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.

The Space I Am In...

Tomorrow morning I leave for a 2 week + vacation to visit family and friends in the West. I am over the moon about getting out of New York...watching people jostle each other through the doors on the subway this morning (as if we won't all get on, eventually) made me so grateful for the impending break.

I'm not certain how my practice will fall out while I'm gone. I went to class early this morning, so as to be limber for a long day of travel on the 'morrow. I am being strongly encouraged not to bring my yoga mat (space and all), but I'm undecided. Rolling it out in class this morning I was struck with what I am often struck with when rolling out my beautiful (now ragged) orange rubber mat--that it is such a clean square space to hold my practice. I have sweated and prayed and wondered and fallen and cried and struggled so many hours on that mat, in that particular 72" of space--it's like carrying a little temple around on my back. And on this vacation, where we will be in many spaces and with much family and where quiet time with my body and my breath will be perhaps hard to eek out, I might need my ratty orange temple, in order to carve out space for myself in all these foreign places.

It is also, I realize, the only thing which posesses as intimate a knowledge of my practice as I do. I love all its funny sweat marks and pock-marks and where my feet have worn down the rubber to its fibers. I want to use it until I can see the floor through it, and then I might have to hang it on my wall or something (P. would love that!)...I am so grateful for this rectangle of rubber. I mean really I am so grateful for this incredible versatile body and for Laughing Lotus which is my home away from home and for the amazing teachers who keep coming into my life and for all the hope of striving for an easier mind, but ALSO I am grateful for this strip of textile that I can role up and shove on shelves and in bags and lug around with me and lay down ANYWHERE and make a yoga studio of it.

That's it. I'm decided. It's coming with me.

After a while...

Um, I think my yoga blog ego suffered a bit of a blow a while back...hence the silence.

Possibly it's because no one is reading this. Or, if you are, (sorry) you are loved, and I apologize for the absence. Not to worry! All is well! It's just been days and then weeks and now, gulp, many weeks of hemming and hawing over the whats and whens and hows of my life.

Concretely: I will not be going to yoga school, I will be acting my pants off in several wonderful plays.

One door closes, another opens. Or sometimes; there's only room for one door at a time, which seems more ept.

My practice, however, is flourishing. Handstand and Forearm stand are inching their way towards me (or I towards them) and it will be only a matter of time now before I do not need the wall OR for the teacher to just come over and "stand by me while I do it" (How old am I?!!). It's the same for falling back into wheel...a brilliant and visceral hesitation to be overcome. For all of these poses it is the same:

I am strong enough to do it
I am flexible enough to do it
I have the form and the training to do it
I will not, probably, injure myself...

But all, also, require a supreme letting go. There is a moment, in each of these poses (whether coming up or coming down) where conscious control has to be relinquished and the body trusted (that legs and arms and neck will go where intended) and it is this moment (which widens out into a Grand Canyon of moments) in which I...pause. And in the pause I lose it all.

A teacher once said to me, "let your breathe be louder than your thoughts" and it was a revelation of sorts...or rather, a beautiful way to trick the mind. Example:

BODY: Time for handstand...

MIND: Um, okay. Okay, yes, cool. Cool. We can do this. I mean, woah, you're not going to do it right HERE, are you?

BODY: Yeah, I was...

MIND: What if you kick that girl? What if you fall weird on her block and you break your neck?!

BODY: I don't think, um...

MIND: Just, how about, how about just a little farther away from the wall? Baby steps. Baby steps.

BODY: No, I'd like to try it in the middle of the room.

MIND: I don't know. I don't know. I'm not really going to kick hard enough to accomplish that just to be sa--

BODY: Inhale. Exhale.

MIND: Are you--

BODY: INHALE

MIND: listen--

BODY: EXHALE..

INHALE...

(mind fading away into small birdlike whine...)

EXHALE...

etc. etc...

Ah, sigh. It could be that way, it really could. The microcosm of my life: Let go of the worrying and just let myself kick up into the sky.

Being Yoga

I've just signed up for the Being Yoga Conference. I hope it doesn't kill me.