This evening, I took in a class at Thrive Yoga with Marina. I usually don't go to this class because there's not enough time to make the commute home, change clothes and go to the studio. The class is at 6:30. This time, I ran out of the office at 5:40, 15-20 minutes before I usually leave, took the Metro to Rockville, had my wife pick me up at the station, changed into my yoga clothes while we were driving to the studio, and got to the class when it was already started. Late by five minutes. Luckily, I found an open spot by the window, which happens to be my preferred location — a wall to grab onto during balancing poses.
Marina leads a very creative class. The asanas and vinyasas are not that exotic, basically, a Flow I-II level, but she modifies and combines them in unique ways, seemingly improvising as she goes along. She's always asking you to play with the pose, make it your own, stretch it farther and breath deeper, without hurting yourself, of course. She frequently asks you to hold poses for what seems like an eternity. I had a hankering for a class that tested my edge, and Marina did just that.
There's a lot of energy at Thrive Yoga. You can feel it in the lobby and the studios. The 40-day Personal Revolution got underway today, and more than 50 people have signed up to participate. They will have to do six classes a week (three in the studio and the rest at home), daily meditation and group discussions. This regime is modeled after the Baron Baptiste yoga crucible method. I bought his book. I don't think I can join the venture because I just have too many other commitments this month.
On Mondays, I usually go to meditation class at Flow Yoga with my daughter Stephanie, but she is working in Las Vegas this week so I decided to do something different.
Labels: class
I've noticed that I can usually hold most asanas individually, but when they are combined into vinyasa sequences, I have problems with the transitions, especially around the hips. For instance, tonight at Thrive Yoga, we were moving up from Reverse Warrior to Warrior II into Half Moon (Ardha Chandrasana), in which I transition into balancing on one leg and a hand on a block. I never seem able to make the same movement twice; I'm wobbling in and out of the pose; I easily lose my balance and fall out of the pose. It's also a completely different feeling working with the left leg forward from the right leg.
(On the other hand, with Sun Salutations A and B, I've done the sequences thousands of times over the past three years so they've become second nature to me.)
I am sure that this problem is related to my "spinal knot" -- the tightness of my hips, spin and shoulders. If muscles are clinched permanently, they are not going to allow for smooth movement.
A tip of the hat to my teacher tonight, Andrea Creel, who says she reads this blog regularly, bless her heart.
I have added a slew of online resources to my meditation page, in effect, putting links where my mouth is. I hadn't done much with that page since I carved it out of the gateway page more than a year ago. I've also done some updating on the recommended reading page. I am going to have to do some housekeeping on the site because some links have gone bad over time. There are also some pages that just do not fit together, ugly and misshapened from a standard Blogger template. That's the price of maintaining a website and blog on the cheap, in terms of resources and time.
Labels: website
I've had only modest progress towards switching to doing meditation and pranayama in the morning. I missed Thursday because we had to leave home early that morning so Teresa could make it to her Spanish class. Today, I missed because I got to bed so late last night that I could not get up to fit in my practice. I definitely have to get to get earlier than I have because even though it may not affect me the next morning, it will catch up with me later in the week. I am really tired tonight and simply cannot concentrate on writing, reading or anything else that requires an alert mind. So sweet dreams.
Someone told me that by slowing down, breathing deeply and listening intently you could probably reach a goal just as quickly as if you had rushed towards it like a race. This advice came to mind because I was in yoga class tonight and a woman was rushing through her vinyasas as if she was in a sprint. She was obviously an accomplished yogini because she had her asanas down pat. I took the opposite approach. I slowed down my vinyasas so that I could savor each pose, the counterposes and the transitions that bind them together. And I still worked up a sweat.
I could probably benefit by following that advice in my professional pursuits and my personal ventures. Fewer brain cycles would keep my mind from being overworked and my imagination overheated. Mindfulness opens up other venues of inquiry.
This was my first class since Sunday because I worked late Tuesday evening and missed my normal class at Flow Yoga (I even forgot to cancel the reservation). Boy, have I felt the absence. It was sweet to be on the mat again.
Labels: practice
I got home late last night and could not get settled into bed until well past 1:00 am. I did some yoga in an effort to unwind, but I was still alert and vigilant afterwards. It was nearly impossible for me to wake up at 6:00 am to do my pranayama and meditation. That's par for the course -- on/off, and always a worthy excuse.
While doing my routine last night, I noticed that my thighs were stiff and a bit sore, probably from my hip-opener workshop.
I am currently reading Stephen Cope's Yoga and the Quest for the True Self
I had been planning on reading this book for years but never bothered to order it. Last week, I put in an order for other material at Amazon and I said to myself, why not. I should also pick up his other book, The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seeker's Guide to Extraordinary Living
I went to a hip-opener workshop today at Thrive Yoga with Susan Bowen. The two and a half hour session is the third one that I've taken from her, a sign of her commitment to addressing this need and my own recognition that my hips are tight. I've been "working on my hips" for the past two years, and I can see only marginal improvements. I still cannot get into easy pose Sukasana without a support under my hips; otherwise, my knees are above my waist. Like most Westerners, I've spent all my life seated in a chair, as opposed to on the ground; I am a man so my anatomy is less flexible than a woman; finally, my professional bondage to a computer means that I spend too much time seated in front of a keyboard and monitor.
I think that my lack of progress is due to the fact that it's not just a hip problem. It's a kind of muscular knot that tangles together my whole core, legs, hips, abs, spine, and even my shoulders, ensnaring both strength and flexibility. Focusing exclusively on the hips is not going to fix it. It's not going to get better until the whole problem is corrected.
So until then, I just accept it as the state in which my body is, and get back on the mat. At least now I enjoy half pigeon (Eka Pada Rajakapotasana).
I have always been amazed at yogis (and yoginis like Ana Forrest) who can accomplish amazing feats of balance and strength even though they do not appear to be overpowering in strength. This morning I chanced across a YouTube video of an example. I had seen Mark Giubarelli's website years ago when he just had flip cards of poses. Big difference now.
I am running into more and more videos of yoga online, from highly polished productions to the equivalent of a webcam pointing to the back of a room. Just put Ashtanga into a YouTube search, and it brings up scores of video on which you can waste your time instead of practicing yoga. Then again, when you're trying to crack the secret of getting into handstand from crow, it's great to have a video demonstration because it so immediate, direct and palpable. It would take hours of reading instructions to understand it. On the other hand, the written word is great for revealing things that are not evident to the eye -- where should your drishtri be focused.
Labels: edge, inspire, yoga_resource
I got up at 6:20 this morning and did my pranayama and meditation before sitting down to breakfast. I felt proud of myself. I don't think it had a lasting on my day -- lots of tension at work that seeps into my bones and muscles and weighs me down like wet clothes. I did not have much of a chance to do anything else in the day because it was my wife's birthday and we went out to eat with my son in the evening.
Obviously, the real trick will be to do this a full week to make it a habit.
Labels: life style, practice
Tonight I did not go to yoga class, but stayed at home and did a sudarshan kriya and then 20 minutes of meditation. It was really refreshing to purge my system and then let it simmer for a while in a peaceful place. It occurred to me that instead of doing this practice in the evenings, I should make a concerted effort to do it in the morning. Rather than being restored, I could energize and enliven my body and mind for the day. That would leave my evenings for a yoga class or journaling or family matters.
The biggest obstacle is that I have never been a "morning person." I am not fully conscious until I have my first cup of coffee. I've tried to do a morning practice before, but always backslide after a few morning sessions. I have also tended to work on my websites, watch TV or surf until midnight or later. Since Teresa and I leave the house at 7:15 on Wednesdays and Thursdays so she can get to her school early, that removes the possibility of meditation and pranayama, unless I want to get up at 5:30. All this means that I can have the same routine each day, which would make it easier to form new habits and sleeping patterns. But she's only got a few more weeks of teaching so we'll be back to the normal routine of driving to the Metro at 8:10. But the real issue will how to make myself roll out of bid, put my knees on the floor and do my durga three-part breathing that starts out the Art of Living routine. Once I get started, the pranayama will goose my juices like a cold shower.
I went to my second Level II class in a row in two days and realized what it feels like after slacking off on my yoga practice (taxes, family priorities, web work, etc.). Plus, I had gone to a couple of weekend classes that were more restorative than vinyasa. So I can tell that I have lost core strength, flexibility and stamina in just a couple of weeks. Not enough to make me collapse on the floor in exhaustion, but I will probably be sore tomorrow. On top of it all, I developed a blister on my shin! I normally have callouses on my shin (actually a protruding tibia bone just below the right knee) from the kneeling poses, but tonight we did a breath of fire routine that required us to kneel in hero's pose and then twist rhythmically as we breathed. The movement probably torqued my legs, rubbing my shin against the mat.
Yoga shorts for a real man -- Drishti bought the 72K line of yoga wear
To motivate myself I have made a couple of purchases at Drishti Yoga: a pair of yoga shorts and a microfiber mat. I got the shorts because I am tired of gyms shorts that just are not made for being worn upside down and that bind in all the wrong places. If this pair works out, I'll buy some more. I got the mat because I was intrigued by the design -- a microfabric top surface that deals well with sweat while still gripping well and a sticky mat bottom surface. I've been using the same mat for more than two years and it starting to deteriorate. My wife's mat is more than four years old (and it was cheap when I bought it), and has lost all its stickiness. Of course, the politically correct thing is to buy a mat that is ecologically friendly. I have a Jade Harmony mat that I store at Flow Yoga so that I don't have to carry a mat to work. My daughter bought it for me for my birthday last September. The mat is made of natural rubber (and smells like it) and is supposed to last forever. It takes some getting used to because I found that it does not allow me to slide on its surface.
I've walked up eight-nine flights of stairs at work between two and five times a day for the past 18 months. It's part of my effort to sandwich in physical exercise in my daily routine. I find that it's the equivalent of a shot of expresso coffee because it gets my blood flowing, my heart beating and my mind sparked. I am not going to nod off at my desk after a climb. It's one of the reasons that I've dramatically cut back on my coffee consumption. It's still leaves me panting on the top flight of stairs, but I've noticed recently that my heart is not pounding as hard as it used to and I recover a lot more quickly. It used to be that I had to wait two or three minutes before walking out into the hallway. I raised too many eyebrows when I tried to speak through my heavy breathing. Now I can walk out of the stairwell within 30 seconds.
I don't know if it has made a dramatic shift in my physical conditioning. It's no more than four minutes to climb the stairs so I don't get any real aerobic effect out of it. I think it does let me get into chair pose (Utkatasana) and hold it longer and more deeply.
All this past weekend, I've felt at dis-ease as I prepared my tax return. On my way in to work this morning, I realized that there was something more. I did some centering through my breath and then directed my awareness mindfully on what I was feeling. I'm not going to bore people with the details, but I learned that my dis-ease had deeper roots than simple displeasure at paying taxes for an absurd war like Iraq or owing some more money. My dis-ease was linked to decisions made nearly 35 years ago when I ran away from home (not precisely) to Peru and stayed away for 16 years and my conflicted sense of guilt about the break with family and country. I stopped doing U.S. tax returns for years (not that I owed any taxes with the kind of money I started out making in Peru) it took me a long time to get back on track. But every time I thought about returning to the States, the tax issue symbolized what the leap-back might mean for me. Once I faced down this phantom, thing went a lot more smoothly the rest of the day.
After working on my taxes for most of the day, I went to a yoga class with Teresa at Thrive in the evening. It was a low-key class, ending with restorative poses and candlelight. The room was chilly because there was a problem with the heating and no chance for repair on the weekend, but I built up some body heat fairly quickly. Halfway through the session, I realize that I had been sabotaging my own productivity, physical wellbeing and mental stamina by putting off yoga classes because I had "more important things to do" and shortchanged my practice. I trick myself into thinking that I have to concentrate on a top priority, but not necessarily investing all my time and energy in that task. There's a diminishing return on my investment.
I now realize why I had a sudden interest in yoga blogging -- it gave me a good excuse for holding off on doing my taxes this year. I always think of Federal tax returns as a disquieting time, stressful and bitter. Part of the resistance is that I do not keep my records up to date so I have to go back and reconstruct the year so that I can recall my deductions, expenses and other details. Also the tax treatment given U.S. residents working at the Organization of American States is far from straightforward. It took me five years just to get a handle on it. Well, I am down to the last weekend so there's no wiggle room now. So blog entries will be minimal until I get done.
I have just taken out a year subscription to the premium content at Yoga Basics. I had always remembered it as having a solid, straight-forward design, solid content and bringing out a useful newsletter. But I did not come back regularly until now. As a paying customer, I see a lot more and I especially like the posture section. Tim Burgin has started a new series of posture photographs using a Flash photo applet and maintained stylistic consistency by using a clean, white background that removes any visual distractions. He also gives several angles on the pose so you get a three-dimensional image of the posture. The only drawback is that I cannot link directly to all the poses because most postures are in the premium section and/or in Flash. The standard version uses small format photographs, only 100 px by 100 px. A use of frames makes it hard to use direct links to those poses fully available publicly. In any case, finding a formula for financially supporting a valueable online service is tough so I can appreciate some of the web design and access decisions made. It's just $25 a year.
Another website worthy following to see how it develops is iHanuman.com. It calls itself "the monkey bridge between students, teachers and the ancient wisdom of yoga" and an "online community of yoga teachers dedicated to serving the yoga world." It has audio and video mini classes and interviews. It will have the YogaDancer Asana Index available once the owner recovers from a hosting switch. Yoga Dancer has had the widest collection of photos of asanas, but the quality is uneven. Among the teachers signed up in iHanuman.com are Erich Schiffmann, Suzie Hurley and Angela Farmer.
Labels: yoga_resource
Last month, Teresa and I took a long postponed vacation, five days in Orlando, Florida. For two days, Teresa kept me running to the Gulf and Atlantic coasts so that she could satiate her thirst for the ocean -- white sands, waves and sun. We stopped at the Kennedy Space Center for a couple of hours, not long enough to take the whole center in. We also spent one full day at Epcot Center, Disney World and also another day shopping for gifts and bargains at the outlets that tempt the tourists to delay their return to the Magic Kingdom. Teresa complained that we had waited 15 years too long: we should have brought the kids to Orlando when they could have enjoyed it. Of course, in those days, we couldn't have afforded it.
For me, the highlight of the trip was the Cirque du Soleil, the Canadian ultra-circus, had a resident show, La Nouba, at Disney World. I had seen Cirque du Soleil on television and was intrigued by the concept. But TV or phtographs could never capture the electricity and scope of the performance. First of all, the Disney World show is presented in a custom-built freestanding theater so it is a magical setting. The lighting, the set and wings were exploited to increase the impact. The audience was seated in the round and the actors frequently ventured into the audience. I thought the music was recorded but there was a full musical band seated in the elevated wings and the singers roamed the stage.
House Troupe, Cirque du Soleil's La Nouba at Disney World
© The Walt Disney Company
Costume credit: Dominique Lemieux
Once the lights came down and the show got underway in earnest, I gasped. It was overwhelming; I felt as if my senses were insufficient to take it all in. My eyes were darting back and forth trying to catch all the action. As the performers soared through the air, danced across the stage, balanced on the edge and tumbled, it suddenly occurred to me that I was seeing something that I aspired to in my own yoga practice. The grace and strength, the imagination and dexterity, the playfulness and wit that drove the performance were the essence of my intention when I stepped onto the mat. Not that I could ever aspire to the sheer athleticism and skill that the Cirque du Soleil cast displayed, but that joy and courage could propel my own body as it flew out of downward-facing dog to forward bend or balanced in crow.
Teresa in front of the Big-Tent-style theater where we saw La Nouba
A week later, I was in Barbados at an evaluation for a new online education program that CICAD, my employer is sponsoring. After our last session, I went back to my room and did a yoga practice on my balcony -- maybe it was something magical about Caribbean seas, winds, sand and sun. As I stretched out in side plank, my top arm reaching high and my shoulders arching back, my vision just took in the blue sky above the railing and it felt if I were balanced precariously on a high wire, and in a daring flourish, I lifted my top leg into tree position, resting my foot on my thigh. It was all an illusion, a trick of tunnel vision and concentration on my practice, but it was also a seed of intention.
For purposes of clarity, I am adding the explanation of the term "La Nouba" because there's no way of know what it means. I says through the entire show and I did not get. Of course, I did not buy a program.
La Nouba originates from the French phrase "faire la nouba," which means to party, to live it up. It transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary, engaging the imagination from beginning to end with opulent sets, brilliant choreography, theatrical lighting and provocative music.
Postscript:
Debra Perlson-Mishalove told me that she had read that many cast members of Cirque du Soleil practice yoga. It wouldn't surprise me. Yoga Journal has a mention of cast members in a yoga class.
I finished reading Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness
Kabat-Zinn really wrote several books under one cover, and he might have been better served by breaking it into separate publications. He was ambitious, ranging from the intimately personal to the globally political. That's a narrative arch that's pretty hard to sustain. I don't regret have bought and read it, but I've read all Kabat-Zinn's books so I am an exception to the average reader who might want something more focused.
Labels: reading
In America, most yoga studios are intent on transforming the classroom into the peak yoga experience. Instructors choreograph their asanas and vinyasas, script their dedicatory monologues and invoke rituals to make each class unique and vibrant. Each session is blessed with a musical soundtrack worthy of a DJ, exotic scents, and candle light. Indeed, the best classes can lead us to achieve a unique state of being, purged of the mental and physical toxins that weigh us down, exploring the edge of our capabilities -- and maybe a little farther, and enpowered by the stillness that remains. A dozen or more bodies breathing and sweating in unison build up a lot of energy in a room.
In the United States, it's preordained that the consumer market dictates that each studio owner -- and teacher, for that matter -- competes against the other studios and fitness centers for customer allegiance, as well as against all the other temptations in the market. They must have a firm grasp of supply and demand, and find the hook, nuance or niche that will distinguish them from other options and keep customers coming back for more enlightenment. That's also one of the reasons yoga styles and approaches have proliferated beyond the lineages traced back to India.
There is a subtle corollary message in the U.S. studio system, that a student will never be able to duplicate the ambiance, pace and intensity of the studio in the privacy of his/her home, even with audiotapes and DVDs. No wonder students get discouraged at how pale their home practice seems in comparison.
But the real test for a good teacher is whether a student can take something learned in each class back into the home practice. Only rarely do I hear teachers give assistance focused on the home practice. I've come to the realization that the class setting can only be of true value when it helps students take yoga's essence back to their home and into the world. That's why I want to be more consistent with recording my "one thing from class" idea -- to find something in each class that can feed back into my home practice.
Labels: philosophy, yoga
Last night I went to meditation class at Flow Yoga with Hugh Byrne. I came in with my head filled with what I call "negative loops." These are things that I am repeating to myself, almost unconsciously, that become a kind of depressive whirlpool that pulls me down. I had had a busy day at work and felt dismayed at some of the mistakes that I had made in my writing and thinking. I felt that I should not be making those kind of mistakes at this stage of my career (life). I ragged myself for not drawing back and appling some kind of mindful craft to break out of my flaws. When I was walking from work to the studio, this thinking kept spinning.
After Hugh had made his opening remarks at the session, he started us into the meditation phase and suddenly the room's ventilation turned on. Because the studio is being remodeling, the fans really come through unmuffled, like storms winds through a broken window. Hugh at first seemed disconcerted by the noise that, at first glance, seemed not suitable for contemplative silence, but then he asked us, fighting to make his voice heard, to focus our attention on the noise itself, to explore it, to come to terms with it and to welcome it into our awareness.
Meanwhile, my negative loops were still clicking away inside my head, keeping me from settling into a calm foundation. But when I started integrating the ventilation noise into my focus, it seemed to counterbalance and nullify the negative loops. As the practice move along, I seemed to be buoyed on these opposing currents: it was not a static peace but a dynamic equilibrium that left my mind aware and refreshed.
My daughter is doing the "30-Class Challenge" at Flow Yoga in April and Thrive Yoga is going to have a "40-Days to Personal Revolution" following the Baron Baptiste regime, starting on April 30. I don't know if I can fit the time requirements for this type of physical challenge into my routine, but I am willing to turn it around, and put my own challenge on the Web: I will blog my yoga-meditation experience for 30 days in a row, starting as of April 6 since I already have four days when I've written something. As with the yoga challenges, you are allowed to double (or triple) up sessions to make up for a missed day or two so I could technically go back to April 3 if I write two entries in a day with just an extra blog entry.
Why am I resorting to this gimmick? I've slacked off my writing (both online and on the page) over the past year because I lost my drive to expose my practice. My practice had become more internal and needed some silence time so that it could mature and deepen. Now I feel that the time has come to re-encounter my yogic expression in words. Hopefully, I will not have many days like yesterday when I try to describe yoga poses and human anatomical mechanics as they apply to me. I just wanted to put up a picture and save a lot of words. More important is what goes on in my head and heart.
I was able to get into Extended Side Angle Pose (Utthita Parsvakonasana) this weekend and then slip into the bind with one arm around my back and the other one under my thigh, grasping my two hands behind my back. It had been one of those poses that seemed not fit me anatomically. My torso seemed too long, my hips too tight to allow me to get my torso down next to my thigh and, then, my shoulders too tight to fit under my leg. Then, I could not rotate my lower arm to get it behind my back and then cock up to reach for my other arm. The position requires the shoulders to bow back so that I can reach around my leg. A good example of the pose can be seen at the Asana Index at the bottom of the page.
It all sounds so complicated, but I got it yesterday and repeated again it tonight at Thrive Yoga. Eighteen months working to loosen up my shoulders, trying to make my shoulder blades touch, and it looks as if it's finally paying off.
I've started going to yoga classes with my wife, Teresa, on weekends. For a long while, she was content with taking classes at Bally Fitness on Sundays, but that just did not get it done, and maybe pick up the odd class somewhere else. I bought her a 10-class pass at Thrive Yoga for Christmas, but she immediately came down with a bad cold and other health complications. She was just able to use up for pass, in March when she started going weekdays, when she does not have to worry about her Spanish teaching. On her own, last week, she bought an unlimited month pass.
Teresa has been dabbling in yoga almost as long as I have, since we both began taking classes at Bally Fitness, but she has never taken it as seriously or consistently as I have. Now she still needs to work a lot on her fundamentals and she refuses to take a basics course because she sees it as a watered-down version of a full vinyasa class. So every once in a while, I will shift an eye over to her mat to see how she's doing. She also needs to work on muscle strength and flexibility, the deficiencies of most beginners.
Between my daughter, Stephanie, and me, we've more or less convinced Teresa of the dividends of a steady yoga practice, and she does not want to be left behind.
The separation of ownership at Thrive Yoga has altered my yoga routine, as I mentioned two months ago, in unexpected way. I studied under both owners and maintain the studio website, which gives me no-costs yoga sessions at Thrive. I have just gotten through working with the site designer to purge the site of pictures of Kim Groark (at her request) and bring the graphic design into alignment with the current status at the studio. So much work that I missed two class this week, and I probably missed a few the previous week.
Over the past couple of months, Susan Bowen has brought in several new teachers, which required me to adjust to different voices, paces and sequencing. And there's been a swell of new people taking classes, many of them just getting their feet wet with yoga. Combined with my frequent travels, I seem to be practicing in a different environment even though the physical facilities remain the same.
Kim Groark, the renegade owner, as she likes to call herself, has started teaching elsewhere, and uses the facilities at the American Dance Institute for three classes a week. Her schedule has not fit mine so I have yet to take one of her classes, and not because I am taking sides in the split. She has a newsletter (PDF and a whopping 2.6 mb) that conveys her love for yoga and unique approach to the practice. She does not have website yet, but I would probably offer her the same deal as I have with Thrive -- hosting for classes.
My first reaction was that yoga and meditation should have prevented this breakup that was due to bad vibs between two friends. If yoga is going to bring harmony to the world, why can't it heal a business partnership? But then, I realized that yoga does not keep people from being human. I am sure that both Kim and Susan struggled with this contradiction and decided that the split was the best way to restore their own personal and separate balances. All these changes have meant I have become more detached from my instructors and listen more to my inner teacher about how and where my practice should be headed. They can lead me skillfully in a vinyasa, but they are not going to give me wisdom necessarily.
Labels: blessing, class, meditation, yoga
Slate Magazine The hostile New Age takeover of yoga Ron Rosenbaum takes Yoga Journal to the rhetorical woodshed for a thrashing:
In fact, my impetus for this examination of yoga media came from a sharp-witted woman I know who practices yoga but frankly concedes that -- for her, anyway -- it's less about Inner Peace than Outer Hotness. She called my attention to what she called an amazingly clueless -- and ultimately cruel (to the writer) -- decision by the editors of Yoga Journal to print a first-person story that was ostensibly about the yogic wisdom on forgiveness in relationships.
The actual article does not seem to be available on the website yet so I can't link to it. I have the issue but I can't remember reading it. Rosenbaum reminds all yoga practitioners and evangelists that we have to keep grounded and focused on what we're trying to accomplish on the mat and in the world.
A tip of the hat to SoulJerky for leading me to this tidbit.
Labels: reading
Last night I went to meditation class at Flow Yoga, with Hugh Byrne. I was surprised that I got through the whole sitting (must have been 20 minutes) without having to squirm in pain. My legs were numb by the end, but I could focus through that discomfort. The small studio room was packed with about 25 people. About 10 of them were first timers so there was an introductory slant to the class, with the previous sessions that I attended. But that's alright, I feel fine with a "beginner's mind" and once you get into the sitting, it's what goes on inside that counts.
I find that a Monday meditation session is a good way to get the week started because after the first day of the work week, I find myself frustrated at the little progress that I was able to accomplish. The sitting helps me get my butt back on the ground.
