Time Out for Hip Flexors

My left hip flexor is sore like a you-know-what.

I've been trying to take it a bit easy this week, only going to class every other day, and that seems to have helped a bit, but it is becoming clear to me that I need to have someone I can go to with my various yogic aches and pains (the physical ones. the spiritual ones I'm gonna have to work out myself...). Acupuncture? Updates to come!

As for classes this week, I have the following brief insights to share:

1. Good yoga class = good music, OR, good music = good yoga class. It works both ways. But, likewise, sucky music = sucky yoga class, OR, sucky yoga class = sucky music. I found myself very aggravated halfway through a class the other day and having trouble concentrating, when I suddenly realized that while the music was tinny and schmaltzy and barely audible, the sequencing, was fast and rigid and challenging, and I was experiencing the dissonance of those two things in my body as "oh my god, I hate you!" (directed at both teacher and music). Realization: I need good tunage.

2. Poses spread like a virus. Hanuman is everywhere! Every class with every teacher, Hanuman is being thrown around like Halloween candy in Fall! Now, it could very well be that Hanuman is a good pose for Spring and so it is popping up (springing!) in all my classes, but I have a hunch that it is also something else...I think poses and sequences enter some kind of yoga studio collective unconscious, and suddenly all the teachers are unwittingly compelled to make us do the splits. Hanuman-arama, no joke.

3. Teachers make a BIG difference. I have made a command decision, that I am no longer going to go to classes taught by teachers who I KNOW do not jive with my style. This is not to put anyone down, as I would say that all of the teachers at Laughing Lotus are well-trained and talented, but there is a particularity to the teachers who I connect with, and it makes a gigantic difference in class for me--I have found that not only do I have more fun, in classes with teachers I love, I am also so much more willing to push myself and really BE in the room.

and,

4. It's time to get serious. About what? You ask. Good freakin' question. Well, it has come to my attention that, while I have a solid and steady yoga practice, I do not have even a semblance of a disciplined spiritual practice, and that concerns me a bit. It does not concern me because of some moral imperative, but instead, because I--it is quite clear--have a desire to, shall we say, "wake up" at least a bit more, and I am not backing that shit up. To be frank. Every time I go to a class and a teacher talks about her meditation practice, every time I read a book or listen to a lecture by a spiritual teacher I am shame-facedly aware of my own fickle grasping for this or that quick-fix and my absolute lack of regular, disciplined practice. And I know, from concrete physical experience that "showing up" is 90% of any kind of growth.

I'm going to start showing up.