CORE stands for COnditioning and RElaxation. This week will feature discussions and participation in diverse forms of physical activity, such as yoga, Pilates, running, walking, hip-hop dancing and more. It will also offer de-stressing and relaxation. There are more activities than a single person can undertake. CORE Week is held from February 9-13 at various locations at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. For more information, please contact the organizer, Dr. Rachel Levine, directly. All events are FREE and open to the public. Details about daily events.
On Wednesday evening, February 11, from 6:30-9:00 pm, the event organizers will have a networking/brainstorming get-together at the Rockville Lifetime Athletic Club, 1151 Seven Locks Rd., Rockville, Maryland 20854. This event carries a modest fee, $15, to cover refreshments.
Judging from a previous event, I know that Rachel and her colleagues will put together a great series of presentations, discussions and hands-on sessions. NIH is also opening its fitness centers for classes before and after the main mid-day events.
Labels: dc_yoga
In the TED conference of 2007, Scottish percussionist and composer Evelyn Glennie spoke on how to listen to music with your whole body, a striking insight from someone who has been deaf since the age of 12. But I was even more moved by her presentation's repercussions for yoga. After all, we are all trying to listen with our bodies, both to the subtle energies that flow through our core and to the world around us that reverberates with pulsations.
More info at TED.com and her bio page, or check out her own website.
PS: Since putting up this blog entry, I've downloaded some of her contemporary classical music and find it really provocative and multi-layered. Lately, I've suffered from a rather conventional choices of classical music (Mozart, Bach, Teleman, etc.), but I've found a way of doorway into a more modern style. She's had music composed just for her, which is a high compliment.
I was able to fit in two hot yoga classes with Susan Bowen at Thrive Yoga before Christmas. I've been holding off on taking one of Susan's classes because I wanted to regain strength, flexibility and confidence before taking her classes again. She can lead you to the edge in her more demanding sets, and I did not want to fall off. I now know most of the poses that I have to be careful with, and modify them to protect my knees. All my teachers know that I have knee issues, and they usually alert us when a knee-sensitive pose is coming up and offering alternatives. Since the first class was in the evening and the second the following morning, I was sore afterwords.
I went to class with my wife, Teresa, which was nice that we could share time on the mat together. She's been using my unlimited pass with Thrive Yoga for the equivalent time that I was out of circulation. Next year, we'll have to see how we can keep her practicing at the same pace.
Yoga Day USA is coming up on Saturday, January 24. The event is sponsored by the Yoga Alliance and is meant to broaden the appeal of yoga and encourage people to be physically active.
At my home studio, there will be a free class at 12:30-2:00 pm, and other studios will be doing similar activities so locate them on the Yoga Day site or go directly to the studios to find out what they are planning.
Labels: dc_yoga
CHANT 4 CHANGE, January 19, 6:30 pm - 11:30 pm, at Church of the Holy City
Celebrate the Inauguration of Barack Obama on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with sacred activist Shiva Rea, world-renowned kirtan/chant artists Jai Uttal, Dave Stringer, Gaura Vani & As Kindred Spirits and 400 other conscious revolutionaries.
I suspect that this event is going to sell out very quickly. It's a relatively small venue. You can buy tickets at Brown Paper Tickets at $70 a piece. It's for a good cause.
Labels: dc_yoga, life style
Two evenings in a row I've hit the mat at Thrive Yoga, once with Teresa Beerman and then with Elizabeth Pope, both of whom pushed me pretty close to my rather pronounced limits. I had to keep reminding myself to hold back, move slowly through the vinyasas, and take child's pose when appropriate.
My injured knee has not been a handicap and I have not had to back off of any pose. I don't, however, do any of the poses that put a lot of torque on my knees, usually the hip openers. By the way, even though my right knee was injured, I treat both knees the same. No one has advised me to do that. It just seems the right thing to do to maintain balance in my body.
Inversions have been one group of poses that have caused some problems. My four-month lay-off has led to an accumulation of weight around my waste and weakened my core. The end result is that my breathing is hampered in inversions, and it forces me to come out of the poses early. Just before my injury, I was pleased that I had fuller breathing in inversions because I had eliminate my midriff fat. This is where I really miss my running because it helped keep the weight off without major modifications to my diet.
I took in two classes at Thrive Yoga this weekend, Vinyasa Flow I with Lisa Johnson and Hatha Yoga with Marylou McNamara. Both instructors pay close attention to the details of alignment. Marylou led us through a series of poses that really helped my psoas. I've been looking for poses and routines that will help me open my hips, but won't put pressure on my knees. A lot of poses, like One-Legged King Pigeon Pose (Eka Pada Rajakapotasana), jeopardize the stability of the knees. I want to start using the safe poses in my home practice.
I fit some core strength routines into my Sunday afternoon because level one classes rarely put a strong emphasis on building up physical strength and stamina.
My daughter, Stephanie, has been awarded her 200-hour yoga teacher credential by the Flow Yoga Center teacher training program. It's taken her a while, in part because she is so conscientious about fulfilling all the obligations and mastering the material. She took it very seriously. For about six months, she has been volunteering yoga classes at one of the House of Ruth's shelters for battered women. Now she's going to be looking for more teaching opportunities.
Great going, Estef!!!
Labels: life style, milestone, Stephanie, teachers, yoga
I went to my fourth class on Tuesday evening at Thrive, with Pierre again. I kept trying to throttle back on my practice, to keep from overreaching and getting ahead of my recovery. For the first time, I did some jump-backs and jump-forwards in my vinyasa, but only after warmly up thoroughly. I did notice a touch of stiffness and discomfort in my injured knee. I have to be careful when getting into kneeling positions, like hero's pose (Virasana) and even child's pose (Balasana) because my body weight rests heavily on my knees.
Pierre will not be back at Thrive for a while. His nomadic journey will bring him back to the DC area in February. He's helped me feel more at ease with my injury and inviting me accept the healing process as a renewed exploration of my body: "With the breath, everything you do can be yoga."
I did not take another weekend class just to resist the temptation to overwork my body during this recuperative period. I still need time between class to let my muscles and ligaments heal.
NY Times H. M., an Unforgettable Amnesiac, Dies at 82 is about Henry Molaison, who opened the way for modern neuroscience because he revealed the crucial role of memory:
"And for those five decades, he was recognized as the most important patient in the history of brain science. As a participant in hundreds of studies, he helped scientists understand the biology of learning, memory and physical dexterity, as well as the fragile nature of human identity."
Molaison could not form long-term memory, and had to live each day as if its events were the first time he had faced them. He lived in an eternal present, without the weight of a future and with only a remote past (prior to the surgery that cut his hippocampus in 1953). He then went through years of investigations into how the operation affected his mental processes. He was known in the scientific literature as "H.M."
Expect to see more articles and blogs about H.M.'s importance in science in the coming days. For a start: A Blog Around the Clock ::: NPR ::: The Day His Day Stood Still ::: Wikepedia
Labels: brain_science, history, news
I had a vinyasa flow 1 session at Thrive Yoga early this morning, this time with Lisa Johnson. I almost talked myself out of going because I finished the week exhausted and was sore in my shoulders and upper arms. But my wife wanted to go to yoga and threatened to go alone so I could not let her show more discipline than me so I threw on my clothes, threw together my kit, brewed a quick pot of coffee and jumped in the car.
The class was less physically demanding than my previous two sessions; at least it felt that way and did not have to take any breaks. I know that I have to keep the mindset of a beginner, to approach my practice without any preconceived ideas about what I should be doing. In a way, it's an opportunity to relearn my yoga poses and vinyasas, and perhaps even overcoming some of the tightness in key areas of my body (shoulders, spin, hips).
I found that my right (injured and surgically repaired) knee seemed to track better than my left one. When doing a balancing pose, I felt more stable, with less propensity to shift out of equilibrium. The tendency may be due to overcompensation for the past three months in which I've nursed my right knee while relied on my left knee for support.
I also noticed that my shoulders seemed to have loosened up since my injury. When I'm laying in savasana at the end of class, my palms turn upwards more naturally. In the past, my arms tended to turn palms down when lying on my back. This pattern was probably created by years of pounding a keyboard, with my shoulders rotated forward. I actually worked on loosening up my shoulders during the break by combining a few simple stretches with my pranayama routine.
Washington Post Happiness Can Spread Among People Like a Contagion, Study Indicates:
"Stanley Wasserman, who studies social networks at Indiana University, said: "We've known that one's network ties are important, but we've never looked at anything on this scale. The implications are you can't look at individuals as little entities devoid of their social context." Others, however, questioned the findings, noting that it is difficult to account for every variable that might affect the outcomes of such studies."Coincidentally, I am reading Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
by Martin Seligman, who's quoted in this article. It's fascinating to see the upside to this approach to the mind. The investigators can apply scientific testing to determine and measure the effects of an emotional state (positive or negative ) in a social network. It also allows society to take preventative actions to safeguard the mental well-being of target populations, like teenagers and the elderly, who tend to be more prone to depression and anxiety. There are simple interventions that can be done without the need for meditation or extended therapy.
Labels: life style, mind health
I went to Thrive again this evening, after giving myself 48 hours to recover from my first yoga session in four months. Tonight's class was with Elizabeth Pope, a new teacher for me, who joined the studio after I hurt my knee. She's been exposed to a range of teachers, from Kasthaub Desikachar to Ana Forrest. It was a good solid class for all levels so I modified most of the poses to concentrate on my knees. Where I really felt it was in my shoulder and upper arms: all the chararungas in the vinyasas were punishing me for wimping out during my convalescence and not maintaining my core strength. Elizabeth confirmed this conclusion by making us do multiple sets of abdominal exercises that left me barely able to lift my head and neck off the ground. I sweated profusely and had to take child's pose on several occasions because my conditioning has lagged far more than it should have, especially in the last few weeks when I was struggling with resistance to going to the gym and the studio.
Labels: balance, class, conditioning, core, injury, teachers
I was finally able to fit in a yoga class at Thrive with Pierre Couvillion this evening. My first class since mid-August and almost two months after my knee operations. I forced myself to go by packing my kit and rolling up my mat this morning before I left for work and giving my wife instructions to take it to the studio when she went to her class in the afternoon. I knew I had to put some kind of imperative in the formula because I was building up all kinds of resistance to the yoga class and even going to the gym, even though I can feel the adverse effects that their absence is having on my body and temperament.
Pierre led a pretty straight forward class that was good for me because it was am all-levels class that emphasized grounding in the basics of good form and breath. I did not do anything crazy — no jump-backs or jump-throughs, no wheels or advanced inversions. I just wanted to feel easy and comfortable in my asanas, and focus on my knees to make sure that they were solid and fully engaged. Pierre led us through some fundamental variations in standing poses that reinforced the tracking of the leg muscles. I think the factor that had deteriorated the most during the break was balance.
In preparation for the class, I had a session of acupuncture in the morning that was supposed to help break up some of the scar tissue in my knee.
