot.  The class had hit a turning point, and I was either going to fade into misery or I was going to turn it around.  I was at the point where my skin started to feel like it was burning, and all of my attention was going right there.  And then, out of nowhere, I simply turned it off.   I could still feel the heat on my skin, but somehow, the misery that comes with the heat was gone, and I felt like I could just do it.  And from that point on, things were really good.

Next high point (it was a really good class) was Fixed Firm.  I went all the way down for the second class in a row, and this time after a day off.  No complaints from the knee, and I've felt good since.  The danger now is becoming complacent about the form in this pose.  I still need to work to get my toes pointed straight back.  But the recent progress here is very encouraging.

And then the best part of class came in Camel.  In the first set, I felt pretty good.  And then Lenette put a towel around the middle of my back and told me to relax my shoulders and hold onto my heels while she pulled up on the towel and lifted my chest and back.  The feeling of my middle back opening up and my shoulders relaxing was incredible.  It was a great help -- I could feel for the first time some of the areas where I've been unnecessarily holding tension.  And in the second set, I did an OK job of repeating it without the assistance.  (These assists I get from time to time make me wonder how much faster I could progress if I had a partner to help from time to time.)

Now onto the meditations, in what's already a sort of long post.  Gates says that underlying the need for forgiveness is the basic interconnectedness of all people.  I see his point, but unlike the practical aspects of other things, these thoughts sound a tad theoretical to me.  The one thing I will add to his comments is, that if he is right, then my idea of apologizing to people instead of forgiving them makes even more sense.  Because if he's right, then other people's wrongs are also our wrongs, and thus we need to apologize for them.  

Today's meditation hit close to home.  There are two aspects to hoarding that come easily for me.  First, is the obvious one: collecting.  When I develop an interest in something, I tend to try to collect all of it.  Thus, as a photographer, I have an irrational desire to get all of the Canon lenses, whether I need them or not.  When I discover some new music, I start to go out and get everything that the artist recorded.  And so on.  This one is pretty straightforward.

Today's meditation is about another part of hoarding:  keeping things.  I've been an irrational keeper of things for most of my life.  I have all of my school notebooks in storage.  That's dating all the way back to the 10th grade.  I have all the papers I ever wrote, all the letters I've ever received.  Some of this seems reasonable.  But how about this:  on my last go through of this stuff (mostly crap), I finally gave myself permission to throw out my multi-variable calculus homework from my freshman year of college.  You never know when that will come in handy!!!

So yes, I have problems giving up things from my past, whether reasonable or not, and this passage might inspire me to have another go through, and dump some more worthless treasures I've got cluttering up my drawers and closets. 

38/52 - Forgiveness

Saturday 9:30 am with Amy

Another good class.  Afterward, a friend of mine who is new to Bikram said that Amy is his favorite teacher so far because she is always so happy, and her happiness is infectious.  It's true.  And she gets very caught up in how well people are doing.  Sometimes class almost comes to a halt, because she's just admiring something.  Today, after Floor Bow, she started talking about how we all think we stink when we are doing the pose.  She can tell by the look on people's faces as they come out of it.  And then she says that we are wrong, that the class looks great, and that she should really bring a camera in, just to capture the beauty of everyone doing that pose together.

I felt good and strong throughout the class.  I got a nice compliment on Locust.  I really need to ask someone how far I'm going up in this pose -- I have no idea, but it feels like I'm getting higher than before.  And I got fully into Fixed Firm for the first time in several months, and this time I did it with my feet pointing the right direction -- I think.

Yesterday's meditation, I think, is quite amazing.  It introduces forgiveness as a species of non-hoarding.  The idea is that we harbor anger, resentment, ill-will,  and other bad feelings about others.  Over time, we become attached to these feelings.  We cling to them.   What we need to do is forgive the people against whom we hold our grudges. 

I've always had a problem with the old saying "Forgive and forget."  If you forget, then the forgiveness doesn't amount to much because there  really is nothing to forgive any more.  Gates has made clear what's behind forgiveness in a way that I have found lacking in others.  The idea is to cleanse or purge ill will from yourself through forgiveness.  That doesn't mean you have to forget at all.  All you do is take the pain away from the memory, and what you are left with is a form of redemption.  Your memories can stay with you, but they become transformed and through the transformation, they become powerless against you anymore.

There is one small quibble I have with the idea that I should start personally forgiving people.  It strikes me that, in many cases, the ill will we bear toward others may be unjustified.  Or even if there is some cause for it, the other person may not be aware of it.  Going around forgiving people might actually cause some problems.  You say I forgive you, and they say "But I didn't do anything wrong."  And all of a sudden they might start to have a problem with you because you are forgiving them, and they don't think they need forgiving.  I haven't really worked this one out yet.  

But it seems to me that a better tactic would be to go around apologizing to people, if possible.  If forgiving people is an act of letting go, then so too is apologizing.  And others, I think, would be much less likely to take offense.  And, on top of that, in many cases where we could forgive, we also bear a decent share of the blame, and thus could apologize just as well.

37/51 - Outdated Ideas

Friday 10:30 am with Miranda

I'm going to post twice today because I don't want to collapse the meditations for the two days into a single post.

Yesterday's class was wonderful.  For the first time, maybe ever, I breezed through the back strengthening series.  I was going at least as deep in the poses as I usually do, and deeper in Locust and Bow Pose.  But for some reason that I can't put my finger on, it felt effortless.  And as a result, instead of trying to recover from a beat-down for the rest of the class, I pretty much sprang from pose to pose, and was really happy to be there.  

The ease of the floor series, the feeling of being completely in tune with what I was doing, so overshadowed the rest of the class that I now remember basically nothing from the standing series.  And its weird, over time I've come to realize that not remembering anything about class is generally a good sign.

Yesterday's meditation goes deeper into the idea of not getting attached to your ideas.  In some ways, this whole concept seems very foreign.  We're taught from a very young age to admire people with convictions, with principles.  But it sounds here like its better for us not to be attached to our convictions.

Of course, the line between conviction and dogma is very fine, and sometimes which is which is simply a matter of whether you stand on one side of the line or the other.  And, each of the yamas has been trying to instill a positive value, one that I think Gate's would say is worth believing in: love, generosity, etc... 

So, the trick, I think, is to find a way to separate the truly valuable ideas from the "outdated" ideas.  But, then it occurs to me that I'm probably wrong about this as well.  Like other spiritual parts of yoga, I suspect that this one is a) very practical and not something to do in the abstract, and b) a process that will prove itself over time.  I think the idea is to allow yourself to entertain doubts about all your ideas, to not grow too attached to any of them.  If you can do this with honesty and humility, then the ones that are not worthwhile will simply fall away of themselves.  And in the end, the proof of this process will be in the results.  The cool thing about this, and one that also seems to be a bit contradictory, is that it raises skepticism to a kind of spiritual virtue.  I like that idea quite a bit.

36/50 - Namaste and Non-hording

Wednesday Off

Thursday 10:30 with Lenette

Lenette led another really strong class today.  People stayed together, and the energy in the room was really high.  It was really hot, especially to start.  And I almost blew myself up in the standing series -- I had to skip out of the first set of Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee.  This is happening more and more, and I'm on the fence about what it means.  It's hard for me to believe that I'm really losing stamina.  Maybe it shows that I'm pushing even harder in the earlier part of the standing series.  That, at least, is the optimistic way to view it.  Anyway, the classes are good overall, so I'm not going to worry too much about it.

Yesterday's meditation was about acknowledging the spiritual light or the divinity in yourself.  This reminded me of the yoga greeting and farewell: "Namaste."  I've been told that it literally means "The light in me bows to the light in you."  For a single word, I think this is just about the coolest and most powerful greeting.  I wish there was some simple, and non-dorky, way of saying something similar in English.  Instead, we get "Howyadoin?"

The other thing Gates brings up again is how exercising the light within you is like exercising a muscle.  The more you do it, the easier it gets.  Lenette has said the same thing about commitment -- that its a muscle and needs to be worked to make it stronger.

Yesterday's meditation, I think, runs contrary to certain kinds of Christianity.  First off, there is the idea that we are devine and fundamentally good.  Some Christians insist that man's natural state is that we are basically dust infused with original state, and that we can only improve through God's grace.  Moreover, these same people (I believe) would insist that all grace is a favor from God.  Taken to its extreme, this leads to the Calvinist idea of predestination and the elect.  Gate's says instead that we can bring ourselves to the light by taking the right first step, and that taking each step makes the next one a bit easier. 

This tension doesn't worry me, but I do find it interesting, partially because its the first thing that I've noticed in the book that seems like it might run afoul of any mainstream religious teachings.

Today's meditation lands us safely back in the yamas, by introducing the last of the five yamas: non-hoarding.  In its most narrow form, this would seem to apply to possessions.  We've made it a practice in our house to get rid of things that we don't use anymore or no longer need.  Just a little while ago, I took this a step further, by getting rid of about 10 boxes of books.  Until then, I had basically kept every book that I had ever read since junior high school.  For me, it wasn't that easy getting rid of the books.  But they were simply cluttering things up and not doing any good.  I don't know that this made any big change, but I have noticed that now that I no longer have EVERYTHING I ever read, I'm much more likely to lend out or simply give people the books that I do have.  And I think that's a good thing, because the books certainly weren't doing anyone any good by just sitting on my shelves.

Later, I'll have more to say about non-hoarding, or non-attachment, as it applies to our ideas, and not just to our stuff.

35/48

Monday 10:30 am with Danielle

Tuesday 8:15 pm with Amy

Yesterday's class was really good.  I felt strong throughout.  I pushed to my limit by Triangle, and then managed to stay with it through the end of standing series.  I felt like I hit a new high in Locust, but I can't say for sure because I can't see myself.  But for the first time in a while, I felt like I had some real control over myself throughout that pose.

Today's class was a bit different.  I had a big lunch of Chinese food, including Peking Duck, a wonderful spicy fried eggplant stuffed with shrimp, and sauteed soft shell crabs.  It was a great lunch, but Chinese food doesn't always vanish after 20 minutes like they say.  So tonight, I could feel tightness from the start because of the food, and sure enough, I had trouble keeping it down in Locust and actually had to bail out of part of the pose.

Other parts of tonight's class were really great.  I locked my knee out in Separate Leg Head to Knee, on the right  side.  I haven't done that in a while.  And I felt much looser on both sides.  I went deeper in Camel than I have in a while.  And I got all the way down briefly in Fixed Firm.  I also really pushed myself at the start of class, and lost my breath and went down in the second set of Triangle.  So overall, tonight's class was a mixed bag.  It was really challenging, but I also had the feeling at times that I am making some real progress.

I don't have much to say about yesterday's meditation.  Of course, all glory is fleeting in one sense, so I take his point about the winners at the Oscars, and perhaps about the Bulls, who I didn't really care about anyway.  But then I think about my 1969 Knicks, with Frazier, Barnett, Reed, Debusscher (sp?), Bradly, Cazzie Russell, etc...  That team was magical, and there are several moments from that season that I will live in my memory forever.  Of course, I was only 10 at the time, and basketball was probably more important to me than food.  But there is a certain kind of glory and artistry that lives on long after the moment of the championship, especially in the eternal mind of a child.  So, Bill Bradley coming around a screen deep in the corner and getting fed with a pass and effortlessly making a shot while fading out of bounds.  Or Walt Frazier making the extra pass on a break for an even easier lay-up.  Or Dick Barnett making that crazy kick with his legs and calling out "Fall back, baby" while the shot is still in the air.  Or Willis hobbling out on the court in game seven, and then nailing his first two shots and totally inflating the atmosphere of every person in the Garden.  These are some of the many moments of glory that I think Gates may too easily dismiss.  

Having given all of that praise, I will also say that in one sense I completely agree with Gates.  The Knick's team was unique, partially because I was just a kid, but more because they played the game absolutely right, and together as a team.  More than any team I have ever seen, in any sport, that team for that one season showed the complete power of unselfishness.  And in that unselfishness, they also showed the pure joy that can be had from a group of people playing mostly (or at least seemingly) for the love of the game.

In today's meditation, Gates mentions a military saying that its always 3am, its always raining, etc...  To me, this brings to mind the hot room.  Bikram calls it the torture chamber.  As Lenette has said several times, a big part of yoga is getting comfortable with the uncomfortable.  The hot room is just another thing there trying to mess with our minds.  If we can deal with the discomfort of the poses, the sweat, the humidity, the lack of air, the barking instructor -- if through all that we can focus and meditate, then everything else in our lives should be that much easier to deal with.  Thus the Bikram studio I think approaches the same idea in a somewhat different way. 

33/46 Injuries as opportunities

Day off.

Today's meditation is something I've thought about quite a bit over the last several months.  The basic idea is that injuries give us the chance to pay more attention, and ultimately can lead to even greater improvement. 

I've dealt with two injuries from yoga so far.  Both stem from the same two basic causes:  excess ambition and bad form.  My guess is that most yoga injuries come from these problems -- although there can be many reasons for bad form.

First was some tendonitis in my knee.  It came and went, then came back even stronger.  It took me a while to nail down what really was causing this.  For a while, we chalked it up to simply being a realignment in my body causing temporary discomfort.  That was fine, until it came back the second time.  It turned out that I was going back to far in Fixed Firm while still having my toes flared out a bit to the side.  And on top of that, my leg would twist out a little when I locked my knee, instead of continuing to point forward.  Paying close attention to these details has worked wonders for my knee ever since.

The second injury was my sciatic pain.  It's still lurking just over the horizon for me, but I almost always have it in check now.  This one came from the same thing -- pushing too hard with bad form.  Here, the bad form came as a result of overdoing what the dialogue says in Separate Leg Head to Floor.  We are told to stand with our feet wide apart and pigeon-toed.  By over doing the pigeon toe, combined with pushing too hard in all of the forward bends, I pulled the periformis muscle in my left hip, and this in turn aggravated the sciatic nerve.  Sticking to keeping my feet parallel instead of over-pigeon-toed, took care of this problem.

When I had these injuries, I learned how to do Standing Bow.  I couldn't push that hard, because my hip hurt too much to allow it.  As a result, I started really concentrating on the form and doing what I could as well as I could do it, without worrying about how deep I went.  It made no sense to worry about depth, because it was impossible anyway.  From this, I got a better idea of what good form in the pose felt like, and the pose has improved by leaps and bounds as a result.

Thus, while we shouldn't be looking to injure ourselves, they do present opportunites for improvement.  And they are almost always an invitation to pay closer attention.  

33/45 Action and Results

Friday 10:30 with Danielle

Saturday 9:30 am with Janna (?)

Friday's class was good, and I felt great all day afterward.  I can't remember anything specific about the class now, which is always a good sign.  I do remember that it flew by.

Today we had a teacher I haven't seen before.  She was subbing, and taught regularly at the studio before I started, but is now in graduate school.  She had a very good pace, and a good tone.  I liked her.

The class however, was really tough for me, especially at the beginning.  I started feeling bad around awkward pose, and basically toughed it out.  In triangle, I really felt like going down, even though I wasn't breathing that hard.  So I resisted, and made it through the whole standing series.  Then, on the floor, everything opened up and class got much better.  In the end, I felt good about the whole class, because it was one where I really felt like bailing out for an extended period, but I managed to keep myself together throughout.  Just doing that let the yoga work its magic, and I've felt much better for it through the rest of the day.

In some ways, this connects with Gates' meditation for yesterday.  Basically, he emphasizes the practical aspect of yoga.  It almost reduces to the Nike slogan: just do it.  I've said before that no matter how bad you feel, you can still do the Bikram class.  You just do it as well as you can given how you feel.  Today, I put that to the test, and it worked out well.

In yoga, action comes before theory.  You don't learn alot before starting to practice.  You don't have to put yourself through any kinds of preparation.  You prepare for it by actually doing it.  And I think, in the end, that practice and theory are supposed to become one.  That means, if you aren't feeling well, like today, the answer is not to wait until you feel in the mood to do yoga.  Instead, you do it and, at least for today, it puts you in a better mood.

Today's meditation seems to go on a different track, but its actually remarkably similar.  Gates talks about becoming too attached to your goals.  When I'm having a bad day, or don't feel like being in the room, I can still practice.  The key is not carrying the same image of where I should be in the poses to every class.  Fixed Firm has taught me about this more than any other pose.  I never know beforehand how far I'm going to get in this pose, and I've learned to deal with the variability.  I still get tremendous satisfaction on the days I can get all the way down.  But, I'm slowly learning to take satisfaction from  a day like today, where just getting my hips near the floor gets a really big stretch in my insteps.  

And, on the days when the entire practice seems really hard, I can take satisfaction simply from doing my best, and feeling better afterwards.  It's taken me almost a year to start to learn this, and I will bet that I need to relearn it from time to time, because its so easy to really want to make progress in a pose.  But, as Gates says, over-attachment to progress and results is a sure-fire recipe for injury and burn-out.  My sciatic nerve, my left knee, and my hips can all attest to that.

31/43 Karma and De-aging

Wednesday Off

Thursday 10:30 am with Danielle

I took yesterday off in keeping with Gate's idea that sometimes we should take off when we want to go.  The other half of that I have down pretty well:  I don't have much problem forcing myself to go when I don't want to.  So for the day yesterday, I just felt good.

This morning's class was very good and strong.  I got all the way down in Fixed Firm, in both sets.  It's funny, but that pose is the one where I change the most, either for better or worse.  I've had stretches, like now, where I can go all the way down.  But if I hurt something, then I basically lose everything in that pose.  Other poses aren't like that.   For weeks, and even months at a time now, my Half Tortoise, or my Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee poses are pretty much the same, or at least they vary in a much smaller range.

Yesterday's meditation introduced the idea of karma, and connected it with the idea of moderation.  Karma is basically the idea that good and bad acts perpetuate their own rewards.  From the standpoint of moderation, this means that eating too much, or drinking too much, or giving in to an addiction, brings its own punishment.  On the flip side I suppose, being generous, kind or loving makes your world a better place and brings its own reward.  In this view, this idea is not so much a law of destiny, but more connected to a person's inner workings.

Today's meditation talks about how yoga stips away our age by giving us back a younger body.  First, Gates talks about how he recently decided to be more moderate about food, lost some weight in the process, and how this has had a big impact on his practice and made him feel younger.  It's tremendously encouraging to learn that someone as advanced as Gates can still undergo this sort of radical transformation.  In the last year, I've literally peeled off a few layers myself (over 40lbs worth).  And I've been basically in a holding pattern now for about 4-5 months.  So its great to get an assurance that its possible to break out of this holding pattern, if I start to focus a bit more.

The de-aging process, from a physical standpoint, is one of the first things that people seem to notice.  It can be something as simple as not having to push youself out of a chair with your arms, which is one of the first things that happened with me.  Or, being able to dry your feet comfortably after showering, which is something my sister noticed after her first week.  The feeling of fitting better in your own body has an almost magical effect, both on the body and mind.

There's a side to this that Gates mentions that I have not yet encountered.  He says basically that some of our physical defects are actually put in place as defense mechanisms, as a kind of armor.  I mentioned a similar idea the other day about obesity.  If you are obese, then you can take refuge in the idea that you are unloved because you are fat (which is an accident), and not because you are essentially a bad person.  Yoga, by correcting the physical defects, may make a person confront emotional issues that they buried in their bodies.  Thus, Gates says that the de-aging process of yoga can actually force people to confront some of the turmoils of their youth and adolescence.  

I see his point.  But he says that he had understood this intellectually before, but just recently got hit with the revelation on a visceral level.  I haven't experienced anything like this yet, so my understanding is at best just intellectual.  But it's a very interesting idea.  I've heard reports of all sorts of emotional breakdowns happening at teacher training.  I've had strange ideas pop into my head, especially doing backbends.  But no breakdowns so far.

30/41

Tuesday 8:15 pm with Miranda

Last night's class was very nice.  The heat in the room felt good, especially with a crazy storm outside.  I felt more flexible than I have in a while, and even though I could still feel the tightness under my shoulderblade, it didn't seem to hinder what I was doing.  And my stamina was up, I made it through everything with no problem at all.

The yamas so far have had a positive aspect that grows from the negative.  Thus, non-harming transforms to caring and love.  Non-lying becomes honesty and truthfulness.  With non-stealing, it is generosity.  Today, Gates shows that moderation or temperance is simply an aspect of personal responsibility.

First, he talks about how we are responsible for all the little details of our practice.  This is something that a few of the Bikram teacher's emphasize.  Don't get too attached to any one spot, any one side of the room.  Last week, Lenette said that instead of always pushing in Standing Bow until I fall, I should sometimes get to the point of return and just stay still, enjoying the feeling of just being still, right there.  Gates makes the same point:  sometimes he pushes really hard, and other times he allows himself a bit of rest.  The idea is that if you feel like you have started doing something because it has become a habit, or simply because you've become attached to doing it that way, then step back and think about doing it some other way. Falling out of Standing Bow is good because it pushes the stretch and shows I'm pushing my limits.  But staying at the point where I can hold the pose is also good, because it inculcates the idea that I can succeed.

There are two other ideas here that are very interesting.  First, he says that if he dislikes a teacher, that means the teacher reflects some aspect of himself that he has not yet made peace with.  Fortunately, I like all of our teachers, and always have.  The broader point is interesting, and I'm not sure if I agree with it.  In film school, I took a strong dislike to another of the students, and the feeling was mutual.  A while later, one of my friends told me how strange he thought it was that we hated each other so much, since we were so much alike.  I thought about that for a long while, and finally admitted that it was true.  Though, at the time, it didn't do anything to cure my feelings for the guy.  So, on that level, I can easily see some truth to this idea.  But I also think its at least possible to dislike some things because they are truly bad.  But maybe I'm wrong on this, as well.

The other great idea from this meditation is the idea that we will never graduate.  Of course, most graduation ceremonies are actually called commencements.  They should mark the start of a new phase of life, not the end of study.  Unfortunately, that's not the way many, if not most, people look at graduation.  In America, people think of a black belt in karate as being a master. In Japan, a black belt is what you get when they have decided that you are ready to begin.  It is not a symbol of mastery.  Instead, a student with a black belt is ready to start serious study. 

On the simplest level, I don't think I have to worry about being complacent because of my mastery of any of the asanas.  Sometimes, when I hear the "one day, eventually, in the future" language in class, telling me where I will ultimately get to in a pose, I think "so this is where Bikram squeezes in the Hindi idea of reincarnation."  But I've talked to people who do seem to do the full expression of some poses, and they all insist that it remains challenging and they still find new things in the pose all of the time.  So even if that "one day, in the future" arrives in this lifetime, even then it won't mean that I've graduated and can move on to something else.

29/40 Prayer and Addiction

Sunday off.

Monday 10:30 am with Bikram CD.

Lenette got rear-ended on her way to class this morning.  She's fine.   Her car may not be.  So we had no teacher and got treated to the Bikram CD instead.  It was fun, but I wouldn't want to make a steady diet of it.  His tone was much kinder than I would have expected.  I thought he would come across more like a drill sergeant.  But his repetitive exhortations weren't loud -- nothing like Miranda's, for example.  Instead, they were quietly insistent, and strangely musical.  Also, there were a few points in the second set of things where I missed some cues.  In the second set of Half Tortoise, I was the only one in class who heard the cue to exit the pose.  The rest of the class stayed in the pose until he called for the Sit-Up following Savasana.  Somehow, I don't think that would have happened if it had been Locust or Camel.

My postures were OK.  I pulled something under my left shoulderblade in Saturday's classes, and it hampered the compression poses.  But otherwise, I felt good.  And there were times when I managed to pretend that Bikram (or the spirit of Bikram) was really pushing me.  But overall, I think one of the main benefits of using the CD is that it shows how much interaction there really is between the teacher and the class, even when it sometimes seems like they are just following the dialogue.  It turns out that they aren't, and that having a real person tell you to push harder actually helps.

Yesterday's meditation was on the power of prayer.  Thankfully, Gates doesn't subscribe to the idea of prayer that Janis Joplin skewers so beautifully:  "Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz."  I now think of that as being the Joel Osteen school.  (If you are lucky enough to not know who Joel Osteen is, he is the preacher here in Houston who bought the Compaq Center, and has services with a congregation of 20,000.  In his services, he basically talks about how God is gonna make you rich, and nothing else.)

Gates idea is that prayer is a form of surrender.  It's a plea for help with our shortcomings.  This simple act -- acknowledging where we fall short, and asking that "thy will be done", is enough to give us energy, to put us on the path toward redemption. 

Gates takes a thoroughly non-denominational approach.  He says it doesn't matter if you don't know who, or what, you are praying to.  Because nobody else knows for sure either.  Like other aspects of yoga, the proof of the power of prayer comes because it works.  And he's not saying that it works in the Janis Joplin/Joel Osteen sense.  It works in a more important way.  By acknowledging where we are lacking, and asking sincerely for help in those areas, we put ourselves on the path toward that help.  Like other spiritual aspects that Gates describes, this one is also purely practical.

In today's meditation, Gates talks about moderation as a path out of addiction.  Basically, he says that addictive/intemperate behavior stems from a perceived emptiness.  People turn to addictive behavior to try to make themselves whole.  But the balance they are looking for can't be had from without.

On all of the above, I think he's basically right.  What he doesn't acknowledge, even though I'm sure that he's aware of it, is that the addictive behavior does seem to make things better for awhile.  For example, suppose someone takes to eating too much because they are dissatisfied with their love life.  This has two effects:  first, the excess eating feels good itself for awhile.  Secondly, getting fat lets the person blame the unsatisfactory love life on something that's at least partially external:  they aren't loved because of an accident (their being fat) and not because of something about themselves.  The food provides temporary relief, and the fat provides an excuse.  But in the end it doesn't work, and things just get worse and worse.

The second point that Gates makes is that moderation takes courage, but it is the path that works.  Going back to the food problem:  diets don't work because they basically substitute one form of obsession with another.  Fad dieters become totally focused on their dieting.  It consumes their lives.  But the diet cannot be sustained long term.  So when its done, the obsession with food remains (either too much, or none at all, or no fat, or no carbs).

The solution according to Gates is simple, but takes courage.  If you are stuck in a hole, stop digging.  With food, this means stop making food such a big deal.  That's easy to say, but much less easy to do (or at least it has been for me).  Here, the Bikram practice has truly helped:  it put me more in touch with the sorts of things that I actually craved -- fruits for example, and who knew???  My body telling me what I want has changed my eating habits pretty radically, and my non-dieting through yoga and moderation has worked wonders that a bunch of diets could not.

28/38

Friday 10:30 am with Miranda

Saturday 9:30 am with Lenette

I had another 180 degree shift in just two days.  Friday's class was cold.  I felt stiff all the way through.  I started the class with a fair bit of anticipation, because I had a slight headache.  The class cured the headache, but I never really felt with it.  For the first time in a long, long time, getting my head to my knees in Rabbit was problematic, at least in the first set.  Of course, I left feeling better than when I came in.  But I still had a lingering feeling of dissatisfaction, from moving backwards or sideways at best.

Then today's class was really great.  The focus was there.  My backbends felt really good (I still have no idea how they look).  The room was hot and I was in an area that had completely still air, but it felt great.  And the energy in the room (with about 40 people) was really high.

Before class, I meant to ask Lenette about some soreness in my right shoulder.  But it went away during class, so I didn't know how to show her where it was. 

Somehow I got mixed up in the numbering of Gate's Meditations, and I'm not going to go back and try to figure out what, if anything, I missed.  Today, he is talking again about temperance or moderation.  He basically talks about how our culture takes passion and intensity to be overriding virtues, and doesn't do much to praise moderation.  

I think he's got it right to a certain extent.  The romantic movement put a very high premium on excess and passion.  And that brings a line of heroic figures like Keats and Byron, flaming with energy and youth and then dying young.  The same spirit in part lies behind the fascination with people like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, etc...

But I think that only looks at part of the picture.  J.S. Bach lived a long, happy life.  He had 23 children, and he was no slouch when it came to writing moving music.  And he's not alone.  Of course James Dean was cool, but no cooler than Paul Newman or Clint Eastwood or a host of other actors who aged gracefully.  So on this point, I understand Gates' point, but I think he's selling our culture a bit short.

26/36 Temperance

Wednesday - 8:15 pm with Miranda

Thursday Off

The fourth yama is temperance or moderation, and in observance, I took the day off.

Yesterday's class was interesting.  I really did not feel like going at all, felt a little bit sick, and was concerned that I might not be able to get through it.  And about 15 minutes in, I was getting even more concerned.  And then, all the troubles just melted away, and the rest of the class simply flew by.  I felt better and better as the class went on, and felt great by the end of it.  It was one of those days where the class gave me about a 180 degree change in attitude.

In yesterday's meditation, Gates talks about yoga as a kind of homecoming.  Basically, the idea that yoga reacquaints us with our youth -- with what used to feel right and can feel right again.  For Gates, the magic moment came in his first class, when he could feel something opening up in his back.  I get little moments like this all the time, from being able to touch my toes, to standing up from a chair without using my arms, to not waking up at night with heartburn. 

I've often said to people that, inside, I basically still feel like I'm in high school.  And step by step, yoga is making my body more and more like it was back then as well.  Without dieting, I'm back to wearing the same size jeans I wore then.  More important, there are times when I feel myself walking with the same sort of bounce in my step.

Today's meditation introduces the idea of temperance.  This is another yama that is tied in with the idea of non-attachment.  Basically, you could reframe this yama as non-obsession.  Whenever you become overly preoccupied with anything, it's a good idea to let go a little and put things back into perspective. 

I first felt this aspect crop up naturally in my attitude toward food.  For the first time in a long, long time (maybe forever), I could feel when I was full and actively wanted to stop eating.  So I was no longer continuing to eat just because there was more on my plate.  That's the main thing that led to losing 40+ pounds, and it's mostly a result of natural (not willful) temperance in action.  

The same basic principle can apply in all sorts of areas.  The intemperate person is never satisfied.  The goal is to get enough control of yourself in any area to be able to say "That's enough, I am satisfied."  

25/34 Neverending Posture

Day off.

Gates mentions a lesson he's learned from the flow style of yoga he teaches.  It's basically that the posture doesn't end:  the transitional phases are just as important as the poses themselves.

Part of me wants to laugh.  When I "crash land" out of locust or full locust, it's pretty clear to me that a posture has ended.  But of course, I've concentrated pretty hard over the past few months on developing a quiet attitude between poses.  In the floor, we are continually told that the Savasanas are at least as important as the poses themselves, because they are where we reap the benefits.  And in the standing series, it's much the same with the emphasis on remaining still, focusing on your eyes in the mirror, and low slow flow of breath. 

Ultimately, the class should become a 90 minute moving meditation.  I've certainly never achieved the result for the full 90 minutes, but I become more and more aware that that end might be possible.

Gates takes this further.  He says that the same attitude should extend outside of class.  Every moment is an opportunity for what he calls a "holy interacton."  I can see glimpses of this.  The peacefulness that comes from practice does bleed over into everyday life -- sometimes more and sometimes less.  And of course, more is better.  

25/33 I Was Sick

8:15 p.m. with Miranda

I guess sometimes you don't really know that you are sick until you get better.  There are two times in the past when I've had a similar experience.  I went to the doctor to get some vaccines before going to Europe, when I was nineteen.  He looked me over, asked me if I had had any recent pains in my joints.  Then he asked me if I had been around any pregnant women, because I had had German Measles for the second time.

The other time, which was more dramatic, was when I had my first root canal.  My left bottom molar broke before I went to the dentist.  I had heard terrible things about root canal work, but for me it was an unbelievable relief.  I had not realized how much pain I was in, until the dentist took it away.  It had made me irritable and angry for months, but I was not really aware of it as pain until it was gone.

Today's class was a minor revelation of the same sort.  For the first time in a week, I felt really good, and class just felt right.  Feeling again how great a good class can be, I also realized that there must have been something wrong with me the last week, and it culminated in last night's headache.  Now, thankfully, it appears to be over.

There were no breakthrough's tonight, but there was a feeling that breakthroughs might be possible, and an overall feeling of grace.  And I wasn't the only one.  Several times Miranda commented on how good the class was, and toward the end she said she thought it was the best class she ever taught.  Everyone was strong, moving together.  Noone sat out.  You could feel the stillness between poses.  There was some laughter.  It was just a great class.

One lesson from this is that for the last week I have not been following what Gate's talks about in today's meditation.  He says that his approach to pain, both mental and physical, has become simpler as he has become more honest.  Pain gives an opportunity to pay more attention to what we do, and to have some faith in the power to heal.  I was somewhat lacking in that faith.  I had certainly been paying attention, but I had also been allowing myself to become  a bit frustrated with what were, after all, only minor and temporary setbacks.  Mostly, I was afraid that the yoga was not really working.  On the contrary, there has been some really nasty stuff going around recently, and I may have just caught a glancing blow of some bug.  If anything, its more likely that the steady yoga practice has kept me from being more knocked out than I otherwise would have been. 

24/32 Non-stealing

Saturday 9:30 am with Connease

Sunday 2:30 pm with Miranda

Both classes were pretty good.  Today's was hot and crowded -- with 55 people.  The mat next to mine was two inches away, which made Full Locust interesting.

I don't have much to say because, for unknown reasons, I have a splitting headache.  I'll have more tomorrow.

In the Meditations, we reached the third yama: non-stealing.  Each of the first three yamas gets translated in a negative fashion -- non-harming, non-lying, and non-stealing.  But it's clear that the negative aspect is just a start.  They all represent a positive virtue when taken beyond the simple prohibition.  Thus non-harming becomes caring or love.  Non-lying becomes honesty or truthfulness.  And non-stealing becomes generosity.

22/30 Therapy for Soles

Friday Off

I took Friday off and felt much better for it.

Gates talks about how, when he started Yoga, his teacher told him he wasn't ready for it, and would not be until he cured his flat feet.  It took him almost six months to get to the point where he could start to feel some muscles moving in his arches, but eventually, he overcame being flatfooted.

Every time I get cramps in my feet during Yoga, I think of this lesson, and take some hope from it.  It says that with time, perseverance and patience, yoga can accomplish the seemingly impossible.  With my feet, the problem isn't fallen arches (at least not so much) but with bunions.  And of course, bone is probably even a tougher nut to crack.  When I started, both of my big toes pointed strongly inward.  By the end of about three months, my right foot had already started to correct itself, and it now looks basically normal, though there is still a fair sized lump on the outside.  The left foot was, and is, much worse.  To begin with, I basically could not move my big toe at all.  I can now get it to separate from the others, and its almost wanting to point in the right direction again.  For a few years I'd been putting off surgery on it, basically because I didn't want to go through the pain, and because bunion surgery doesn't solve any structural problems:  it just makes the pain go away until you build the excess bone up again.  Now, I'm not thinking so much about surgery, because I think in several years I may actually solve the problem itself.

And of course, the underlying message here is that if yoga can accomplish what seems impossible on your soles, then why not on your soul as well?

22/29 - If you try sometimes, you just might find...

8:15 with Amy

Tonight was another in a series of tough classes.  My stamina seems to be getting worse, and I can't figure out why.  I'm either in a slump of some sort, or maybe I've got some low grade illness that is not otherwise apparent.  Somewhere around the third breath of pranayama, I get a sense of impending weakness.  By the end of the first set of Awkward Pose, I start looking forward to Eagle, because that's not so bad.  Then, I try in Eagle and I can make it because party time is coming.

Then the balancing series ends up being sort of a break, mostly because my lower back is tight, and I fall out alot.  I've gone backwards in all of these poses recently, and I think it's really from some tightness in my lower back which will work itself out.

Then comes the Separate Leg series.  The first pose used to be a rest, but I've really been trying to open up my hips recently, so spreading my legs really wide, and it had become one of my harder poses.  Triangle I still like, because I can do it.  It's hard, but very satisfying, and then, because I tried so hard in Triangle, the Head to Knee pose becomes a real struggle.  By the time I get through it, I have been feeling wiped out recently, sort of like I felt the first couple of weeks of practice.

Then the floor series is better, if I don't start cramping up.  Today, I didn't.  I had some exhaustion issues, but for the most part they didn't get in the way of what I was doing.  And I got all the way down for the first time in a long, long time in Fixed Firm.

Today's meditation was more like a much needed pep talk.  Basically the idea is that in the long run, a spiritual practice has much bigger payoffs than any of us anticipate.  Basically, Gate's is putting a really positive spin on the Rolling Stones line "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need."   For the most part, we don't really know what is good for us, and Gates insists that spiritual practice will deliver what is good for us, which may be much better than the things we think we want.

The caveat on this is that spiritual practice means more than doing your poses, or meditating.  It means acting right, trying to follow the yamas and niyamas.  The hopeful part is that, according to Yates, every right action, every step in the right direction, gives more energy and makes it easier to take the next step.  I guess it sort of acts like a snowball rolling downhill.   I've found that to be true about being honest in general.  The more honest you are, the easier honesty becomes, largely because you realize you don't need to protect yourself with lies (and lies don't work that well anyways).   I don't have any reason to doubt that this applies elsewhere as well, but I can't vouch for it yet, either.

21/28

10:30 am with Danielle

It was just a nice class today.  I stayed strong throughout, and didn't have any of the nagging problems I've had the last few days.  Then, I cramped in my right foot in the final breathing exercise, but it was not big deal.

Danielle was explaining how Bikram smashed his knee in a weightlifting accident and then cured himself with yoga, including Fixed Firm.  She then said he did that when he was in his teens, and now he's OLD, like in his sixties.  I started laughing and gave her a look, so she immediately shied away, and said that she didn't mean that 60 was old, just that it was older and he'd been doing yoga for a long time.

Of course, she did mean that Bikram is old now, and there's nothing wrong with her saying that.  I was laughing, not offended.  I would have liked it much better if she had something along the lines of:  "Hey, I'm only 20, and I just spent 9 weeks with Bikram, and to me, he's old.  Maybe when I'm older I'll think differently."  I think that that sort of clarification is the kind of thing Gates has been talking about.  I don't think it should really hurt anyone's feelings that someone in her early twenties might thing a 60+ person is old.  I know I did back then, and its amazing how much younger 60 gets every year.

Gates today talks about the specter of success in America.  This one doesn't resonate with me personally.  I've never fallen too much under the spell of material success.  I certainly didn't come to yoga to get away from the allure of success, or to find something more, as Gates says many people do.  I agree with him that American's, for the most part, are way to driven by the desire for success, advancement, status, and the accumulation of things.  And if Yoga helps break that spell for some, then more power to it.  Just yesterday, Lenette was talking about how tragic it is that people spend their entire lives getting more and more, and then end up getting sick, lonely, and bitter in their old age, but still just trying to patch over all their dissatisfactions with more stuff.  I certainly agree, but I'm fairly confident that that is not a trap that will catch me.

20/27 Conundrums

10:30 am with Lenette

Going in my left hip hurt even more than yesterday, and my back was still very stiff.  But I had a much better class than any of the last four, and I felt like I was working through some of those problems.  Since class, I've felt much better.

Lenette hit on two topics that have come up here recently.  First, she said that the one thing that will stop your practice in its tracks is fear.  The trick is to learn to distinguish between fear and respect.  But the key to making real progress is to let go of your fears.  

The second thing she brought up was "wanting" as the source of all conflict.  We get into trouble with others, and with ourselves, because we want too much.  I would have used the word "greed," but I don't think there's much difference in the central point.  Here, she emphasized that ridding yourself of greed is not incompatible with setting goals for yourself.  The distinguishing point, I suppose, comes from your attitude toward the goals.

One brief comment on actual poses:  In second set of Standing Separate Leg Head to Floor, she had us slide our legs apart as far as we could until our head hit the floor.  I'm still not there, and this pose is definitely the one that is throwing my hips through the ringer.  And so this is the one where I'm really going to have to learn the line between fear and respect.  It's easy to sort of do this pose and just hang out, but I really do need to open up the hips to make progress here, and yet I have the lingering doubt that pushing too hard is just going to flare up the sciatic pain again.  So, from once being just about the easiest of poses, this one has gradually become just about the most difficult for me.

Gates talks about how discussions of satya at yoga workshops, and how these invariably lead to trying to solve conundrums, like is it OK to lie to someone to spare their feelings?  or is it OK to avoid telling your boss what an idiot he is? etc...   The Sutras, and other yoga texts, of course, don't answer these questions.  Yoga isn't a detailed system of thoughts and rules.  And Gates says its easy to use these conundrums as a way to delay doing the work that needs to be done, or to avoid it altogether.  The point is that it's easy to get started on the path of being truthful, and the more you do it, the better you will get at it.

There's another point that Gates doesn't make, but its one that most lawyers, at least, will appreciate.  (And, yeah, I know some people will consider it odd that I bring up lawyers in a discussion of honesty.)  The conundrums are abstract cases.  They are the sort of thing a court would not decide, because they are simply hypothetical.  I think the same apples to the idea of truthfulness here.  The important thing is to apply the principle to real situations as best you can, and to improve at doing it over time.  If you can't solve some hypothetical case, who cares?  It's just not relevant, and shouldn't be seen as any sort of obstacle.

19/26 - The Eyes of a Child

8:15 with Danielle

This was the fourth tough class in a row.  My stamina was back, and that felt good.  But I was also really tight, even for me.  The hamstring, knee, and hip I injured in the last challenge are all starting to complain, and I was not as flexible in my left leg as I have been for the last several weeks.  On top of that, I started cramping again toward the end of the class, in my left foot in Rabbit, and then in my calf in the first half of the Spinal Twist.

It looks like I'm either going to have to ease off a bit on the frequency of my classes, or be much more careful about intensity during the classes, especially in the forward bends.  I thought I had learned my lesson last time, but now it's looking like I learned from the past, and I now know how to repeat it exactly.  

Gates quotes a line from Proust which is remarkably similar to the line from Thomas Hardy I paraphrased a couple of days ago:  "The real voyage of discover consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."  He talks about the value of a retreat, for whatever time period, to get a fresh look on ordinary life.  With a refreshed, or refurbished, awareness, it becomes possible to again see what he called "the hugeness of the ordinary."

There are lots and lots of ways to achieve this.  One of the reasons I love the movies is because the world itself becomes a different place after seeing a really great movie.  Everything looks, sounds, and feels different and somehow fresher.  The same thing happens, for me, after a really good music performance.  

And, its also one of the reasons I love the heat in the Bikram studios.  When I get wiped out, totally beat up, and feel like I've left everything I could on the mat, then after class the whole world feels calmer, more still, and I feel more at peace with myself and everything else.  The funny thing is, for the most part, the peaceful feeling comes after the "tough" classes.  And while its nice to really be on top of it during class, it often doesn't end up being as satisfying later. 

On a higher level, this thought connects with a passage of scripture that I know best from a paraphrase from a Sidney Lanier poem called The Symphony:  "Never shalt thou the heavens see, save as a little child thou be."  To a child, the world is perpetually new -- everything is new and exciting.  In practice, it helps to try to continually take the attitude of a beginner, in part I think because this attitude opens the way to discovery.  The retreats that Gates talks about, I think, facilitate the ability to look at things as though they were fresh and new.  They allow us to experience the ordinary again with the fresh eyes of the child.  And this in turn may give us glimpses of heaven.

18/25 - Humility

Day Off

Yes, I blew the challenge today.  And I did it deliberately.  Yesterday, I caught myself looking at the sign-in board, seeing who had missed days already.  Then it hit me that I was getting a bit competitive about that sort of thing again.  I don't want to do the 60 days to impress anyone else, or even to impress myself.  And I don't need to prove to myself anymore that I can do it.

Instead, I just want my practice to improve.  And my knees and hips are asking for a break.  So I decided to take a day off.  Now, I don't have the challenge to live up to anymore.  And I may end up going to every day from here on out.  But I won't feel like I HAVE to go, and that by itself makes class better.

In an odd way, I think this decision fits with the humility Gates discusses in today's meditation.  By skipping this day, and blowing the challenge early, I was trying to take pride out of the equation.  Now that I'm not going to end up with 60 in 60, I can just do the classes, which is all I really want in the first place.

Gates brings up another interesting idea about humility.  He says that humility should be an aspect of truth or honesty.  Of course it tempers pride and ambition.  But it should also temper fear and avoidance.  Basically, he's saying that a false humility can act as a sort of pride as well.  Thus, a person might avoid trying a pose because they aren't built that way, and won't be able to do it.  Their self image tells them that the pose is not possible, so they don't apply themselves.  But the humble person in the same situation will think, even though I might fail, I will still try as best I can.

18/24 --Pretense

Saturday 9:30 am with Amy

As Amy likes to put it, Saturday's was a "drippy" class.  That means the humidity was way up and the humidifier didn't come on a single time.  The heat was up pretty high too.  I came out of class seriously drained, but I didn't feel quite as beaten up as I had in the couple of classes before.

Six days in a row has exposed several areas of tenderness.  My knees are feeling a little weak.  My hips and butt are sore.  My back is tight between the shoulderblades.  And surprisingly, I'm feeling some tightness in my breastbone area.  The last is pretty encouraging.  It feels like something is about to give, and I suspect that might help me in backbends and in the opening breathing.

Class was crowded, with 45 students.  And only a handful were people doing the challenge.  The weekend attendance has been really good so far this year.  It's pretty clear that a bunch of people put yoga as one of their resolutions, and I hope its one that they can keep.

Gates talks about another side of honesty, or non-lying.  Not only does it involve not telling any lies, but at a deeper level it means stripping away pretenses -- daring to be uncool.  Of course, it doesn't mean being uncool just for the sake of being different, because that can be just as much of a pretense as any other.   As I see it, there are a couple of different types of pretense.  The easy variety is to identify is the posing that a person does to impress others.  There's a flip side to this, typical in adolescents, where a person puts on a pose to repel, or put off, others.  I think this type of pretense is pretty easy to spot, in others and usually in oneself, and not that hard to get rid of.   

The deeper pretense comes from a person developing a harmful self-image.  You start to think of yourself as this or that KIND of person, and then let this image of yourself drive your behavior.  This kind of pretense can lead to all sorts of problems, from eating disorders in insecure girls, to unbearable righteousness in the insecurely religious zealots.  

There's a yoga version of this that I've seen as well, but fortunately not at my Bikram studio.  I've encountered yogis who hit you over the head with their "spirituality".  What I mean is the person who seems wound up very tight in their own spiritual "path."  But at the same time,  you don't get any real sense of them connecting or relating with other people in a genuine way, and they don't even really seem to care.  As I said, this has definitely not been a feature of Bikram, which in many ways seems to be more down to earth. 

17/23 continued -- Truthfulness

The second yama is honesty, non-lying, or truthfulness.  Again, it applies in thought word in deed.

Gates notes what he considers a strange process.  By willfully applying this principle, we can gradually strip away tendencies to deceive, and eventually what took much effort becomes effortless.

I don't think this is as odd as Gates seems to.  For the most part, people lie to protect themselves.  Or at least they think that they are protecting themselves.  Being honest is much easier and more natural, but people stray from either fear or greed.  When you start to strip away the various deceptions you've become accustomed to using, you find that nothing terrible happens.  There was no real basis for your fears.  And with that realization, I think it becomes much more natural and easy to strip away the next layer of deception.  (Of course, this may be harder for some than for others.)

In my life, I can't remember a time when telling the truth (even when it seemed hard and scary) did not come as a relief.  In high school, I panicked on an exam once and copied a few answers from the girl sitting next to me.  The teacher spotted the similarity, and marked both our grades in half.  When I found out that she had been punished as well, I went to the teacher and told him to give her the full score and do whatever he wanted to me.  I don't remember how he punished me.  But I do remember him being pleased with my simply coming forward, and my being enormously relieved at having told him.

17/23

8:30 am with Danielle

I'm only on the 5th day of this challenge and already I'm feeling beaten up and a bit exhausted.  Maybe I'm getting a little sick.  Maybe I need more sleep.  Maybe I'm not hydrating enough or getting enough electrolytes.  But for the second day in a row, class was a struggle, and unlike yesterday, today I could not simply decide to pull myself out of it and turn the class around.  I tried, and it maybe helped a little.  But it was still tough.

I had a new experience today.  My mat was near the window and the morning sun was shining through.  At first, this was really nice.  Then the window started to fog a little with sweat, and those beads of water seemed to focus the sunlight, which also started to shine more directly on me.  So it got hotter and hotter right where I was.  That may have had something to do with my not getting my energy back in the floor series.  Anyway, from now on, I'm going to think twice before setting up for an early morning class by the window.

In yesterday's meditation, Gates talked about how you only hear and understand lessons when you are ready to learn from them.  I don't think this would come as a surprise to any Bikramite.  I don't know how many times I've suddenly heard, or realized something, about the dialogue only at the point when my body was ready to do that thing.  

There was a phrase I particularly liked when he was talking about his own practice, he was learning to get "glimpses of the hugeness of the ordinary."    Thomas Hardy once said something to the effect that there are no boring landscapes and no boring towns, and that becoming bored by such showed a character flaw, a lack of imagination.  I think this is the sort of thing that Gate's is getting at when he talks about the hugeness of the ordinary.  It goes back to his first definition of the practice of yoga as "celebrating what is".  The idea is to become open and involved with otherwise everyday things.

16/22

Wednesday 8:15 pm with Amy

Thursday 10:30 am with Lenette

Last night's class was the toughest I've had in a long time.  Starting in half moon, I got short bursts of lightheadedness.  I lost my breath after Triangle and had to sit out the first set of Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee.  Then, I nearly lost my lunch in the back strengthening series.  (Important safety tip:  no more mexican food for lunch before a yoga class.  I know better by now, and yet I still do it sometimes.)  And even the winding down part of the class was a bit of a struggle.  I left feeling as drained as I have in many months.

So this morning, I went back with some reservations.  And those reservations, by themselves, I think hampered the first part of the class.  I went into the first postures with a bit of trepidation, just feeling like I was not up for another struggle.  So then, somewhere around Triangle, I decided not to struggle.  And from there class got better and better.  The heat wasn't oppressive any more.  I paid really good attention to my form in the standing series.  And I came out of class feeling great.  Mostly the change was a change in attitude.

Which brings me to yesterday's meditation.  Gate's says that the only thing we can control is our attitude.  That's not quite true:  we can also control, to a large extent, what we do.  But the important point here is that attitude is a matter of choice.   For today's class, I had two big choices to make:  First, whether to go at all.  Signing up for the 60 day challenge definitely tipped the bar on this one.  Last week I would not have gone.  It would have been so much easier, and as Gate's says, it is very easy to "say it is too difficult to make the hard choice today."  Actually, in some ways, that was the easier choice to make in practice today.  The other choice was whether to wallow in feeling bad, to ease into a suffering class, and to take some pity on myself, or whether I could decide to make the best of it, and to accept today's limitations.  And amazingly, by making that decision, everything improved.

Gates generalizes this idea.  He says that the obstacles that we encounter are the path itself, and that we continually face choices between life and death, between love and fear.  Continuing with yoga practice, especially when its easy to find excuses not to do it, is choosing life and love over death and fear.  And as he said in an earlier meditation (the one I skipped), the more we turn to the light, the more we choose life, the easier it becomes to continue to choose it, on and off the mat.

I'm still a day behind on the meditations.  I haven't even read Day 22 yet.  I will try to post again later.

14/20 Connection with others

Tuesday 8:30 am with Lenette

I missed posting yesterday because we went on a road trip: a five hour drive to Fort Worth, followed by a wonderful piano recital by Yendi Li who won the Chopin Competition a few years back, followed by the five hour drive home -- getting back at 3am.  On top of that, the leisurely trip tensed up a little when we got a flat tire about half way there and then discovered that the spare was also flat.  Roadside assistance managed to get us off the road, plug the spare well enough to make it barely roadworthy, and get us moving again.  We opted to try to get to Fort Worth and made it with 10 minutes to spare.  And the spare tire had only dropped in pressure from 32 to 20 lbs.  We got home OK, filling the spare only twice.  The good news is that I managed to stay calm despite the road troubles, the tight squeeze in making the concert, and having no dinner.  I think, in substantial part, I owe that calmness to yoga.

Class in the morning was good.  Lenette gave me some good pointers on Standing Separate Head to Floor.  She showed me how to bend one knee at a time to grab the outsides of my feet even with my legs spread really wide.  She then pointed out the spot in the middle of my back that I need to concentrate on lengthening.  This help made for an unusually deep stretch, and combined with the Yanzi's car seat (which I detest) and ten hours of driving, I was really feeling it in my hips by the time we got home last night.  

I've got to be careful in this pose:  its what caused the sciatic pain before.  And yet, I'd really like to start making some progress with this pose as well.  So there is a tension there between caution and desire that I need to puzzle through.

The high point in class was Lenette's reaction to my Fixed Firm.  She looked at my feet and said "That looks really good, Duffy."  I've been working really hard on getting my feet to point to the back in this pose, and its nice to hear that the efforts are visibly paying off.

In Gates' meditation, somehow non-harming has morphed into the connected nature of all people (and perhaps more).  Here's my guess as to how this leap comes about:  as you practice non-harming you also begin to focus on what it means and what effects it has.  One of the main things that comes about through this process is the realization that we should not harm others because we are connected to them.  This calls to mind the buddhist vow:  "I shall become enlightened for the sake of all living things."  And also the christian idea that we are all one in the body of Christ.  The same idea probably crops up in other interesting places as well.

Two other thoughts from today's meditation:  Gates talks about how his fear of rejection has sometimes hindered his ability to connect with strangers.  As a basically shy person, this is something I can relate to very easily.  It's not easy for me to engage with strangers, and I think this is partially out of fear.  And, as he noted earlier, the fear is in some ways mingled with a sense of pride.  Sometimes, with strangers, I feel like the teenager at a dance who stands alone or with a friend or two off to the side, not dancing and feeling "above all that," but really not dancing because we were scared shitless that any girl we might want to dance with would say no.  It would be a blessing if the practice of non-harming could help to exorcise that small demon .

The last and most optimistic part of todays meditation is the idea that observing the yamas and niyamas, which might seem onerous before you start, is actually much easier to do than most people think.  And its easy because it fits with us -- because it is right, it feels right.  Or, borrowing from the Messiah - its yoke is easy and its burden is light.  I can't say at this point whether I agree with this point or not, but it certainly makes it easier to give these ideas a chance.

13/19 Nonharming

Sunday off.

Monday 10:30 with Danielle

We started a new 60 day challenge today.  I took yesterday off as a day to rest before embarking on another challenge.  I haven't decided yet how I will go about this challenge.  Donna, who also did a full 60 classes last time, says that she doesn't know yet whether she will do the full 60, or do the "wimpy" challenge.  That would be shooting just for 40 classes in 60 days.  That's enough to get the free two weeks as a reward, but I don't think I could do that and accept the reward.

Today's class was very nice.  Danielle is getting better each week in her ability to encourage people, and in giving corrections and guidance between the poses.  She keeps a fairly high level of energy in the class.  The only "problem" I have with her is that her classes regularly run about 10 minutes short.  It only feels that way in some of the standing postures, notably Awkward and Triangle.  And I still feel good after class, so its not really a problem.

In the last two days, we finally get to the first of the yamas: non-harming.  The first thing that strikes me is how broad and seemingly vague the concept is.  The yamas, as far as I know, don't come with a guide to their interpretation.  How to interpret them is largely up to the practitioner, and this means that there will be lots of room for disagreement.  For example, for some the idea of non-harming leads to being a vegan.  Others don't draw that conclusion.  

In a different way, Gates seems to think that his competitive past is somehow contrary to this principle.  And perhaps it is for him.  But there have been asana competitions in India for a long, long time.  Gates may get so involved in his competitive spirit that he sees no distinction between winning and destroying his competition.  Personally, I don't have that problem, and have been able to compete at many things without engaging in any harmful thoughts or activities.

Another point that I think is interesting is that the principle applies to actions, words, and thoughts.  That makes me wonder how thoughts can harm.  From a Cartesian, dualistic perspective, that idea seems strange.  But, of course, Yoga seeks a unity of mind and body.  In that unification, harmful thoughts will hurt yourself.  And that's something I can easily relate to.  Just getting angry or impatient with a stranger, even if the stranger doesn't notice it, can set me back for awhile and can interfere with how I deal with other people.  

The more difficult question is how one can actually observe the principle of non-harming when it comes to thought.  It's easy to control what you do, and what you say, but not so obviously easy to control what you think.  This reminds me of a guitar lesson I had a long time ago, where I was learning improvisation.  At a certain point in the improvisation, I played a blue note, and it sounded really good.  My teacher stopped me and asked me what I had played, and why I had played it.  I couldn't say what note it was, and I told him I played it because I "heard" it.  He said fine, but remember, when improvising you can control what you hear.  If that's true of musical thought, why not about the attitude of our thoughts in general?

I haven't touched much on the Day 19 meditation, which deals with light and darkness.  Perhaps I will take that up tomorrow.

12/17 - Love in Action

9:30 am with Connease

No breakthroughs, but a good class anyways.  I mention no breakthroughs because I predicted one might be coming based on yesterdays soreness. I've still got the soreness though, so there's still hope.

Class started cold and humid, which never bodes well.  I bailed on one standing posture (Separate Leg Head to Knee, second set), and on one third part of Locust.  It was also fairly crowded, with 39 people.  

A crowded class always makes me happy.  It means Amy is doing well, which is good for everyone, because that means the studio will stay open.  I often wonder about the economics of the studio.  About a week ago, Amy said that she needs an average of eight people to keep a class.  Recently I haven't been in a class smaller than 15, and thats really good.

Gates postpones getting to the yamas and niyamas for at least one more day, while he makes another small, general observation.  The quote that precedes today's passage is  1 John 3:18:  "Let us not love in word or thought, but in deed and truth."  Gates says that the purely practical aspects of yoga -- yamas, niyamas, asanas, and pranayama -- are nothing more than love in action.  This is a pretty amazing idea.  Again, there might be good reason to be sceptical of this idea.  But, as I said before, its a purely practical thing -- either it will work or it won't.  This is just the sort of thing where I think Pascal's Wager actually does apply:  if you try it and it works, you gain so much.  If you try it and it doesn't work, you lose hardly anything at all.  And without trying, you certainly gain nothing.

On top of this, there are two other amazing ideas today.  The first is that yoga shuns failure: as long as you are honestly trying, you are on a path toward redemption, of mind, body, and spirit.  This doesn't mean that everything is OK, just that when you do stumble, its perfectly to get up and try to keep moving in the right direction.  This fits very well with the early emphasis on the pointlessness of punishing ourselves.

The other idea that is amazing is that the practice of yoga generates positive energy, and that this positive energy makes it possible to generate even more.  I've certainly found that just going to class gives me more energy in general.  It also tends to make me more efficient, and to want to be more helpful and productive.  And from what he says, it appears that I'm just scratching the surface.

11/16 Digging Deeper

10:30 am with Miranda

I'm not sure what I did, but I must have been working really hard today.  My upper back and shoulders are tight.  My neck has cracked a few times.  And I've got a deep soreness in my butt.  Otherwise I feel really good.  I've been told before that a new stiffness like I feel in my shoulders is often the sign of a breakthrough coming.  One can hope.

I tried the Manduka mat again today.  It definitely makes it harder to balance, and makes Fixed Firm more difficult.  I still can't decide if this is a good or bad thing.  Basically, I like the mat.  And I think that the surface shouldn't matter that much.  So, I think that if I learn to balance on the harder mat, then I will be that much better at balancing.  But I still haven't made a final decision.

Today Gates talks about people feeling something missing in their practice and trying lots of new things -- postures, styles, routines, etc... -- to fill the void.   Instead, he says the problem is often cured by introducing people to the yamas and niyamas.  These are yogas "do's and dont's", a loose analogue to the ten commandments.  Instead of constantly digging new wells, he encourages us to dig deeper.

When I first picked up Meditations from the Mat, I didn't have any feeling that something was lacking.  Rather, I was overwhelmed with the changes I was feeling in the early phases of my practice, and I wanted to read more about yoga in general, so I could maybe put what was happening to me into a larger framework.

What's interesting to me, however, is that I decided to change the emphasis of this blog precisely because I had the nagging feeling that something was missing.  I focused so much on the minutiae of the postures, and on making physical progress, that I felt I was holding myself back.  And I had the feeling that I was losing the bigger picture.  So I decided to turn to this book.

It turns out that I was taking Gates' advice about digging deeper, without even remembering it.  Perhaps I did learn something the first time around.  

There's one other point about digging deeper that I find very encouraging.  Many people complain that they ultimately become bored with Bikram because its the same 26 postures and 2 breathing exercises.  I've heard that Emmy Cleaves, who has been teaching for over 30 years, wonders how someone could get bored when there are TWENTY SIX postures and TWO breathing exercises.  There's so much there, she says, that she could study it in more depth forever.  I think that's part of what going deeper means.  

In some ways, its like Chinese and Japanese artists, who may paint the same painting thousands of times.  The quest isn't to find something new or original, but to get to some sort of ideal form using a time-honored, classical approach.  In Yoga we may be doing the same thing with our bodies and these classic poses, digging ever deeper to approach some idealized form.  But to get there involves more than just a flexible body.  It requires the cooperation of mind and spirit.  And that's where the yamas and niyamas will play a role.

10/15

Day off.

Gates talks about using our senses, directing our gaze, to become present.  Lenette is the only teacher I have who really concentrates on where, and how, we are looking.  Again and again, she says, "Your eyes, your eyes in the mirror."  And she will call people out if they start looking around at how other people are doing:  "Yoga is not a spectator sport."

The part of Bikram that this passage reminds me of is Savasana.  Here, we are told to fix our eyes on one point on the ceiling.  Ours is nothing but hardened sprayfoam insulation painted a really ugly shade of brown.  There was a time when I tried to find funny faces in the swirls of foam, sort of like picking out figures in the clouds.  But I've given that up, and now I just pick a blob and stare, when I can manage to stay that still.

We keep our eyes open through Savasana to remain present.  The goal is to be aware of our senses, and still at the same time.  Gates likens this practice to the training of Crazy Horse on the prarie.  That makes me wonder whether it is harder or easier to "see what is there" when you have lots and lots of sensory input, or when you are just focused on your own eyes or on some brown blob on the ceiling.  On that point, I honestly don't know.

10/14 The Importance of Rest

10:30 with Lenette

I pushed really hard today, and I'm feeling it a bit now.  Every once in a while I get a tender feeling in my hip which screams at me to back off or face some more sciatic pain.  So, I need to be a bit more careful about my limits tomorrow.

Lenettes classes are always fun.  Today she was talking about laughter and being silly.  She mentioned a "lecture" by an accomplished yogi from India where the yogi did nothing but tell jokes and get everyone laughing.  The jokes didn't have deep spiritual meaning.  That meaning came through the laughter itself  -- when we are genuinely laughing, we also tend to be more completely present.  Laughter involves an inherent union between mind and body, and thus its a particularly good gateway to yoga.

Having said that, if there are a few laughs in class, it definitely makes the time pass better.  It also seems to make it easier to focus when in the postures.  The laughter acts as a break, a respite, from the serious work of the poses.

And that leads to today's passage.  Gate's talks about the importance of rest on a purely practical level.  If you are having a tough time, take a knee.  Think of that rest as part of the practice.  There's nothing wrong with sitting out when you need to.

I don't think Bikram practitioners have any problem with this.  Yes, there are times when I push too hard and don't sit out a pose when I probably should.  But the rule I've been following is that I must sit out if I can't control my breath.  That rule has been working pretty well for me.

Also, Bikram builds rest into the practice itself.  At the beginning, Lenette was pretty fond of saying that the Savasanas on the floor, between each pose, were one of the things that set Bikram apart.  Unlike other forms of yoga, Bikram's series builds active rest right into the program.

Gates also talks about resting during a pose.  He says if you are pushing too hard and get overwhelmed in the pose, then simply back off some, hang out, and then push it again.  On its face, this seems contrary to Bikram practice.  In Bikram, as I understand it, you are either in or out.  There are no half measures.  Being in means pushing as hard as you can while still keeping control of your breath.  Out means taking a knee, or going into Savasana.

I'm thinking that the difference may stem from Bikram poses not being held that long.  In Sivanandra classes, we held the seated forward stretch for as long as five minutes.  In Bikram, that would be several eternities.  When the pose is held that long, perhaps it makes sense to find a way to rest in the pose, and then to increase the intensity.

Another possible difference is that Bikram does two sets of each pose.  Thus, in the series itself, there is already the idea that we will ease up on the pose, and then try to go deeper again in the second set.  In this way, what Bikram has us do looks similar to Gate's idea of resting.  Except we don't rest in the pose itself.  Instead we rinse and repeat.

The practical question I have about this is whether people in Gates' classes regularly go so deep in poses that they lose control of their breath.  So long as breath in in control, I don't understand why there would be a need to rest in the pose.  I think, on this point, I must be missing something.

And without further explanation, I'm going to stick with my teachers' advice: in or out, no compromising in the pose.  Then rest during the rest times.  Perhaps when/if I try another school of yoga, I will be able to see more clearly what Gates means here.

9/13 Going Meta

10:30 am with Danielle

Toward the end of the standing series, I thought the class was going too fast.  Danielle is a new teacher, so I thought she was holding the poses too short.  Then I looked at the clock, and it turned out we were right on schedule.  At that point, I re-evaluated and decided I was having a really good time.

That lasted until near the end, when I got a wicked cramp in my right foot.  Usually, if I cramp up, it will be either in Fixed Firm or maybe Camel.  Today it was in the final stretch, which I had to sit out for awhile to massage my foot.  I didn't feel like I was working that hard, so I'm not sure where the cramps came from.

Also, I used my spiffy new rubber mat from Manduka for the first time.  It was a Christmas present, and its really heavy and thick.  I used my sisters on the hard wood floor when I practiced in NY.  Today, I found I had some of the same difficulties that I had then.  The mat is so thick that it tempers the softness of the carpet.  This, for me, made it harder to balance.  And it made it harder to go as deep in Fixed Firm.  In an odd way, I think the extra difficulty is probably a good thing, especially in Fixed Firm  I felt a deeper stretch in my feet.  Of course, that may have led to the cramping.

In today's passage, Gates warns against being too harsh in self judgment, especially in judging your judgments.  Getting angry with yourself over your anger, getting frustrated with your frustrations, becoming disappointed at feeling disappointed -- these can all lead to an endless spiral of negativity.

One of the goals we strive toward is to "be present."  Judging yourself, whether positively or negatively, takes you one step away from that goal.  So judging your judgment takes you two steps away, and so on.

The other point is that chastising yourself for your negative feelings simply won't work.  You don't get rid of negative feelings by punishing yourself for having them.  Rather, that way just leads to more negativity.  Instead, Gates suggests that the answer is to observe these feelings and let them go.   

Then, out of nowhere, he says that instead of shutting out the negative parts of yourself, spiritual practice should turn on the light of love.  This introduction of love is very striking.  I think its the first time he has mentioned it, and I'm not quite sure what he means, but I'm pretty sure we will be hearing much more about it. 

8/12 Fear, Pride, Judgment

Day off

I had an exchange of emails today with my sister and brother.  My sister just started Bikram, and she says that she loves it even though she stinks at it.  Even though I know what she means, and from that standpoint I pretty much stink at it as well, I answered that being good at Bikram means nothing more than trying your best and making gradual improvements.

So today's passage was especially fitting.  Gates says that he sees beginners all the time coming to class with the same obstacles: fear and pride.  Pride sets a standard, and then we pass judgment on ourselves and approach the practice with fear that we won't live up to that judgment.  I've noticed again and again that athletes, and experienced yogis from other disciplines, tend not to return.  I think they get beat up more than their pride can stand, and decide its not for them.  On the other hand, people in terrible shape tend to come back more frequently.  Here, I think we (since I was one myself) come to Bikram with very low expectations from ourselves.  Even with those low expectations, we might fail to live up to them.  But the benefits are so immediately obvious, that it also becomes easy to overcome our disappointment with ourselves.  So we come back for more benefit, and perhaps learn either to discard or live up to our expectations.

Gates says that discarding expectations is the key to long term success.  That's one of the reasons I changed the format of this blog:  I had the feeling that analyzing each posture, each day, was getting in the way of my progress.  Worse, it was making the yoga itself feel a bit stale.  Since I've switched the format, I'm starting to see the classes again as part of a bigger picture, and I look forward to them much more.

Having said that, its really tough to let go of expectation and judgment.   It can happen in some moments.   I'll be in a pose and everything is going nicely, and then I realize its going nicely, and that blows the moment.  The "ah-ah" moment, the moment of being pleased with what I've done, actually seems to dampen the pleasure.  

Of course, this is much less a problem than getting frustrated or down on myself for some shortcoming.  For that problem, the best advice I've gotten is from Bill Johns, who sold us our pianos and first told my wife about Bikram.  He said that the most important thing to do is to "be kind to yourself."

8/11 Practice and priorities

2:30 pm with Miranda

We set a new record today -- there were 57 people in class.  It was packed., with about 4-6 inches between mats.  In Full Locust, I nearly took the eye out of the guy to my right.  And it started out really cold, like 80 degrees, but did warm up.  And the cold wasn't so bad because the energy level in the room was so high.  Well, my flexibility was a bit off, especially in poses like Fixed Firm and Camel.  But other times when it's been so cold, its taken a mental toll.  Today, I felt fine and was able to adjust my practice to the conditions.

Today's passage has two big, and probably interrelated points.  First, practice is whatever we do with regularity, and without regard for what's happening externally.  Gates puts it in these bare turns, but then he says its a matter of priorities.  He talks about winos who manage to get liquor even though they are destitute.  And he says that yogis are people who have turned to a practice of spiritual growth.

I like this, but I think there's a difference between practice, in the sense he means, and purely habitual things or pastimes.  A practice, combined with the sense of priority, becomes a matter of devotion.   At the start, going to class was partially a matter of will (and guilt).  I forced myself to make it a priority.  At some point, devotion seems to have taken over, and making it a priority is no longer a question at all.

The interesting thing about this is that it now becomes very hard for me to think of ways to persuade others that they should also make it a priority.  I can tell them all about the benefits.  But if they say they don't have the time, all that means is that the benefits don't mean that much to them -- they aren't that high a priority.  In the end, the best I seem to be able to do is to tell them to try it and see for themselves.  And, where the talk should work and doesn't, the yoga often speaks for itself.

7/10 Continued

The tenth passage reflects a bit more on renunciation.  The main point is that before a person is ready to renounce something, it seems pointless; but when ready, it is almost effortless and rejuvenating.  In some ways, this is like only one psychiatrist being needed to change a lightbulb, but the lightbulb really has to want to change.

I think Gates gives a good description here, and it may help me to understand what happened.  And he's basically saying that renunciation either feels right, or it is impossible.  For it to feel right, the groundwork must be paved beforehand.  But he doesn't address here how you pave the way.  So in the end, he seems to be describing a process much like a dog losing its puppy teeth:  the adult teeth are already there underneath the lost teeth.  Or like a butterfly shedding its cocoon.    The description is fine, but for some reason I don't see the power in this passage that he seems to think is there.

7/10

Friday 10:30 am with Miranda

Saturday 9:30 am with Amy

I missed posting yesterday, and its a bit more problematic with the daily passages from Meditations from the Mat, but I'll press along as best I can.

Yesterday's class was really nice.  My balance was good, and I felt very focused throughout.  I managed not to fall out of Standing Head to Knee for the first time in a long time.  I've backed up a bit in this pose recently.  I typically don't try to kick out in the first set, making really sure that I'm keeping a solidly locked knee.  I felt good in the other poses, and I even picked up both hands in Toe Stand for a microsecond.

This morning was one of those cold, sweaty mornings.  The humidifier never went on and it was still like 60% humidity.  The heat wasn't that high, but that never seems to matter when its that humid, at least not for me.  I sat out one set at the end of standing series, but otherwise was fine until Rabbit, when I just seemed to run out of air.  I came out of both sets of Rabbit early, then caught up with my breath and was fine again.

The high point today was Fixed Firm.  I got down all the way on my back.  Then came out of it because my knees were wanting to lift up, and I'm really trying to be careful on this one.  I also got a compliment from Amy on the first backbend, of all things.  I never get compliments on this pose, so that made me feel really good.  And I got a "beautiful" for my Triangle.  I wouldn't have gone that far, but it is looking better these days.

The last two days present two difficult passages.  The first passage basically has two thoughts:  1) shit happens and your practice isn't going to change that; 2) a commitment to your practice will help you when shit does happen; and 3) the commitment doesn't come through strength of will or determination, but rather through engaging in the practice itself.

The third idea I think is the most profound.  In some ways, what I think he's saying that the practice and the attitude that goes along with practice becomes a habit of being, and the more you engage in it, the more firmly rooted that habit will become.  This accords some with my limited exposure.  Before doing the first 60 day challenge, it seemed like it would be an enormous commitment, taking lots of determination.  There's another challenge coming up, and I may or may not do it, but doing it would only slightly push me beyond what I'm doing now.  

And I don't think this is because the yoga gets easier.   From what I can tell, it does not.  Instead, it seems like its just becoming a part of me, so the ease or the difficulty of it may not be relevant anymore.

I'm going to think some more on the Day 10 passage and post about it later...