Review: Om Yoga Center

So, here's how this will work: every so often I will take my little yoga butt to another yoga studio in the city, attend one of their classes, and give you the low-down on the place, from soup to nuts. Or rather, from "Om" to "Shanti". This week we begin with Om Yoga Center...an uber-popular NYC yoga spot.

Atmosphere:
I'm sorry, but if I had a little "star" system, Om would rate preeeetty low on the ol' atmosphere scale. For one thing, you walk in and it is deathly quiet and deserted (or at least it was at 3:30 in the afternoon), and dim, dim, dim. The dude and dudette at the front desk were stone-faced...I had to ask the guy who signed me in to please tell me where everything was. (Which wasn't even all that helpful as their studio is layed out like a maze, and he rattled off the directions so quickly I just had to pray for signs...).

The studio itself is quite large, with lots of winding hallways and rooms with cutesy names (every yoga studio in the world is guilty of this...oh, that will be taking place in the sky room...you'll be having class in the love room...just leave your mind right outside the earth wind and fire room...) and the dressing rooms are practically palatial compared to the Lotus. This was actually really nice, as I'm so used to bumping elbows (and all kinds of other things) with my fellow dressers while shimmying in and out of my sometimes-sweaty yoga togs.

After getting dressed I lined up with my fellow classmates outside the earth room (sigh) where we would be taking class. Again with the silence! No talking, no laughing, no groovy chant-y music playing...we all just kind of jammed ourselves against the wall and pretended we were alone. Other signs of chilliness: a full-size model of a skeleton staring at me from down the hall. (I mean, I get why it's there, but really...necessary?), and a large-size note next to the perfectly organized rolled-up mats declaring over and over that if you are NOT a member or a teacher you are NOT to touch these mats. Mats for you (oh, non-member peon) are hanging up in the studios! (Okay, now I'm just being snarky. I promised myself I would keep an open mind, but the vibe was really killing my I'm-about-to-go-to-class buzz.)

Class: (Intermediate/Advanced, One hour and 40 minutes)
Finally, the doors opened and we were allowed in to the studio (also huge), and all beige, which I was not super fond of...though the light was nice and because of the monochramatic thing going on it felt kind of ethereal, which I like...and stocked to the brim with mats and props. I found what I thought would be a nice hidden spot, one row from the back, and set myself up.

Note: I hate being the new girl, and I hate even more being the new girl and feeling like I have to "relax" or "warm up" on my mat before class. It makes me supa self-conscious. So...picture that.

My teacher today was to be...let's call him "F"...the straightest straight man I have ever taken a yoga class from. Perhaps even a trace of a New York accent? F. wandered in with coffee cup in hand to our class (all women, mind you) and wandered from student to student, chit-chatting and making them giggle before calling things to order. I was hoping that he would not come over to me to have one of those "are you new?" conversations that teachers feel obligated to have when they see a new student in class, as they are oftentimes embarrassing, and also make me feel like I'm wearing a "new girl" tattoo emblazoned on my forehead (but also I was kind of hoping that he would. No, not for the reason you think! But, because it's nice to feel that the teacher is looking out for you when you are new.)

He didn't.

Class began and I quickly realized that I had not chosen my spot as wisely as I had imagined. Turns out, at Om (or at least in this class), they orient the front of the room toward the middle, meaning, there are two rows of mats on each side, all facing in toward the center. Meaning, you are staring at the people across from you while you practice.

Boo! Double boo! Me no likey. Where do you look?! Do you look at them? Do you look right past them as if they aren't there?! Do you stare at the floor the whole time?! What the...ugh! Blar! Noooooo. Bad. Bad bad bad. (Okay, seriously, I thought this was totally uncomfortable, but you do actually forget about it pretty quickly. And I'm sure there's some good, spiritually enlightening reason for setting things up this way.)

As for the class itself: though I felt frustrated by the set up and the total lack of music (!!), and the continued somber atmosphere, the class itself was good. I say "good" and not "great", because I, personally, like my classes to have a bit more "flow" to them...this class was sequenced for learning, more than for moving, if that makes any sense. What I LOVE about the Lotus is that, no matter the teacher, the classes tend to be physically inspiring and move with the breath in a creative symbiotic way--not this pose, pause, pose, instruction, pose, pause stuff. I miss that, in classes that are otherwise, but I do not deny the benefits of working with poses for the sake of the poses individually and not just the overall output of the asana. Which is what F. was doing. Some of the work in ardha chandrasana was particularly helpful...at one point he made an adjustment for me and said softly "it's not all about your leg" which was a bit of a revelation, as it has been pounded in to me over and over that half-moon is very much about my leg!

Moment of Brilliance:
We did a long handstand practice toward the end of the class and after a bit of us all hopping up into handstand against the wall, F. encouraged those of us who have been practicing for a while and used to being upside down, to start playing around with micro-bends in our elbows after we got up. He emphasized the micro part of that instruction and asked us to pay attention to how it shifted the weight on our hands and the rotation of our shoulders. He likened it to the up-and-down play that is so often done in standing poses (bending the knees and then coming out, re-bending, etc.). I tried this and it ROCKED my handstand WORLD!! I realized, as soon as I did it, that, not only was all my weight focused in the heels of my palms, instead of spread throughout the whole breadth of my hands as it should be, but also I had been paying so much attention in my handstand practice to my legs and my feet and my lower ribs, I had completely forgotten about my hands! That would be like doing an entire standing practice only thinking about your arms, and then wondering why you kept falling over! This one instruction, for me, was worth the entire class.

Conclusion:
Though I can't see myself getting really excited about OM, I would go there again in a pinch. I still think Laughing Lotus beats it on all fronts, and going there made me realize just how much I value a sense of fun and improvisation in my practice, and in the atmosphere of the studio itself.

YogaLia Rating: 3 Lotuses (out of 5)

Train-ing in Frustration

I'm deep into rehearsals for my current show, and have been squeezing my practice into early mornings and two-hour breaks or, if worse comes to worse, in ten minute slots of time, sprawled out on a sawdust covered floor in the theater. I know that my practice gets sacrificed during the weeks leading up to a show, I know this from experience, and I also know that it will all even out again once the show is up and running...this is what I try and remind myself...but my body begins to complain after a few days of haphazard practice and I, un-yogic-ly, have nightmares of all my hard work slipping away from me as my practice dwindles from 5 to 3 days/week (or worse!). So, I struggle during these weeks--to keep practicing even if it's not as much or as challenging as I want it to be, and to remind myself that there are only so many hours in a day, and only so much that I can do...

But some days are harder than others.

This morning I had a costume fitting scheduled for 10am, which I was nervous about, as I was supposed to be in midtown by 11:00 for my job-job...but the designer assured me she would get me in on time, and the fitting was just on 26th street, so I figured I would be okay.... I had spent a good part of the early morning half-assing it through a practice while my brain wheeled madly, trying to figure out how I could jam a class into my day. Maybe I can leave work a couple hours early? Maybe I won't go at all? How many classes will I take this week? How EARLY can I get up tomorrow? On and on. Truth be told, I COULD have taken a class this morning, if only I'd woken up at 6am when my alarm went off...

But, unable to solve this conundrum, still bandying around the idea of ducking out of my job-job at 4pm to make it to a class before rehearsal, I headed off, in plenty of time to make my fitting. I even postponed my cliff-bar-from-the-deli ritual in order to have a cushion on the other side of my train-ride. However...things being as they are, meaning, as my friend's father used to say: "the hurrier I go, the behinder I get", nothing went quite as planned.

The train was just pulling in to the station near my house when I arrived and I thought my goodness, what luck! There was nowhere to sit, which was kind of a bummer, especially since I had put on uncomfortable (yet beautiful) shoes this morning (a whim!). But, C'est la vie! I have a good book to read...no harm done. THIRTY MINUTES later, when we had still only gone 2 stops and I had finally looked at my calendar to see that my fitting was over on 11th ave and would take me at least an additional 15 minutes of walking when I finally did get off the train (whenever that might be...), maybe even longer, taking into account my beautiful yet idiotic shoes and this meant I would most definitely be late not only for my fitting, but for work, which really blows my take-off-early-and-make-a-yoga-class idea all to smithereens, not to mention the fact that as soon as I DID get off the train I would get a voicemail from my commercial agents asking me could I please make an audition that afternoon, which meant not only would I be late to work I WOULD have to leave early, after all, and...life was looking preeeeeetty unfair.

I tried, gentle readers, I tried not to let it rile me up. I really did. I tried repeating "Ganesha" over and over as one of my yoga teachers says she does on aggravating train rides, I tried taking the joke, I tried gently asking myself what the universe was trying to say to me about worry and rushing, but to tell you the truth, the whole thing really ticked me off!

But what could I do, but wobble my way the several long blocks to the fitting, apologize to both designer and boss, adjust my schedule to give me enough time to run to my audition later, and try (and try and try and try) to not show up to my fitting in a lousy mood. Of course I couldn't find the entrance to the costume collection and of course I got on the wrong elevator and then had to get off again, but with every step I just had to remind myself to let it go and continue moving...the world is not conspiring against me, the world is not conspiring against me...no one, after all, wants to deal with a crabby actor, no matter what kind of morning they've had. And nor did I want to pull myself so far downhill that I would not be able to climb up again (you know what I'm talking about). I could feel myself wanting, again and again, to put on my "everything sucks" goggles--thoughts of all the larger and larger and larger annoyances in my life beginning to surface (all for the sole purpose of keeping the feeling of frustration alive in my body), and again and again I had to take them off and breathe. And breathe. And breathe.

So, as it turns out, even though I will NOT be making it to class today, I might still be getting all the practice I need...

Scrubbing My Way to Freedom...

So, in order to pay for my many, many yoga classes, I clean my yoga studio once a week. It's a sweet gig, just a couple hours of elbow grease yields me unlimited free classes, and makes me feel a bit more part of the community, to boot. And there are worse places to clean than a yoga studio, let me tell you what...

I do my cleaning either in the evening after everyone has gone home, or early in the morning, before everyone arrives. Both have their pluses. The evenings are serene in their isolation--the city is dark and hushed outside the windows, and without the threat of imminently arriving yogis, I can relax into my work, secreted away on the third floor with my vacuum and toilet brush. However, it can also get a little creepy--late at night, me the only one around, in a building that is rife with noises of banging radiator pipes and a settling foundation. I have freaked myself out on more than one occasion with visions of "robbers" scaling the side of the building and crashing through one of the studio windows. (What a disappointment to someone looking for wads of cash to come tumbling into a yoga studio...).

In the mornings, however, I am waking the studio up, as opposed to putting it gently to bed (as it sometimes feels I am doing at night)...I make tea and get all the loud cleaning done before anyone arrives, and the rest of the morning finds me scooching around the early-morning yogis with my roll of paper towels in one hand and a bottle from our selection of "natural" cleaners in the other. There is another kind of peace these early mornings, but it is a bit more electric, and because of the solitary nature of the work, and the quick action which my mind tends to leap to immediately upon waking, I am a bit more prone to...um...shall we say...flights of fancy? Or rather...whirlpools of fancy? Sometimes muddy sucking quicksand voids of fancy? There's something about those early hours and the unconscious repetition of toilet brush in toilet bowl, three sprays of glass cleaner to every mirror and a backwards-forwards vacuum stroke that lends itself to...obsession.

Lately I've been cleaning a lot of mornings.

But this week, I tried a little experiment. Instead of letting myself sink into thought thought thought endless compulsive thought while absently scrubbing away soap-scum, I decided that I would try my best to pay attention to what I was doing. Fully. With totalness of mind.

While visiting home my mother told me a story, which she has told me many times before, about her days as a youth, working in a bank, before the days of computers, where her job consisted of slipping many many checks into many many check-sized slots--a job which, no surprise, became a feeding ground for a variety of worries--and how she one day picked up a book all about the Japanese tradition of the "tea ceremony" and how it changed her life. The Japanese tea ceremony is, apparently, all about the triumph of aesthetics over the mundane, and so she--my mother--began to apply these principles to her check-sorting. She began to give the checks and the slots and the sorting of the checks into the slots her full and total and beatific attention and according to her, it changed her life. She even said that one day, while the checks were flying into their proper places, and her hands too, were flying, she looked over to see a customer hanging around her area of the bank. Assuming the man was lost, she asked him if there was something she could do to help and he shook his head, no, and said:

"I was just watching you do that."

Why? Because it had become beautiful. Why? Because she had become fully and wholly devoted to it. And watching anyone do anything fully, is a beautiful sight. So, it was by this principal that I attempted to operate this week while vacuuming rugs and cleaning toilets: Japanese tea ceremony, baby, Japanese tea ceremony.

I can not say that I found any yogis hanging over me, watching me spray cleaner on the sinks, delighted by my beautifious concentration, but I can say that I had a more enjoyable morning of cleaning than I have had in quite awhile. I attempted to be gentle with myself, and every time my mind wanted to go rampaging off in this or that direction, I just softly guided it back to the task at hand. I tried to notice the small beauties of the room: the gleam of a cleaned handle, the brightness of a light, the juxtaposition of two colors, the feel of fabric and paper in my hand. And I began to ask myself questions about what exactly I was doing: why was I doing it, for whose benefit, how good a job could I possibly do--was I willing to do? And all of these things led me deeper and deeper into the task at hand.

Which is, ultimately, the only thing that is at hand anyhow. Always. No matter what. Now I only have to master this for every OTHER MOMENT OF MY LIFE. And then, finally, I will be perfect. (hehheh)

My Shoulder Hurts

And, after much deduction, I think it's because I was trying to show off to my brother all my cool yoga moves and I tried to do a forearm stand without warming up.

Because I'm an idiot. Apparently.

3 Ways of Practice

I am returned from my trip!

I did not write while there...my apologies. But, I am delighted to see that I have new readers here in Shanti Town in the meantime...welcome! I love you! (Seriously. I love you.)

My practice was minimal while away...a few stolen moments in the mornings at P.'s parents house, a beautiful vigorous practice on the cold wet deck of a shared house on the Oregon Coast (thank you, Heidi), and another on a different deck, this one shaded with fat green trees, watched by a white cat with wide eyes, in a beautiful house in Seattle. This last practice may have been my favorite...the air was warm but full of breezes, music quietly seeped from the outdoor speakers, and I felt--on the warm plank wood of the deck--that I was both indoors and out, and with P. and Jos working just on the other side of the windows, both solitary and with company (this, like taking a nap in the middle of the day when someone else is home and awake) being one of my favorite kinds of feelings...and every time I bent backwards, I could look up to see the sky covered with trees...

The trip, like these three practices, was broken into three major parts: A week at P's parents house in Eugene (where I stole bits of practice before the house was awake), several days on the Oregon coast (where Heidi and I practiced in the damp air of the morning), and our last week in Seattle (where I did backbends on the deck in Seattle with its fat cat and fat trees)...and I have to wonder if the practice matched the place...?

Perhaps it is right that the quiet solitude and spaciousness of the house in Eugene--itself standing solitary amidst acres of farmland, down a long dusty road to the peace of it--inspired a silent solitary practice, stolen on the gray rug that carpeted our bedroom. I remember how much my back ached that first day when I bent forward into a gentle seated practice, how I could feel all the muscles around all my vertebrae begin to stretch and call out, and how much patience I felt I had for my practice...the space to lean forward and rest my head in the cups of my turned out ankles...bereft of my usual need to push and move and accomplish, I spent a good portion of an hour rippling the waves of my aching back. And so it was at the house, where every morning P and I watched birds gather in the grass as we drank our coffee, and the buzz of New York slipped from our ears and the backs of our shoulders, a little more each day, as we took walks and ate long lunches and generally reee-laxed.

Perhaps it is right that on the coast--where for most days the sky was luminous gray and the air so cold both P and I had to go to the local outlet store and purchase jackets, where we were suddenly away from the solitude of the country and in the arms and eyes and conversations of a large group of friends, all gathered in pending celebration--that my practice became not just shared, but spoken aloud, as I led a chilly (but soon vigorous warm) practice on spread-out beach towels on the deck of our temporary coastal home. The addition of another yogi made my practice come alive in a way that I find difficult to achieve when practicing on my own. I wanted it to be good, damnnit! And we sweated and moved and bent and twisted and inverted, so well my legs quivered after with the exertion of it. (What is it about company, that can so easily obliterate distractions?)

And perhaps also it was right that in Seattle--the place of my youth and late-youth (heh), a place which I feel I am rediscovering, now as an adult, and which also swells with memories and nostalgia and my own longing to live in a place which is beautiful--that I practiced in a new house in a new neighborhood, but in a city I know so well, outside beneath the trees, with my love just on the other side of a window, and the smells of Lake Washington spilling over the dry leaves around my feet, and that the trees and the height and the space of the deck forced a kind of improvisation to my practice, and that the past, after so many days of family and friends and childhood neighborhoods, was deeply present, but also, after the revelry of a much-anticipated wedding and the silent reclamation of a city I have long loved, and, more importantly, the appearance of a Self--more grown, more solid, more flexible--in all these places of old, meant that the future was there with me as well.