Yoga and walking

I'm on my third time through the "Moving Toward Balance: Yoga in 8 Weeks with Rodney Yee", and for the past 5 months or so have been doing the Rodney Yee "Power Yoga" DvD every morning.  That's about 1 1/2 to 2 hours of yoga every day.  That much yoga can only result in profound changes in ones life.  And sure enough I am finding profound changes.  One of my latest revelations was the holding of my body as I'm walking.

 

About two years ago I had an episode where my back refused to hold my body up any longer.  When I sat in a chair, I would feel as though my spine was collapsing my body so that my internal organs were getting squashed.  After going to one doctor after the other, I finally became desperate for a cure, and decided that no matter how much it cost I would find my own cure.  I did acupuncture, Alexander technique lessons, reiki, massage, healing, and whatever else I could find.  Well, I finally pulled out of this by finding a physiatrist who put me touch with a physical therapist who gave me a weight training program.  But that's an aside.  The important thing I wanted to mention is the Alexander work.  The Alexander technique consists of a series of lessons where the practitioner "teaches" your body to understand what the perfect alignment is.  He or she basically does things to cause your body to find its own alignment, and then continually guides it.  Over the course of time, theoretically, your body will "learn" by incorporating this into other parts of your day.

 

I never got much farther than a couple of months with Alexander, and never completely understood it.  But I retained a lot of the words of what my teacher taught me.  One of the things he said was to "think about your head suspended over your body, with the spine hanging from it".

 

Last weekend, I was walking my dog and thinking about this, and also thinking about the correlation with Rodney Yee and other yoga and tai chi instructors, who say "think about your shoulders moving down, and by  moving down allowing your neck to elongate and your head to be suspended as though it's hanging from the stars (note the similarity with the Alexander teachings)".

 

After about the millionth Sun Salutation, I think I'm finally understanding how to walk with my head suspended and my shoulders down.  When I get into this "groove", it feels as though everything from my shoulders down is one unit, separate from  my head, whose purpose, it feels, is to dangle my spine.  Then everything from my shoulders down moves as though a puppet on a string.  This is a recent discovering, and I'm still exploring it, so I may not be on the correct path at all.  Still, it's nice to have these periods of self discovery as my body begins to release itself and my mind.

Washing my hair, and Quan Yin the Buddhist goddess

It's funny at how a small side note or comment can catch your ear and cause you to make big changes.  I read a small note in my latest Yoga Journal about how our society over-does its processing of everything from food to even our bodies, the way we insist of putting medication into our bodies, and scrubbing our hair every night.

 

I've been washing my hair every night for probably my entire lifetime (because my parents did and my brothers did).  I've tried not doing that, but found that my hair got so greasy and itchy it drove me crazy.

 

Well, I read that line in the Yoga Journal, and for the past couple of weeks I'm attempting to wash my hair every other day.  If I can make this a habit, then maybe I can make it every other day.  I'm pleasantly surprised that except for the first day or two, it's been quite tolerable.  On off days, though, my hair sits flat on my head and it's becoming obvious that it's thinning as I age.  But that's the vanity part of me speaking, and I need to get over that.

 

I was in a new age bookstore recently, and the sales person told me that she saw the Buddhist goddess Quan Yin standing behind me, and on the other side behind was a Buddhist monk.  Even though I have no idea who this person was, it still inspired me to research Quan Yin.  She represents a very strong diety of the female persuasion.  She's actually a female version of the male Buddhist diety Avalokitesvara, who is supposed to be the embodiment of all compassionate Buddhas.  I find myself praying to her when I meditate, try to get to sleep, feel stressed, or stand in namaste during my practice.  I like the thought of having someONE to pray to instead of just the heavens.  And I'm holding the image of her being physically present with me at all times.  I find that very comforting and grounding.   In one of my yoga magazines, I read about petitioning when you pray.  I've not petitioned for myself when I pray, and I realize it's a big thing that I miss in my life -- petitioning for myself.  So now I petition Quan Yin, morning, day, and evening.

Second Thoughts about Continuing with Rodney Yee (and first experience with Kundalini)

I had a heart to heart with myself over the weekend, pondering whether I should quit the Rodney Yee yoga program I've been doing (morning Power Yoga DvD and evening "Moving Towards Balance: 8 weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee").  Part of me is concerned about whether concentrating on just Rodney Yee is compromising the balance in my body's strengthening -- making me strong and flexible in certain ways, and leaving other areas week.  The reason I worry is because of the soreness I feel in my legs, back, and neck, and I found that if I twist my foot inward (instead of outward, which is how it is inclined a large number of the poses), it seems tight.  Still, these are vague issues, not really enough to actually KNOW that bad things are happening.  They could be related to improving and my body's scar tissues breaking up.  After all, I've not been flexible nor had strong core muscles for many many years, I'm guessing as much as 30 years.

 

I bought a Kundalini Yoga DvD  (Kundalini Yoga with Gurmukh) and did it on Sunday morning as a change.  "Shake out the anger!"  I heard her saying that as I desperately threw my body left and right in a frenzy, trying not to collapse from the pain and motion sickness of it all.  If that's what Kundalini Yoga is, it's....  well, different, that's for sure.

 

So....  not being in the mood to shake out my anger for 40 minutes this morning, I went back to my old standby, Power Yoga with Rodney Yee.  I was pleased to feel completely refreshed and rejuvenated and totally rewarded by doing it.

 

I wonder if the second thoughts I had all weekend were just a signal that I'm progressing to the next level in my practice.  hm.

I'm grateful for me

I woke up late this morning and decided to skip my morning power yoga practice.  I think I've done it every day for the past 5 weeks.  It was probably time for a break.  My legs were beginning to feel sore.  So as not to lose the peace and calm of my morning I kept my date with my meditation room and did 13 minutes of meditating.

 

I'm filled with gratitude today.  Gratitude for being given another chance at life after my breast cancer, gratitude for my life and my job, my husband, my dogs, and maybe most importantly gratitude to myself for being who I am.  I spend so much time feeling guilty for appreciating who I am, as though it was somehow making me a selfish, self-indulgent person.  This morning I thought about who I am and what I've done in my life, and the work and persistence I've invested in becoming the person that I am today -- breastless, uterus, ovaries, and fallopian tubeless, childless -- yet my life is incredible, and so fantastically much richer than I could ever imagine.  From a childhood with a dictatorial perfectionist for a father through to my cancer, through to everything that's happened since my cancer that has caused my health to slowly decline to the point where, two years ago, I was suffering chronic depression and dysfunction from just about every spot in my body -- I've overcome all those things which wanted so desperately to see me wither away into an insignificant ball of nothing and die.

 

I'm nothing short of an amazing person, and I'm grateful today for me.

Pulling my Yoga Practice into my Day

The other day, after our bicycle ride, I leaned on the car to take off my shoes.

 

"Stand on one foot and take off your shoe, you shouldn't lean on anything," John said.  I realized John was right.  There are so many opportunities for us to do our "yoga practice" throughout the day that we miss.  This morning in the shower as I leaned against the wall to wash my feet, I realized that it never once dawned on me until now that I could do this on one foot.

 

One of the beauties of a daily yoga practice (twice daily for me) is you do find it spilling into the rest of your day in so many physical and mental ways.  If I'm not completely focused when I practice, then I find that I'm not doing my poses correctly.  In the morning I do 40 minutes of Rodney Yee's "Power Yoga" DvD.  If I'm not 100% engaged, I miss poses or find myself doing the wrong poses, or find that I lose my timing and then have to rush to catch up.  In the evening when I do my practice from my "Moving Towards Balance: 28 days of Yoga with Rodney Yee", if I'm not 100% focused on what I'm doing, I do the poses incorrectly.  I find myself tensing up my muscles in the wrong places, lifting my shoulders out of their sockets, or tightening my waist instead of letting it elongate and be loose and elastic.  Each pose requires me to check in on my body, scanning for anything out of place or ignored.

 

The need to be 100% engaged means that for those couple of hours a day that I'm doing my yoga practice I'm not thinking about the problems of the day or any of the other things in my life that would so love to be the most important thing for me to fixate on.

 

I think the impact of all this is that instead of my external stresses encroaching upon my yoga practice, my yoga practice is encroaching on the rest of my day.  And that's a good thing.  How wonderful it would be if, when my boss says "how are you doing on your schedule?" instead of everything in my body tightening up and my teeth clenching, my mind automatically says "take a deep breath, shoulders down, chest and back wide, forehead smooth, smile."  :)

Mike's Blog: "... the world needs people who have come alive."

Mike's Blog: "... the world needs people who have come alive." This is such a nice quote: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -- Howard Thurman

Quote of the day

"Do not believe in what you have heard; do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations; do not believe anything because it is rumored and spoken of my many; do not believe merely because the written statement of some old sage is produced; do not believe in conjectures; do not believe merely in the authority of your teachers and elders. After observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and  is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and  live up to it."

-- Buddha --

Living in a world of true understanding, and how it defines "beauty"

Today I thought about the word "beauty".  What would the world be like if we all had this supernatural gift of understanding each other, similar to the way you begin to understand a character in a movie as the character develops and you see, for instance, how a seemingly common person behaves under an extraordinary circumstance.  What if we all were able to "see" each other for those underlying capacities:  the eloquence that comes out of a person who on the exterior looks to be completely uneloquent;  the poise and control that might come out of someone under a situation of intense pressure;  perhaps the lack-of such eloquence or poise that might come out of someone who on the outside is extraordinarily beautiful.

 

How would a world like that be different from todays world?  Would we still have a world that worshipped external beauty and fancy clothes and possessions?

Finishing "Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee"

I finally finished my very last lesson of the "Moving Toward Balance: 8 weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee".  It was refreshing, (first half of) the meditation practice was to take a walk.  Even though I walk all the time I used it as an excuse to go take another one.  I wondered whether I should let the dogs out to go walking with me -- I usually spend most of my time being paranoid that I will hear the screeching of wheels as a car careens into one of my dogs, so I'm constantly hyperaware of where they are.

 

As is usually the case, I gave in to my reservations and let them out with me. My little one, Sid, who usually walks with me came down a couple of houses with me and then disappeared, and Mac the Lab as usual hung out near the house.  So for most of my walk I was alone, which allowed me to think about the lesson -- walking with my chest open and my arms and legs swinging freely.  I love the "listening" that yoga requests me to do to my body.  As a software engineer, my body is usually the last thing on my mind, which is why I think that after 30 years of this abuse my body has taken such a downward spiral.

 

My mastectomies and radiation treatments have wreaked havoc with my upper chest area, from scar tissue damage around my heart,  lungs, and arms right up through my neck where my port-a-cath was inserted.  So I find that my shoulder and upper arm really work hard when my chest is open.  Every couple of seconds I need to check in with them and make sure that they are moved down, and not tensed up as I am naturally inclined to do.  I liked the concept of timing my breathing to my steps, because it did add a breath-awareness to my walking, which converted my focus from outward and daydreaming to inward and attentive.

 

I walked for about 20 minutes.  My street is in a very dark rural neighborhood.  With all of the autumn leaves covering the street and lawns, the world seems abounding with clutter, and with my flashlight and listening for the clink clink of Sid's tags, I still could not see where he was or hear him.  When I got back to the house, I walked up the driveway and there were Mac and Sid, sitting on the back lawn by the deck stairs, commisserating and watching me.  "'Bout time you got back to let us in!".

 

Two years ago, John and I went on a meditation retreat for Thanksgiving.  Even though I was very sick during the retreat and spent most of my time walking the halls trying to get through the weekend, I loved the sense of thankfulness and love that I felt.  I'm hoping that we can do a similar retreat this Thanksgiving-- maybe a yoga retreat this time.

More on Yoga and Religion

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Thursday/NewsBreak/20081030151705/Article/index_html

 

Oftentimes, I think religions see themselves as changing a person from without.  People who are lucky will take that change and begin seeing a change from within.  Yoga changes people from within.  Maybe that is one explanation why some religions feel threatened versus their members practicing yoga.

 

John has female friends and I have male friends.  Our abilites to grow as individuals strengthen our marriage.  I think that goes for everything in this world.  Anything that stifles me or tries to compartmentalize me brings my growth as a person to a halt, and although those things might help me feel better shortterm, they have never lasted longterm.  The most ideal religion for me would be one where my individuality is respected and indeed celebrated.

Is Mindfulness Good for your Brain?

As I was showering this morning I thought about the towel.  I had the towel hung behind the shower door, and my bicycling clothes from last week hung on the towel rack to dry.  When I moved the bicycling clothes from the towel rack into my bureau, I didn't realize that I could move my towel from the door back over to the towel rack.  As I stood looking at the scene, I could feel the gears in my brain reorganizing things so that the towel was on the towel rack again.

 

This is a minor thing in the grand scheme of my day.  But the reason I mention it is because I could stop and observe myself as I worked this infinitessimally trivial thing out.  If I could be conscious of doing this, then I could expand it to being conscious of the rest of my world and the way I interact with it.

 

One of the books I listen to at night is a book about the Buddhist precepts.  One of the things that he says is that we can view our bodies as physical manifestations that we're temporarily being given control over.  That struck me as an interesting concept.  If I view my body as a thing outside of who "I" am, then I can separate the "me" from the "it", which also separates the "me" from the thoughts in "its" brain.  How does that help me?  I guess mainly that I can project a loving relationship onto this body as I care for it -- feed it, exercise it, do the things I need to do to keep it healthy --  and I can remember that when "it" is sick and unhealthy that there is an "I" underneath that is a constant.  The concept is fuzzy, and for all I know, I completely misinterpreted what he said, but still, it got me to thinking.....

 

Yoga and the Child Within Me

I've been doing 30 minutes of the "Power Yoga" Rodney Yee DvD in the mornings.  I always follow it up with a sitting meditation.  The more familiar and proficient I get at doing the 30 minutes of this DvD, the more intense the workout is getting for me.  This morning, in my follow-on meditation, I found myself sinking effortlessly into a state of perfect calm and contentment.  It felt like brilliant sunshine, and I celebrated it by dedicated my practice to my mother, mother-in-law, a dying uncle, and my boss at work.  I accepted the suffering that each is going through at the moment, and gave each a silent offering of the peace that I was feeling.  It was a very nice meditation.

 

Afterwards, I went into the bathroom to take my morning shower and noticed that I had a bottle of a new type of shampoo, and I felt the child inside of me jump with glee "wheeee, a new shampoo, how fun!".

 

Yoga is bringing back the child in me :)

The Question of Yoga and Religion

I've been thinking about the question "Is Yoga a Religion" since I read the article about the school that had issues with yoga being taught because they didn't want some "cult" religion to be taught to the kids.  It took me by surprise.

 

I can't deny, though, that I do feel very spiritual when I do tai chi, or yoga, or even go to holistic practitioners or natural foods stores.  Why?  Because those things make me feel better.  When I feel physically healthy and alive, then my mental outlook changes, and I can't help but have a sense of deep spirituality.  I feel that spirituality in the muscles of my body when I do my yoga stretches, or when I am thinking about my yoga body as I move about my day and check my breathing.

 

I can't tell whether this means that yoga is a religion for me.  Is it the end result that defines a religion or the path towards that end?

Bicycling, dog training, Extended Side Angle, and Building Post-Mastectomy Arm Strength

Last week a friend at work told me about his son.  His son is 7 years old, and an avid mountain biker.  My friend was telling me how much he's learned from this little 7 year-older, who has an intuitive sense about how to shift his weight and maneuver his bike through difficult trails.

 

I've thought about this over the past week.  I spend a good portion of every single day studying my body and muscles.  "Am I standing correctly?  Is my back relaxed and wide when I'm walking?  Am I breathing?  Is my neck tense?"  I seem to have lost my ability to handle my body "intuitively".  How is it that I need to relearn the very seemlingly basic forms of standing upright and walking?  In that same vein, how is it that my body doesn't intuitively understand what it needs in order for me to maintain good health?

 

Yesterday John and I had a gorgeous bike ride around our neighborhood.  The weather was warm, and the road was covered with leaves.  We laughed at a small poodle sitting in his yard.  The first time we passed her, she barked at us.  Second time we passed, she barked, but after we passed her.  Third time we passed, she didn't bat an eyelash.  How easy it is to train a dog :)

 

I bought a Rodney Yee DvD called "Power Yoga", and I've been doing the first 1/2 hour every morning.  Thankfully it's not as hard as I anticipated.  It's not easy either.  I like that you are thrown directly into the workout without long, tedious explanations.  I feel like that 1/2 hour is well-spent, doing one move after another.  It's a perfect complement to the "Moving Towards Balance: 8 weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee" book.  The DvD starts off gradually with the Mountain, Standing Backbend, Forward Bend, Lunge, Downward Facing Dog, Upward Facing Dog, etc, and then works up to Warrior 2, and then Extended Side Angle, and then Triangle, and then sends you through different combinations of doing one after the other.  It's very nice.

 

I smiled last night as I was doing my nightly "Moving Towards Balance: 8 weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee" lesson.  The Triangle and Extended Side Angle poses in the lesson are so easy now that I'm doing them with the DvD in the mornings.  I still find the Extended Side Angle to be one of the most challenging because of the arm limitations from my cancer surgery and my back pain.

 

Speaking of which....  one of the new things I've been adding lately is handstand.  I've been doing that twice a day for the past couple of weeks.  Just in the doorway for now, though, and only for 5-10 seconds at a time.  I have a long ways to go to build up my arm strength.  After breast cancer surgery I was told to never lift anything more than 5 pounds for the rest of my life or I would get lymphedema in my arm.  So, for the past 7 years, I've done nothing at all with my arm -- babying it obssessively.  Yoga is teaching me that I never had to do that.  The medical establishment still hasn't figured out how to heal people in the true sense of the word.  99% of the population will never study yoga or any of the holistic practices, so 99% of all breast cancer survivors will go the rest of their lives never picking up more than 5 pounds.

Looking to Where the Teacher is Pointing, and not to the Teacher

I've been thinking the past few days about spiritual leaders and their responsibilities.  The reason is that I googled "Rodney Yee" and discovered an article about his extramarital affair.  I found myself filled with disappointment that this had to happen to me yet again.  It seems that this has happened to me over and over in my life.  I become engrossed following someone who is resonsibile for a life transformation in me, and they turn out to be human.  Then I become disenchanted with the person/group, get a bad attitude and leave.

 

In thinking about this, I've realized something.  If I can't forgive my "spiritual leaders" for being human, then who am I to forgive myself for being human.  After all, they are not saying that they're gods (and therefore perfect, by whoever's standards) by any means.  Now that I've been through this exact conundrum a handful of times and am older and wiser, I'm beginning to realize that this has nothing at all to do with them, it has to do with me, and my ability to look at the world through mature eyes.

 

In my own always-trying-to-find-a-spiritual-answer-to-everything way, I am seeing this as Rodney Yee's lesson to me.  It's an opportunity for me to learn.  I can walk away from my yoga book and never buy or look at another lesson by him, or I can continue with what I'm doing and continue to grow spiritually and physically and keep my eyes focused on the real goal, which is the thing that is at the end of the path that Rodney Yee and the rest of us are all on together -- the path to a place of peace and harmony and a world of tolerance and love for each other.

Goal for today: breathe

Yesterday my back killed me.  It was one of the very few days that I skipped my yoga.  I suppose it was from increased activity.  I was so busy, that at the end of the day I found myself collapsed in front of the TV, hardly able to keep my eyes open, my body was so tired and my back so achy.

 

As I was puttering around washing dishes and doing my various pre-bed preparations, I realized that I spend a lot of my time holding my breath.  It's most obvious when I'm washing the dishes.  The thought of my breath came to mind from watching a new DvD I bought called "Yoga Burn" by Rodney Yee.   He makes a point of using the word "breath" in almost every single one of the 3 billion or so poses that he demonstrates on that DvD.

 

I woke up this morning and thought about breathing, making a conscious effort to breathe into my lower back as I hiked the dogs, did my sun salutations, and got ready for work.  I noticed that thinking about breathing into my lower back affects my Downward Facing Dog pose quite a bit, in a subtle way.

 

My goal for today is to breathe.

There But for the Grace of God Go I

This morning I thought about my yoga practice and how it seems that yoga is so much more than placement of body and breathing and stretching. Once you get past the point where you're just trying to get somewhere even slightly close to what you're supposed to be doing, things relax, and then it becomes a process of listening to your body. As the weeks and months pass, I find myself reading the instructions in my "Finding Balance: Yoga in 8 weeks with Rodney Yee" book and getting into my pose, but after that, Rodney Yee seems to fade away and the dialog is between me and my body. And even more profoundly, most of the dialog is about my body talking to me.

The more I continue my yoga practice, the more I'm drawn towards the reality of how lacking most of our society is in finding empowerment to heal themselves. I find myself associating myself more and more with "fringe" groups -- the "touchy feely, spiritual, tree-hugging-mouse-saving" types who, like me, are in their middle age and continue to search for meaning, purpose, and explanations in their lives. The reason I'm drawn towards these groups is that I find that most everyone else is just plain stressed out and not doing a thing about it.

Having been there for most of my life, and seeing myself where I am today, I know that "that" part of myself that can become chronically stressed out can overwhelm the real person underneath. So the world never gets to see that person underneath when I'm in that state. My dialog, actions, activities, diet, addictions become a web of protective covering and escape and deception both to myself and to everyone around me. Seeing that in the people around me, I can say to myself "there but for the grace of God go I....". May I never lose my true self again

Sleeping with the Dalai Lama

I have lots of issues with sleep.  I find myself needing sleeping pills a lot more than I should because I have so many issues with hot flashes, which will often wake me up 4 or 5 times a night in panic.  I've been trying to figure out how to wean the sleeping pills from my life and how to learn to live with the hot flashes and still be able to function during the day after sleepless nights.

 

Last night I decided to play an audio book that I have called "How to Practice" by the Dalai Lama.

 

I haven't decided whether I consider myself deeply religious or not.  I think of deeply religous people as being people who have some sort of religious tenet that they follow.  One of the things that helped me get through my cancer treatments in 2001 was the meditation classes that I took from a Tibetan group called Rigpa.  I like the Buddhist view of the world where, instead of changing the world, they believe that first and foremost the person needs to change.  I guess in that respect, I would consider myself a Buddhist.  Tibet is a wonderful icon of what all of the world should be, I believe.  And I also believe that if there would be any hope at all of my helping to create that world, I would need to find a solid ground within myself first, so that I would have a firm foundation upon which to stand as I hold my hand out to the next person.

 

So, in that vein, I thought that playing a Dalai Lama audiobook might be something that could help get me through the night and hopefully instead of waking up agitated and unable to meditate and/or get back to sleep, having the Dalai Lama speaking to me and helping me to focus on that image of world of peace and simplicity, and finding it all within myself.

 

I woke up at 6:00 this morning, feeling completely rested.  I was amazed.

Finding a balance between what I can do and challenging myself to go one step further

I took 4 days off from my yoga to deal with a colonoscopy and recovery from its associated complications.  The last day before I took off, I did the first day of week 5: Twisting of "Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee".  I remembered while I was doing this lesson that the last time that I did this weeks lessons, I really hated it.  The pretzel-like twists in his variation 3 of most of the new poses are completely out of the scope of my abilities, and if I try to do them, I find that I struggle with just getting my arms to go the right way.  And if I can finally manage to grab my toe (arm, waist, etc), my body is so contorted out of proper position, I find it frustrating and I begin resenting the lesson and secretly accusing Rodney of being unnecessarily difficult and tedious.

 

So...  after taking four days off, I had a hard time motivating myself to come back to week 5 of the book.  I played with whether I should begin at week 1 again, or take a break from Rodney Yee and do my Richard Hittleman "Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan" routines.

 

A part of me didn't really think that quitting at a time that I hate the lessons was a good time, so I negotiated with myself.  I told myself to just do the ones that I can do, and not even attempt to do the version 3 twists.  And maybe not even try to twist far, but instead of making it a tedious lesson, try to make it more meditative and gentle.

 

That's what I did last night.  I re-did lesson 1 of week 5 on Twisting, but I did the twists in a very gentle, contemplative way, concentrating on listening to my body and the things that Rodney says we should be thinking about:  Inhaling into the bottom of the twist, exhaling as I'm twisting and feeling my body rising, and then inhaling as I untwist slightly.

 

It turned out to be perfect for me to approach the lesson that way.  I felt very positive afterwards, and felt good that I could come up with a way to modify the lesson so that I could feel good about it.  I'm sure if I went back over the instructions in the book I'd find that somewhere along the line Rodney says to do that.  It's hard to find a balance between doing what I can do and challenging myself to go just one step further.

 

It felt wonderful to do the meditations after last nights lesson.  My "chi" was full of positive, relaxing energy, and I found myself at peace, even during the sitting-against-the-wall part of the meditation which I find to be hard.  Maybe the pillow in the small of the back helped.  This is the first sitting-against-the-wall instruction where Rodney has you using a pillow at the small of your back.  Or maybe it was just that my practice was so wonderful.

Yoga room and meditations

I spent yesterday completely clearing out our "yoga room".  It's a big bedroom with a walk-in closet, and now it has one platform bed and one floor lamp and the rest is completely empty except for yoga mats, props, and CD player with relaxation CD's.  The walkin closet is my meditation room.  It has two zafu mats and a couple of meditation cushions, and a dog bed for my dog, Sid, who sees it as a space that he can go when he's really exhausted and doesn't want to be bothered.

 

The "yoga room" was originally my office, so now my new office is in a small cubbyhole in one corner of our master bedroom.  My life seems to be a constant, neverending shuffling of my stuff.  I change hobbies, interests, friends, etc. etc. etc.  Sometimes I think it stems from a childhood of being a military brat and never having developed the skill of bonding with anything or anyone.  At other times I wonder whether it's something that's unsettled in my innate being.  Luckily for me, this characteristics hasn't extended to my husband, family, or dogs.

 

Anyhow....  now we have a beautiful yoga room that is free of any outside junk save one bed, and a space for both John and I to do our practices at one time.  In the meantime, I work on our family room downstairs, which will be a REAL yoga room some day.  Right now it's in the middle of wallpaper stripping.  What exactly would "yoga room" wallpaper look like, I wonder as I wade through downy-soaked wallpaper and puddles.  I have not been able to find an answer to that, so we have yet to see where this activity will end up.

 

I didn't begin my practice until 10:30 last night, and I'm on the first day of week 4 of Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee.  I know that the first day of the week has a fairly long and intense practice, so I opted for doing day 2 of "Richard Hittleman's Yoga: 28 Day Exercise"'s revolving daily exercises.  Hittleman's yoga is different from Yee's.  Whereas Rodney Yee will have you do one pose for 30 seconds, Hittleman will have you do a sequence for 10-15 seconds apiece.  The poses are slightly different as well.  Rodney Yee's poses have made Hittleman much easier, although Hittleman poses still hit upon areas that are quite tender in my body, so I know that they are a valuable cross-yoga-training practice.

 

Another thing that's interesting is, Rodney Yee is much more formal in his meditation instruction.  Hittleman has some breathing or imaging exercise, and then the rest of the meditation is lying quietly.  I have very good meditations with Hittleman.  Last night I was pleasantly surprised to find myself sinking into a state of complete relaxation and mental calm.

Yoga practice with your spouse

I'm going to discover what it's like to share my yoga practice with my spouse.  At want for a place for him to begin his work with the book "Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee", I cleared out the other half of my office, and now he shares my space with me.  I gave him instructions to be quiet unless absolutely necessary, since my yoga practice is somewhat sacred to me.

 

Within about 10 second he said "I don't know how to set up my mats.  Do I really need two mats?  This one is curled up, I should turn it over."

 

"Work it out with yourself please, John.  You don't need to get me involved in this discussion." I grumbled as I faced the wall in my mountain pose, trying to concentrate on relaxing my face and body (and a positive attitude).

 

I still have a long ways to go in being a generous person.  Sharing my sacred space is definitely an act of love.  We'll see how long I can last :P

Wide upper back

Today as I walked the halls at work, I thought more about my posture and the proper way for me to hold it.  In "Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee", Rodney talks about keeping your back and hips wide.  And I can feel that as I relax my back, my hips and back widen.  I can especially feel it in my chair, where I have a lumbar support.  If I relax my back so that it feels widened, the I can feel a greater ability to curve my back over the lumbar support.

 

It feels as though if I relax my back when I'm walking, where I can feel my back widening, it brings my spine back (or up from the slouched position, if you want to word it more properly).  And then, it feels as though everything else begins to fall into place.

 

I'm still experimenting, though.  I'm the first person to say that when I'm in a touchy-feely class and the teacher asks "what are you feeling"? I inevitably am the person that makes a comment that's totally the opposite of what I'm supposed to be feeling.  Throughout my years and years of built-up stress, I find that I'm completely out of touch with perceptions about my body.

 

John made a wise statement the other day.  "You reach and age where you have to do these [stretching/exercising] things because they're serious business".  That is so true.  I've reached an age where my yoga and meditating and such are very serious pursuits, and I know that if I stop them, my body and my emotional health will slide downhill.

Graceful Sun Salutations and the Perfect Posture

I watched an online video on the Sun Salutation on the http://www.jogajournal.com/ site (http://www.yogajournal.com/video/learnposes/?bctid=1483914421 by Natasha Rizopoulos) the other day, and it showed ma a bit about how to do the transitions from pose to pose. I've read that the sun salutation should be done in such a way that the transitions themselves become part of the pose. I didn't quite understand that, and have been studying online videos of people doing it.

In the Natasha Rizopoulos video, I can see a couple of things which are interesting:

1. She spends a quiet moment initially in mountain pose before beginning the routine.
2. She brings her arms around when going from upright to down, and from down back to upright
3. When she moves to and from the lunges, she hovers her leg in the air before actually placing it in the new position
4. She begins her Downward Facing Dog on her toes (thereby keeping them in the exact same position as they are in the post just preceding) for a brief moment before lowering her heels into the full Downward Facing Dog

I've been attempting to mimic her style, and I'm feeling a lot more of the graceful flow that I think I should be feeling.

Yesterday when walking to my car after work I thought about what I wrote about curving my upper back when walking or standing, and that's not exactly correct. I don't actually curve it. I think the right term may be that I reposition it.

The finding of one's perfect posture seems to be such a complicated and introspective task. I'm constantly studying different holistic methods of posture and coming up with revelations. Hopefully with each new revelation, I edge closer to something that will hopefully become my perfect posture.

Reaching Nirvana through reading ebooks

In last nights "Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee" lesson (week 3, lesson 2), I did alternate Cobra and Downward Facing Dog poses. It was interesting because as I repeated this sequence throughout the lesson, I found myself thinking about the entire curvature of my backbend, especially the upper part of my back, which has a tendency to be very rigid. I could feel that thinking about the rounding of my entire back and trying to keep my legs active took the edge off of my lower back receiving most of the workload.

As I walked up and down the hall today at work, I found myself thinking about this, and as I walked, I had the sensation that my lower back even in the walking position seems to get more than its fair share of the workload. I concentrated on trying to give my upper back more of a backbend -- which to people with good posture it would seem more like my moving from a tendency to be hunched over, to a more upright position -- and felt that it helped to bring my spine upright into a more holistically balanced position.

I've had a funny revelation lately. I have had chronic sleep issues since my cancer treatments in 2001, due to all of the myriad of subsequent side effects and health issues that followed. I keep thinking that I need to resolve them the "spiritual" way, and use the awake time to put myself into a meditative state and clear my mind. The other night, I lay awake for about 3 or 4 hours. Finally I gave in, opened my ebook, read a page of it, and promptly fell asleep. When I told John about it in the morning, he said "if the ebook puts you to sleep immediately, why don't you just read it instead of laying there trying to meditate?" Now, I read my ebook to put me to sleep. If I wake up in the night, I read another page of it and then fall asleep within minutes. Another example of how I'm learning to live my life, not in the way that I try to put pressure on myself to (or feel pressure from the outside world to), but in the way that makes it work.

My question is, if I do not use this sleepless time to meditate, and instead us it to read ebooks, will it take more time for me and my subsequent lives to reach nirvana? A somewhat puzzling conundrum to me.

This morning I did a full headstand, legs in the air. I didn't feel at all uneasy about doing it, and found a nice balance where I was able to relax the muscles in my neck. Afterwards I got up and started for the bathroom to brush my teeth, and then it occurred to me that coming out of a pose as demanding as a headstand should have a more gentle transition, so I went back into my office and did a child's pose for a minute. As I walked out of the office, I wondered whether getting the blood to my head would help me think better at work today.

Yoga and headstands and back pain

This morning I successfully took my headstand another step and raised my legs into the air. For just a second or two. It feels good to see myself making progress in my poses.

I'm starting week 3 of "Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee". I loved how the last time I did this first lesson of week 3 I was amazed at how I was able to accomplish that backbend lifting my head off of the floor. Before Rodney Yee, I was doing Richard Hittleman's "Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan", and I could never lift my head off of the floor in the backbend. There is something very thoughtful in the lesson plan laid out in "Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee". The poses seem to build upon each other, and somehow, subconsciously, the mind develops an understanding of the body, so that by the time he asks you to do something challenging, the mind has already done 80% of the work needed to accomplish the pose.

I find that the yoga is not helping my back pain -- some of which I attibute to old age arthritis, and some due to scar tissue from breast cancer radiation treatments. This is guesswork on my part, since the source of my back pain has never been diagnosed despite repeated visits to many doctors, a host of tests, and a ton of physical therapists and holistic practitioners. The yoga in fact seems to make the pain worse. I think the reason is because, I imagine, the mobility of muscles that haven't been mobilized in 30 years and the breaking down of scar tissue mean that things around my spine are getting repositioned and resorted.

I may have to live with my back pain forever. At this point it's irrelevant to me, because I go about my life in spite of it. Even when I'm not doing the yoga now, I spend more time being aware of my body and what parts are tensing up throughout parts of my day. When I walk down the hallway at work, I feel when I'm slouching, because the Mountain Pose has taught me about finding that spot where my head and spine are balanced and the parts of my body that don't need to be working are relaxing. In that way, I can feel my body gliding with more ease. Part of what yoga is teaching me is that I can live with back pain AND ease of movement. It's a constant lesson, but that's what helps me see that motion (and my life) need not come to an end because of my various aches and pains.

Finding Enlightenment

I constantly struggle with the concept of enlightenment and the concept of "finding" it. One of the biggest roadblocks for me in a group of spiritual types is seeing everyone else as more enlightened than myself. It's especially vivid with zen buddhism where people work with koans. I can feel the whoosh as it all flies above my head.

On the other hand, sometimes I get into modes where I've been doing a lot of meditating and feeling myself becoming more grounded, and then it feels as though the entire rest of the world is so messed up emotionally.

I wonder if this means I'm normal?

More on headstands, as well as the relationship between scuba diving and meditating

In the past couple of days, I've started to do three full sun salutations (ala Rodney Yee) in the morning, and one headstand a couple of breaths long.

I love timing my poses through my breath instead of counting. It makes me mindful of my breathing, and helps me focus on my body.

I've noticed that yoga hasn't helped my back pain at all, which I believe is caused by scar tissue from radiation caused by my breast cancer treatments. The worst of the back pain is just behind the lung on my cancer side. But somehow the yoga makes the back pain less of a concern to me. My body feels like it's getting some understanding and acceptance of itself, and that's a very calming feeling.

The really nice thing about the Rodney Yee yoga is that he emphasizes mediation. The last 15 minutes or so of the practice are dedicated to relaxation poses, and if my body can't take a particular pose for too long, I'm able to do my meditating with the next pose. I feel that I'm learning alternative meditation positions. It's nice because I find that in my life my ability to meditate is directly connected with my spirituality as well as my entire attitude about life in general.

This morning when doing my headstand, I discovered that I can get my body into one particular position where maintaining the headstand is effortless. On either side of that position I either fall back against the wall, or fall forward onto my arms. So my goal will be to keep praticing so that I can reproduce that position reliably every time. I will stick to doing one headstand of 2-4 breaths duration each practice session so as not to strain my neck. I truly believe that learning to do this will do wonderful things for my overall well-being. This is one of the aspects of scuba diving that I believe causes such a calming effect. The other aspect of scuba diving is the pressurization, which I think must have huge positive effects on the body. I just don't know an easy way to simulate that on-land though.

Musings on comments (and why none)

I thought about commenting as I drove in to work today, and decided to turn off commenting in this blog. There's something about allowing comments in ones blog that I've noticed. A blog with commenting allowed implicitly invites others to be a part of your blog. Which is a really good thing in most cases, because it invites collaboration, which is a wonderful aspect of blogging.

But comments in blogs also change the blog. They guide the direction of the blog development, and also affect the writer -- and reader -- in a positive or negative way. I find that I tend to feel a certain degree of social etiquette in acknowledging people for their comments. If someone takes the time out to write something, then they deserve to get some sort of recognition for being an active reader. I also find that I tend to be driven by affirmation from my audience, and I'm wondering what will happen if I have no "audience" per se, but stand on my own, without any of that feedback.

I'm going to do something different with this blog and turn off commenting. I want my time and writing to be directed by what is within me to say, and not by comment maintenance.

So.... this is the groundwork that I am laying for this blog. I have neither traffic stats nor comments turned on. This will be all about my sharing a very profound part of my life with the world in words, and about my trust that there will be a connection to the world, without any need for proof.

Head stands

Since I'm gradually realizing the profound impact that yoga is having on my life, I decided to create a blog and see where this takes me. For the past 5 months or so, I've done the yoga every night. I began with Richard Hittleman's "28 Day Exercise Plan", and after doing that for a couple of month, I realized that I was beginning to reap both mental and physical benefits from my practice.

One day, at Barnes and Noble, I discovered a book by Rodney Yee called "Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee". I discovered what a truly amazing teacher he is, and have been inspired in my practice by the care and mindfulness that he shows in his books and workouts.

Last night I did a yoga headstand for the first time. When I first began attempting the headstand, 5 months ago, I never ever thought I'd get to the point where I could do such a difficult (for a 50-something post-cancer woman) pose. I discovered that the yoga headstand doesn't come from the development of external muscles, it comes from an internal sense of balance and relaxation, and from a deep sensitivity to my body that is slowly beginning to come to me from doing 1 1/2 to 2 hours of yoga every night.