Learning to Sit...

I got up today determined to meditate...just like so many other days. I gave myself a pep talk in the shower about how important it is to start a mediation practice, about how I can't expect it to change my life instantly or anything (unfortunately) , but that it will be very good for me and that it will be a life-long practice and if nothing else it will help me get more open instead of more closed as I get older. My automatic internal rebuffs to this went as follows: I want radical change! There are plenty of people who meditate all their damn lives and are still just as messed up and neurotic as they ever were. I don't know how to do it right anyhow. I need a guru. How many times have I tried this and failed. Etc., etc., etc.

But I was good and strong and I ignored this whisper-voice and went ahead...

I pulled out my meditation cushions and lit my favorite jasmine-scented incense and my altar-candle and I looked at my little postcard with the pictures of Krishna and Shiva on it and I set my cellphone alarm to ring in 20 minutes and I sat my butt down. And, just like every other time, I got up from my cushion before the alarm rang, frustrated and tied up in knots. Ah, how relaxing!

Here now, I shall try to dissect why my meditation practice is, ahem, faulty.

1. Often I decide to sit while in the throws of some worry or another, thus using the meditation as an excuse to sit down and worry some more. But just to worry in spiritual language.

2. If I'm not in the throes of worry when I sit down, I tend to think that I'm supposed to solve some great bothersome woe while meditating--since my plan in the meditation is to become one with God, at which point I will reach enlightenment, at which point I will solve the great struggles of my life--which often leads me to skip the enlightenment part and head right to the problem-solving. See item #1.

3. I tell myself I don't have to follow any "structure", that my meditation is about freedom, man, and therefore I am really going to just sit and Be. However, since I am a person prone to worry (yes, I am, I admit it), and I don't actually have a lot of experience meditating (or just being, for that matter), I often slide quickly into neurosis, without any kind of structure to serve as safety-net. Again, see item #1.

4. As much as everything I've read tells me not to do this, I really want to have a big awakening experience while meditating. This is born of my very first few months meditating (lo, these many years ago), when I did feel like I was having a kind of enlightened experience every time I sat down to meditate. I attribute this to a kind of "beginner's mind"--not knowing what I was getting into, just falling into meditation, la-dee-da--but now the memory of this and the desire to return to it plagues me and makes my meditation a muscular experience, to say the least.

5. I am a big fan of things you can do every day, ritualistically, preferably ones that will make instantaneous changes in your life. I tend to read about things like this. I tend to have an on-going mental collection of things like this. Which makes it very hard to (a) choose which magic 10-minute a day miracle I'm going to devote myself to and (b) meditate.

6. I lack discipline. I do NOT lack discipline as a person. In fact, when I set my mind to something I can be incredibly focused and diligent. Take my yoga practice, for example: sure, I'll miss a few days here and there, but for the most part, I am on my mat. And I can feel and see on a daily basis, the benefits of that kind of discipline. However, I am most disciplined when either (a) there is great desperate survival-type need for discipline or (b) somebody else tells me what to do. Meaning: I am really good with "plans". I love plans. I want there to be a specially designed plan for me called "the 10 things to do everyday which, if I do them, will make me a happy and balanced and grateful person all day, every day". Where the hell is that plan? (Unfortunately, that plan is published in a million different forms in a million different sources in a million different ways, and I am overwhelmed by all the options.)

However, I do know that when it comes to something like meditating, discipline is key. I just have to make up my mind that getting into that seat for 10, 15, 20 minutes everyday is important to me, is something I want...and probably it wouldn't hurt if I made it a little easier on myself by not making it such a momentous thing every time I pulled out those cushions.

Cosmic Dana Comes and Shakes the Planets...

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

I read in an online article that Dana is sometimes referred to as "the Janis Joplin of yoga". This is not an inaccurate description.

I was shocked when Dana introduced herself to me in class (she didn't remember me, nor did I expect her to) at how beautiful her face is up close. It's tan and creased and her eyes look right at you in a way that feels dangerous and delicious and...breathtaking. As I watched her walk away to take her place at the front of the class I immediately decided that if I loved women (in that way) that I would be in love with her. She is hot, hot, hot.

Dana did not remember me, because I had only taken one of her classes prior to her and Jasmine's (the other co-founder of the Lotus) move to San Francisco. I only took one of her classes before that because I was pretty sure, halfway through that one class I took back then, that I was going to die, and that it would be Dana's fault if I did. Now, mind you, I was taking a super-advanced class back then when I had no business doing so, and if I had died it would have been no one's fault but my own. However, it did put a permanent terror in my heart when it came to taking Dana's classes.

Also, of the founding team of Laughing Lotus, Dana is definitely the Shakti to Jasmine's Shiva, if you know what I'm saying. To put it plainly, she's terrifying. Sooooo, when I heard she was coming back in town and that she'd be teaching the Tuesday afternoon Super-Crazy-Advanced-Class that I have now been regularly attending, I figured I'd bite my lips and go. Terrified or not. And I was. Terrified, that is.

Dana does not, like most of the teachers at the Lotus, spend a lot of time up front talking before class starts...she just opens up that harmonium and lets it rip, singing out Shri Ram Jai Ram, her voice cracking, just like Janis Joplin.

"Shri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram, Om" She says "No, not your friend Ramone!" We laugh. Yoga humor. You had to be there. Over and over we sang, and sang and sang. Halfway through she called out "Now, pretend you're in San Francisco and swaaaaay!" And we all did, and we all laughed, swaying and singing. I closed my eyes and let the sound wash over and through me. We sang and sang until she asked us to sing it one last time "Sweetly now..." and then we all finished and we sat and the aftermath of the sound buzzed around and she let out a deep thick chuckle and announced, "Well, I am just Vibrating. Are you?" And I was. We all were.

About the class itself: I am proud to say I did not die. Not only did I not die, I survived quite admirably. I kept up. I could not, no, wrap my legs around my head in lotus and then roll up into a seated position (if you can call it seated when your legs are wrapped around your head). I did get one leg around my head for a little bit. The left one. Thank you, left leg! And, yes, my arms were shaking by the time we got to the inversions and I definitely could not throw in the forearm and handstands between the vinyasas like some...but I held my own. And, at some point, about halfway through class, something spectacular happened. I do not know if it was what Dana was saying, which now I can barely remember, or if it was the music (which was great), or the excitement of her being there, or just mind-gripping fatigue, but at some point I had the following short exchange with myself:

Me: I would really like you to be free.

Myself: Really?

Me: Yes. I love you, and I would really like you to be free.

Myself: I would like that too.

And then, it happened. I was free. And it felt un-fucking-believable. And then, of course, it went away. I tried to hang on to it...tried to remember it the next morning when I woke...tried to repeat the words to myself "I want you to be free", but it just wasn't the same. And I have to say, I do not think it was her sequencing or her words or her music, but it was Dana herself that allowed me that moment of...grace. She was a sharp hot knife and I was cold butter, and I ain't afraid of her no mo'!

Thank you, Dana.

Standing at the Gate...

Class: 12:30-1:30, "Flower Hour", Mary Dana.

My yoga studio is on the third floor of a building in Manhattan, and in order to get up to the studio you have to enter the building, sign in with a security guard, and take either the elevator or the stairs to the third floor. Simple.

It used to be that the "security guards" on most days was some young disgruntled guy, who would much rather be talking on his cellphone and blasting tinny R&B from a transistor radio than talking to you, which, most of the time, he was. If you signed in, it was utterly by choice or happenstance, as no one seemed to care much about it. I also assumed that the girls heading up to the yoga studio were fairly recognizable (you get me) and so the whole "sign-in" formality was waived, since our stay was sure to be brief and devoid of mischief.

However, several months ago, someone, somewhere down the line, apparently decided to crack-down on the state of security at said building, and gone were the slouchy youths and the R&B. Replaced, seemingly overnight, by the building's new security/door man, whom I shall refer to herein as Mr. X.

Mr. X is an older man, small-statured, perhaps of East Indian descent. His blue guard uniform is ever immaculate, and he is the model of politeness. He also Drives. Me. Crazy. Crazy with irritation. I do not know if this is Mr. X's fault, exactly, as he is causing no foul other than doing his job well, something that this little lobby probably has not seen in awhile. Mr. X makes everybody sign in. Everybody. Even if you're running late for your yoga class and he sees you nearly everyday. Even then, he stands to attention when you come in the door and is gesturing at the sign-in sheet before you've crossed the threshold "How can I help you?" he shouts at you from his post. I'm here for CLASS, Mr. X, just like every other freakin' day!! And then, god forbid there are several people in the lobby, he holds the elevator for you while you are signing in, even if it's full of people. This, I know, is of much more irritation to the people standing in the elevator waiting for me to sign my name than it is to me, but still it makes me so uptight. I'll take the STAIRS, Mr. X! I'll just take the stairs! Let the doors close! His efficiency is maddening. I find myself wanting to run past him, to dash up the stairs without signing in, claiming I'm late even if I'm not, just to get him going. I wave him off, respond sharply to his pleasantries, and am adamant about how "I'm taking the stairs" as he stands there patiently holding open the elevator door.

Oh, how I miss the disgruntled R&B boys!

However, the other day, as I was heading down the block to the studio, feeling myself well-up with resentment at the very thought of Mr. X--playing out various little aggravating scenarios in my head--ready to fight or flee at the sight of his uniform blues, I suddenly felt very, very bad. Waaait a second... What am I doing? I thought. Aren't I going to my yoga class right now? It was a little startling, actually. Was this really what I wanted to walk into this building filled with? Indignation and disdain? Why was I so quickly and easily inflamed by the thought of this poor man, just trying to do his job? And then, forgive me for this, I began to think in symbolic terms:

Joseph Campbell talks often about how just beyond the snake, or dragon, or what-have-you, that you're always tangling with or running away from, is the cave that holds all your treasure...that your quest in life, your hero's quest if you will, is to stop running away from and to SLAY that dragon so you can get to your treasure. Okay, so this does not mean, obviously, that I have to slay Mr. X...but what it does mean, at least in my own mind, is that this aggravation, this aversion, is the very thing that is blocking my entrance to the cave...my sanctuary...my yoga. That it's the emotion, the indignation, the automatic thought-spiral, that I'm supposed to be looking at and working with and eventually...slaying, and not, much to my chagrin, Mr. X.

Dr. Mr. X.,

I'm working on it.


-Yogalia

Vasisthasana All Crazy-Like

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

If you think I can do this pose as pictured...well, I'm flattered. Because, if you think that...you would be very, very wrooong-o. There was only one person in class (and mind you, this is super-crazy-advanced class) who could really execute this pose. She was next to me (I think her name was Renee) and all I could do was fall on to my butt with my toe still in my hand and watch her wrap her leg behind her head and fan out into what I have now deemed "Vasisthasana-all-crazy-like" (see above). I think I even said "you are awesome" as she came out of the pose, like her one-woman yoga fan club.

This is actually one of my favorite things about the aforementioned super-crazy-advanced classes--how I am forced to check my ego at the door in the face of so much unattainable work and so many far superior practicioners. It is not only a kind of call-to-arms for my own practice (someday I will get where she is) it's also an opportunity for me to practice humility, to use my beginners-mind, instead of being a big fat show-off (as I can be in some of the open-level classes). Not to mention Favorite Teacher Edward. Who rocks my world.

Edward's classes are always very free-form and creative, and often he gives lots of time for a choose-your-own-adventure practice (i.e. "you've got a few minutes, do some standing poses"), and though I love this aspect of his teaching, it also kind of freaks me out. My audition muscles kick-in when I hear him tell us to "make it your own" or "be creative" and I begin to size-up not only my own "best moves" but everyone's around me. Am I being wild enough? Risky enough? Graceful enough? If Edward happens to walk past me during this "play time" there is a good chance I will fall over or do something backwards or almost kick somebody, and I find myself longing for instruction. I also almost always feel like a downright schlubby yogi, what with all my darting glances and wobbly half-committed poses. Why can't I look like she looks? I think, stealing more glances at graceful creative Renee to the side of me. She may as well be underwater for all the effect gravity seems to have on her. And all I can do is cringe at how much earlier I return to downdog than everyone else and hold my breath until Edward starts calling out poses again.

It's humiliating to me, having been a performer all my life, that I would get such amateur-y stage-fright IN MY YOGA CLASS. However, it is also a great teacher, all this uptight-ness, as I know (smarty-pants that I am) that this self-consciousness comes from the same place as does my vanity--and that it nets the same effect: a separation from myself and from my practice. Because, see, here's the other thing that I know (did I mention I'm a smarty-pants?), graceful Renee is not graceful because she's over there thinking about how graceful she is, she's graceful because she is involved in her practice...I daresay she is graceful because she is so involved with her practice she is actually one with her practice. She is, as they say in some circles, in the flow. I, sitting on my butt with my toe in my hand, gawking at her as she pretzels herself, I am most definitely not in the flow. My body is on the floor and my brain is sitting at the front of the room, running a minute-to-minute compare and contrast of me v. the rest of the class.

But then, something lovely happens: we continue to play with Vasisthasana variations, moving back and forth between standing poses and inversions and Vasisthasana+ and at a certain point, without thinking about it, I am suddenly WITH MYSELF. It's nothing outwardly too obvious--perhaps I'm moving a bit more slowly, more fluidly, perhaps I'm looking around a little less, but inside it is like a whole new world, and it clicks--how simple it is!--it is my practice, I suddenly realize, it is my practice and all that I can really pay attention to is how it is going for me. It's the difference between walking into an audition room to do what you think the director wants and going into an audition room to do what you want--it's a subtle shift, but it means absolutely everything. It is why you return to the mat in the first place. It is the thing you fell in love with and the thing you keep working to return to. It is the thing that makes the whole world drop away, that says fuck-all to what everyone else is doing, and that allows you the space to see and hear and feel your own body, even when you're trying to put your feet behind your freakin' head. Suddenly there I am, breathing, paying attention, shifting and adjusting to fit my own bodies quiet little desires and aversions...the simplest hardest thing in the world: to pay attention.

And do you want to know something? Later that same class...I caught Renee watching my practice out of the corner of her eye...(not that I pay attention to that kind of thing...)

The Exhale...

Class: 9:30-10:30am, "Lotus Hour", Deborah.

This month at the Lotus is all about Pranayama. The breath. The breath--often forgotten--which is in fact the foundation, not just of the practice, but of one's entire life. And Deborah, wanted to talk about the exhale. Deborah has a great accent (New Zealand?) so she can talk about just about anything and make it sound interesting...

The exhale is an interesting subject for me. The breath itself, but I suppose the exhale in particular is a source of great curiosity and consternation for me. When I was young I spent a short period of time (unnecessarily) using an inahaler for my allergies, as I would often spend days stuck in a sort of no-man's-land of breath, unable to fully inhale or exhale, and so forced to take these deep sucking gulps of air--giant sigh-like breaths--which tended to be of mild to great concern to those around me. A highschool boyfriend, in particular, was convinced I was perpetually frustrated with him because of all that sighing.

The inhaler did little to help, though it did give me a kind of fun light-headedness, and I rather enjoyed the sickly-sweet pumped chemical taste. I discontinued it after not too long and soon thereafter took up smoking, which cured me of this little breathing hiccup for the duration. However, in 2002 I quit the nicotine, and sure enough, the voluminous sighs returned. These days, though I still sometimes blame them on allergies, I know that this variation in my breath is the result of stress, fear or worry. As my practice grows, as my training as an actor continues, as my life evolves, it becomes more and more clear to me that I HOLD MY BREATH. A lot. Not only do I hold my breath, I tend to breath primarily from my upper chest, and my exhales are just wimpy little stepchildren compared to my inhalations.

So, the exhale is a weighty subject for me. Mainly because sometimes I feel that I literally do not know how to exhale. This is not a great thing, seeing as how the exhale is the source of emptiness and of letting go. The exhale, physiologically, is the thing which creates the space in your body for the inhale to come. The exhale drains the water from the pool so that the inhale might come in and fill it back up again. The exhale is the tiny little death of the breath and the inhale, the rebirth. The exhale is spaciousness and silence and emptiness and the inhale is, literally, inspiration.

Do you see where I'm going with this? If the exhale is short and shallow and...difficult...do you see the effect it might have? A clogging up of inspiration? A holding on. A refusal to let go. A building up and building up, building up so much that eventually the only possible release must come in the form of something like...

A Giant Sigh?

(Sigh). So. I've got a lot to learn about the exhale. And I'm trying. It seems that every day lately I am trying--placing my own hand on my own belly and gently, gently reminding myself to let go, to breathe out, noticing when the breath starts to get high and tight in my chest, reminding myself that there is so much more room in my body, that my instrument of breath stretches from the very bottom of my pelvis all the way up through my skull, just reminding and reminding, gently gently.

I can't say that there has yet been any miracle transformation--I still feel at times that the art of breathing is beyond my clumsiness, but I continue to just gently notice and adjust and notice and adjust, and in small steps I feel my body learning--ever so slowly--just quietly climbing in to the wheelhouse of my breath, and sometimes, like today, the body and the breath become one being--just briefly--and it all makes just a little bit more sense.

Inhale.
Exhale.

Contract.
Release.

Inhale.
Exhale.

Inspiration,
and Letting Go.

(and one great big sigh...)

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