Today was a full on back-popping day. Not the quiet, settling in kind of pops that happen when you stretch your back just the right way. These were the ones audible a few mats away. The ones that cause the person adjusting you to suddenly hesitate as they try as suss out if that was a good pop or if they just partially severed your spinal cord. The first one came as I was being twisted, Linda Blair-like, in Marichyasana C. Next, in Kapotasana, I was given the old two-on-one adjustment, where there's one person on each end of me, each pulling in the opposite directions. After it popped, Tim and I both uttered a surprised "Huh!", Tim's trademark response to situations like that. It did feel good. That's one of the best feeling adjustments around. If you ever get the chance, try it some time. The only draw back is you have to be struggling in Kapotasana to start with. The last pop came when Tim was helping me do my drop backs at the end. I'm too 'ascared' to do them on my own so I make him do them with me. After the last one, he has us go down into Urdvha Dhanurasana and either come up on our own, or more typically, he will assist us up to standing in one fashion or another. Today he did the one-hand-on-the-chest variation. As he shifted my weight forward and directed me up, out squeezed that last clunk from my spine. No pain in any of it, just my back saying hello I guess.

When I make the mistake on commenting here on the progress I'm making in a given posture, I then go on to totally hack at that pose the next five or ten times out of the gate. Today, I couldn't come close to maintaining a balance in Dwi Pada Sirsasana. I even tried to balance when I came up from Supta Kurmasana, when I should have been more rested. No go there either. So I'm learning my lesson. From now on, I won't be announcing how much better I'm doing at anything. That way, I may actually be able to do something better.

I think I just don't know how to move through the poses quickly. I try to do it but I always seem to end up finishing the first series around the same time. Today, I actually fell behind my normal transition time from first to second series by about ten minutes. What the hell am I doing in all that time? I do waste time with a variety of maneuvers but today was no different than any other day. Where did that time go? I hate to feel time challenged in the latter stages of the practice. By definition, the poses near the end are the ones you are usually least good at. I want to be able to spend as much time as I need on them, re-doing them if necessary, maybe doing a research pose or two to help me get better over time. When every one else is in Savasana and I'm still five or six poses from the end, I feel like I've just got to blow through it so that I don't keep the teachers too late. I vote for a three hour Mysore class.

One of the most intriguing aspects of ashtanga yoga is that each person seems to have some things that they can do and some things that they have a harder than average time with, even the more advanced practitioners. My teacher, for example, has a very smooth, VERY powerful practice, amazingly open hips and hams. But, his back is not in the same league. He can do the poses, but it's not the same thing. I am similar but from the other direction. I can do a thing but am challenged in most of the rest. My hips rotate externally better than average, but my hams, my adductors, my back, my shoulders, yada yada, don't compete. I usually don't comment too often about other people's practices. It's obviously an area in which it would be easy to offend, however unintended. Today we had a visitor practicing who had a great second series. There really wasn't anything in that sequence that wasn't done well. Very high end. After finishing the headstands at the end of second series, the person then began third series. Incongruously, there was a pose early on that the person just wasn't able to do. It was a double-take kind of situation. Having visually caught glimpses of the person's ability from time to time as I did my practice, I knew full well that this person was capable of doing most, if not all of the third series well. Then I saw the pose and it was..., "Hmm, what's up with that?" I just didn't understand how they couldn't do it. It didn't seem possible. We all have something. It's part of the deal.

The folks who went to Mysore are all back now. The teachers who went are sometimes incorporating the current traditional method for poses when they lead us in classes. Baddha Konasana B, or C? No problemo. Holding the outside of the feet when doing Upavishta Konasana B instead of the big toe? Okay, that's different but eminently do-able. My all-time least favorite update? No rest breaks between repetitions of Urdvha Dhanurasana. Whine. Snivel. I'm sure most people most places already do this the correct way but we usually get a short reprieve between each rep. Now, we are having to face the prospect of lowering from back bend just to the top of our head and then going right back up for the next rep. Where's the justice in that? There's no time to contemplate how you did, how you hope to do, no strategizing and negotiating with your different body parts to try and get a little deeper intro the pose, etc. No way to waste time so you end up only having to hold for three counts instead of the normal five. Just boom: up-5 breaths, dip, up-5 breaths, dip, up-5 breaths. And then, what? We're supposed to stand up? With no time to let the back relax a bit? No more trips to India for anybody! There's a reason for status quo. Don't knock it.

I've been playing around with one of those streaming music sites. I don't download a whole lot but it's a great way to learn about music that you don't know. My wife can't stand anything that I like, of course. In the OR, I either want no music at all or something low key and relaxing. I need to not be distracted. Some people like to have cranking music there but I can't handle it. One of my co-workers, knowing I prefer such lamer fare, told me about a group called Thievery Corporation. The genre is called downbeat, or something like that. I listened to a couple of the discs on Rhapsody while on call one day and liked it. So, while in a Barnes and Noble store to look for a book, I stopped by their music section to see if they had one of the CD's. Now I know what all the file sharing nonsense is about. They wanted $18 for a single disc. To use a quote from Eddie Murphy, "Get the F--- out of here!" I had no idea stuff costs that much. I'm usually not allowed to do much in the way of shopping so it came as a bit of a shock. When CD's first came out, something like 15 or 20 years ago, they only cost $15 dollars. Screw 'em. I'll just listen to streaming music

Our teacher has been out of town for the last two weeks. We had all thought he would be back by yesterday, certainly by today. When I walked in to the shala this morning, he wasn't there leading pranayama. "Hmmm," I thought, "that's weird." I know the pranayama group expected him to be there because they had put down a blanket for him to sit on. I'm not really regular enough to know if he misses pranayama that often but I get the sense that that is usually the one thing that he doesn't miss. So, it was a little odd to not see him there. I watched as other people filtered in while the pranayama class slowly wound down. People kind of looked around and would get this unsettled look on their face when they realized he wasn't there. It's not like we need him there to practice. With all the workshops and seminars he's involved in, he's actually gone quite frequently. This was just an unexpected absence, "Could Tim be sick?? Did he make it back okay??" You could almost hear our concerns. But, right as I bent over into my first sun salutation, he strolled in. You could instantly feel the mood of the room change. Curious that we are like that.

My practice today was one of those flash sessions where I do the standing sequence through Parsvottanasana, then I do what second series poses I've received, then the finishing poses. It took me just under 60 minutes to get it in today. I thought I was moving through things maybe too quickly but two or three people who started after me were well ahead of me by the time I got done. Go speed racer, go. Timing-wise, it worked out great. Today was one of those days that I had to be at work by 9:00. I got there without a lot of rushing and with a few minutes to spare. Not enough time to get in a shower too, but you can't have everything.

When I do a rush class like that, I don't really have any spare time for doing 'research' poses before my more challenging postures. I just have to do them straight, the way they're actually supposed to be done. I actually like that better. It takes less energy. I don't always do them the best that I can do them but I'm not sure they're really that much better when I do throw in a bunch of extra stuff. I did do the Samakonasana and Hanumanasana sequence that I usually do after the Prasarita poses. I really need to do those any chance I get or I regress very quickly. Those were the only extras though. I wasn't hurting in my back but I haven't regained much of what limited back flexibility I had at my peak, such as it was. My Kapotasana was less than great but Tim did get me pulled into a place where I was grabbing near the base of my toes (before my hands slipped that is). My Dwi Pada Sirsasana was equally disappointing. I had been able to get both feet up on my own the last couple of attempts. I had also developed a gradually improving balance, meaning I could get my hands off of the ground for a half a count or two before tipping in one direction or another. A big part of developing that aspect of the posture, for me anyway, has been in working on countering the pressure that my legs are putting on my shoulders and neck by pushing back firmly with my shoulders and attempting to lengthen my back. Kind of seems like that would be self-evident, but when doing this pose, it's involving enough that rational analysis often gets the short shrift. It's also fairly exertional. I often find myself gulping for air when I come out of it, even if I felt reasonably in control while in the pose. I noticed the last time I did the pose that I wasn't always breathing, especially when I was trying to get my second leg back and over the first ankle. I guess I was otherwise occupied enough to forget to breathe. As it might seem to the observer, not breathing in a strenuous pose makes it unlikely one will be able to do the pose very well or for very long. These details just sort of come to you with experience. It's an arcane science. At any rate, no great progressions today. In that pose or any others either. I did stand up in a reasonably stable fashion after only three backbends, so that's coming around, again.

I've wondered from time to time to what degree what I write here, or over on EZBoard, is read by the people with whom I practice. I know a few people read it because they've mentioned it to me directly, but only a very few. I will occasionaly get a hint in conversation with other folks that they may have read something but I usually can't tell for sure. It doesn't really matter, or maybe better put, it shouldn't really matter. The goal of the blog wasn't really to be an entertainment or educational tool for others. It was just meant to be a journal, not necessarily private, not necessarily public. I try to write my impressions but I do find myself trying to make what I put down be interesting to others rather than just a recording of my brainwaves. When I'm in class, I'll often think of something I want to tell about, some interesting perspective or funny occurance. Unfortunately, I usually forget what it was by the time I ever get around to hacking away at the keyboard. Because this is something that is read by others, or that could be, there are some things that I choose not to write about. Not everything needs to be said.

I debated about going to pranayama this morning. I was awake. I had planned on getting up and showering earlier than usual. If I wait until after my wife has finished all of her showering and bathroom stuff, I don't get to class with much time to stretch out. So, today I decided to be the first one in the shower. Since I was up anyway, I thought to myself, "Why not do pranayama?" Because I was scared to is why. It's been so long, I knew it would be hard. I just didn't want to go through the mental aspect of running out of air, wanting to breathe, trying to maintain control, etc. I just wanted to stretch before class, do as much as I could in the time that I had and get to work in enough time to avoid the stress of making people wait. I want to get back into doing pranayama. Unfortunately, I still won't be able to do it regularly. If I can't do it regularly, I know I'll have a hard time ever developing any skill at it. I'm afraid, though, that if I don't get back into it, I may lose the opportunity to learn it well. The class is already changing quite a bit. Tim seems to be shortening classes and adding in some chanting more than just the one day a week that he used to do it. Turns out though that today may have been an ideal day to start back. I counted a few of the retentions while I stretched and they seemed shorter than what I remembered under Tim's direction.

Opting to not go to pranayama has been more than just a fear thing. It's a time thing too. I've drawn heat for thinking of trying to learn how to teach classes when I already spend as much time away from my family as I do. Going to pranayama regularly means I will almost never be there in the mornings. I am almost never there as it is because of when my work starts, so doing pranayama with any regularity wouldn't help. I feel pretty guilty when I come in to stretch out before class and the people I practice with are there doing the pranayama. I also feel sick about losing what ground I had originally made in the practice. It's much harder to me than asana. To have to go back over that..., it's like having to re-learn how to forward bend after tearing a hamstring, frightening.

Tomorrow I get to go to Mysore class. Hope I don't get killed at work tonight.

Earlier this week, it wasn't looking too good for me in terms of getting time on the mat. But, as sometimes happens, the yoga gods smiled and opportunities arose. In the past, I wouldn't practice in the mornings on days when I was scheduled to be in the clinic. The schedule for those days starts at 9:00, so I could never get in much of a practice and still make it to work. While I was laying in bed early Monday morning, it hit me that I could go and just do the second series portion of my practice. That would take me an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes, max. I could practice and still make it to work. It wasn't the best practice I've ever had, but I got something in. The low back tweakiness I had a few days previous was less but still lurking. I did my backbends and decided it felt good enough to try a stand up. My first attempt resulted in a bailout due to the usual culprit, I raised my head too soon. So I went back for another try. That time I did one of those things where, rather than coming up to standing, you accidentally roll right onto your knees. I decided it wasn't going to be the day, called it quits and went to closing. The teacher came over to squash me in Pascimottanasana and said, "No drop backs?" I told him I had to get to work, my back hurt, I was lazy, take your pick.

Nothing going for Tuesday. I was in the OR during the day and worked that night. It was reasonably slow. I just had to get up at around a quarter to four to do a couple of C-sections.

Since I didn't get off from work until around nine in the morning, I went to the Wednesday evening first series class. I'm not really sure what adjectives to use to describe it. Maybe messy is the best one. It was definitely something of a spaz attack. It seemed like I fell out of just about everything. I lost my balance on both sides of Utthita Hasta Padangustasana, though in different places, I almost did an endo in Ardha Baddha Padmottanasana. I stubbed my foot on my first attempt at a jump thru when we started the seated postures. I even fell out of a jump back from Uttanasana to Chaturanga during the Sun salutations. How do you do that? I was trying to do a press up and float back and I over cooked it in shifting my weight forward. Once the weight gets the momentum going forward past the balance point, it's pretty hard recover and get the body moving back toward the feet. I realized I was about to do a somersault so I did a mini-cartwheel instead. I figured that would be less embarrassing. The sequence was so overtly out of place that I started laughing out loud. Style points champion for the night. There were a couple of other screw ups that I can't remember right now. I was sort of giggling at myself most of the class. I was maybe a little distracted mentally. There were two people in the class that I hadn't practiced with in quite a while and I was curious to see how they did. I knew, however, that the one person who I could see normally kept a very focused approach to practice. I didn't want to be distractive by looking over too much so I had to suppress my normal willingness to look around. That was probably my undoing. Paying more attention to not looking around than to what I was doing, very wobbly making. Unfortunately, my low back discomfort re-arose in that practice. It wasn't really too noticeable early on but by the latter half of the class, I could tell that Setu Bandhasana and the backbends weren't going to be much fun. Fortunately, the teacher only had us do three Urdhva Dhanurasanas. I walked up the wall on the last one, rather than try to stand up or be pulled up to standing. When I was showering earlier in the day, I had decided to once again attempt to improve my back range of motion by dipping backward as far as I could. At one point in the past, when I arched back, I could see as far as thirteen tiles down from the top. When I tried it Wednesday, I think I got to where I could see eight or nine. Three steps forward, ten steps back. I couldn't bend very far when I tried it but nothing hurt when I did it. I think that's what made me tight later in practice though.

I didn't expect to be able to practice today at all. The person I was helping in the OR had told me we had three tough cases. They all went reasonably smoothly though, so I was able to get to this evening class too. This class used to be a first series class but lately the teachers have been throwing a few improv type things in. Tonight, when asked what they wanted to work on, people said shoulders, hips and arm balances. Hmm. We had a wide array of ability levels in the class, though it was a fairly small group. The teacher did a pretty good job of giving us stuff that didn't push anyone too far but that still pushed us. We did a lot of pre-lotus type hip opening postures. Then we did Eka Pada Galavasana, which we entered from down dog rather than from tripod headstand. We also did the hip opener in which you go into a lunge pose. You then grab the forward ankle with the opposite hand, twist the body toward the side of the forward leg and drop the opposite shoulder forward and down to the ground, ideally on the outside of the forward foot. If possible, you then put your head under your leg in an Eka Pada Sirsasana type position but while in the lunge. I guess it's really more like Kasyapasana in a lunge position. To exit from that, you then go into Vashistasana for five counts then balance on the arms while you rotate the leg back into a Koundinyasana B position and go into chaturanga. For the shoulders, we did a series of Viparita Dandasana variations against the wall. We then did Pincha Mayurasana. I was expecting to struggle in these because of the recent back problems I was having. Instead, I was able to lift my head and chest back and through my arms better than I ever had before. Usually when I press and try to extend my legs in Viparita Dandasana, even a supported variation against the wall, I can really feel it in what I think are my quadratus muscles in my back. When I extend into it, I have a hard time internally rotating my thighs enough to get my legs straight and my knees to touch each other. Tonight, I felt that area actually relaxing and opening rather than tightening and resisting, as it usually does. When we got around to doing back bends, we were low on time, so we only did two. Even with that minimal prep, I was able to stand up. I don't think I've ever been able to stand up after only two backbends before. I don't think I've ever even tried to stand up after only two backbends. Tonight was just an "on" night for my back and shoulders I guess. The improv stuff really seemed to help. I do those same things as prep for
kapotasana when I do mysore class but it's never seemed to help like it did tonight. Maybe it would if I did them right before backbends.

I was supposed to not be able to practice tomorrow but I am not needed to help in the OR until 10:30 so I get to sneak in an extra class. My wife is going to be assisting in mysore class tomorrow for the first time. She's helped out at most of the other classes at the studio at one time or another but this is the first time that Tim asked her to help with Mysore. She's stoked.

The other day, some one posed a question over on the EZBoard site about how to enter Chaturanga Dandasana. I wrote an overly long response about the 'proper' way to do this. Someone pointed out that I sure sounded like I thought I had my stuff together. In class yesterday, I thought I'd see what I actually did. Turns out, I don't do most of those things that I said you should do. Enough giving advice.

I've had a good couple of weeks. I've gotten lucky and had more chances to practice than I had hoped. Every dog has their day I guess. As any mathematician can tell you though, every stretch of good luck is balanced eventually by a comparable amount of the opposite. I just don't know if I've already had that or if it's still yet to come.

Today was the first practice day after Friday's vernal equinox (it occurred on Friday the 19th here on the west coast) and yesterday's new moon. I worked last night, so I went to the Sunday morning led first series class. The class wasn't as crowded as usual, probably due in part to our teacher being out of town this week. I had a fairly easy night of call, I was in bed by 1:30AM, so I wasn't worn out. I had a surprisingly good practice. I say surprising because my last two practices were thrown off by some low back pain. Today I didn't feel any problems in the opening up-dogs so I didn't give it too much more thought for the rest of the practice. It did feel a little tight and edgy with the vinyasas after the Marichasanas but that is fairly typical for me. When I got to Urdvha Dhanurasana near the end, I found I had regained most of my prior "depth" of movement. I was able to get up on my own on our sixth and last one. In the mysore classes of Thursday and Friday, I was uncomfortable enough that I just did three backbends and then a chakrasana vinyasa to the closing sequence. If I can just give the area some time, these little tweaky kind of discomforts usually go away pretty quickly. I'm hoping that continues to be the case here. This is going to be a week of very few practices so it should get plenty of rest.

The last two times I've tried it, I've managed to hold that press up position after Utkatasana for the whole time while people were doing their Bakasana transition. I'm still not doing a pure press up, I don't think. It feels like I'm minimally hopping my toes off the floor before I've got all the weight in my arms and shoulders. It's hard to fully commit to that kind of weight shift where the feet are just pulled up off of the floor by the weight moving past the midline. It's way better than it was though. Due to lack of confidence, I used to spend almost the whole count negotiating with myself on the move. By the time I ever got up, it was already time to jump back. Now at least I'm holding it long enough that I'm able to work on stuff like maintaining the balance point and on getting better arm extension.

I was pretty pleased with the rest of the practice. Nothing seemed very off. The postures that I've been going back and forth a bit on lately, like getting the ankle cross in Supta Kurmasana and getting better leg extension in my standing and supine padangustasanas, were all on today. No landmark breakthroughs but no hang your head in disgust performances either. I though my Supta K was the best I've done so far on my own. I felt like I would have been able to use my right ankle to drag my left leg in the direction of moving over my head, except I was too tired to give it a try. Just thinking of it was an advance though. In the past, I would just have been thinking how much I wanted to get up and get a drink of water and catch my breath.

I've been working a bit on doing better in my binding in the Marichyasanas. For a long time, I was able to do all of them, I could get into the pose and could bind far enough that I could cup the finger tips of each hand together. So, I left it at that and didn't try to do a whole lot more. When my teacher adjusted my Marichyasana D a few months ago, I realized how many things I'm not doing correctly in that pose. So, I decided to go back a few squares and work on getting better fundamentals in all of them. Now I'm able to bind to the wrist in the first three but I don't think I've ever bound D to the wrist on my own. I get put there by the teachers of the class most of the time now though. One result of the deeper bound position is that my twist is usually better than it used to be in C & D.

So, now for this week, the interesting thing will be to see how much I lose from having a low practice frequency. I had gotten pretty good at accepting that aspect of my practice. That's just how it usually was. Having a fairly active few months has now made it harder to feel satisfied and accepting. In fact, I find myself daydreaming of fanciful scenarios where I get to practice as much as I want, even every day. The Walter Mitty version of yoga.

I've managed to set up a week in which I get to do mysore practice almost every day. Well, Tuesday through Friday anyway. Weird thing is, I don't remember setting it up when I did my schedule a few months ago. I must have though because I took portions of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as vacation. I took two hours of vacation off tomorrow so I could practice at 7:00 and get to work to start clinic at 10:20. Of course, as so often happens, when I manage to get a bundle of practices like this, my main teacher leaves town half way through it. Tim left for his Maui workshop and will be gone for the next ten days.

My practices so far have been all over the map. The first one on Tuesday was reasonably okay but nothing great. I remember spending a bit more effort than usual trying to be floaty with my jump backs during the Surya Namaskaras, trying to get closer to a jump back, etc. One high point was getting an assist in Utthita Hasta Padangustasana. I was able, with the assist, to get my leg fairly high on both sides. Not Trivikrmasana range but up there for me. I thought Tim kind of raised his eyebrows a bit as if to say, "Hey, better." Maybe not, I am somewhat prone to over reading that kind of thing. Wednesday's practice was mediocre. I just felt tired the whole time. I didn't sleep all that well the night before. It's getting warmer here. I kept waking up, either too hot with all the covers on me or too cold from taking them off. Lots of little things in practice were marginal. I couldn't hold the handstands after Navasana for more than a picosecond. I didn't get my feet crossed in Supta Kurmasana. I would have made it eventually but I ended up getting assisted into the pose. Still, I was having to grunt and groan to even get them close so I had definitely backtracked. Kapotasana was abysmal--only got my hands to my toenails. Worst of all, when I failed to keep my balance in Dwi Pada Sirsasana and my legs slid up from behind my head, Tim commented to my wife who was practicing next to me, "He's regressing. I may have to take a pose back from him." That whacky Tim. What a droll jokester. I did manage to stand up from my fourth backbend, though it was one of those where you end up catapulting forward towards the mats of the people who are set up in the middle of the room. I must have unknowingly over done it one of the backbends. Later in the day, the lumbar area of my back began to get increasingly sore. Today, the stiffness and soreness in the back totally screwed my practice up. Every up-dog sucked. It hurt to let my hips drop down. Purvottanasana and Setu Bandhasana were do-able but I wasn't into holding either of them for a normal five count. Kapotasana was likely my worst ever. I didn't want to do any of the usual prep routine that I go through. I waited until the teachers were all helping someone else so that they would hopefully not make it over to me in time to help me actually do the posture correctly. Unfortunately, they were quicker than I anticipated. I never even got to my toes, even with an assist from the teacher. I gave up on the normal exit from Kapotasana and just sank back to the mat. I did just three back bends then chakrasana'd and went straight to Pascimottanasana, no drop backs etc. I did have a better Dwi Pada though. I got into it by myself. I stayed in it. I balanced for a second or two at a time but never for long enough for it to actually count as a balance. I was also able to have my feet on the floor while in Yoga Nidrasana. Still, in balance, a downer of a practice. I'm glad Tim wasn't there to see it.

There was a guy across from me who was doing a nice third series. He looked familiar but only in the sense that I may have seen him somewhere once ever and I'm not even sure if I did at that. With most of our more advanced students out of town, he kind of stood out. When he was attempting Ganda Bherundasana, it seemed like everybody stopped to watch. It was a pose he couldn't quite do fully but made an admirable effort. He had asked for an assist from one of the teachers, which I'm sure made her a little nervous. One, he was older than the average student, with grey to white hair. Two, she had probably not done that adjustment on too many people. Three, she had probably never adjusted him in anything that dicey ever before. Lots of room for catastrophe in that pose. One interesting thing about practicing at a place like Tim's is that you get all kinds of folks that come through. You can't help but wonder about some of their stories. There's just not too many people doing third series that well. Of the ones that do, a tiny fraction are of this guy's generation. Most are young hardbodies. He was an older hardbody. Very admirable practice.

Some of the usual teachers have made their way back from India and from other travels. A couple of them will be moving away for good, one to Costa Rica and later to India and the other to Bozeman, MT. Flux, it's the normal state of affairs.

I decided, after attending my third teacher training course, to actually try and start doing some assisting in classes so that I don't forget what I had learned in Tulum. Given my day job, it's not likely I'll be moving into the yoga teacher profession any time soon, but I do think I can be a good teacher. I have always been reluctant to think about getting involved with assisting or teaching because I didn't think I had the background that you should have. I have an acceptable mid-second series practice. I go to class as regularly as is possible. I've been doing Ashtanga for almost four years now. I've been to three short seminars on teaching asana. Hardly first line stuff. I don't know how much you have to have behind you before you attempt to teach. The most awkward thing is sitting there in the back of the class, waiting to adjust people who I had been practicing next to the day before. I can feel the vibe from some of my peers, the "What's he think he's doing? He's one of us, he's not a teacher." We'll see how it goes. I think I have some value to add though. I teach every day in my normal job. It's always been a part of what I do. I'll have to find out if it's something I should do with regards to yoga. Much like in my practice, one difficulty for me will be getting opportunities to do it regularly. It's not something that should be done just every once in a while. The insight and touch necessary to do it well only come with regular practice.

Time to pop an evening motrin and get to bed. I've got one mysore class left in the week

I managed to insert a small site tweak over there on the red sidebar. I saw this module for the current moon phase on another blog. It seemed to be just the thing to put in a site like this. If you click on the link within the module, it will take you to a site has a set of free HTML codes for modules that you can just insert in your web page. I thought it would be a simple cut and paste of the code into the template, but html is not meant for simple minds like mine. After initially finding only a small empty black box, I had to go back into the template and set the code up into patterns that resembled the surrounding baseline code for my site. That's what passes for coding for me. After a few trials and errors, it somehow popped up into its current glory. If it's still working tomorrow, I'll consider it a successful coding session. Sometimes when I open the web page, the moon phase window does not fully open. If I hit the refresh button a time or two it will eventually come up. Must be some problem with Blogger. I sometimes have the same problem with the picture in the upper left corner.


We went to a Krishna Das workshop yesterday. This was held in our yoga studio. It was set up to be a smaller, more personal type performance than usual, in that it was limited to 108 people. He has no problem filling venues that are larger. The time I had seen him before, it was in a larger venue. While I very much enjoyed that performance, I was looking forward to being closer to the performers. Satsang sessions like this are very much an interactive type experience. It's much easier to become directly involved in the energy when you're sitting a few feet away from the performers than it is to be watching from thirty or fourty rows back in some auditorium. I invited a few people from work. There's only a few that would be inclined to try something like that. Of those, only one wanted to come. But, she brought her partner and her 70 year old mom as well. I hope they enjoyed it. For me, I guess I had expectations that shaded my enjoyment a bit. I wanted there to be mostly chanting with some interspersed breaks for discussion, story telling, etc. Instead, we chanted a few songs, then he talked for close to an hour. We did another song or two, then he mostly talked the rest of the time. My friends left after two hours. Since we were all sitting on the floor, I can't blame them. But, I wish they could have had a few more chants of differing rhythms to experience before they left. I would have preferred to hear him talk about the chants themselves, what they were about, some of the history behind them. Instead, he mostly went over his life, his experiences when he was in India with his guru, some of his perspectives on life in general. All good stuff, just not in the balance that I had been wanting or expecting.

My wife finally got her wish and was given a new posture. As is often the case, she said it was anti-climactic. It can be frustrating to stay in one spot if you think you are doing things okay, or if you're not sure what you need to do to move further. She stayed the course and waited to be told when it was time. Her daily practice used to consist of all of the first series and as much of the second series as she had been given, She's moved far enough into the second series now that she no longer does the first series poses, except for Fridays, when it is traditional to only do the first series poses.

I got a pose as well. I've been working on Dwi Pada Sirsasana since last Thanksgiving. Working on it as best I can anyway. It's a hard one to get facile at when it is only practiced intermittently. Obtaining and maintaining the needed flexibility in the hip is one thing, but learning to get the balance part is equally difficult and maybe harder to develop with only occasional attempts. While I still have a hard time getting that second foot behind my head on my own in Dwi Pada, I am able to do Yoga Nidrasana reasonably well. When Tim was adjusting me in the pose the day he gave it to me, I was trying to assess how it felt and what muscles I needed to let go, etc. I must have closed my eyes while doing this because while he was stooped over me he asked, "Are you feeling relaxed?" I looked up at him and, after thinking about it, I had to say that I was. It was fairly non-exertional. I was working mostly on how I was positioned. My wife had told me that the feet are supposed to be on the floor in Yoga Nidrasana. Mine tend to be a few inches up in the air. So I was thinking about what shifts of weight to try that might get my feet closer to the floor. I guess this is my "rest" pose before I get into the serious stuff that follows.

So, another three or four weeks have sneaked by. At least I'm still practicing, when and where possible. Mostly, it has been one first series class or another. I have had three or four mysore classes and last night I went to the Intro to Second Series class. The usual potpourri.

My son did well after his surgery. I was expecting him to have a lot of post-operative discomfort. I remember how much it hurt him when he had tubes put in his ears a few years ago. He never had any discomfort after this procedure though. The hardest thing has been keeping him from doing stuff, like recess, playing soccer and just normal roughhousing. I can just see him running into something or getting whacked by a ball and having his ear seperate along the suture line. He's done well though, so we got clearance for him to go back to soccer if he wears some kind of ear pad.

We've been getting kind of jealous of everybody we know going to Mysore to study with Guruji. We're exploring the possibility of going but it's really easy to find reasons not to. First and foremost is the kids. Take them, or not? It's five or six thousand more dollars if we do. Plus, they are not the most adaptive of kids. I have hard time seeing them finding a diet to their liking in Mysore. How long could we be in Mysore with kids before they went stir crazy and made it impossible to stay longer? For that matter, how long could we go for if we didn't take the kids? We could leave them with my wife's sister for a while, or send them off to summer camps of various sorts (another several thousand dollars), but it's not like we really want to be away from them for very long. I would favor taking the kids. At some point, they need to get some insight about life in the real world (so do I). They also need to be edged out of their personal comfort zones. If I were going to go, I would want to be there for as long as possible, two or three months at least. Financially, and work-wise, that would be very difficult to pull off. My wife does not seem too interested in going for a stay that long. I question the rationality of spending so much money if we are only going to be there for three weeks. Hard question to answer. My wife does need to go to India at some point soon to return her father's ashes to the Ganges. Unfortunately, that is on the other side of the country from Mysore, so that would take that much more time out of any trip that we could take. Could we justify going to India and really only spend time in Mysore? What value would that have for our kids? There's just so much more for them to learn about the country and its history. So, we dither on, doing nothing except thinking about doing something.

It's been a different feel lately at our studio with so many of the more senior people gone for one reason or another. Of the four or five people that I can think of that regularly do third series or beyond, all but one are in Mysore or are out of town for several months. I don't know if it seems different to anyone else or not. Not having that top end there just seems to have subtracted something. There's tons of folks doing second series and first series. But the big kids are all away on a field trip it seems like.

That whole thing about second series sort of gets my wife's craw. Traditionally, you are given poses as the teacher tells you that you are ready for them. In our area, most folks just pick up the first series poses by going to led classes. The allocation of postures really doesn't occur, for the most part, until second series. Also, to get postures, by definition you have to be going to mysore classes. I wasn't given any poses in the second series until I had been going to classes for about two and a half years. I didn't get to that many mysore classes and it took me at least that long to develop any facility with the first series. I have gradually gotten postures over the next year and a half. My wife has followed a similar but more accelerated progression. She goes to mysore classes pretty much every day. What bugs her are that a lot of people decide that they are just going to do seond series poses. They don't wait until Tim says to them, "Now, you do pashasana" They just start doing them because they feel like they are ready or that they want to. So, she'll be stuck at a pose for several months, grinding away and will look around the studio and see a handful of folks who can't get their foot behind their head or who can barely grab their toe in kapotasana yet who will be in there doing the whole second series. For some reason this bugs her. I think it bugs her more that it doesn't bug me. If they want to rely on Tim for guidance, like we have done, well, that is the way that he was taught and that is how he teaches. But, if they choose to make their own path, choosing to use his studio as a place to practice and to use him to help them get into postures that they can't get into on their own, he gives them the rope to do so. If someone is clearly out of their league in what they are trying, he will generally gently encourage them to back off. He doesn't usually let people go off doing third series, but not too many people try to pull that one off on their own. In general, I couldn't care less what somebody else does for their practice. It doesn't affect me, it only affects them. It only bugs me if they are distracting others or making Tim look bad.

I have started to get a slightly better range of motion in my back bending. The last couple of kapotasanas, I have gotten myself to my big toes and the teachers have pulled me into where I can grab my feet just past my big toes. My backbends are better and I have stood up each time lately, though with typical gracelessness. A class or two ago, after going back and putting my hands on the floor in the last assisted drop back, Tim told me to put my head down on the floor between my hands. Then he had me move my hands back past my head and put my forearms on the ground. He then told me to push up into backbend. "I can't..." was out of my mouth before I even tried. I got my arms to about 25-50% of the way extended then collapsed back down. I don't know if I could do more or not, I just wasn't mentally ready to find out. As it was, I was dizzy when I got up to my feet. I'll have to give a few more goes. Little progressions work better sometimes. But, sometimes you need to be shown that leaps and bounds are possible.

I've gotten my ankles crossed the last several attempts at Supta Kurmasana. In my last class, I even was able to grasp something other than my finger tips, I got hold of one palm. I still can't intuit what I need to do to hold the balance in Dwi Pada Sirsasana. This is one of the poses that people almost always get an adjustment in, usually because we suck at it so badly. When I am put into it, I can hold the feet in position reasonably well, though my head does begin to graually tip forward from the pressure of the feet/shins. I can't balance though. I usualy tip forward. Once that happens, my feet release and slide off of my neck. This last time, I tried to err in the other direction by leaning back to counter the forward tendency and... I fell backwards. Over and over again. Tim kept bouncing me back up but I never found it. I don't think it's so much how deeply a person is in the pose. Some people who do this are pretty scrunched up and bent forward, yet they can hold the balance. More reps, more reps.

Tomorrow, Sunday led first series. I work tonight and have eaten junk all day. We'll see how it goes. I just want to maintain an even keel with my energy and do better on back bends.

No yoga day today. No yoga yesterday either. Or tomorrow. Yesterday, I was on call for 24 hours. Today, my son had an out patient surgery to fix a chronic problem with his ear, so practice can wait. Tomorrow, I'm on call again. Thursday though. Thursday for sure. Unless something comes up.

Since it was slow at work yesterday, I spent the time trying to figure out how to put the pictures that I took on our recent trip to Tulum up on a web site so that everyone else could see them. While I was busy bothering people who were trying to pay attention in class by constantly shooting pics, I had promised them that I would put something together where everybody could see how they looked. Unfortunately, I didn't have a clue how to do this. I just knew that it could be done. Fortunately, Zearchim, a friendly sort who posts over on the EZBoard Ashtanga message board pointed me to this photo gallery hosting site.

It worked great. I was at work so I wasn't really able to do much in the way of photo editing to get the shots tuned up and get the file sizes reduced. I just bought a bunch of storage space so that it would all fit comfortably. From prices that I had seen for other kinds of web hosting sites, it seemed very reasonable. The site made putting together the photo collection on-line a snap. The only hard part, really, was coming up with captions for the shots. I could have just left them on their own but that seemed too staid. At any rate, I've linked to the photo gallery over there on the side bar. I'll link to it here too. If anyone is looking for a site to post photo collections, I'd highly recommend pbase. It was a lot easier to set up than setting up this blog.

My son's surgery went well. The surgeon came out and told us he won't hear that well for a while and will need a second procedure in about 9 months for some reconstructive stuff but that he was pleased with how it went. We had worried if we were doing the right thing. All we could think about were the things that could go wrong. He told us afterwards that he really needed the surgery though. So, he's home now and sleeping it off. And we're waiting for the local anesthetic to wear off. Should be fun. He scored though. As partly a birthday gift and partly a bribe for having to undergo surgery, he got a cool portable DVD player. He watched "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" while he waited in the pre-op area. Taking bets right now for how long it takes before he drops it and breaks it or loses it.

Having to work the day after his surgery was not ideal but my work schedule is set three months in advance so we'll see how it goes tonight. If he does okay, I'll go ahead and work. If he's having a hard time, I'll have to see about calling in sick.

I also posted a few new shots over on the sidebar of the blog of me doing poses in Tulum. Again, nothing great, just showing what I do now

Sunday led first series. It's kind of an ongoing competency exam for me. Get out there and do it and see what you're capable of. None of the extra time for brow wipes, nose blowing and extra breaths that are so easy to sneak in during a mysore class. None of the stopping for demos of the more complex poses or the skipping of postures or vinyasas due to time constraints that sometimes pop up in the evening led classes. Just do it the way it's supposed to be done, do it the right way, not my way. It's usually the most crowded class of the week. It's also usually the warmest class of the week. It's led by the big guy, Tim. It's the class where you tend to try to do your best. No excuses for not being able to do any of it. You find out pretty quick where your practice is at.

I have to be very cautious with myself because I find myself becoming pleased with how I'm doing lately. That can sometimes be a bad thing. With a sense of satisfaction, there sometimes comes an unintended, undesired but insidious complacency. It's so easy to feel comfortable that I can finally fold forward without discomfort and can get my chin to my leg. But that doesn't get me into an even better expression of the pose, it tends to get me no farther than that. I learned something about myself and about a lot of other people when I was in college and in med school. It seemed that the better I/we did in courses, the more we tried to convince ourselves that we were just a test away from blowing all chances at getting into med school or at getting a good residency or whatever. I would play the "Not only am I not worthy, I really suck" game with myself. It was just one more way to keep pushing, to ward off the complacency demon. I noticed the same thing when I was playing competitive volleyball (competitive for Oklahoma anyway). As I gradually got better over the years, it seemed to me that everyone else was starting to lose it, they weren't playing very well any more. "Jeeze, I just stuffed Geno. He's getting old." After a while I came to accept that I was getting better, but I didn't let myself know that for a long time. I haven't had to do the same in yoga so far because I haven't been able to do a lot of stuff until the last 6 to 12 months. Now that some of it is coming, I have to get the old denial defense shields up. It's pretty easy to do because there's so much that I still can't do. Actually, I still do suck at most of it, just not as bad as I used to. See, it comes easy.

Today was a (shudder) pretty good class for me. At least it felt that way. It probably looked sucky (ok, I'll stop now) but I felt that I did most things okay. I'm still riding the conditioning high that came from my work in the last couple of months. I've noted before that I traditionally get up after Garba Pindasana to get a quick drink from the sink and catch my breath for a second. There was a time when I really did need this. After Supta Kurmasana, I would be totally cagging. Not a hint of breath control, bandhas, etc. I would get a little settled in with my break and then would feel that I did better over the later poses, especially back bends. More recently, it's been clear that I could get through a first series class with out that break but I would still let myself have it. I'm too nice. When I do mysore classes, I convince myself that with the second series postures still to go, I do need a respite so that I'll feel strong enough to do well at harder poses near the end. When we were in Tulum for the teacher training, I didn't take any breaks when we did just first series. I didn't need them. Plus, getting up to discretely get a drink would have taken too long since I would have had to trundle all the way over to the dining hall to get some water, so it wasn't an option anyway. Today, after I did Garba, I got up like usual to go to the bathroom. As I bent over the sink, I thought to myself, "What the hell are you doing this for? You don't need a rest and you sure aren't thirsty. You're just lazy." So I only took a short drink. As a result of the self-assessment that comes with this class, I've decided no more drinks or rest breaks in first series. Wow, what a tough guy. I'm still reserving the right to wimp out in mysore though.

At the Tulum seminar, there was a guy who studies in NYC who had only been practicing for 9 months or so. Despite that, he had a complete practice. Most impressive was his ability to effortlessly lift up and jump back, jump through, press up to headstand from just about any position, etc. The guy's bandhas had bandhas. He said he had been able to do those things from the first day he tried yoga. That made me feel a little better. It must be a genetic deficiency of mine that, after almost four years of trying to jump back, I am barely able to get my feet through my arms before they inexorably sink back down to the mat. As part of my effort to gradually grow some bandhas, in the last few months I had been working on trying various versions of floating back to Chataranga Dandasana from Uttanasana in the sun salutations. I could sort of do it but it was a cluncky, thumpy kind of thing. In Tulum, the bandha guy and I were working on the correct exit from Utkatasana. Normally, in our classes, we go from Utkatasana into Bakasana. After holding that for a few breaths, we then jump back into Chaturanga. The transition to and through Bakasana is really kind of a "training wheels" type thing for developing the true vinyasa. In led classes, after finishing Utkatasana, Guruji will call out the eighth vinyasa for the pose, "Ashtau, up!". What is supposed to occur is that we are supposed to lower our hands to the floor and press up into a position that looks kind of like a hand stand with the legs still bent in a tuck. It's not really supposed to be a jump up to a bent leg handstand. It is supposed to be a tilt forward of the balance point then a press up into the posture. The legs and knees aren't held against the body or in the arm pits, like they are with Bakasana. They are held free in balance just above the arms. Anyway, the guy watched me and gave me a few pointers about what I should do to get it. I gave it a try today and actually did it and held it the whole time that the rest of the group was in Bakasana. I have no clue what it looked like, but for me it was a significant step forward to be able to press up into it, much less hold it. I had been using that transition out of Utkatasana to practice my Bakasana B, where you jump/float from down dog into Bakasana position. Now, I think I'll work on the vinyasa I did today. It makes me trust my core and my shoulders, neither of which have been reliable in the past. If I can get to where I can float up out of Utkatasana, maybe I can then get it out of Uttanasana too. For what? I don't know. Maybe if I can learn that sense of internal lift and can develop control of the body over the balance point while inverted, it may help me get my jump back.

I got a legitimate ankle cross in Supta Kurmasana today. Not one of those big toe under the other ankle deals, it was an ankle over an ankle. They were nowhere near being over my neck, of course. I've only been able to do this maybe once before and even then, it was pretty marginal. I could tell it was going to go today as soon as I bound my hands. My hips didn't feel constricted. I could shift my body weight to the side and slide my left leg way over towards the right. Once the toes got under, I kind of rolled over to one side to try and seat the foot even farther under the right ankle. Unfortunately, I got stuck on my side and couldn't get the momentum to get rolled back to a neutral position. I had to let the ankles go and re-settle back in the starting position and do it over again. This time I didn't over-do the roll and was able to get the feet crossed reasonably well at the top of my head. I'll have to do it a few more times to get a better sense of what is going to be needed to get the feet back over the head onto the neck. I've watched one guy who can get his feet up on his neck and still bind to the wrist. He starts out with the hands bound, as we are told we are supposed to do, then he brings his feet into a crossed position. Once he's got the foundation set, he unbinds and rolls to one side while sort of pushing on the side of the leg with his upper arm to get it to move up and over his head. Then he rolls the other way and gets the other leg up. Then he re-binds. I'd like to be able to do it without releasing the bind, it seems like it's a purer but harder way to do it. Hips have a ways to go yet. My head needs to get skinnier too, so the feet can get up over it.

Ooooff! Back bends. If anything sucked today it was my attempt at a stand up. No reason for it. I felt like I was in plenty deep, We were on our sixth backbend and I wasn't tired. I had done a dry run of rolling up on my finger tips on the previous backbend. It should have gone. But, no. I guess I must have raised my head or something. I did a mid-stand up twisting bail out. I tried to get back down into a back bend and stand up before anybody could come by and raise me up. Tim had spotted me flailing though and came by for a hand on the chest stand up. As he started me up, my legs were bent more than usual and I had pushed off on my own trying to quickly get up before any intervention. The result was that I came up with a lot more momentum than usual. As I stood up I kept going forward like I had been shoved from behind, slamming into Tim. A little embarrassing. These stand ups are starting to get into my head. I was doing them far better just a few weeks ago. I don't think I've had a clean one in quite a while. I usually consider myself to be trainable, I can learn most things. This, however, is stumping me.

Well, the extended family all went down to Tijuana today, leaving me here to blog away. It's time for me to stop this and to try and figure out how to put together a web site for all the pictures we took in Tulum. I had promised everybody I would do it as soon as I got back but I had to go to the funeral, etc. etc. Since I have no idea of how to best do it, I am open to suggestions. I guess I should have thought of that before promising to set one up.

My wife's father died a few weeks ago. He was suffering from a couple of debilitating problems so his death was not a surprise but it is still always a shock when someone so close does die. We are having a hovan, a hindu rite of passage ceremony, today at his brother's house. My wife's brother has been in town for a meeting and her sister and her four kids flew in yesterday from their home in Hawaii. So we've got just about the entire family together in one spot for the first time in quite a while.

Yesterday I worked in the OR in the morning and the clinic in the afternoon. I tried to jigger the clinic schedule a bit so that I would have a chance to get out in time to make it to the evening Intro to second series class that starts at 5:30PM. I did finish seeing patients at about ten till five, but I still had tons of phone messages to get done, since I'm not back in the office until next Friday. I didn't get out of there until about ten after five. I figured, "OK, so I get to practice late, maybe miss the Surya Namaskaras, no biggie. It's maybe rude but that's just tough." Well, this time the traffic gods were not smiling on me. By 5:45 pm, I was still 15-20 minutes out from the studio. I called my wife to tell her I would be coming home. She told me to instead go to the 6:00 led first series class at one of the local health clubs that she teaches at sometimes. So, dedicated ashtangi that I endeavor to be these days, I turned around and headed back there. I still got there late but I was in a class.

The class was in a nice room but it was well air conditioned by the gym's system so I never got very warm. The class was a typical melange of ability levels but for the most part, people were fairly new. The teacher spent a fair amount of time explaining how to get into and out of poses. Since on-the-fly verbal description is often insufficient in helping people do some of the more complex and difficult poses, he also had to spend a fair amount of time helping people do poses that a fair number of them really weren't ready for. It was supposed to be a led full first series class though. He did get in almost all the poses and the class did flow fairly well so I have to give him credit. That's not an easy thing to do when a good portion of the people had not done those poses very often or, in some cases were trying them for the first time. Given the need to coach people, the class was distinctly different than what I am used to because the guy was talking non-stop for the entire class. That's okay for the asana part of it but I think savasana should be left for people to do on their own. I don't like it when teachers talk about stuff during that pose. It should be time for internal focus, not external guidance. My only real peeve for the class.

I had to curb my desire to try and show people how to do poses. You know, when they are trying to figure out what the hell the guy is talking about when he's talking them through the entry into one of the Marichyasanas and are wrapping the incorrect arm around the wrong leg. I realized it wasn't my place though, it's too easy to be taken the wrong way. So, I just did my stuff as best I could. I was a little embarrassed at not being able to get my arms through on Garba Pindasana, not a bit of sweat to help out. It was a good thing, kept me humble.

I think we ran out of time near the end. We only did two back bends. I usually do a modified bridge pose, setu bandha sarvangasana, for my first back bend. When I went up into Urdhva Dhanurasana for the second rep, he said that would be the last one. Crap! I thought. I need to do more work on my backbends so I had been hoping for at least three or four. Then he came over and started to help me up to standing. I wasn't expecting that in a class like that, especially after only two back bends, so he ended up doing almost all the work.

I was glad to be able to practice, I felt reasonably loose and I knew having done it would help delay my tightening up for that much longer. No practice today. I work tonight so I will be going to the led first series class tomorrow morning

I just got back in town from a short visit back home. I had to go back to Oklahoma City for a funeral. I hadn't been there since my dad's funeral four or five years ago. You kind of need to have a really good reason to go to Oklahoma City. I figured I wouldn't have much chance to practice in that time unless I was able to force myself to do it at my sister's house, where I was staying. I booked my flight so as to be able to get in a first series class before I left for the airport. I knew there was a guy, Andrew Eppler, who taught ashtanga at a yoga studio in the college town of Norman, OK, about 20 miles south of OKC. My wife had taken a class from him the last time she was visiting my sister. I didn't think I'd be able to get down there though. I hit the internet and did some searches for yoga classes in OKC. I found a couple of options. One of them had a teacher named Christina, who it turns lived with Alan Little while he was in Mysore about a couple of years ago. I've never met Alan, but I've come to know him to a degree through his writing on those Yahoo and the EZBoard ashtanga message boards and from reading his Mysore diary and going through his personal web site. I figured if Alan liked her enough to live with her while in India, then she had to have something good going for her. I called her and left a message telling her I wanted to try and make it to the Mysore/self-practice that she holds at her house on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She left me a message that there was also an evening Ashtanga class on Wednesday at the studio. So, it turned out that I was actually able to practice all three days of my trip.

The led first series class on the morning I left was a little on the cold side. Even though we are in Southern California, the morning temperatures have been in the upper thirties lately. The heat is not left on in the studio overnight. They do turn it on when they come in for the pranayama class that starts at 6:15AM. That doesn't really warm the room up that much though on a cold morning. For some reason, there weren't that many people in class, only 17, so we didn't have the usual quorum to generate body heat either. I knew going into Kurmasana that Garba Pindasana was gonna suck: not enough sweat to let the arms slide though the legs easily. I was able to smear just enough sweat from my head onto my legs and arms to get them through but I was barely able to get my hands to my face, much less up by my ears or the top of my head for the rolling around. We didn't do anything extra in that class. I can only remember going to that class a couple of times ever in the past, but both times he threw in a couple of extra things, like doing Marichyasana E and F. We did do ten back bends, because it was the tenth of the month it turns out. This is a class that Tim practices with us, so he was doing each back bend too. At the end, he dryly noted that it was a good thing that it was the 10th and not the 29th. I have been screwing up my stand up attempts lately. I spazzed on this one too, so he came by after getting everyone else up and assisted me to standing. Most people will help someone up by gently pulling forward on their hips or thighs. Tim has a neat kind of assist in which he will put his hand on your chest and bring you up using pressure with that hand alone. Unlike the typical assist to standing where the assister ends up doing most or all of the work, the hand on chest approach requires the student to do most of the work with your legs. It also helps you keep your head down and your back and chest in the appropriate arch.

On Wednesday, after the memorial service and the after service get together were all done, I snuck away and did the evening class at the Yoga Studio OKC where Christina teaches some of her classes. The Wednesday class was taught by a guy named Alan. He told me the class would be a little different than a typical ashtanga class. The folks in OKC for the most part are guided by Andrew Eppler, an Ashtanga teacher who follows the approach of his teacher, B.N.S. Iyengar. There were some minor variations in vinyasa in the standing poses. The rest of the class was pretty much a typical prep class. Most of the poses were done. The poses omitted were the ones that are typically omitted in most of the prep classes I've gone to, namely the bound lotus poses, marichyasana D, setu bandhasana. Surprisingly, we did do janu sirsasana C, which many classes do leave out as being "too challenging" for their students. We only did three repetitions of navasana but they were longer holds than most classes would have, so my abs didn't mind stopping after three. We did do kurmasana and supta kurmasana, again these are often omitted in other classes. I think I was able to get the big toe of my left foot under the heel of my right foot in Supta K. The teacher then came by and crossed my ankles the rest of the way. I tried to let him know he could go ahead and bring my feet all the way up behind my head onto my neck but I knew he didn't know me or my practice and would not likely give that kind of an adjustment to a stranger. After finishing the first series poses we moved to back bends. I thought that he said, "Go ahead and do two sets of five back bends". I wondered why people were holding them so long. Usually, when faced with the prospect of doing ten backbends, people are pretty willing to come down after just a few seconds. I was thinking back to the long Navasanas we had done. "Man," I thought, "These folks are serious." It turns out that instead of "two sets of five backbends", he actually had called for two "sets", or reps, of backbend to a count of five. Whew. That I can do. Then he said, "Okay, now just do the three stand-up and drop backs or hand stands or whatever other back bending poses you want to finish with on your own." Uh oh. Sure enough, they all started doing drop backs, etc. I meekly did a few more simple back bends. I am not worthy. I am too scared. We finished with a somewhat truncated finishing sequence, did some bhastrika pranayama and had a nice long savasana. The instructor was a very nice a guy named Alan. He kept trying to refuse my class fee, since I was a visitor and all. He doesn't know me very well. He had a very nice floaty practice. He did most of the class with us, getting up from time to time to help adjust or coach someone in the postures, often getting up at the most undesirable of times, like during each rep of Navasana. All in all a nice class, especially since I didn't even know it was available until the day before when Christina clued me in.

We finished Alan's class at around 7PM. I went back and did the post-funeral meeting with family stuff then went home and to bed. I had a mysore class to go to at 6:30 the next morning. In addition to leading classes at The Yoga Studio OKC, Christina has been trying to get a Mysore type thing going. It's a new concept there and hasn't really developed a strong following. Yet. She holds it at her house a couple mornings each week. Fortunately for me, one of those days was this morning. And it was early enough that I could get it in, get showered and still make it to my flight without rushing. Before I left San Diego, I called her to find out where her house was to see how much travel time I would have to plan for. It turns out she lives about five houses down from my sister. Weird stuff. So, this morning I got up, showered, dressed up in just about every piece of clothing I had (it was 25 degrees there) and headed over to her place. When I walked in, I wasn't sure I had the right house. First thing I saw was a guy wearing a sarong type skirt thing, so I figured I was in the right place. The guy turned out to be Andrew Eppler. After some brief early morning chat, we all moved upstairs to her practice room, which was fortunately heated to about 95 degrees. I was a little unsure about how to proceed. I knew that she was an Ashtangi, but I didn't know if she did things guruji's way or if they all did things in BNS's way. Like quite a few of Tim's students, in mysore classes I tend to throw in a few extra poses and research poses. I didn't want to come across wrong though. I decided to go ahead and do the samakonasana and hanumanasana sequence that we usually do after the prasaritas. When she didn't do them I thought I better cool it with the extras. Then Andrew did do them. In fact, he did a whole lot more stuff, including pressing up from prasarita into handstand and then into ashtavakrasana on both sides before he ever touched back down. So, given that lead I just did my normal mysore practice. One thing was real obvious early on: I don't float. Andrew was doing these nice soft jump backs from down dog and descents from hand stand. We were practicing on a wood floor on the second floor. My landings sounded like land mines going off. We all practiced on our own. It was more of a group self-practice than a mysore type class but that was all I was looking for. Nothing really great stood out about my performance, though I was able to get my feet crossed on my own in Supta Kurmasana. Not very well mind you but they were crossed. My Kapotasana still sucks. I need to get back to working on that. I had been grabbing the knuckle of my big toe on my own at one point and now I can barely even touch my toes. I gave Dwi Pada a go but didn't get it on the first try so I gave up and did a quick finishing sequence. While I was in savasana I listened to Andrew do his pranayama. He had some pretty long retentions going there. I was without a clock to guide me and I didn't want to be the guest who stays to long, so I tried to move fairly expeditiously. They both finished before I did but I managed to get done with everything before they got done with their post-practice pranayama and meditation. I knew they had some stuff to do, work to get to, etc., so I left and grabbed a quick shower at my sisters before heading to the airport.

I wish I could get my sister to take classes with them. I think she would really benefit from it in many ways. Well, she knows it's there.

Have to quit, I'm being challenged for computer time by the rest of the tribe.

Today's practice was the guided second series class. Since I usually don't make it to that class, I never know how it's going to go when I do attend. Some days, I'm out of my league, exhausted even before the Tittibhasana sequence and completely wrung out to the point of just going through the motions after doing the Titti's. Other days, I make it through okay abut struggle with one area or another, the backbends in the middle, the inversions, it's almost always something. Today was a little different. I never really got exhausted. That's a first for me in that class. I worked enough to get sweaty but not my usual drenched look. I guess doing the poses through dwi pada sirsasana in my mysore classes has helped me develop some endurance and some familiarity with the demands of the sequence that made today's class less of a struggle. Who knows? The next time I try the class, I'll probably get totally waxed.

In my recent trip to the Yucatan for that week long course with Tim, I managed to accumulate a small collection of minor dings and twinges. I did something in the first mysore class that caused me to feel a semi-sharp but not disruptive discomfort near the area of my right rhomboid muscle, near my scapula when I started doing back bends. I think maybe I let my shoulder collapse too far forward from the pressure of the right leg in dwi pada. It didn't really affect the rest of that practice but it did get more noticeable through that day. I took some motrin and had one of the people there who was a physical therapist feel around. No major knots or tender points. The discomfort decreased but lingered in the background, forcing me to pay more attention to that area while practicing than I might normally. I also managed to tweak something in my lower back later in the week. It came early on, during the Sun salutations. I either mis-landed my attempt at a floaty jump back to chaturanga or I over-contracted the buttocks during up dog. I felt it right away. It was strong enough to worry me that it would get worse. The rest of my up dogs looked pretty pitiful as I attempted to baby my way past that area. I think my up dogs were more like plank poses with my head tilted back. I was worried that the back bends would really hurt but they actually made the area feel better. I didn't try a stand up though. I could feel it that night when I slept but it wasn't getting worse. The next day, our last practice of the seminar, I did okay. As the practice went on, the area loosened up and the up dogs started to look like weak but more normal up dogs. Later that day, Tim was going to demonstrate how he assists people with supported drop backs. He mentioned to the class how much I "love" doing that, because I have managed to land with a thud on my head a couple of times by not using my legs and back the right way. So, I got up to show him I ain't scared of no stinkin' drop backs. I wasn't concerned that I would hurt anything since doing backbends actually had helped the area during class. As I warmed up a bit though, I could feel the area warning me. It was a full moon day, a day when we are traditionally not supposed to practice anyway. I was going to be leaving on a plane in about three hours. I wasn't very warm. I just knew if I did it, I possibly might significantly tweak something and be out of action for a while. So I told him I didn't want to give it a try and sat back down. Nobody snickered, out loud anyway. Then my wife got up to do the drop backs with him, cold, and made the whole thing look absurdly easy. Well, I've managed to avoid a significant injury in practice, so far. Usually, the best way to manage an injury is prevention. I don't wimp out on everything but I didn't feel ready to walk the edge right then.

We're having something of an exodus amongst the teachers at our shala this month. One of Tim's assistants is already gone on a three month trip to help someone in Wyoming who is having a shoulder operation soon. Three other teachers were going to be going to Mysore to study with Guruji but one of them had to cancel. Tim still has able assistants to help out and fill in while they are gone. My wife is going to be substituting for one of them at the noon classes each Monday. She has already been helping Tim do adjustments sometimes for the Sunday led first series class. She is very excited to be able to have the chance to teach a group on a more regular basis. To date, most of her teaching has been on a fill-in or substitute basis. That actually works better for her in the long run, given all of her other family, school and soccer team commitments. Still, the more experience she can get teaching with Tim, the better.

The rest of this week will not be a good one for practice. I work from 8 till 6 tomorrow, so that eliminates all classes. I will probably be flying to Oklahoma on Tuesday to attend a funeral, so I'll be out of the yoga loop for a while. I've gotten pretty accustomed to that kind of flux by now, but having gotten in some really regular practice this last month or so, I've developed a taste for it.

Back again. A fitful sort of writer I am. I've been fairly busy practice-wise, so I felt it would be appropriate to try and update a bit.

Since that last posting in December, I've made an effort to make it to any class that I could. Gym classes, Intro classes, Improv's, you name it. I took some half days of vacation to get in some extra mysore classes. I even practiced at work a couple of times. I tried it in my call room one day. It's a pretty small room. There was a small space heater in the room but it didn't make a dent in the room temperature. If you've never had to be in one, you might not know that hospitals tend to be a bit on the chilly side. To generate any room warmth, I opened the door to the bathroom, turned on the shower to full blast at the highest temperature and left it running the whole time I practiced. A sinful waste of water and energy that I never let myself repeat, but it did work. I've become increasingly willing to do most anything to avoid stiffening up. To quote a sutra we learned recently, II.16, "Future suffering should be anticipated and avoided."

Going more has definitely paid off. I'm at my upper range of motion in almost every aspect of practice, except for backbending. In the past, I've managed to hit similar peaks but would usually fall back into inflexibility as work and life caused me to miss more practices than not. These last few weeks have had fewer regressions. It's going to be a hard act to maintain though.

To cap off a fruitful couple of months, my wife and I just returned from a week long seminar with our teacher Tim in Maya Tulum. We've gone to this annual teacher training retreat two other times and loved it. We didn't get to go last year because our oldest was playing in her first state soccer tournament during the same week. This year both my son and my oldest daughter were playing in the tournament the same week as the retreat but my sister was in town to help and we just convinced ourselves it was okay to put ourselves first. So we missed my son losing all of his games the first weekend of the tournament. My daughter's team did win enough games to make it through to play this weekend but we were back in time for that. We wanted to beat ourselves up for being bad parents, going off and missing a seminal event like that. But, after going to soccer tournaments and games every weekend since September, the self-accusations kind of bounced off. We're more than a little sick of soccer right now. As much as we would have liked to have been ideal parents and been there for every single game, while we were in Tulum, we didn't really feel bad at all.

The retreat is set up as an abbreviated form of Tim's two week teacher training seminar that he gives each summer in Encinitas. Each day for us started out with practice from 7 to 9 AM. After a shower and breakfast, we would work on postures from 10:30 till 1:30. Then we would break for lunch. We had time off after lunch to go to the beach or do various side trips. We met back again at 5 PM for a couple of hours of work, usually on non-asana aspects of the yoga practice. We would cover some of the more fundamental yoga sutras of Patanjali, do some compassionate pranayama, some chanting with Tim leading with his harmonium and usually some reading of stories from hindu literature. You know, the ones in which the protagonists all suffer through horrible indignities, the more noble the protagonist, the greater the suffering. Uplifting stuff. Then off to dinner and the nightly ritual of Tim drubbing us at the Scrabble table. Come to think of it, our days were kind of like those ancient hindu nobles. Between the morning asana practice and the final accounting of the Scrabble scores, it was one lesson in humbleness after another.

In every yoga retreat or seminar that I've ever been to before, there's always at least one person, one irritating know-it-all, who has to show off how much they think they know by constantly asking questions, challenging what has been taught by the instructor by pointing out how it differs from what they heard in a Baron Baptiste seminar and even lecturing on how they think things should be done. This seminar wasn't like that. It was a nice, receptive group.

I like these kind of confabs because you get out of your usual comfort zone and you get to meet people from a lot of different areas with widely varying personal and yoga backgrounds. In this group of roughly 25, we had six people from Tim's studio in Encinitas, some LA folk, a handful of people from Canada, several New Yorkers, including two or three people from Eddie Stern's place who interestingly had never before met or seen each other. We had people from Mexico City, Guatemala and even one from the Big Smoke, London, England. There were a three or four couples, one set of sisters but most people were there by themselves. A lot of the people did teach yoga, naturally enough, but I think most did not, at least not yet. We had obstetricians (me), national level triathletes, graphics designers, dancers, physical therapists, massage therapists, property managers, we even had a dog. Most were mid-thirties or older. Some younger. We had a toddler join us from time to time too, Tim's daughter Leela. The yoga experience ranged from "I went to my first class three weeks ago" to many years of experience in yoga and in teaching. All in all, kind of an ideal mix. In genetics, they call it hybrid virility. Strength from variety.

I've mentioned in past postings that I like it when I can see people I'm not used to seeing practice. I learn from seeing other people do their practice. This was better because I could also talk with the people, find out their backgrounds, add some context to the physical practice I was observing. I tried to speak with as many people as I could. In a group of twenty five, you can pretty much get to know everyone else a little bit by week's end. Some you get to spend more time with than others but I think we all were able to temper our own experiences and biases with what we learned from and about each other. I got quite a bit out of this meeting, something from everyone, the perseverance and drive of the woman from Guatemala who basically studies on her own, the self assurance and pluck of the person whose home in the deep south and whose non-mainstream lifestyle couldn't have made it any harder to practice ashtanga, the humbleness and openness of the triathlete who had only practiced a few times before coming down with his ashtangi wife to the seminar. Just about the only thing I didn't absorb was the incredible bandhas that Andrea, the Italian guy had. Boy, if it were only that easy.

Our practices in the morning varied a bit. The first two days we did guided first series with Tim leading the class. Then, on Tuesday we did a mysore style class. There were several folks who had never been to a mysore style class but everyone soon learned that it wasn't a big deal. On Wednesday, hump day, we did a guided Improv class with Tim practicing along with us. That was probably his only real chance to get in much practice the whole week. Thursday was another mysore class. On Friday, we did the traditional guided first series practice, despite it being a full moon day. In the two other times I had gone to this retreat, we never got to do a mysore class, so that must be something new. I think everyone liked it.

My practices were all pretty good for me. My work in the preceding months bore fruit. I was able to do the forward bending with relative...., i don't want to use the term ease because 1) its not entirely the most accurate term and 2) the gods will punish me if I make a claim like that. Lets just say I came closer than usual to achieving sukha as recommended by Patanjali in Sutra II.46. Now to work on the steadiness. My backbends remain in a bit of a regression mode however. I just haven't worked on them as much as I could have, to be honest. I feel pretty good about my second series poses. I'm not doing anything that looks "WOW!" but I'm doing acceptable work, again except for kapotasana. I'm as far along as I've ever been with my hanumanasana and samakonasana range. I can get all the way down on my left side in hanumanasana. On my right, I'm stiffer in the ham and in the opposite groin, but I'm just shy of the ground. In samakonasana, everything remains safely off the ground, still with at least five or six inches of clearance. That's by my measurement. A more accurate, unbiased evaluation would likely add another 50%. But, I'm closer than I was. I still grunt and groan and squeal like a pig in that one though. Those arm balances kill me. In my latter poses for second, I'm doing okay in eka pada sirsasana. I still haven't managed to balance in dwi pada sirsasana. I usually end up being put into it by Tim, but I have gotten into it twice on my own, so it can be done. Just not every time. I've completely abandoned attempts at dropping back. I just don't see the point if I'm feeling stiff enough that I barely make it up from a backbend, and sometimes fail at doing that. I have also made barely discernible progress in my attempts at jumping back. I can sometimes get my feet through to a lolasana-like position but there my momentum hits a wall. I haven't yet worked out what I need to do to get my upper body moving forward and down to get the hips and feet moving up and back. I did get a slight twinge in my elbow a couple of times when I was trying to force my body forward, so I'm just gonna keep on gradually trying to accrue change. It was illuminating to watch the ease with which the guy at the retreat was able to lift up and jump back though. He's only been practicing for a year but said he was able to do that from day one. Time for Sutra I.33: "the mind become serene when it cultivates.....joy in the presence of virtue...." In other words, I shouldn't curse the ease with he moves while I still unsuccessfully attempt to throw my body to and fro with unresponsive and seemingly genetically absent core muscles.

Well, I'll try and save some of my literary huffing and puffing for another date. It's getting late, I'm still used to the time zone of the Yucatan, which is two hours earlier than mine, I'm going to try the second series class at 8:00 tomorrow morning and I've still got to spell check this thing. Hope to be doing this more regularly.

Yesterday was the end of two straight weeks of mysore practice for me. The only other time I've ever been able to practice every day, Sunday through Friday, for two weeks straight was when Guruji came to visit our area in 2000. Those were led classes, one week of the first half of first series, the second week of the whole first series. I've never had anything close to two weeks in a row of mysore style classes. Probably the best I've ever been able to do prior to this was maybe three days of mysore in a row. I had this run because I had taken off the time to attend classes with Guruji on his recent tour. That visit was cancelled about a month ago when his son-law suddenly died back home in India. Since I had the time off from work, I decided to keep it off and study with Tim. Unfortunately, Tim already had plans set up to go to Mysore, India to visit with Guruji. He left in the middle of my second week of classes, so I still got a lot of time with him.

After doing mostly led classes for the last three and a half years, all of a sudden doing mysore classes only has revealed some pluses and minuses. Going every day for two weeks straight has helped my endurance, at least I think it has. I'll have to go to a normal first series led class and see if it feels any different. As it stands now, when I do a mysore class, I do the normal first series and then the postures that I've been given so far in the second series. I have to move through those a bit faster than people might normally do them if they were just doing first series or just second series because I only have about two hours to complete it all. I think I mentioned before that doing the poses at a faster pace does make it easier in a way. Not having to hold every pose for as long, especially the more challenging ones, does save energy. Those energy savings are quickly used up in the extra poses though. Not being able to hold the poses for as long is also the drawback. Having a time barrier is an unfortunate distraction. There's lots of stuff I need to work on. The last thing that I need is an easy excuse, like, "hey, I better hurry up or I'll run out of time", to lead me to gloss over what needs attention. Not surprisingly, I'm a little more tired at the end of a mysore class than I am at the end of a led first series class. The postures that I'm learning in the second series are fairly demanding for me. By the time I get to them, I feel like the cup is empty sometimes. I definitely let my backbending fall off this past two weeks: "low on time, low in energy, I think I'll just do four back bends and skip the standing up attempt today" kind of thinking. That will get better, hopefully as I get more accustomed to doing this practice. Unfortunately, I'm now back in the real work-a-day world where mysore opportunities are sparse.

I've debated with myself for a while now about trying to jury-rig my daily schedule so that I can get to more mysore classes. Most of the mysore classes start at 7:00AM, so I would need to start work at 10:00 or 10:15 to be able to do it. Even if I could arrange my clinic days to allow that start time, it still wouldn't give me that many chances. A lot of my days are days where I'm in the operating room, which starts at 7:45AM, or on call, which starts at 8:00AM, or coming off of in-house over night call, where I don't get off until 8:00AM, an hour after class has started. It would be a fairly big hassle to switch my schedule around for only a couple of extra mysore classes each month. But, having had the chance to go as regularly has I have had these two weeks, I can't help wonder what I could do if I could go regularly. Once you get the chance to increase the frequency of practice, you then feel the need to go even more. The monster needs to be fed.

Before I started this two week bend-a-rama, I was expecting that when I got through it, I would have made advancements in lots of areas. Now that I've finished it, I'm not sure I can say that I'm any better at anything actually, except maybe endurance. I had hoped that I would make clear progress in my bandhas and my jump backs for one thing. In all honesty, I don't think I put that much energy into them during these two weeks. I did land Bakasana B from a float a few times, but never in a good enough position to hold it for more than a second or two. Hopefully I won't jinx myself in saying it, but I am getting a little better picture of what path my body needs to move in to be able to enter it that way. I used to either under shoot and land in a squat, or over shoot and end up cart wheeling across the room to avoid a face plant. Now I tend to mis-land it. I guess that's a kind of progress. I did make progress at the poses at the end. I had never before been able to keep my leg behind my head when I would press up to vinyasa out of eka pada sirsasana. As soon as I would start to lift up, my leg would slip and slide off, whacking me in the head in the process. I asked Tim to look me over and see if he had any suggestions. He watched me, then after a second or two of thought, said, "don't let your head and neck bend forward." "Oh, come on," I thought. "That's the best advice you have? Don't you think if it was that simple, I would have already thought of it?" So, next practice I showed him. I did just what he said. Naturally, my leg hasn't come off since. He must have been pleased enough at that that he gave me dwi pada sirsasana right before he left. More than anything else, that's what sucked for me about his leaving for India. I can't get my second foot back on my own. I can be put there readily. I can be put there fairly deeply actually. But I haven't yet figured out how to do it by myself. I was really looking forward to his help for a few practices so I could hopefully get to a point where I could do it on my own. While he was gone, I only had one other adjustment in that pose. The other times, they just let me wiggle and struggle on my own. I'd be happy to do that, but I was only good for a couple of attempts on my own before I would run out of gas. This is one pose that I sense that I'm going to have a harder time progressing with if I'm only doing it once or twice a month.

I wasn't the only one who decided to study with Tim when Guruji cancelled his tour. There were some crowded mornings. One morning, there was no space available for a couple of people who had come late. They had to go home. That would really, really suck. There was a whole mini-contingent of folks from Chicago. Some pretty good practices in there with all the new folks.

Well, enough for now. I'm at work. It's slow but there are some things that need to be done.