Last weekend, I took some shots of the YogaUSA Day event at Thrive Yoga. It was a packed house, 64 people signing up online. Susan Bowen led the session. I think some people got a bit freaked out by so much attention (a photographer shooting every few minutes). Admittedly, no one came expecting to have their practice immortalized. Most people were there because the class was free, and Susan was just hoping that a few of them would come back for more.
I was using my son's Nikon D80 SLR camera, which was a real treat. I now understand why attempting to take shots of yoga practice with anything but an SLR camera is tough, almost a guarantee of amateurish shots. Yoga is like any sports activity: you need a fast shut time, a sensitive CCD and the ability to modify the RAW file in Photoshop (or similar application). I've been working with a Canon compact, which is fine for tourist shots, but for anything moving at real life speed.
Thrive Yoga is offering a $69 unlimited month yoga pass promotion. She made a good point explaining the offer to the people at the event: you have to give yoga some time to see if it can work for you. The first couple of sessions, you're looking around at the other people, worried whether you're holding the pose correctly, fidgeting in your clothing, and trying to figure out the audio cues that the teacher is giving you. Meanwhile, your body is complaining after the session that unusual demands were being placed on it. You need a couple of weeks to get over the initial shock and awe, and then take a more balanced assessment of how yoga affects you.
Although my knee injury, operation and recovery have been primary concerns for my yoga practice, a more modest injury has been holding back my practice for the past two weeks. I jammed my left toe on a one-legged jump-back (my torn meniscus, by the way, is on my right side). When it happened, I barely noticed it. It made a sound like cracking your knuckles. In the evening, it start to swell up. The next morning it was black, blue and purple, and throbbing like mad. I made it to work, but saw my doctor the next day to make sure that nothing serious had happened. He said that at most there was a hairline fracture and there was not much that could be done: I should take some ibuprofen and raise it off the ground when seated, whenever possible. By the end of the week, the bruising had gone away (so it was no longer a source of conversation at yoga class), but it will take weeks to get back to normal.
Even though the injury is getting better, it is a major speed bump for my practice (not necessarily a bad thing). I now refrain from doing jump-backs and jump-forwards in vinyasas. When the toe jam happened, I was really feeling a rush in my practice, which may have caused me to be over-aggressive. I had gone to class four days in a row, and was starting to feel some momentum. Where the toe injury really hits me is with balance: the big toe plays a big role in keep the foot (and the rest of the body) level. It's probably better to rely more on the sole of the foot (the old "four corners" mantra) as the touch points of balance, but a jammed toe affects the foot all the way back into the ball of the foot and then up the leg.Inspired Yoga is getting into the swing of Obama Inauguration with Inaugurating the Sacred featuring master teacher Saul David Raye, stretching from today, January 15 to Monday, January 19. There are too many sessions to mention here specifically (yoga, Thai massage, meditation, chanting). In addition, there's an Om Inaugural Ball on Sunday evening, January 18. Many out-of-town guests will be showing up at Inspired Yoga. More power to them. Recently, the studio and its owner director, Kyra Anastasia Sudofsky, were featured on CNN about the relief that yoga provides stressed out Washingtonians.
Just to update, the Shiva Rea & Seane Corne events have been all booked up for more than a week (if not longer).
I have made headway in getting back into the swing of my yoga practice. My acupuncturist says that I am ahead of the curve. He's seen several people, 40 years or older, who had have had knee surgery, and in my case, my knee has full range of movement, and I no longer have serious swelling or other side effects. With one month of yoga practice under my belt, I can see I am recovering. I know of two people at my office who've had knee surgery in the last six months, and one has already blown out his knee again because he went back to running too soon.
Knee support and rolled hand towels that are placed behind the knees when in child's pose. At Thrive Yoga this past weekend, I took a vinyasa 2/3 class with Susan Bowen and managed to get through it. The following day, I took a hatha yoga class with Marylou McNamara. It's a nice combination: the advance class tests my limits physically while the hatha class keeps me grounded in the basics of alignment and breathing, and allows me to recover from the hard work with Susan.
I keep some props with me on the mat: a knee support and two rolled-up terry cloth hand towels that I put behind both knees to create some "space" in my joint whenever i am in a stressful pose, like child's pose. The knee support is more to remind me tactilely that I should keep my awareness on my knee, rather than to brace my knee. When I fold my knee, there's always a double-ply of Neoprene between my thigh and calf, offering a minimum of protection. The support also keeps my rolled-up hand towel from slipping out due to lubricating sweat. It keeps my knee warm, too.
I was doing a mental inventory of how my practice went this week, composed of two evening vinyasa classes with Dana Cohen at Thrive Yoga. If my yogic intention for the year is "listening with my whole body," my body was screaming "Why are you torturing me tonight!" I felt an almost combative resistance in my shoulders that made Warrior I and II a real struggle. But I could also sense that my breathing offered a depth that promised to counterbalance the weight of my heavy muscles and bones. Surfing the web at lunchtime today, I came across a November article in my hometown WashingtonPost.com Yoga Can Give You Strength, Balance, Flexibility. Isn't That Enough?. Somehow, I had missed it. It helped put things in perspective:
My own sense, buttressed in talks with Willow Street owner Suzie Hurley and others, is that regular participation in yoga, regardless of the style or level, is going to produce at least two surefire benefits: It will identify and help strengthen weak points in your body, and it will help reawaken muscles that tend to be underused in even active people.
Howard Schneider, one of the Washington Post's Misfit columnists, gives an excellent rundown of the relevance of yoga and other mindful disciplines to fitness. Of course, it helps that he has Suzie Hurley as a reference authority. I appreciated that he did not dip into the standard clichés about yoga (even good writers seem to recur to the pretzel metaphor all too easily).
By the way, Dana Cohen is an inspired teacher. I really enjoy her classes, which usually end with her signing a gospel or chanting a kirtan. She has been teaching at Thrive on an off-and-on basis for the past year -- Rockville is her family's home, but she seems to lead a nomadic life that leads her to the West Coast, India and beyond. Catch her while she's in town by checking the Thrive Yoga online schedule. She also gives Thai yoga massages. The easiest way to contact her is giving Thrive a call.
Labels: class, conditioning, news
Flow Yoga Center is sponsoring additional activities on Monday, January 19, taking advantage of the presence of two leading yoga teachers, Shiva Rea and Seane Corne. Seane will have a two-hour session from 10-12, followed by two sessions (1-2:45pm and 3-5pm) with Shiva. The third session has already filled up. All yoga sessions will be held at the Washington Ballet facilities. Remember that January 19 is a holiday so you may have some free time to take in a day session. You can sign up at the online store. These events lead into the evening Chant 4 Change: Inaugural Kirtan Festival. There may be other events taking place around the inaugural so you may want to check with your local yoga studios. You also have the Yoga Day USA the week after the inauguration.
NYTimes.com Yoga Classes Play Up the Lighter Side opened the year with a chuckle about the use of laughter in the yoga studio:
"I do think there's a trend toward lightening up in the yoga community," said Kelly McGonigal, 31, the editor in chief of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy (found at iayt.org). "Mostly around the rigidity and humorlessness of doing things 'the one right way' &emdash; always having to get better, feeling like every yoga practice has to be one big self-improvement project."
I was struck by the lameness of some of the attempts at humor cited as examples of a trend in this article. I really had to search for some text to pull out in a quote. I suspect that the context gives more meaning to the words. The point about yoga being taken too seriously is right on target; I am guilty of it myself.
Labels: life style, news, teachers
Each year I decide on a new intention that will focus my yoga practice. This year, I've decided to use "Listen with my whole body," taking up on my previous blog entry. My body tells me lots of stuff about myself and the world around me, and I don't pay enough attention to it, instead getting carried away by the stream of consciousness that flows through my head like a storm pipe. To start, I need to pay more attention to what my knees are telling me so that I don't get into any more trouble. The intention is also a reminder to slow down both breath and movement.
I've been able to fit in classes at Thrive Yoga every day this week, except for New Year's Day, when the studio was closed. Teresa has been going to most classes with me. I think that I've gotten back into a regular practice and could handle any level of class. It's still going to be months before I recovery my full strength, flexibility and ease.
