Breaking Through...

I am now a certified yoga teacher.  I am also now an engaged woman.  And nearly thirty (but that's a story for later).  I am back in Los Angeles, back taking class, trying now to build this new business, trying not to spend too many hours pouring over wedding porn, trying to maintain even a modicum of the devotion I was so steeped in over the last month in NYC...

It's a lot.  It's a lot. 

Going back to classes at Still, diving back into the deeper alignment work and the slow steady pace of classes there (none of the color and music and whirling-dervishness of Laughing Lotus), has been good--an opportunity to begin to digest all that's happened to me and all that I've learned since July. 

But yesterday, feeling a bit sad and distracted (what? I thought I was done with that!), I urged myself to class--knowing the caffeine hit of the room full of other practice-ers would do me some good--even though all I really wanted to do was treat myself to an extended lie-down on my mat in the middle of my sunny breezy living room.

Okay, but first, please don't laugh--lately I've been often (and shame-facedly) consulting these native american "medicine cards" that I got as a gift (I know! I know!)--especially when I'm feeling a little out of focus--just as a tool to give me something to think on, or, if I'm lucky, to flip my thinking totally on its head.  And yesterday morning I drew one with the intention that I'd use it as inspiration for my home practice, just a little something extra to meditate on.  But to my great dismay, the card I drew was "Action".  It was all about some animal I've never heard of and how action is the recipe if you've drawn this card.  But I, feeling quite nap-ish, and also a little sad, was completely convinced that this card could not mean what it said it meant--I had no desire to have an active practice, so how was I supposed to meditate on ACTION?  My then-tender monkey-mind immediately decided that this must be some kind of (probably bad) omen about an action I'm supposed to be taking but haven't, and I spent the next 20 minutes rolling around on my mat, worrying about what it is I'm supposed to be doing, but not.

Fun!!

And so by the time I dragged my sorry little butt to class I was feeling a little, well...picked on.  (That same pernicious bully is at it again!).   But the class was happily rigorous and as it ALWAYS happens when I am forced by sheer physical demand to pull myself up from the depths I was immediately cheered.  "Why don't I remember this?"  I asked myself.  "Why do I always think that indulging a worry is going to be more helpful than doing some...I don't know...sit ups?!"  The relief is so immediate and so visceral and the ah-ha is like that of a person who has just learned that the quickest way to stop the burning in her fingers is to REMOVE her HAND from the STOVE.  So, blah blah this came, this relief...and the class progressed...and handstands were down and backbends and all kinds of friendly stuff, all going along swimmingly, until we get to the...

HANUMANS.

Yes, hanumans.  Plural. 

Now, I've talked about my difficult relationship with hanuman before (these are the splits, for those of you squinting at the sanskrit)...and it has not improved.  In fact, lately, even attempting hanuman makes me want to burst into tears.  And for that reason I have not been attempting it.  At all.  For weeks.

So, the first round of hanumans come and I am pathetically far from the ground.  My hamstrings are whining, I'm shaking...partly from aggravation and partly from exertion.  I'm annoyed at all the women (and a few men) who slip right into it.  "Don't you know!?" I want to scream, "don't you KNOW how hard this is".  It all lasts too long, but I make it through, thankfully.

We are instructed back into downward dog.  And then right back into hanuman on the first side again.  I am livid.  AGAIN?!  My god.  I am only mildly plused to see that I'm a teensy bit closer to the ground this time.  Mainly I'm just trying to stave off the waves of sick emotion rolling through me.  Get me out of this get me out of this get me out of this.  Again, it lasts too long, but again, I make it.

We are instructed back into downdward dog.  I am impressed with myself for surviving.  And then we are instructed back into hanuman on the first side.  AGAIN.  I am--I'm a little stunned. I have NEVER done three hanumans in a row.  Ever.  But apparently this 3rd round is just absurd enough for my body that something...changes.  Because I give up.  I surrender.  And I feel myself "drop" into my body, as if prior to then I had been hovering somewhere just above my own wobbly form, lamenting my misfortune.  The difference is palpable.  I'm relaxed.  I'm okay.  I could stay--maybe I could even do another round.  And just then the teacher, from the front of the class, who has not said much to me up to this point, calls out:

"Great, Lia.  I see that.  You've broken through something.  Do you feel that? You stopped fighting it."

And I felt a hot flush rise to my face as he said it...was it that obvious?  But of course it was.  And it was true--I had been fighting and fighting and fighting, until it became clear the fight was futile, and so had thrown up my hands in surrender.  And quick as you know, in had marched sweet relief.

And I thought about the stupid "Action" card I had drawn that morning and how totally convinced I was that action didn't mean what it said it meant--didn't mean real honest to goodness concrete physical action--no, it must have meant something grander, something more esoteric, more existential.  And I realized in that moment that of course it had meant exactly what it said it meant.  It meant DO. It meant that sometimes getting IN your body and IN your life is a much quicker route to relief than all that mucking around in the mind.

It's so ridiculously simple, the edict to just "do", and I have so often in my life been the kind of person who wants to make sure all my internal messes are cleaned up before I take to any kind of action--though I have learned over and over again that those messes will never be clean, and I could end up waiting forever--but still I have been reluctant to believe it could be as easy as all that. 

But I am getting older...and my life is getting bigger...and I am beginning to see that if I want to break through whatever layers within still sometimes pin me down, I am going to have to act.  To just continue to do, no matter what.  Not because there is some magical action that will solve all my problems, but because to engage with the world often IS the solution. 

Hello, Pelvis...

So, as my practice deepens I have been trying to pay more and more attention (in my off the mat life) to where and how I am holding unnecessary tension.  For awhile I was obsessed with my head and I was doing this thing that I could only characterize as, "relaxing my skull" where I'd sort of do pull my attention into the way-back of my head, make what I'm sure was a very unattractive face, and try to relax all the muscles surrounding my skull. (Note: I don't even know if there ARE muscles surrounding my skull, but the process of doing this little exercise made my ears pop and little waves of pleasure run down my neck, so whatever...it worked).

But lately my attention has shifted...downwards.

Um...

It all started with my butt.  Yes, my butt.  It was this thing I started to notice, in totally mundane moments of the day--when getting a glass of water from the sink or waiting for my tea to brew or just, kind of, standing around, I would notice that my butt was kind of, um--gripping.  The muscles around my outer hips and the big ol' glut muscles themselves were unnecessarily engaged.

Please, if you don't know me, try not to make any overarching judgment calls about what this says about me as a person...I am hopeful that I do not project a personality that screams "butt clencher"...so, if we could all just keep our minds on this purely anatomically, that would be great.

Anyhoo.  I found this kind of curious, and began to pay closer attention, and sure enough, in all kinds of situations, especially tense ones, I could feel all the muscles around my hips and butt and groin start to, almost imperceptibly, tighten.  As if my body was stepping in and cutting off sensation from that point down.

And I thought about how often I feel like my breath and my emotional center is located high up in my chest, and I thought about how I've often felt that it was difficult to kind of lock-in to sensation in my lower belly, and about how f-ing tight my groins are (sorry, TMI) in wide-legged straddles, etc.  And I put it together that I might actually be tightening muscles in that area to cut myself off from a certain variety of feeling...or to at least keep conscious feeling localized in my chest and head regions only.

So, over the last week or so, I have been consciously trying to release tension in and around my pelvis, hips, butt and thighs, both in and out of class, and have been urging this process along by doing a lot of hanuman (the splits), frog pose (I can't even...this pose is like torture to me...I can't even describe it), and deep thigh stretches.  And the results have been...pretty amazing actually.

1. I am feeling WAY more grounded.   I feel much more aware of my feet and legs and just the presence of the ground underneath me  (In certain moments I am suddenly "aware" of my height...which is a weird kind of fun-house sensation in which the whole length of my body is sort of lit-up in my consciousness, all at once).

2. I am FEELING a lot more stuff.  I won't go into the details, but basically it feels that I've covered up a fox-hole that certain emotions used to hide away in, and now they've got nowhere to run to, baby...

3.  Things are opening up, physically.  Those poses that I mentioned I've been doing...those are all poses in which I struggle, mightily, and they are all (minutely) beginning to become more accessible.  And much more powerful, as I am now feeling fully present inside of them, instead of stuck way up in my chest and head, trying to pull away.

The more I conduct these little yoga-laboratory experiments, the more I am amazed by the capacity of the body to hold on and to communicate that which it is holding on too.

And it all began with a little butt clenching...

Um, gripping.  Butt-gripping.

Nevermind...

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.

Monkey'in Around

Class: 4-5:45pm, "Cosmic Play", Edward.

Have I gushed about Edward? Not enough, I'm sure. Not nearly enough.

My favorite quote from his class today,

"I can tell how many of you have been to prison by who is paying attention to instructions..."

and in second place,

"This class has the highest pose per minute ratio."

and rounding third,

"This is all going to culminate in some incredibly complicated choreography which I have of course entirely forgotten."

Do you see why I love him? I looooooove him.

I think I love him all the more because he walked in off the street wearing black jeans and a black sweater and then changed promptly into his yoga gear, which consisted of black yoga pants and a black t-shirt. And he's a filmmaker and he plays the most kick-ass music ever. (he's an amazing teacher, that helps too.)

I'm having a couple strange little body twinges in my classes lately: a funny feeling in my left hip flexor combined with a little sciatic nerve soreness, and my continued right shoulder crankiness. I am, however, really attempting to use my injuries as teachers and am proud of my newfound proper alignment in chatarunga and upward dog. The hip thing...I don't know about that. (It makes me feel like the work I'm doing in my legs and lower body is actually having an effect, albeit a sort of painful one right now...). At the very least I am trying to back off from my tendency of muscling through everything, and paying attention to when and where my body wants to hang back.

But, back to the amazingness of Edward and his amazing classes...(sigh)

Today, we did a big fat investigation of Hanumanasana. What, coloquially, one might call, the splits. Oh, Hanuman. Oh, horrible, terrible, groin-wrenching Hanuman, how I wish I knew you more. This, if you haven't guessed, is not one of my favorite poses. No, actually, let me rephrase that: this might be one of my favorite poses, if I could do it. My groins and inner thighs (and hips, I suppose) are just a little too tight to do this pose. Translation: I feel like I am going to rip down the center and all my insides are going to spill out onto the floor if I do it. Graphic, I know, but it's also a very intimate pose...meaning, the parts of your body you have to open up in order for it to be successful (groins, hips, heart) are very tender and protected (for moi). So, let me just say, I was not thrilled when I realized that all of our work in class was leading up to Hanuman-a-rama.

*"all of our work in class" being: standing and sitting twists, standing splits, pushups in handstand. Yes, in handstand. And all the usual requisite standing poses*

So, we pushed our mats to the side to get onto the slippery wood floors and I watched graceful long-legged types around me just sliding into this pose, their pelvis cuddling up to the ground, while I hovered wobbly on my two blocks. You could have driven a truck beneath my pelvis. And I seethed a little with envy. It looks like such a glorious pose, such a sexy, difficult, wide-open pose, and I long to be able to do it. I did notice, however, that though I was far from doing the pose, it was not as mind-numbingly excruciating as it had been in the past. In fact, I noticed, I bet I could actually go a lot further in the pose than I was, even. So why wasn't I?

For one, I was really using the blocks to lean forward and rest my body weight, terrified of the tendon-ripping I was sure would come if I let my legs and pelvis carry the weight. Also, I was putting a lot of focus (and fear) on my inner thighs/groins, energetically scrunching away from their opening, and also assuming the worst about the above-mentioned possibility of tendon-ripping.

As an experiment, I moved my focus away from my groins and on to my pelvis, and moved the blocks back a bit so that I could grip them with a straight-spine and open heart, and lo-and-behold! I was another few inches closer to the ground! Not only that, I felt more secure and balanced in the pose, and could feel the opening in my groins as a positive sensation, instead of a terrifying one. I even, I kid you not, wanted to stay in the pose longer than we were instructed! (Not to worry, however, as we revisited it about a dozen more times, complete with some crazy slip-sliding from leg to leg and a twist that made me laugh while attempting it, as it was so hard, and I was so far from accomplishing it.)

But, I attempted it all, and got closer to feeling really good in Hanuman than I have ever felt before. And thank god there are still so many parts of this practice that feel out of my reach. That gives me the juice to want to practice more and more, to imagine a future wherein I will be one of the graceful girls who slips into the splits, and not the cranky wobbly block girl I was this afternoon.

Thank you, Edward.

-Yogalia