I will be taking two weeks vacation with my wife in Spain, starting today, so I will be posting very little, depending on the availability of Internet cafes and my wife's willingness to stop sightseeing. Plus the run-up to the trip has been hectic because I had to clear away a bunch of work to be free to travel. So I have not been posting much in the past few weeks. This trip is when I wish I had a small laptop to do some journaling that then I could upload the material when I found web access.
This trip will also be a test of how I can keep up my practice while away from home base. Certainly, I can see a long trans-Atlantic flights being conducive to meditation. Find a place and time for yoga is another matter, though a hotel room may be more than adequate. It's more a question of keeping the right frame of mind.
The Washington Post's blog called The Checkup has a post about The NIH and The Woo-Woo Thing, which really refers to the NIH Yoga Week events taking place in Bethesda this week:
"Yoga Week is chock full of lectures about yoga's role in medicine and hands-on-the-mat opportunities to practice asana (the Sanskrit term for yoga poses)."
The writer gets an interview with Dr. Timothy McCall who's the medical consultant for Yoga Journal and also recently published a book about Yoga as Medicine. He talks about the yoga practitioners being way ahead of the medical community in knowing the good that yoga does. Speaking from the personal experience of having just come from a vinyasa class at Thrive Yoga tonight, I could not have had a better tonic. I sweated out all the toxins of the daily grind and was left at peace on the mat for the final restorative pose (blessings to Dana for a great class).
I've heard that the activities are drawing "big crowds," but I can't be real sure since I am confined to a cubicle from 9 to 5:30 (except when I escape to run around the Mall in shorts). A tip of the hat to the organizers and sponsors, especially to Rachel Permuth-Levine, who worked her butt off to make this week possible. I wish I was there to soak up the wisdom.
Today, I did not do my usual Sunday routine of meditation and vinyasa at Thrive Yoga in the morning. I took a special master Ashtanga class that Devon Roe offers, usually on a monthly basis at Thrive (next time is in August or September). Devon studied with Beryl Bender Birch and teaches in several yoga shops in the DC area, mainly in Virginia. It's two hours and focuses on the primary series. There were only four students in the class so it was a chance to focus on the asanas and get hands on corrections.
I have taken a few Ashtanga classes or workshops in the past so it was not completely foreign to me. For that matter, the whole vinyasa trend is strongly influenced by Ashtanga. I was surprised that I could handle the class physically, that I did not have to fall down in child's pose in order to recover my breath, recoup my strength and steel my will (except for one brief time in downdog, but that does not count). After the whole thing was over, I did not spent two hours collapsed on my couch at home because I have developed stamina, thanks to my running and practice. In other words, I did not feel intimidated by the difficulty of poses, I just knew that some of them were beyond my reach.
If it were a strict Ashtanga class, I would never have gotten beyond the first pose that requires anything approaching half-lotus: hips and hamstrings are still too tight to allow me to fold. Then, there are still issues with behind the back binds because of stiff shoulders and my inability to rotate my should joints more than a few degrees. The other major flaw is core strength, especially in the lower abs: I still don't have enough strength to lift my legs off the ground when seated in staff pose, for instance, or when sitting cross legged.
My biggest surprise was that when I was in shoulder stand and plow poses, I was able to breathe smoothly. In the past, my stomach (and probably other organs, like liver, kidneys and intestines) pressed down on my diaphragm and made me feel as if I was suffocating. I suspect that I've gotten rid of some belly (omentum) fat. That changes lifts a burden off me in the inversion phase of my yoga practice because I don't have to fight off the panic feeling of suffocation and can concentrate on balance and breath.
Labels: class, conditioning, core, hips, practice, shoulders
Beryl Bender Birch, the master instructor of Hard and Soft Power Yoga (within the Ashtanga school), is giving a weekend workshop at Georgetown Yoga on Friday, June 6 and Saturday, June 7. As noted here and here before, I participated in a Bender Birch workshop at Thrive Yoga. I really enjoyed the opportunity to benefit from her insight and inspiration and would recommend her to any serious yoga student.
At Thrive Yoga, there are a couple of great workshops coming up:
- Govindas & Radha - Waves of Love Weekend on June 13-14. Govindas is a Rockville native who now lives in California and leads workshops that combine asana with kirtan, music, rhythm and joy. You can buy his CD at CD Baby. The Friday evening event is going to be a family affair in which you can bring offspring and friends for a single price.
- Anusara Yoga with Desiree Rumbaugh will take place on the July 11-13 weekend. Desiree is an exception teacher and associate of John Friend. She has multiple two DVDs that deal with body issues through yoga. These sessions are going to be 2-3 hours long so that will really reveal a lot about Anusara's approach to the body .
There is nothing like take an intensive workshop (just one session or multiple days), to break through barriers in your practice.
I got a message from a visitor to this site with a question about dealing with back pain during extended meditation. Turns out he or she has been visiting this site for the past four years and noticed that I had not been posting as frequently as I used to. I was humbled to think that someone would keep coming back to follow this pilgrim's progress and even call it an "inspiration" to continue doing yoga. I felt instigated to write more on the blog although I find that I want to keep doing yoga and running as first priority, above writing about yoga, but I should be able to fit them all in if I can manage my priorities right and keep focused. Thanks, Shobit.
Labels: website
Washington Post A Breath of Hope: Walter Reed Tries Yoga to Counter PTSD picks up on the use of mind-body techniques to heal the psychological and physical suffering of war veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center:
The yoga that Carnes teaches, a form of guided meditation known as yoga nidra, was added to the program in 2006 after she helped conduct a feasibility study at the medical center... The results of the study were overwhelmingly positive, she said, adding that the service members appreciated learning skills that they could continue to use after they left... However, it's difficult to document the program's impact. Participants, who evaluate their own progress, often say they feel better after sessions, Carnes said, but there's little scientific evidence to back their anecdotal reports.
When Bush unleashed war on Iraq, his administration failed to put a dollar cost on the invasion and occupation of a Middle East country for five years. Now we know that the psychological cost may be even heavier than the financial, maiming a generation of soldiers. Their suffering will linger for decades. Yoga and other disciplines have been identified as key components of any treatment strategy, but it's been hard to pin down the statistical evidence (anecdotal accounts abound) to back this up to the full satisfaction of Western science.
