New body...

The title of this entry refers to a famous quote from K. Pattabhi Jois, "new body, new body, new body is making..." Which referred to the fact that yoga, maybe this specific practice even, changed you on a cellular level. Your body sweats, detoxifies and evolves as you practice. Even most peoples diet and approach to life change from it. So as cells go they replenish more quickly with all the excess sweat forcing the old cells off the epidermis. Your muscles change, they get strong but also longer and more pliable, along with many other things. I tend to get here and sweat so much here, more than in my former home, and break out. The zits only last about a week but they are annoying and painful, then boom, gone, it may happen again if my diet falters while I'm here but again, goes away fairly quickly. My hair and nails grow faster here, I believe because of the energy flow of the place, there is a LOT of prana here, both in the shala and outside of it. But this is maybe the first time I've experienced the feeling of a new body. I have practiced this path we call Ashtanga Yoga since March 1 of the year 2000. I began primary series and didn't really complete it for two years, when I was on the island of Maui studying with Nancy Gilgoff and Guruji for a week as well. Nancy immediately started me on intermediate series and then began me on advanced A during my time there. Maybe during those weeks I was in less pain, but for the majority of the time I've been engaging in this practice I have hurt. I hurt myself as well and that is why I quit in 2008 and studied Kundalini Yoga and Anusara Yoga, to heal, physically, but also emotionally and spiritually. When I came back to Ashtanga Yoga I was safer, studied with many certified and authorised teachers and began my yearly treks to Mysore, India to study with Sharath, who had taken over guiding the lineage once Pattabhi left his body. But even then, I still hurt all the time. I felt better when I was practicing at home because I would take an extra day off here and there but when here and having to do this 5-6 days in a row each week I was just sore, joints, muscles, one season my SI joint went out, this season I'm having a wrist issue, etc. But this is the first season that I am not sore all the time. I've always been jealous of those people who can just get up daily and practice, no matter what. This is another issue, no segway, sorry. I always have a battle of internal dialogue telling me how awful it is to do this daily, that I'm going to kill myself or worse, going to lose my mind! haha, as if... And the soreness always made my mind choose to do the same as I was doing back home, takes extra days off and such. I felt justified for following my body's needs, yay for me! But was I? Or was I just telling myself that? In some ways both. But this season I'm here, I'm practicing 6 days in a row (okay those in the know, yes I still sometimes skip the Saturday led class to avoid the crowds, but I did go once, but I've practiced at home all but one!) and my body is okay with it. Dare I even say my body feels better than it ever has? Yes, I dare. Because it does! I will also state that Sharath still has me doing mostly only primary series. He's always talking about how important it is for the basics of the body, and now I finally believe him. When I was practicing the first go round I love intermediate and after you practice it you feel just ethereal almost, although I hear this isn't so when you're doing it daily. I was on Nancy's regimen of primary one day, intermediate the next, back and forth. Which was pretty good, so we'll see how it goes if I ever get there again. But for now doing mostly primary and adding on pasasana and the backhanding, it's working and making my body feel great, and my mind feel strong and I'm feeling more open than ever, heart-wise and mind-wise. And I will say I love feeling open, even though I fought hard against it for so many years. No, now it feels great. So whether or not you agree with this, that's fine, but from experience let me tell you to keep practicing. Things change, eventually, physically of course (even though that took the longest for me) but emotionally and mentally especially. Then that's when you can enjoy life a little more. I enjoy going out around town with people, or by myself. Or staying in with people, or by myself. Eating, or not eating. Reading, writing, watching tv shows, scanning social media. All of these things, or none of them, I enjoy doing them, or not doing them. Just being okay with whatever comes up, that's a new thing for me. But yogascittavrttinirodhanah, right?

The hard and the soft...

Now, those of you who know me well will likely think the title of this entry is sexual. I do like my potty humour and have a terribly naughty mind, but alas, I'm sorry to disappoint that it has nothing to do with this.

I've been really thinking, most of the summer actually, about the hardness of this practice. The intensity really, which seems like hardness. It comes across to those who don't practice it that it's all about pushing further and further and forcing yourself into these postures that don't seem natural.

In fact, its the exact opposite.

If you try to push yourself into these posture you will do nothing but hurt yourself. I used to do that when I was first practicing Ashtanga yoga, hurt myself a lot while teaching myself third series (I'd previously learned primary and Intermediate with a teacher).

The key to this practice, which already brings a strong yang vibe in its intensity with all the focus on the breath, bandhas and dristhi and the sheer amount of jump backs, jump throughs and posture sequences, is to allow it to happen. Is to soften and just breath without a lot of muscle tension or mental tension to make it worse. It's to find the softness, the feminine energy, the yin, within all that yang.

It took me coming to Mysore and having Sharath poke me with his toe saying relax, relax, relax, thirty times each practice to realise the maybe he wanted me to relax and not push so hard, not focus so much on my alignment, which I'd gotten into with the study of Anusara yoga, and just breathe. Breath really is the softest thing we can offer ourselves, and it changes our postures.

It slowly seeped into my practice that I'm meant to just practice, not thing about everything while I'm practicing. They've given us enough to focus on during our sadhana, so just breathe and do it and look at your nose and do it and just do it, do the next posture! hahaha...

So, I feel like this trip is really going well because I've integrated that softness by now, my fourth trip here, and my back feels great, my wrist was hurting but keeps getting better and my mind I'm mostly able to shut off during the asanas.

I ran across someone I've seen around at the shala on Facebook and found out he does Thai massage, which I also do, but that I never have the opportunity to receive. So decided to contact him about getting some bodywork, even though I didn't really need it, I've been craving that human touch and was following my instincts and they'd told me to contact him.

I must say it was the most bizarre massage I've ever had, very strange techniques that I've never encountered, but my god, it was also the best bodywork I've ever had. I feel better than I've felt in a long, long time and he mostly focused on the wrist, but using the whole body to get the energy flowing to the wrist, and everywhere. But the one thing that stood out is what he said to me after the experience. He told me he felt that I've worked hard on myself and I've achieved a lot but there is some last bit of resistance and that is whats affecting the wrist. I also felt this so agreed and now need to figure that out and let it move on through.

But he also said that he so much appreciated my softness. He could tell I worked hard to get to that point and it was a pleasure to work on someone who received so well. How masculine it is to be with and admit your softer side, rather than harden up (as we're taught to do so intently back in the midwest, maybe everywhere actually) and he appreciated it.

So, I'm soft. I've always wanted to be and I guess I have achieved that. But my hardness comes out a lot as well, as it has in pissing a few people off this week via social media. So it's always a balancing act, isn't it? Finding out when to comment, or not, and if you do to deal with the consequences of it, good or bad. But then good or bad are just labels, and I'm so tired to death of labelling everything.

Put that way, aren't hard and soft just labels as well? They are also ways of being I guess but labels to those ways of being still. Maybe one day I'll learn to just be, to just be content and at peace with whatever comes, as the sutras state. Maybe not. For now I'll be who I am and sometimes I'll remember to back off, and sometimes I won't and Ill make that comment, and sometimes when receiving bodywork I might tense up, but sometimes I'll be able to relax and fully receive it and just breathe.

Those who know me and love me get me either way, they may get irritated when I'm a bit too hard edged, but they know that underneath it I'm just a big soft teddy bear. Now I've spilled the beans and you all know it huh? Oh well, maybe that's part of it too. The catharsis of letting you all know my secrets, or maybe not having secrets at all? Ahhh, I like that...

Practice, practice, practice...

This trip has been very different for me, not sure of all the reasons just yet, but they are there. One thing is my wrist is jacked up, but its slowly healing. Have to take care with that one, we use our wrists A LOT in this practice. So my ego has been poked already around what I think my practice is supposed to look and feel like, which has so far been a good thing.

One thing that's surprising to me is how much I'm looking forward to practicing each morning. I just like being in that room and there is a whole different group this year, well, not all different, but there are many new faces and they seem to be much better behaved than the other groups I've encountered in past trips. Including going in at the gate each morning, it's been not a heart wrenching nervous system jarring experience, it's been quite pleasant and calm mostly, even on led days. And speaking of led class, I'm enjoying them for a change and have been able to get in the room each time, not just been relegated to the change room.

People here seem to be socializing a bit less, less people in the cafes most of the day, not including Santosha in the mornings which has been busy. But not as much going out and about, and that's okay too.

I've taken to visiting the area temples more this trip, much like the end of my last trip. And am getting a lot out of it, more encouragement and welcomeness from the locals too. Not they ever made me feel unwelcome, just looked at me like wtf? lol, but not this time, it's been amazing.

Also, I'm eating less. Not interested in being super full and eating things with more nutrients I think has helped that too. But I feel much more energized, maybe putting that stuff about diet I learned back in the US before I came has been helping that too, interesting to use my body as the experiment and seeing where it takes me. I like having more energy and I like not feel super full all the time, or excruciatingly hungry, as I used to.

Not much more to say right now. Not a lot of deep stuff coming up for me yet, not that it won't, it usually does, but that I'm in a different place so its not affecting me as much maybe? Or maybe I've just not dug deep enough yet? Or maybe I should just enjoy it either way...

Mysore, again...

I've been terrible about writing in this blog this summer, and now that it's fall back in the US and I'm in India again I'm finally feeling like I'm ready to start again, maybe... Let's see how it goes.

I've been here about 2 weeks now, just starting my second week of practice with Sharath again. It feels like home, and like I never left. I truly did not want to leave last time, so much so that I vomited all the way to the airport in March when I was leaving. Well, maybe not all the way, do you remember Katie? It was miserable. And it took me a while once back in St. Louis to shake off the icky feeling of not wanting to be there. In fact, I don't think I ever shook off that feeling. I think I just embraced it and felt that way.

But being back here and with most of the same friends who come with me each time from around the planet, it feels right. And walking into the office to register for classes with my teacher and his "oh, it's you again..." helped it feel even more right, haha. I love India and it feels correct to me to be here. Even though I can't wait to travel around and see more and more of it and it's culture and decide eventually where I want to live, yes I'm planning to live here.

But that's for another blog, at another time.

This past week it has been Dasara, more popularly known as Navaratri. Nine nights of the goddess. Which somehow becomes 11 days, really 10, but the big procession was today and it's the 11th of October. After worshipping different aspects of the goddess for the last 9 days.

I took part in a homa, a fire ceremony, on the 8th day, which according to my astrology was the proper day and version of the goddess for me to be involved in. There was a sankalpa, an intention, to start the ceremony and it was in Sanskrit and beautiful. Asking for guidance and knowledge to be able to follow the path that I'm supposed to. From that I also god a great reading of my chart telling me many things that are meant to happen, not all wonderful, but many not so shabby. In this system you can also change the karma of the future by tapas, mantra or some work on yourself that cancels out the stuff that could be coming your way. So I've been assigned a mantra to recite 1008 times daily, yes that many, even more if I can, but I'm finding that to be quite enough for now. It's amazing how I feel after that.

I'm also having wrist problems, but they seem to be a part of this process of clearing shit out and making way for the new ventures in my life. And there seem to be many coming my way, and that I'm quite ready for.

Practice is hard with the wrist thing going on but I'm able to do it at my own pace and Sharath has been supportive of it, and also he remembers my name now! That alone made me feel great, and it only took 4 extended trips here, but I'm not complaining.

Mostly I feel very grateful and appreciative of the path that has led me here and those who have played a part in it. I'm ready to move forward, in life, in this practice and in embracing all the things possible, rather than feeling like I'm blocking them off. It's time to open up my arms and say yes, rather than cross my arms across my chest as I normally would and say, mmmm, let me think about it, or no.

Well, off to do my japa for the evening, take care, see you soon!

Svadhyaya: Self-study

The following are the words of my teacher Sharath on the above Niyama:

Svadhyaya means studying what we have learned from our teacher: not only trying to understand what has been said, but deepening that understanding and expanding our knowledge by reading manuscripts and thinking for about the subject we are learning. Self-study is to engage out mind, to further our studies. It is out duty to do our homework, to practice and review what the guru has said, to go deeper into whatever yoga subject we are learning, and in understanding and experiencing the self and the divine. the teacher cannot push, he or she can only guid. If he or she shares who Ganapati is, the remover of obstacles, it is up to the student to find out more about Ganapati and those obstacles.

For some reason this has been on my mind today. Partly because I know my students never do this with what I say to them, I'm hard headed and draw hard headed people to my Mysore program lol. But, have I been doing this? The biggest advice Sharath has given me personally is about my diet. And so I have to think about that. He obviously thinks that is where the bulk of my work needs to be done. I overeat, for sure. I try to put the best things in that I can, but I don't cook and so resort to eating out and have to make the best choices I can on where to eat with what my body is needing at that time. But I also love pizza and lots of stuff that doesn't react well with my body anymore. Plus the quality of the food here isn't great, even at most of the restaurants that I will eat at. So for the next month I really need to pay attention, I've been prone to eating far too much these past two weeks and too much stuff that I know affects my stomach badly, and now my back is out again. Hmmmm...

Okay, I'm paying attention, I truly am.

Seeing things differently...

It's odd to be driving around, seeing things that I've seen hundreds or even thousands of times and recognising them, but also feeling like I've never seen them before.

I feel like since I've decided to leave St. Louis this is exactly what's happening to me. I'm sitting in this room in a friends house on a futon that I'm sleeping on that's unfamiliar to me. It's damn comfortable though lol, but not mine. In a room with not too much stuff in it but only a small amount of books in the corner and clothes in the closet are mine. Oh, and this lamp I bought when Tom and I moved in together back in October of 1999. Somehow this damn lamp has followed me from that apartment to Collinsville, to when I lived with Hugh and Steve, to my own apartment, to all five places I moved around to last year and is still here with me. My car is gone, so I'm driving a friends car that's very comfy and has ac in it and so I'm feeling foreign as I drive it around, it's nice in this heat to have ac too, don't get me wrong, I've just not had it in my car in over 8 years!

So all of my circumstances are altered and so I am seeing things, the same things that my mind is acknowledging that it recognizes, from the most different perspective than I've had before. I've lived here for a very long time and had the same "stuff" for a very long time, so have always recreated the same sort of little comfort zone in each place I've lived in these last 16 years. But I've swiped that rug out from under myself.

All this root chakra stuff being stirred up has also helped my very low back go out, which is no fun. It went out on me in Mysore as well my second trip, that was even worse! But to have it go out just when your practice was soaring sucks. I was very distracted and thinking of things instead of lifting my pelvic floor and the deeper inner muscle actions that affect moola bandha and crack, crack, crack. Three cracks. Now it's a mess. I'm feeling better. Had a chiropractic adjustment that got the nerves freed up, they were being pinched, and now it's just cranky. So I'm practicing less and slower but it's working in getting it all where it needs to be. We learn from injury, especially when it was something we did to ourselves! I'm learning, and learning and learning. And will be better for Mysore this time around than maybe ever.

So that pain adds to the surreal quality that life is already taking on around me, giving things more brightness, more color, making scents stronger and sensations warmer, or colder.

I read this passage this morning in one of the books I'm reading about experiencing the heart space. It also was an exercise in going deep within, feeling the void that exists at your centre, at the centre of all things, and then when I came out of the exercise I was also seeing things from that quiet, empty, dark space. Not that things were darker. They actually were brighter, the heat from the sun that was beating down on my flesh didn't feel hot and wasn't making me sweat anymore. The bright green of the surrounding trees and the grass was slicing through me. The smells of the creek at the park I was at were intense and took me away to the Ganga, which I've been thinking about so much.

It seems source is coming through me more and through the experiences I'm having in life this week I'm becoming more and more aware of source in every situation I find myself in. It's very interesting. I'm enjoying it. These new eyes. Or should I say this new vision, same old eyes, but seeing with a new vision. Feeling with a new depth. Experiencing with a different gauge.

I taught a private a couple weeks back and mostly focused on the breath with her, which is really the ashtanga way to do things, but then introduced movement along with the breath and when she left she was teary eyed and spoke of how she was seeing all the things in the neighbourhood differently. Colours were brighter, the sun was lighter, just everything. Maybe I'm experiencing a new level of this, which happened to me many years ago when I began living this yoga we call Ashtanga.

I want to bring this quality to everyones life, are you in? Come see me soon!

Lots of thinking going on...

I haven't written too much lately, been thinking way too much. I hate thinking! Well, maybe I don't hate thinking. I'm just the sort that can get caught up in those thoughts and never come back to being present. It's a pattern from my youth, get lost in my head and not feel things anymore and navigate from my heart, which has really changed my life and opened me up.

I'm leaving for India in just about a month and a half, give or take, and I'm intending to teach and travel from there. I have one four month gig lined up already. Thinking I could go and cover peoples Mysore programs maybe, but also am open to it manifesting however it will.

I also have a lot of money to make before I leave, and that makes me anxious. I also am having lots of feelings about leaving, not the kind that will make me stay, just the kind that will make me nostalgic while I'm here which can again lead to the thinking and then that fucks me up.

Then there's this election and if you know me, I never talk about politics and I've been talking about them. I never even usually think about that stuff, but Trump has me scared. And I actually just had my first discussion and unfriending of someone because they were a Trump supporter. And I'm not the kind of person to hamper anyones opinions of that kind of stuff, but it's what I did.

I also just watched Looking: the movie, which used to be an HBO series that I liked and they kind of left hanging after three seasons, or two? Can't remember. So they made a one shot movie to settle up on some things from the series. Again, like the series used to do, it made me emotional, but also made me think a lot about the past. When I used to have a lot of gay friends and we used to drink and dance and party all the time, not where I am anymore. But after I quit drinking and going to bars almost all of my gay male friends stopped contacting me, and that makes me sad. I do still have some gay friends and even some I've met in Mysore and keep in contact with, but almost none here that I'm in contact with regularly and can hang out with. Not that I need that, but its just like I always say about being in Mysore, hanging around with only Ashtanga yogis is nice because there's that shorthand you don't have with other yoga practitioners, same with gay male friends, its just a shorthand you don't have with your female friends, or straight male friends. Who knows.

I just know that it's been very hot here, actually more humid than anything, and that has been making me stay indoors more and I'm not and indoors sort. So its making me a bit depressed. I think its supposed to finally cool off this weekend with a storm that's coming through, we'll see. I also don't feel totally depressed, I'm just ready to leave. I'm ready to be in Mysore and its not time yet, so I'm feeling a bit held back...

I'm supposed to go to this big Laksmi puja at the Hindu temple, right about now actually, but I'm not sure if I want to go now. The service I usually go to is normally at 6:30, its an abishekam, where they bathe the murthy and chant and have parsed, but its been moved to 5pm and they're havoing a 2 hour celebration after that for a bit holiday celebrating Lakshmi and what she stands for. This is something I would normally love, but again, the heat has me not wanting to go. I don't have air conditioning in my car, so driving all the way out there is a big suffer fest! Oh, I'm so dramatic!

Ok, off here to figure out what it is that I want to do and go do it. Enjoy your evening and weekend!