Mindfulness and burdens I am reading Jon Kabat-Zinn's Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness. It's a really ambitious book that addresses the personal and the global. It's a heavy assignment because it's 600 pages and weighs like a ton. It's a kind of daily act of penitence to remind me about paying attention and cultivating mindfulness. That's what I'm sweating about on the mat, to purge and purify the bullshit and get down to the essentials.  ¶ 3:32 PM 0 comments

  Honoring my son Yesterday, my son Matthew got his Masters in Geography from the University of Maryland. He will start working full-time at the Global Landcover Facility (GLCF) next month. He's been working there part-time while he was a graduate student, and they saw fit to bring him on staff. Teresa and I went to the graduation at the Memorial Chapel and then a reception afterwards. Finally we took him out for dinner. Matt has grown a lot over the past two years, and it's encouraging to hear his dreams and ambitions, grounded in humility and honesty. It's tough forging a career, but he's earned his achievements.

On another note, please excuse the spotty performance of this website over the weekend. I upgraded the server to Apache 2 (as well as other security changes) and the modifications had several unforeseen consequences the site. Hopefully, Interland, my hosting service, will work out the other kinks. All the maintenance issues kept me from putting up new content.

  ¶ 2:46 PM 0 comments

  A wild Friday night For the first time, I've ended my work week with a visit to Flow Yoga where I took a Flow 2 class. I needed the release from accumulated stress and I wanted to see if I could handle the more demanding level. Great on both counts. We worked on headstands and I got my feet up on the wall -- with a little help from the instructor.  ¶ 10:45 PM 1 comments

  Shoulder dividends An unexpected result of my shoulder loosening routines is that my arms seem so much lighter than before. In Warrior II, a pose that seemed to be worse than weightlifting, I can now sustain my arms outstretched with a lot more ease. When doing my bastrika breathwork, my arms rise above my head with less effort and do not get tired. So part of the fatigue issue in doing many of my hatha poses was the resistance that was coming from lack of range and flexibility, not just fighting against gravity.  ¶ 12:59 PM 0 comments

  When a high-tech magazine starts reporting yoga news Yoga Suit Settlement Beggars Open Source Ideals: "As it stands right now, Choudhry's copyright claims, which looked vulnerable before the settlement, will remain unchallenged by the courts. Unless he has made confidential assurances to OSYU, Choudhry is free to importune other instructors, into paying fees to practice his style of yoga if they aren't in a position to marshal the time and effort to wage a legal challenge as OSYU did." eWeek John Pallatto is mainly interested in the software ramifications of the suit between Bikram and the Open Source Yoga Unity. What probably happened is that it dawned on the group of rebellious instructors that they were going to end up in appeals for the next 10 years, paying a lawyer to represent them, giving depositions and getting strangled financially. Although principles are nice, you can't eat them. Bikram has far more resources for this kind of game. I am just guessing because both parties are bound to silence on the settlement terms.

Postscript: Stretching and twisting, yoga guru settles copyright case (SFGate.com) provides more information.

  ¶ 2:24 PM 0 comments

  Sweet My daughter quipped back at me after our class this past week at Yoga Flow, "Dad, you always say that your class was a breakthrough." Well, it so happens that I've noticed qualitative changes in key poses.

• I sat cross-legged in Easy or Sukasana pose without a folded blanket under my hips and still did not feel as if I was going to fall over backwards. Maybe one day I will make it into Half Lotus.
• I could get into Supta Virasana (Reclining Hero's pose) with a block to support my sitting bones and protect my knees and a bolster to support my back. This was the first time that I had ever seriously attempted the pose.
• My heels now touch the ground regularly in Downward-facing Dog.
• Pigeon pose has become one of my favorites. A month ago, I felt threatened in the pose. A year ago, I despised it. This past week, I found myself jumping into the pose with relish -- but the teacher had not asked for it.
• The other change is that my weight has dropped below 190 for the first time in the first time this century. It makes a difference when I'm not carrying around an extra 10 pounds.

But even more importantly than the progress on asanas was how the practice made me feel. I had left work that afternoon, dragging, brooding. Job stress was making me feel frustrated, powerless and bitter. But my vinyasa seemed to pull me out of the mire and thrust me forward with an emotional lift that carried me through the next couple of days. The clarity that was destilled from my practice helped me make key decisions about my career.

  ¶ 9:09 PM 2 comments

  Shoulder routines Alan Little asks me for my secret sauce for loosening up my shoulders: see his comments. He even gives his own his own example. My routines are not rocket science, much more remedial. I am still waking up to my body, probably for the first time in my life, after decades of misuse.

The premise that got me started is that I don't do anything fancy -- just do it everyday, along with my meditation and pranayama practice. These are routines that are equivalent to office yoga -- stuff that you can do to relieve tension from sitting at a desk all day.

• The upper torso part of Cow Face pose or Gomukhasana -- I have to use a strap to reach between my hands.
• I do a simple pectoral stretch, usually pressing my arm against the wall, and the reverse that by pulling an arm across my chest.
• The clasped hands behind the back of prasarita padottanasana (wide-legged standing forward bend). I do this several times a day, loosening my shoulders and forcing my hands down as far as they will go and then lifting my arms out away from my body. This has done wonders for my mobility of my shoulder blades.

I've found two good books with shoulder routines: Erich Schiffmann also has eight shoulder stretches, some with a strap, in his book Yoga The Spirit And Practice Of Moving Into Stillness. I can do only five of them. Miriam Austin in Cool Yoga Tricks has a whole section on loosening up the shoulders.

I still can't do the top half of Garudasana or Eagle pose. My arms and hands simply will not intertwine.

Postscript: here are some other ideas for office yoga: the University of Alberta has some detailed instruction with drawings in Word format. Easy Desktop Yoga has a free video download. Cyndi Lee gives advice in Yoga Journal. And then you have My Daily Yoga, which has some fun graphics.

  ¶ 3:06 PM 1 comments

  News flash -- add inches to your reach I discovered an ingenious way to add (what seems like) two inches to my reach -- loosen up my shoulders. I've been concentrating on doing some simple routines over the past 2-3 weeks to increase flexibility in my shoulders, and it's had a ripple effect across my practice and my torso. Suddenly, I find it much easier to reach the floor in forward bends or similar poses. Camel (Ustrasana) becomes easier to get into, rather than blind backward flaying in search of my heels. It also translates into longer flanks, because the farther your shoulders rise, the more your side can stretch.

I also discovered that once your shoulders are loose, it is much easier to move your shoulder blades together and down your back -- I can actually feel them float down as I relax. I now realize that although I heard my instructors to manipulate my shoulder blades, I hadn't the slightest idea of what I was doing.

All this softening means that it's easier to open my chest more deeply. I start hearing cartilage popping and creaking.

And when I say "discover," I am speaking facetiously.

  ¶ 2:45 PM 6 comments